Chinese Military,Political and Social Superthread

[Colin Parkinson]

China upset about our ex-PM Harper going to Taiwan https://www.theglobeandmail.com/world/article-china-issues-angry-criticism-of-stephen-harpers-visit-to-taiwan/

 

[MarkOttawa]

Something we should do and almost certainly won't--Chinese consulates general in Vancouver and Toronto especially big menaces:

Under New Rule, Chinese Diplomats Must Notify State Dept. of Meetings in U.S.
State Department officials said the new measures were ordered in reciprocity for China’s strict limits on the actions of American diplomats there.

The United States has begun requiring Chinese diplomats to notify the State Department before any meetings they plan to have with local or state officials and with educational and research institutions, the State Department said Wednesday.

The move was a reaction to the Chinese government’s rules for American diplomats in China, a senior State Department official said. American diplomats are generally required to obtain the permission of Chinese officials in Beijing before they can travel to official meetings in the provinces or to visit institutions, the official said.

The new State Department requirement was still less onerous than that imposed by China. Chinese diplomats are not required to seek permission for the meetings; they need only to notify the State Department in advance.

One aim of the new restrictions was to get China to relent on its limits on the actions of American diplomats, the official said, adding that the United States had complained to the Chinese government about the regulations, to no avail.
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The new rule, described by State Department officials on the condition of anonymity, applies to officials working at all Chinese Missions in the United States and its territories, including at the United Nations.

The policy of reciprocity is sure to add to the growing tensions between the United States and China...
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/16/world/asia/china-state-department-diplomats.html

E.g. Would be nice if we had a record of Michael Chan's meetings (doubt CSIS knew about all of them):

1)  Spookery in Canada: China, CSIS and…the Ontario Government
https://mark3ds.wordpress.com/2015/06/17/mark-collins-spookery-in-canada-china-csis-and-the-ontario-government/

2) Spookery in Canada: China, CSIS and…the Ontario Government, Part 2
https://mark3ds.wordpress.com/2015/06/17/mark-collins-spookery-in-canada-china-csis-and-the-ontario-government-part-2/

3) How Convenient: “Ontario minister Michael Chan defends China’s human-rights record”
https://mark3ds.wordpress.com/2016/06/09/mark-collins-how-convenient-ontario-minister-michael-chan-defends-chinas-human-rights-record/

Mark
Ottawa

 

[a_majoor]

While the headline is overblown, the reality of internal divisions inside the CCP is something we tend to overlook:

https://donsurber.blogspot.com/2019/10/xi-may-face-coup.html

Xi may face a coup

[snip]
The newspaper reported, "In Beijing’s system, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) holds a monopoly on power. But the party leadership is not a monolithic group. CCP leaders span a range of political associations, socioeconomic backgrounds, professional credentials, geographic associations and policy preferences. Two broad camps in the leadership vigorously vie for influence and control in post-Deng China: the elitist coalition, with its core faction of princelings (leaders who come from veteran revolutionary families), and the populist coalition, which primarily consists of so-called tuanpai (leaders who advanced their careers through the Chinese Communist Youth League)."

Elitists vs. populists. Sound familiar?

Chairman Xi is part of the former. Red China may not be immune from the worldwide rise in populism because populism is a reaction to the failure of elitists to protect the people. Factory closings in the rust belt in the 1970s led to the Reagan Revolution.

How this ties into issues like Hong Kong, Taiwan, the trade war with the United States and so on will be interesting to watch in the future.

 

[MarkOttawa]

This doesn't seem terribly practical to me:

USAF looks for expeditionary precision landing system for Pacific

The US Air Force (USAF) is looking for a precision approach landing system to enable its aircraft to land at expeditionary air strips on islands in the Pacific Ocean.

The service is asking military contractors to submit white papers that outline component-level designs and trade-off analyses to determine the right mix of requirements necessary for a Small Footprint Precision Approach and Landing Capability (SF-PALC) system, it says in an online notice on 17 October.

The USAF would use information from the white papers to set requirements for a separate contract to fund development of prototypes from one or more manufacturers. A production contract could follow the prototyping phase, says the service.

The expeditionary precision approach landing system is needed to help the USAF carry out its Agile Combat Employment (ACE) strategy in the Pacific Ocean. The strategy is a response to China’s precision, long-range missiles, which could hit US aircraft parked on the tarmac. To avoid losses on the ground, the USAF plans to fly from a greater number of air bases, of sizes small and large, so as to increase the number of targets an adversary would need to attack.

However, the agile-basing plan requires the service to constantly keep its aircraft on the move, so that the Chinese military doesn’t have time to spot and attack US jets [emphasis added].

“The ACE concept is basically having a jet land [at a remote location], then a team of maintainers re-arms and refuels the jet, and sends it back into the fight as quickly as possible,” says Master Sargent Edmund Nicholson of 67th aircraft maintenance unit, which is based at Kadena air base in Japan. He explained the concept via an USAF media release about an agile combat exercise at Fort Greely, Alaska in August 2019.

In order for a jet to land at a remote island air strip – a runway without the usual navigation and air traffic control infrastructure – the USAF needs portable equipment. The service wants its SF-PALC system to be small enough to fit onto one 463L pallet, which would be airlifted inside one Lockheed Martin C-130H cargo transport. The system must also be able to be setup and operated in a GPS-denied environment, says the USAF.

The SF-PALC system requirement comes after the US Navy awarded Raytheon a $235 million contract for 23 Joint Precision Approach and Landing Systems (JPALS) in May 2019. JPALS is a differential, GPS-based precision landing system that guides aircraft to a landing spot, typically on an aircraft carrier deck, though a land-based expeditionary unit is in development as well.

The navigation equipment is integrated into the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II and will be installed on the in-development Boeing MQ-25A Stingray unmanned in-flight refuelling vehicle. Raytheon has said it plans to demonstrate expeditionary versions of JPALS to the USAF.
https://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/usaf-looks-for-expeditionary-precision-landing-syste-461599/

End of a 2016 post:

USAF “Officers Give New Details for F-35 in War With China”
...
All that basing thinking has rather a Rube Goldberg/Heath Robinson feel about it to me.
https://mark3ds.wordpress.com/2016/07/04/mark-collins-usaf-officers-give-new-details-for-f-35-in-war-with-china/

Mark
Ottawa

 

[MarkOttawa]

I'm still eagerly awaiting the next similar arrest--serious China link (don't know about Ortis)--in Canada:

Former intelligence official Roger Uren facing 30 charges for breaching national secrecy

A former Australian intelligence official is on bail after being arrested and charged with breaching national secrecy rules.

