February 18:
The volume and sophistication of Chinese cyber-attacks against the U.S. has become so intense that it now threatens the fundamental bilateral relationship. Under a new presidential directive the U.S. government will more aggressively defend against Chinese state-sponsored hackers and share information about their digital signatures with American internet providers. “In the Cold War, we were focused every day on the nuclear command centers around Moscow,” one senior defense official said. “Today, we worry as much about the computer servers in Shanghai.” But U.S. government warnings do not explicitly link Chinese groups, or the giant computer servers they use, to the Chinese military. The question of whether to publicly name the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and accuse it of widespread theft is debatable. “There are huge diplomatic sensitivities here,” one U.S. intelligence official told the New York Times.
February 19:
Russia’s state oil company Rosneft has proposed that Russia and China cooperate to explore the Arctic seas. In Beijing, Rosneft president Igor Sechin, who was heading a Russian negotiating team, met with Vice Premier Wang Qishan and the heads of China’s state oil companies to discuss projects for the exploration of petroleum deposits in the Arctic’s Pechora Sea and the Barents Sea, Russia’s Vedomosti and Forbes report. Earlier this month Rosneft announced that it had been granted the right to carry out geological studies and exploit 12 subsoil blocks in the Arctic’s Barents Sea, Kara Sea, Chukchi Sea, and Laptev Sea.
February 20:
Taiwan’s National Communications Commission (NCC) has rejected the takeover of cable distributor China Network Systems by the Want Want China Times Group due to fears its outspokenly pro-Beijing chairman Tsai Eng-ming would control too much of Taiwan’s media market. The NCC tentatively approved the deal last year, but stipulated several conditions to ensure operational independence that had to be met before the takeover could go ahead. Want Want’s inability to meet those conditions prompted this most recent NCC ruling. Public concern about Tsai’s influence on Taiwan media has grown since he led a $590 million bid to purchase Next Media’s Taiwan operations, including the fiercely anti-Beijing Apple Daily. If the NCC approves the Next takeover, Tsai would control over 46 percent of Taiwan’s newspaper market, Taiwan News reports. Critics say the takeovers will increase Beijing’s influence over Taiwan’s reporting on sensitive issues such as human rights, Falun Gong, and Tibetan and Taiwan.
[Editor’s Note: The NCC is working on legislation to bar the concentration of media power in a limited number of hands. The opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) proposed the amendments, but the ruling Kuomintang (KMT) rejected them. The DPP accuses the KMT of being soft on the issue because Tsai and other tycoons support the KMT’s pro-Beijing policies.]
February 22:
PLA units have been training near the Myanmar border in case fighting between Kachin rebels and Myanmar government forces spills into Yunnan, the official Taihai news website reports. As fighting intensified on the border in late December, shells began landing in China and some Kachin refugees sought refuge with family and friends in Yunnan or at hotels on the border. In response, since the end of Chinese New Year, PLA units have been training to ensure that border guards are prepared for “real combat” and that army units have experience fighting in the region’s jungles, ravines, and hilly terrain.
February 25:
China has more than 247 “cancer villages” in 27 regions, according to a map posted online this month. The Ministry of Environmental Protection has admitted the map’s accuracy and said pollution was to blame for residents’ high cancer rates. “In recent years various chemicals detected in rivers, lakes and inshore waters, and in animals and humans have caused environmental emergencies linked to water and air pollution. Drinking water crises hit many regions while ‘cancer villages’ and other severe cases of health and social problems emerged in other regions,” the ministry said in comments carried by the official Shanghai Daily. China still produces and uses toxic chemicals that have long been banned in developed countries.