Roger Uren, who was an assistant director at the intelligence analysis agency, Office of National Assessments (ONA--now ONI, Office of National Intelligence [https://www.oni.gov.au/short-history-ona-oni], no exact equivalent here but there is Assessments Staff in PCO [a lot more staff than listed here https://geds-sage.gc.ca/en/GEDS?pgid=014&dn=ou%3DIAS-BEI%2C+ou%3DNSA-CNS%2C+ou%3DPCO-BCP%2C+o%3DGC%2C+c%3DCA]), is facing 30 charges of unauthorised dealing with records.

He appeared briefly in the ACT Magistrates Court yesterday, to answer the charges which police said arose out of a raid on his Canberra home in 2015 when classified documents were uncovered.

Police said the charges came under the Intelligence Services Act and the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation Act.

In a statement, police alleged there was an unauthorised removal and retention of classified intelligence information from Mr Uren's place of employment.

Mr Uren resigned from his position at ONA  in 2001, and in 2011 was considered by then-prime minister Kevin Rudd as a potential Australian Ambassador to China.

He is married to Chinese-Australian lobbyist Sheri Yan, who was jailed in the United States for bribing then president of the United Nations General Assembly John Ashe.

Despite the raid happening four years ago, Mr Uren's prosecution was not approved until it came to Attorney-General Christian Porter's desk mid-this year.

"My consent was required as the charges relate to alleged offences under section 40J of the Intelligence Services Act 2001 and section 18A of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation Act 1979," Mr Porter said in a statement.

"Each of these offences have specifically required the Attorney's consent for a prosecution to proceed since they were introduced in 2014."

Mr Porter said as the matter was now before the courts, it would not be appropriate to comment further.

Mr Uren will be back in court in February next year.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-10-24/intelligence-official-roger-uren-faces-national-secrecy-charges/11634962

Mark
Ottawa

 

[MarkOttawa]

Canadian prosecutions? After Kovrig and Spavor safe? What about Robert Schellenberg with death sentence now?

US To Press China Espionage Cases Regardless Of Trade Talks: DOJ
“We didn’t bring one of these cases because of what’s going on on the trade front,” assistant attorney general John Demers said, “and we’re not going to drop them even if we reach an agreement.”

The head of the Justice Department task force on China pledged today to continue prosecuting espionage cases regardless of trade negotiations with Beijing.

“I don’t do trade, and I try to keep our cases well apart from what’s going on the trade front,” Assistant Attorney General John Demers told the CyberTalks conference this morning, “because we didn’t bring one of these cases because of what’s going on on the trade front. And we’re not going to drop them even if we reach an agreement.”

“We’re going to stop doing cases about China intellectual property theft when the Chinese stop doing intellectual theft,” Demers continued. “If they agree to a trade agreement and they actually change their behavior, great…That’s ultimately what we’re really looking at.”

The Trump administration has been accused of inappropriately entangling trade, national security, domestic politics, and the president’s family business in its dealings with foreign powers. Demers himself was a presidential nominee, working at Boeing before Trump tapped him to head Justice’s National Security Division. He’s not a career DOJ lawyer. But Demers had significant experience, having previously worked in what was a brand-new division under President George W. Bush from 2006 to 2009, right after he clerked for Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.

Since Demers took charge in February 2018, the National Security Division has:

    *brought multiple espionage cases against Chinese nationals and Chinese-Americans alike,
    *charged Russian Elena Alekseevna Khusyaynova for interfering in the 2018 election; and
    *brought charges against a government-owned Turkish bank for violating sanctions on      Iran. A key witness in that investigation was a former client of the president’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, who had tried to get the case against him dropped.

Demers and his division have also worked with the Commerce Department to impose sanctions on a Chinese company tied to industrial espionage against the US. Last year, after Jinhua Integrated Circuit Co. was accused of stealing intellectual property from US chipmaker Micron, Commerce placed Jinhua on its Entity List of companies restricted from doing business in the US. Unable to import US-made equipment for its factory, Jinhua was unable to use the stolen secrets to actually make chips, Demers said...
https://breakingdefense.com/2019/10/china-espionage-cases-not-a-bargaining-chip-in-trade-doj/

Mark
Ottawa

 

[MarkOttawa]

Beware your smartphone, and much more:

Why you should worry if you have a Chinese smartphone
China’s use of technology for social control of its citizens is extensive – but it could affect users elsewhere too, says security analyst Samantha Hoffman

Samantha Hoffman is an analyst of Chinese security issues at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (Aspi). She recently published a paper entitled Engineering Global Consent: The Chinese Communist Party’s Data-Driven Power Expansion [https://www.aspi.org.au/report/engineering-global-consent-chinese-communist-partys-data-driven-power-expansion].

Internet pioneers heralded a time when information would be set free, giving people everywhere unfiltered access to the world’s knowledge and bringing about the decline of authoritarian regimes… that’s not really happened has it?

Bill Clinton said that, for China, controlling free speech online would be like “nailing Jell-O to the wall”. I wish he had been right. But unfortunately, there was too much focus on the great firewall of China and not enough on how the Chinese Communist party was trying to shape its external environment.

When did China pivot from seeing the internet as a US-generated threat to something it could use to discipline and punish its own population?

It’s not just the internet, it’s technology in general. If you go back to even the late 1970s and early 80s, the way the Chinese Communist party (CCP) talks about technology is as a tool of social management. It’s a way of not only coercive control, but also sort of cooperative control where you participate in your own management. It’s this idea of shaping the environment, shaping how people think, how they’re willing to act before they even know they’re making a choice. That’s the party’s idea.

When did that develop into what is called the social credit system?

Former Chinese leader Jiang Zemin spoke about this in 2000. He said we need a social credit system to merge rule by law and rule by virtue. I don’t see it as different from the way Hannah Arendt describes how regimes attempt to make the law inseparable from ethics in The Origins of Totalitarianism.

How does the social credit system work for the average citizen? As they are going about their lives, are they continually earning and losing points based on their behaviour?

A pop cultural reference might be the Black Mirror episode Nosedive. But it isn’t the same. It’s not really a number score that goes up and down. There are multiple inputs. So you have, say, legal inputs, like a court record, and financial inputs. Then there are third-party inputs, such as surveillance video or data about your sentiment on social media. The system includes blacklists, records on public websites, and platforms to support decisions on creditworthiness that integrate things like “sentiment analysis”. This applies to companies and individuals. Muji’s Shanghai branch had a mark of dishonesty on its credit record with the Shanghai government because one of its products was labelled “Made in Taiwan”.

The number of people affected is enormous: 17.5 million people were prevented from buying flights in 2018. Is there much pushback from the Chinese population about this system?
An average person might not see how it’s affecting them yet. Social credit is technology augmenting existing control methods. So if you’re used to that system, you aren’t necessarily seeing the change yet. Blacklists aren’t new, but the technology supporting this social management is. And over time, as it becomes more effective, that’s where more people will notice the impact.

So there isn’t much concept of user privacy or anonymising data in China?

Privacy matters to the average Chinese citizen and there are privacy regulations in place. But privacy stops where the party’s power begins. And so, you know, the party state might put controls on how companies can share data. But again privacy stops where the party’s power begins. And that’s a huge difference in the system.

One thing that’s interesting to keep in mind is the system itself. When we think about China’s authoritarianism, we think about surveillance cameras, we think about facial recognition. But we forget that a lot of the technology involved provides convenience. And control happens for convenience. Some of the technologies involved in increasing the party’s power are actually providing services – maybe Mussolini and his timely trains is a useful way of thinking about it.

The most egregious example of this surveillance technology would be in Xinjiang for controlling the Uighur [Muslim] population?

The most visibly coercive forms of what the party is doing are unfolding in Xinjiang. It’s a virtual police state. There are QR codes on people’s doors for when the party goes in to check on who is in. Some researchers have found that if someone leaves through the back door instead of the front door, that can be considered suspicious behaviour.

Is the wider Chinese population aware of how the technology is being used in Xinjiang? Do they realise this is a more enhanced version of what we’ve got in their own lives?

I don’t think people are aware of how bad it is. A lot of people don’t believe Western reporting. If they see it. Even if they do believe it, propaganda has shaped a bad public opinion of the Uighurs.

Do you think the Chinese Communist party has a file on you?

I imagine that they probably have a file on a lot of outspoken researchers. I try not to think about what mine would look like. In general, a lot of researchers on China have a fear, whether it’s conscious or unconscious, about losing access or the ability to go to China.

You have written about your fears that a commercial deal struck between Huawei and a Turkish mobile operator could be used to monitor the exiled Uighur population in Turkey.

Chinese tech giants like Huawei are signing agreements for smart cities globally – in April we at Aspi counted 75. These agreements include public security, licence-plate and facial recognition tools. As a local government you’re taking what is the cheapest and best product for your city. You’re deploying it in ways you’ve decided are reasonable, but what might be forgotten is that these services require data to be sent back to the company to keep it up to date – and who else has access to that data once the manufacturer has it? One agreement was made with Turkish mobile provider Turkcell. Turkey has about 10,000 Uighurs living in exile – that system could be used to further control and harass exiles and family members in China.

More generally, I found that the party central propaganda department has made cooperation agreements with a number of major Chinese tech companies. As their products are bedded in they become ways of collecting tons of data. A language translation tool, for instance, doesn’t sound like a surveillance tool but it’s a way to collect a lot of data. Technically it’s not different from what Google does but their intent is different – it’s about state security.

So western governments should be wary of installing Chinese-designed tech infrastructure in their cities?

Yes. It’s perhaps uncomfortable for a lot of people to acknowledge, but the party is very clear about its intent. Its intent relates to state security. The party talks about “discourse power” – the party’s version of the truth being the only thing that’s accepted. The Chinese government ultimately controls all Chinese companies through its security legislation. You might be comfortable with someone collecting data to tailor advertising to you, but are you comfortable with sharing your data with a regime that has 1.5 million Uighurs imprisoned on the basis of their ethnic identity?

So we should be cautious about buying Chinese smartphones and smart home products?
I would be. You may think “I’m not researching the CCP or testifying in Congress, so I don’t have anything to worry about”. But you don’t really know how that data is being collected and potentially used to shape your opinion and shape your decisions, among other things. Even understanding advertising and consumer preferences can feed into propaganda. Taken together, that can be used to influence an election or feelings about a particular issue.

Some of these elements of monitoring and nudging are present in western life. For instance, fitness tracking that earns you discounts on health insurance, or local authorities using machine learning to identify potential abuse victims. Should we be careful about letting this stuff into society?

We need to be very careful. It’s easy to see what the benefits are, but we aren’t adequately defining the risks. Some of the problems can be dealt with by introducing more data literacy programmes, so that individuals understand, say, the privacy issues concerning a home-security camera.

The Chinese party state is going to take advantage of the weaknesses in liberal democracies, whether they’re legal or cultural. They take advantage of our really weak data privacy laws. GDPR is a good step, but it doesn’t really deal with the core problem of technology that’s providing a service. By its nature the company providing the service collects and uses data. Who has access to that data, their ability to process it, and their intent is the problem.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/oct/26/china-technology-social-management-internet-social-credit-system?

And along several similar lines, an excerpt:

Document Number Nine
...
The most important of these diametric opposites concerns Western liberal values. In 2013, an amazing paper from the highest reaches of the CCP, catchily known as ‘Document Number Nine’, or ‘Communiqué on the Current State of the Ideological Sphere’, came to light. (The journalist who leaked it, Gao Yu, was sentenced to seven years in prison and is currently under house arrest.) Document Number Nine warned of ‘the following false ideological trends, positions and activities’: ‘promoting Western constitutional democracy’; ‘promoting “universal values”’; ‘promoting civil society’; ‘promoting neoliberalism’; ‘promoting the West’s idea of journalism, challenging China’s principle that the media and publishing system should be subject to party discipline’; ‘promoting historical nihilism’ (which means contradicting the party’s view of history); ‘questioning Reform and Opening and the socialist nature of socialism with Chinese characteristics’. The paper, which is cogent and clear, takes direct aim at the core values of Western democracy, and explicitly identifies them as the enemies of the party.​1 It sees the internet as a crucial forum for defeating these enemies. The conclusion speaks of the need to ‘conscientiously strengthen management of the ideological battlefield’, and especially to ‘strengthen guidance of public opinion on the internet’ and ‘purify the environment of public opinion on the internet’.

Document Number Nine is thought to have been either directly written by, or under the auspices of, President Xi Jinping. It marked a new turn in the history of China, and quite possibly the history of the world: the moment at which a powerful nation-state looked at the entire internet’s direction of travel – towards openness, interconnection, globalisation, the free flow of information – and decided to reverse it. In effect, it was a decision to prove the Western boosters of the internet – holders of Friedman’s nutcracker view – wrong.

Between them, Griffiths and Strittmatter tell the story of how China arrived at this point, and what happened next. China took to the internet relatively late and relatively slowly: in 1994 there were only about 1500 internet users in China, most of them academics, with, according to Griffiths, ‘the entire country sharing the equivalent of what was a home connection in the US’. Today, the number of internet users in China is 830 million and counting, with most of them accessing it via smartphones. The party has fought many battles against internet freedom over the course of that quarter-century...
https://www.lrb.co.uk/v41/n19/john-lanchester/document-number-nine

Mark
Ottawa

 

[MarkOttawa]

Gosh, we wouldn't want to be see as maybe racist by worrying about insider threat from Chinese espionage in federal government, would we?

Federal employees concerned 'insider threat' training means spying on co-workers
One researcher who took course described it as 'James Bond-type' training

At least two federal government departments have introduced training so staff can identify and report "insider threats," and it is raising concerns from employees who don't want to spy on their colleagues.

Insider threats are defined in the training documents as "purposeful, malicious action" by employees or contractors who have access to inside information, and who act "in opposition to the interests of the organization."

Since February, Health Canada and the Public Health Agency of Canada have offered four on-site sessions to staff in Ottawa and Winnipeg, as well as providing online training to staff in other locations.

An online training module was added to Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada's security awareness training in August. The department says all employees have been asked to take it.

CBC News has obtained copies of both courses. They are slightly different because they were developed for specific departments, but they cover much of the same information.

Several scientists told CBC the training puts them in an awkward position of spying on their co-workers and partners, some of whom have dual citizenship with China. Some also have a relationship with Chinese universities and the Chinese Academy of Science, which sends fully sponsored students to study in Canada.

The training provides specific instructions on how to report their suspicions. One researcher who took the course described it as "James Bond-type" training.

"It is an issue that we federal scientists are treated like secret agents," said the scientist, one of several who asked not to be identified over fears of being reprimanded for speaking to the media.

Staff are being told it is an offence and a national threat to share their research results and data outside their departments without proper authorization.

This page is a part of a training document meant to help employees at Health Canada and the Public Health Agency of Canada identify and insider threats. (Health Canada/Public Health Agency of Canada)

Scientists say waiting for that authorization is not always realistic or practical, and say the training was created by people who have no idea about the extent of international collaboration in research.

"We scientists work in a fast-evolving, globalized world where sharing data and ideas with colleagues in our fields is the way to generate new knowledge. Because science is ultra-specialized, the colleagues working in the same field are usually in other countries," one researcher told CBC.

'There are real risks'

The training is in response to directives from the Treasury Board of Canada outlined in the Policy on Government Security and the Directive on Security Management, both of which came into effect on July 1, 2019.

"As risk levels vary across organizations, it is up to each Deputy Head to ensure their department's compliance with this Policy," a spokesperson for the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat wrote in an email in response to questions from CBC News.

While there are legitimate concerns, they have to be balanced with fairness, said one expert in Asian and transpacific relations.

"There are real risks. There are real concerns we have to deal with. But we have to do it in a way that respects individual integrity and privacy rights and, at the same time, makes people more aware that we are in a new era where technology is increasingly vital and increasingly seen as a national asset," said Paul Evans, a professor at the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs at the University of British Columbia.

Evans said the training provided to employees at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC) provides several case examples, including that of Jeffrey Delisle, the Canadian naval intelligence officer who was sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2013 for selling secrets to Russia.

The training course by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada provides a list of warning signs that could have identified Canadian naval intelligence officer Jeffrey Delisle as a potential threat. (Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada)

The other four agriculture examples involve scientists with connections to China [emphasis added].

    *Yan Wengui and Zhang Weiqiang, who stole genetically modified rice seeds from Ventra Bioscience in Kansas and were apprehended for attempting to smuggle the secret grains (worth approximately $75 million US) to China. Yan was employed by the USDA. They were sentenced to 10 years in prison.

    *Mo Hailong, who was caught stealing GMO corn seeds that he was planning to sell to a Chinese agricultural conglomerate. He had already stolen and sold about 500 kg of the seed to a Beijing-based company. Mo was sentenced to three years in prison.

    *Huang Kexue, a Canadian scientist who worked for Cargill in Minnesota and stole and sold trade secrets and components to make a new food product. He sold these to parties in China, and also provided them for research to universities in China. Huang was sentenced to 87 months in prison.

    *Klaus Nielsen, who was fired from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA), along with fellow scientist Wei Ling Yu. Neilsen pleaded guilty to attempting to export an infectious agent to China and was sentenced to two years' imprisonment. Yu fled the country and is believed to be in China...

In the United States, the FBI is investigating hundreds of cases of possible Chinese intellectual property theft. The agency has warned universities and research agencies that China is a serious counter-intelligence threat. It's created a chill with many Chinese scholars who fear racial profiling [emphasis added].

'Overreaction can be worse than the problem'

"The cases that have been most public in the United States and Canada have involved people of Chinese descent, and I think we have to be very careful in any way inferring that the loyalty or the integrity of people with Chinese names is a more serious concern than for others [emphasis added]," Evans said.

(Paul Evans, a professor at the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs at the University of British Columbia, says steps to stop espionage need to be balanced with individual integrity and privacy rights.)

"The overreaction can be worse than the problem itself in harming the careers and the reputations of the vast majority of people of Chinese descent."..
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/federal-employees-concerned-insider-threat-training-means-spying-on-co-workers-1.5343194

Mark
Ottawa

 

[MarkOttawa]

And now China and AI in the US:

US Reliance on Chinese Students, Workers is a ‘Hard Problem,’ Say AI Commission Leaders

But despite concerns, Eric Schmidt and Bob Work warn that ‘decoupling’ from China “will hurt the United States.

The importance of artificial intelligence to national security is among the few areas of emerging consensus between the political right and left, and between Washington D.C. and Silicon Valley. But significant disagreement is emerging around the issue of tech talent and the large number of Chinese students studying in the United States and getting jobs in the tech industry.

Former Google chairman Eric Schmidt and former Undersecretary of Defense Bob Work on Monday unveiled that finding and others in a new report for Congress from the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence, which began operating in March. The commission focuses on how the U.S. can retain an edge over rivals like China in the development of artificial intelligence within national security areas and commercially. But, they said, the issue of tech talent in Silicon Valley and the reliance on Chinese students and workers in the United States, is a burgeoning issue of contention.

The good news out of the report is that policy-makers and defense leaders are addressing the bad news, which is that the United States’s position of tech leadership in AI is dissolving rapidly, said Work and Schmidt. The government still isn’t spending enough on AI research and development, despite some recent increases, and there is too much red tape around the Defense Department, they tell lawmakers. The Defense Department currently has about 600 different artificial intelligence projects and is working to unite them under the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center. The report applauds many of the small, pathfinding projects coming out of the military but says the department has yet to scale them up successfully.  In other words, Schmidt and Work’s key concerns are ones with which most Defense Department leaders and politicians would agree.

The commission identified near unanimous concern of China surpassing U.S. capabilities on the battlefield, stealing intellectual property, and in general dominating research, development and commercialization of AI. It’s topic Schmidt discusses frequently, pointing out that China has made dominance in the field of AI by 2030 a core area of planning, and is now spending appropriately. Consensus on what to do about the high level of entanglement between the U.S. tech sector and China is far more elusive, particularly when it comes to people, according to both Schmidt and Work.

Attracting foreign students and tech workers to the United States for years has been considered essential for U.S. technology-sector growth. Big tech firms employ an increasing number of Chinese-born computer science grads and post grads.Chinese students make up an increasingly large portion of undergrads in the United States. More than 350,000 Chinese Students were enrolled in U.S. universities in 2017. But as President Trump has targeted all aspects of China’s infiltration into the U.S. economy, Chinese students — and their talent — are beginning to look elsewhere.  Top U.S. graduate business programs report that applications from China are falling as those students turn away from American in favor of Asian schools.

“One of the things the commission investigated pretty carefully is how dependent we are on China today. The answer, which some people may not want to hear, is that we are dependent on Chinese researchers and Chinese graduate students,” said Schmidt.

Work called it “one of the hard problems,” that the commission has been grappling with [emphasis added]. “As you can imagine, because this is a national security commission, we’ve had some briefers who have really recommended decoupling [or separating economically] as much as you possibly can, because of the threats of [intellectual property] theft, etc. But then there’s another group that says, ‘No, in the area of AI, and especially in the area of research, entanglement is a virtuous thing.”

Some already are pushing for more decoupling...[lots more]
https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2019/11/us-reliance-chinese-students-workers-hard-problem-say-ai-commission-leaders/161082/

Mark
Ottawa

 

[MarkOttawa]

And a UK Commons' committee on China and British universities--wake up Justin Trudeau and many others (our compradors, some naive, some not, have been selling Canada out for a long time). And note freedom of Conservative committee members to criticize their own government:

'Alarming' Chinese meddling at UK universities exposed in report
Chinese embassy appears to be coordinating efforts to curb academic freedom, say MPs

Universities are not adequately responding to the growing risk of China and other “autocracies” influencing academic freedom in the UK, the foreign affairs select committee has said.

The report, rushed out before parliament is suspended pending the election, finds “alarming evidence” of Chinese interference on UK campuses, adding some of the activity seeking to restrict academic freedom appears to be coordinated by the Chinese embassy in London.

The report says: “There is clear evidence that autocracies are seeking to shape the research agenda or curricula of UK universities, as well as limit the activities of researchers on university campuses. Not enough is being done to protect academic freedom from financial, political and diplomatic pressure.”

The committee highlighted the role of China-funded Confucius Institutes officials in confiscating papers that mentioned Taiwan at an academic conference, the use of the Chinese Students and Scholars Association as an instrument of political interference and evidence that dissidents active while studying in the UK, such as Ayeshagul Nur Ibrahim, an Uighur Muslim, were being monitoring and her family in China being harassed [emphasis added].

The committee accuses some academic organisations, such as Million Plus, which represents 20 modern universities, of complacency.

Bill Rammell, the chair of Million Plus, told the committee he had “not heard one piece of evidence” that substantiated claims of foreign influence in universities.

The committee said the government’s focus was on protecting universities from intellectual property theft and risks arising from joint research projects. “This is not enough to protect academic freedom from other types of interference such as financial, political or diplomatic pressure,” the MPs said.

The Foreign Office’s evidence to the committee highlighted the lack of government advice to universities, the report says, adding ministers have not coordinated approaches to the issue, either within Whitehall or with foreign governments such as Australia and the US [and Canada? emphasis added].

The report points out that a 2019 international education strategy white paper mentions China more than 20 times in the context of boosting education expertise to the Chinese market, but with no mention of security or interference.

The committee concluded: “The battle for university students or trade deals should not outweigh the international standards which have brought freedom and prosperity to the UK and the wider world [emphasis added]. The government should provide any strategic advice to universities and not used its key sanction tools such as ‘Magnitsky powers’ to curb interference on human rights grounds.”

Ministers can curb interference through the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Act passed 17 months ago, the report said.

However, ministers previously told the committee they could not use the so-called Magnitsky amendment, contained in the act, until the UK had left the EU. In June the FCO finally admitted this interpretation was legally incorrect, and the powers could be used independently of the EU while still an EU member.

The FCO has still to lay the necessary statutory instrument to introduce the power, 17 months after the act became law. The foreign affairs select committee pointed out that the power, touted by the foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, in pre-Conservative party conference interviews, will be delayed still further by the general election.

The committee, chaired by the Conservative MP Tom Tugendhat, also asked the FCO to explain its failure to use sanctions in response to repression by state authorities in Hong Kong and Xinjiang [emphasis added]...
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2019/nov/05/alarming-chinese-meddling-at-uk-universities-exposed-in-report

Mark
Ottawa

 

[Remius]

In what must be a reluctant but no other choice move by China...

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-pork-beef-trudeau-1.5348532

I'm sure it must gnaw at them but people want their meat.

 

[a_majoor]

Austin Bay on the evolving Chinese response to the Hong Kong protests. The linguistic divide between Hong Kong and the northern Chinese is interesting, as well as the divide between the Chinese and Taiwanese. This adds another element to the mix:

https://strategypage.com/on_point/2019111381713.aspx

On Point: Hong Kong in History's Lens
by Austin Bay
November 13, 2019

How will historians in 2060 frame the 2019 Hong Kong crisis?

"The first battle of the Second Cold War" is one possibility, though Russia's 2014 Crimean invasion deserves that cruel award.

Perhaps the first Cold War isn't over. The USSR's communist dictatorship collapsed in 1991. China's party tyranny didn't. In 1989, the Kremlin didn't order its puppet regimes to murder protesting citizens en masse. On Nov. 9,1989, the Berlin Wall cracked without a shot.

Not so in China. On June 4, 1989, the People's Liberation Army attacked peaceful pro-freedom protestors in Beijing's Tiananmen Square and murdered over 2,000 Chinese citizens.

Hong Kong's first major 2019 demonstration commemorated the Tiananmen Square massacre's 30th anniversary. That demonstration was pro-freedom, not anti-government.

The Hong Kong-Tiananmen Square connection suggests Hong Kong is a continuation of the 20th century's great battle between imperial tyrannies --monarchies, Reichskanzlers, Politburos -- and political systems that protect essential individual freedoms such as free expression and assembly.

Chinese President Xi Jinping is a tyrant. Xi and his Communist Party brutes run a police state that uses Karl Marx's bogus 19th-century theory of history as propaganda cover. Marxist-Socialist Workers Paradises -- plural -- whether in Russia, Cuba, Venezuela or China, have always employed terror and committed mass murder. Marxist tyrannies corrupt their own societies.

Hong Kong residents know that fellow Chinese living outside the Hong Kong special administrative region face totalitarian restrictions.

Mainland China today -- China under Beijing's boot -- is an authoritarian national socialist state. National socialist -- Nazi -- that's a German acronym. China's "state capitalist" system -- a corrupt nexus of government, industry and spies stealing technology -- gamed the international economic order until President Donald Trump's administration said no more.

There's more to it than tariffs. The Politburo knows China must reform its domestic economy, but that involves breaking the money-skimming "rice bowls" of connected party members and PLA senior officers, and permitting more freedom.

snip

Stuart Heaver (reporting from Hong Kong for The Independent) thinks Beijing is already invading. "There may be no tanks," Heaver wrote, but many locals believe "PLA troops are already here, disguised as Hong Kong riot police ..." They intend "to impose Tiananmen by stealth and create a climate of fear."

The suspect police "are often heard speaking in Putonghua dialect," Heaver writes. Putonghua is Mandarin (Beijing) Chinese. Most Hong Kongers speak the Cantonese dialect. Eighty-five to 95 million Chinese living along the south China coast speak Cantonese or Hakka, a related "southern" dialect.

Which leads to a linguistic connection that disturbs Beijing's mandarins (pun intended): Seventy percent of Taiwan's 24 million people speak Hakka.

Read the entore article at the link

 

[The Bread Guy]

Dredging waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay back ...

Somehow, I doubt (harvesting prisoners' organs) is ever truly going to stop in China considering the lucractive black market in organs that's already established there...

... here's the latest on that bit of Chinese culture:

Despite repeated denials, China stands accused of a systematic cover-up to hide the continuing practice of forced organ harvesting and murder. The practice, described as “state-run mass murder” and valued at $1 billion each year, has supposedly been outlawed in the country. But a new report, published on November 14 in the BMC Medical Ethics journal, refutes this, accusing China of a “systematic falsification and manipulation of official organ transplant datasets,” as the killings continue.

In June, I reported on the China Tribunal in London, which found evidence of "forced organ harvesting" from Chinese prisoners, including Falun Gong practitioners and Uighur Muslims. The Tribunal’s final judgment concluded that this "forced organ harvesting has been committed for years throughout China on a significant scale, [and] the tribunal has had no evidence that the significant infrastructure associated with China’s transplantation industry has been dismantled.”

The Tribunal used first-hand testimony from former detainees and the implausible accessibility of transplants to shape its findings. Those witness reports were horrific—including organ extractions on live victims who were subsequently killed by the procedures. With China’s illegal organ transplant industry said to be worth $1 billion each year, the country is determined to deflect the international outcry that has intensified as details of the organ harvesting have come to light. But this latest report casts doubt over claims of reform, exposing a material delta between the estimated number of transplants and the state’s official statistics ...

More @ link, or @ study noted in article here.

 

[MarkOttawa]

Canadian Uyghurs get some satisfaction, you gotta love that diplomacy with Chinese characteristics:

Two Chinese representatives dropped from UBC business forum amid anger from Uyghur groups in Canada

A student forum aimed at promoting ties between the Canadian and Chinese business communities cancelled appearances by representatives of two Chinese companies that activists have accused of being involved in rights violations.

The two companies, SenseTime and Sina Weibo, had been invited by the University of British Columbia’s BizChina Club to deliver presentations at the forum, which was endorsed by UBC president Santa Ono and the Chinese consulate. However, after the speeches drew backlash from Uyghur groups in Canada this week, the two speakers – SenseTime’s Jimmy Zhou and Sina’s Lina Chen – were dropped from the program.

“Due to extenuating circumstances, our speakers from SenseTime and Sina Weibo will no longer be participating in the 2019 UBC China Forum. We apologize for the short notice and wish everyone will have a pleasant weekend at our event,” reads a note on the forum’s website.

The forum, which took place in downtown Vancouver over the weekend, came under fire as SenseTime, a Chinese company that focuses on developing AI technologies, was blacklisted by the United States last month for its alleged involvement in China’s repression of its Muslim minority groups in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous region.

“They contribute to the cultural genocide of the Uyghurs,” said Shalina Nurly, youth leader for the Vancouver Uyghur Association, adding she was very disappointed and shocked to see Mr. Zhou was invited to a Canadian university event [emphasis added].

Ms. Nurly’s group had planned two protests on both Saturday and Sunday, calling for banning Mr. Zhou’s speech, but cancelled the second one after two speakers were removed.

“It made me happy because we saw the result of our work and the fact that we stood up could make could make a difference,” she said in an interview on Sunday.

The U.S. Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security said in a document that SenseTime, along with several other entities, was enabling activities contrary to the foreign-policy interests of the United States.

“Specifically, these entities have been implicated in human rights violations and abuse in the implementation of China’s campaign of repression, mass arbitrary detention and high-technology surveillance against Uighurs,” the document says.

In response to the document, SenseTime said it was “deeply disappointed."

“We abide by all relevant laws and regulations of the jurisdictions in which we operate. We have been actively developing our AI code of ethics to ensure our technologies are used in a responsible way,” reads a statement on SenseTime’s website.

The company also says on its website that it partners with a number of big corporations in China, as well as the country’s government agencies such as the Public Security Department in Yunnan province and a public security bureau in Guangzhou. In 2017, China’s tech giant Huawei and SenseTime jointly launched high-capacity face recognition technology.

A statement issued by the office of the Consulate-General of the People’s Republic of China in Vancouver Saturday says it encourages students’ efforts to promote China-Canada exchanges and appreciates their innovation and entrepreneurship. The consulate says it is against any attempts to “smear Chinese companies’ lawful and legitimate operations, obstruct the normal cooperation between China and Canada and target specific foreign businesses [emphasis added].”

Earlier this week, China expert Charles Burton, a professor at Brock University, said the UBC Board of Governors should intervene to withdraw the “shameful invitation” to Mr. Zhou.

Kurt Heinrich, senior director of UBC’s media relations, said the forum was a student initiative and the university was proud of its students who engage on global issues.

The university’s spokesman Erik Rolfsen said on Sunday that dropping the speakers was an independent decision made by the students.

Ms. Nurly said Ms. Chen, the chief editor of Sina Weibo, shouldn’t be invited either as the Twitter-like social media platform censors content that Beijing considers politically sensitive, including material about Xinjiang indoctrination centres.

“We know what’s going on, but they deleted it all,” she said.

People in China cannot read the Western media coverage about “the camps [on Weibo] because they don’t want it to be out there.”

The Globe and Mail reached out for comment from the student group that arranged the conference but was told organizers were too busy to speak Sunday. The Globe attempted to attend the sessions but was told only registered media were allowed. Requests to register for the conference last week were not answered.

SenseTime and Sina Weibo did not respond to e-mails on Sunday afternoon Pacific time.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/british-columbia/article-two-chinese-representatives-dropped-from-ubc-business-forum-amid-anger/

Mark
Ottawa

 

[Retired AF Guy]

Apparently this was reported in various Canadian news sources, but I apparently missed them. Even with the unpleasantness between Canada and the PRC, we still sent representatives to the Chinese Military Games. From Lawfare:

Despite Strained Bilateral Ties, Canada Participates in Chinese Military Games

In late October, the Canadian Armed Forces dispatched a large delegation to the seventh edition of the Military World Games, held in Wuhan, China. President Xi Jinping noted that the Military World Games provide a forum for military athletes from around the world to build bridges and to engage in “mutual learning.” The Globe and Mail, Canada’s leading newspaper, broke the story, noting that “Ottawa didn’t issue any news release before or during the games to draw attention to Canada’s participation.” A Department of National Defense spokesperson told the Globe and Mail that Canada had sent “114 athletes, 57 coaches and support staff.”

Canada’s sending of a delegation of military athletes to China comes at a time of strained relations between Beijing and Ottawa. Canadian officials arrested Meng Wanzhou, chief financial officer of Huawei, in December 2018, in connection with a U.S. extradition request. Associate Chief Justice Heather Holmes of British Columbia’s Supreme Court—the province’s superior trial court—has scheduled Meng’s formal extradition hearing for Jan. 22, 2020.

In response to Meng’s arrest, Beijing detained two Canadian citizens, Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig, and then formally arrested the men in May 2019 on espionage charges. The Canadian government and international allies have condemned the arrests of the two Canadians as “arbitrary” and political. China also retaliated against Meng’s arrest by blocking Canadian canola exports in March, and by blocking Canadian pork and beef exports in June. On Nov. 5, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that China had lifted the ban on pork and beef exports. Experts have noted, however, that China’s move could be motivated more by the effect of African swine fever, which has decimated Chinese pig stock, rather than by Beijing’s desire for warmer relations. Despite the resumption of commodities trade, bilateral tensions remain strained, and Kovrig and Spavor remain imprisoned.

In a press release, China’s Embassy in Ottawa cited Canada’s participation in the games as proof that “China’s friends are all over the world” and that “in the future, we will have more and more friends in various fields.” The press release noted that Canada’s participation “speaks volumes” about China’s global reach. Canada’s involvement in the military games was widely decried by Canadian pundits and foreign service veterans. Mark Towhey, writing for the conservative Toronto Sun, argued that “as long as China continues to hold two innocent Canadian citizens in prison, Canada must stop pretending it’s business as usual between our two nations.” Towhey suggested that the military games were about more than sport, arguing that “Canada’s military is a tool of government and military action is an extension of diplomacy.” Another commentator, writing for Global News, cast the decision as “seriously misguided.” Guy St. Jacques, former Ambassador to China, called on Ottawa to reform its China strategy, arguing that “now that we have seen the dark side of China, we have to have a much more realistic approach to China.”

The United States has similarly called on Ottawa to rethink its China strategy. Back in May, Vice President Mike Pence visited Ottawa and asked Canada to exclude Huawei from 5G network construction. And in a recent interview with CBC, Susan Rice, who served as U.S. national security adviser between 2013 and 2017, spoke extensively about Sino-Canadian relations. Rice argued that Canada’s arrest of Meng was the correct decision and warned that “it’s not beneficial for Canada to back down” to Beijing. Like Pence, Rice cautioned Ottawa against allowing Huawei to build Canada’s 5G network, warning that “it gives the Chinese the ability, if they choose to use it, to access all kinds of information.” Ottawa has yet to make a decision on Huawei’s role in 5G network construction.

Domestically, the prime minister faces pressures from certain parts of the Canadian establishment to eschew the harder-line approach that Pence and Rice have promoted. The Globe and Mail has reported that Canadian intelligence agencies are “at odds over whether Ottawa” should block Huawei from its 5G networks, with at least one agency arguing that “robust testing and monitoring of Huawei’s … equipment could mitigate potential security risks.” In addition, certain Canadian businesspeople and political leaders want Ottawa to begin focusing again on increasing trade to China. The Globe and Mail has reported that the Canadian business community is “eager to move on after a year of friction.” Notably, Stephen McNeil, premier of the Province of Nova Scotia, has continually pushed for more trade with and investment in China. McNeil told the Globe that “the idea that we’re going to moralize and preach and lecture societies, in some cases 5,000 years old, hasn’t worked out very well,” and he hoped that “with time and continued engagement, the relationship will endure and grow.” David Mulroney, a former Canadian ambassador to China, tweeted that the business community’s pro-trade sentiments were “shameful.” In general, despite Susan Rice’s warnings and China’s treatment of Ottawa over the past year, it is clear that a stable cohort of voices within the Canadian political establishment are pushing for engagement and increased trade rather than for a firmer stand against Beijing.

Link Links to other articles in original.

 

[MarkOttawa]

PLAAF wowser!

Embarrassing mistake: Chinese magazine ‘accidentally’ reveals new top secret weapon
China appears to have been caught with its pants down after a state-run magazine accidentally published details of its top secret new weapon.

A centrefold graphic recently flourished intimate details of a Chinese bomber carrying a stark new weapon. State-controlled media has since gone into cover-up mode. But military analysts think Beijing may have been caught with its pants down.

The government produced Modern Ships magazine has splashed high-resolution computer-generated images of China’s most recent addition to its strategic bomber line-up – the H-6N – over the front and feature pages.

But that’s not what drew the eye of the world’s defence thinkers.

The graphics showed the new bomber carrying a huge ballistic missile slung under its fuselage. And that missile looks a lot like one of a family of ballistic weapons deployed by China’s People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force (PLARF) as aircraft carrier killers.

Beijing’s state-controlled Global Times immediately went into damage control mode, declaring, “The images are computer generated, merely conceptual and have no official background.”

But there’s far more to the story than the detailed conceptual images.

And this may confirm Western defence analysts’ worst fears.

“If (this) is correct then this would be an impressive anti-ship standoff capability for the PLA (People’s Liberation Army), that would extend the utility of the DF-21D out well beyond the first island chain,” Australian Strategic Policy Institute analyst Malcolm Davis told Flight Global.

“That would theoretically match the ground-launched DF-26 anti-ship capable (intermediate ballistic missile), and increase the risk for US aircraft carrier battle groups … the Chinese are clearly trying to make it costlier for the US to project power into the western pacific, to the point where the US simply chooses not to intervene in a crisis [emphasis added].”

OUT OF THE ORDINARY

Defence enthusiasts noted several strange things about the latest N variant of China’s Xian H-6 series of strategic bombers when it was unveiled to the public at the 70th National Day parade in October.

The state-controlled Xinhua news service simply said it was a “homemade strategic bomber capable of air refuelling and long-range strike”.

But when a flight of three of the bombers flew over Beijing, military experts saw it doesn’t have bomb-bay doors. Instead, it has what appears to be new heavyweight attachment points in a recess along the centre-line of its fuselage.

Also noted was its modified, extended nose-cone and an air-to-air refuelling nozzle.

Speculation as to what this all meant was rife.

    Even if the images posted yesterday were for the first time showing the underside of the latest H-6N bomber, these now clearly show not only the deleted bomb bay but also the semiconformal attachment for the new ballistic anti-ship missile.

    (Images via Huitong's CMA-Blog) pic.twitter.com/QKPq79TqlF
    — @Rupprecht_A (@RupprechtDeino) September 23, 2019

Most observers settled on a disturbing prospect: that these changes enabled the bomber to carry huge, nuclear-capable or hypersonic-speed ballistic missiles [emphasis added].

If correct, it would become only the second nation to do so.

Russia displayed an air-launched ballistic missile, the hypersonic Kinzhal, in 2017. It was slung under a cold-war era MiG-31 interceptor.

Another possibility, presented by the South China Morning Post, is that the H-6N can carry the large new supersonic semi-autonomous drones also revealed at the National Day parades.

“The semi-recessed area under the fuselage of the H-6N is designed to carry either the WZ-8 or the CJ-100,” an anonymous military source reportedly told the Post.

The WZ-8 is the supersonic drone and the CJ/DF-100 is a large new missile [emphasis added]...
https://www.news.com.au/technology/innovation/military/embarrassing-mistake-chinese-magazine-accidentally-reveals-new-top-secret-weapon/news-story/99967f182da868ba6321d559cde96e62

Mark
Ottawa

 

[tomahawk6]

I think its fake. To carry the DF by plane would defeat the purpose of the weapon. They have cruise missiles which are far easier to deploy.

 

[a_majoor]

A missile such as the one depicted would have a much shorter flight time and provide far less ability to respond than an ordinary cruise missile. It would also have a different flight path than that of a supersonic or even hypersonic missile, providing a possible means of exploiting gaps in the defensive coverage.

As always, this is only one piece of the puzzle. What is never discussed is how the Chinese would identify and track the target beyond the First Island Chain in order to dispatch and launch this (or any other) missile. The USN has long experience in operating near hostile waters (the USSR) and how to mask or minimize the presence of a ship or carrier battle group, so there are probably many different techniques that would make the job of finding the Americans difficult. This is not even taking improved SAM systems into account, much less the near term arrival of laser weapons.

As always, the dance between offence and defense continues.

 

[MarkOttawa]

Will Justin Trudeau's gov't even notice at political level?

1) China wants to ‘take over’ Australian politics, former spy chief warns

    Duncan Lewis tells newspaper ‘any person in political office is potentially a target’ for espionage and foreign interference
    He cited incidents of Chinese agents making large contributions to Australian political parties as part of a wide-ranging influence-peddling campaign
https://www.scmp.com/news/asia/australasia/article/3038873/china-wants-take-over-australian-politics-former-spy-chief

2) Defecting Chinese spy offers information trove to Australian government

A Chinese spy has risked his life to defect to Australia and is now offering a trove of unprecedented inside intelligence on how China conducts its interference operations abroad.

Wang “William” Liqiang is the first Chinese operative to ever blow his cover. He has revealed the identities of China’s senior military intelligence officers in Hong Kong, as well as providing details of how they fund and conduct political interference operations in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Australia.

Mr Wang has taken his material to Australia's counter-espionage agency, ASIO, and is seeking political asylum – potentially opening another front in Australia’s challenging bilateral relationship with China.

A sworn statement Mr Wang provided ASIO in October states: “I have personally been involved and participated in a series of espionage activities”. He faces certain detention and possible execution if he returns to China.

Mr Wang is currently at an undisclosed location in Sydney on a tourist visa and seeking urgent protection from the Australian government – a plea he says he has passed on in multiple meetings with ASIO.

In interviews with The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald and 60 Minutes, he has revealed in granular detail how Beijing covertly controls listed companies to fund intelligence operations, including the surveillance and profiling of dissidents and the co-opting of media organisations.

He has given previously unheard details about the kidnapping of five booksellers from Hong Kong and their rendition to the Chinese mainland. His testimony shows how Beijing’s spies are infiltrating Hong Kong’s democracy movement, manipulating Taiwan’s elections and operating with impunity in Australia.

ASIO has repeatedly warned that the current threat of foreign interference is “unprecedented” and that the number of foreign intelligence officers currently operating in Australia is higher than it was during the Cold War. ASIO has never publicly named China as a primary source of its concerns, as the government grapples with how to balance public awareness with the risk of diplomatic and economic retaliation.

However, on Friday, former ASIO boss Duncan Lewis said the Chinese government was seeking to "take over" Australia's political system through its "insidious" foreign interference operations.

Among his key revelations, Mr Wang said he had met the head of a deep-cover spy ring operating with impunity in Australia...[lots more]
https://www.smh.com.au/national/defecting-chinese-spy-offers-information-trove-to-australian-government-20191122-p53d1l.html

Mark
Ottawa

 

[MilEME09]

Given that he is being protected at a secret location, I am guessing he had evidence to back his claims up not just statements, that said why hit the media, if true Beijing would be pulling any operatives it believed were compromised and covering up the existence of any operations. Either they are not worried about what he knows, or doesnt care because they can counter a single breach effectively.