December 26:
Baidu’s Japanese-language input application, Baidu IME - an input method editor that allows users to enter characters and symbols – has been transmitting keystroke information and its Japanese users’ computer identifications to foreign servers without consent, Kyodo reports. Baidu IME is a free app that often comes together with other Chinese applications. Baidu’s Simeji input system for smartphones, which has been downloaded over 7 million times, has also been transmitting “highly private information such as user names.” In response, Japan’s National Information Security Center has warned government agencies not to prepare confidential documents using Baidu IME. “We acknowledge the risk,” said Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga and “will make efforts to secure information at government agencies.” Japan’s Foreign Ministry confirmed Baidu IME was installed on five computers, while the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology found the software on two PCs.
December 28:
China’s National Audit Office has announced that 137 people are under investigation for the “misuse through false declaration, embezzlement and waste” of 234 million yuan of 1.24 billion yuan set aside for disadvantaged regions from 2010 to 2012. The results were part of an audit carried out in April and May across 19 counties in six provinces including Guangxi, Yunnan, Guizhou, Shaanxi, Gansu and Ningxia. The audit covered about a third of the 3.92 billion yuan reportedly transferred to the 19 disadvantaged counties over the three years, the official Shanghai Daily reports.
December 29:
The Supreme People’s Procuratorate of Hunan (the local government's prosecution and investigative arm) has found “major electoral fraud” occurred at the 14th Hengyang municipal people’s congress held in December 2012 and January 2013, the official Global Times reports. An investigation revealed that 56 lawmakers from Hengyang, Hunan gave 110 million yuan in bribes to 518 municipal lawmakers and 68 staff. The provincial legislature disqualified the 56 and accepted the resignations of 512 officials in Hengyang including Hengyang Party chief Tong Mingqian Tong, who was sacked from his new post as vice chairman of the Hunan’s People’s Political Consultative Conference for “not taking measures to crack down on bribery during the election.” Over 400 CPC members and government workers remain under investigation in the case. “This is a challenge to China’s system of people’s congresses, socialist democracy, law and Party discipline,” Xinhua reports.
December 30:
Police in Xinjiang have shot dead eight Uighurs and captured another involved in an armed “terrorist attack” on a security office that took place around 6:30 am in Yarkand County, Kashgar. The nine “terrorists” set fire to a police car and attacked the office with knives and explosives, Kyodo reports. Following the violence, U.S. State Department Deputy Spokeswoman Marie Harf called for China to exercise restraint.
[Editor’s Note: Last year was particularly violent. On March 7, at least four died in Korla; on April 23, 21 were killed including 15 “social” workers and police in Selibuya, Kashgar; on June 26, 35 were killed including two police in Lukqun, Turpan; on June 28 no official death toll was reported, but locals claim several people were killed in Hotan; on August 20, at least 16 were reported dead, including one police officer in Kashgar; on November 16, 11 were killed including two police in Selibuya, Kashgar; and two weeks ago a clash between police and “terrorists” left 16 people dead, including two police officers.]
January 3, 2013:
Without firing a shot, 3,000 police officers stormed Boshe in Lufeng County, Guangdong destroying 77 methamphetamine labs and capturing 182 gang members, including 14 party officials. Police seized three tons of meth along with 100 tons of ingredients and 570 pounds of ketamine. In recent years Lufeng produced about one-third of China’s total meth production. Local officials, police, and men wielding AK-47s protected the so-called “fortress” of meth in Boshe, home to eighteen of Guangdong’s most wanted drug criminals. A fifth of Boshe’s 1,700 households produced drugs and production was “organized by families, managed as an industry and protected by the locals,” said the deputy chief of the Guangdong Public Security Bureau in comments quoted in the New York Times. Boshe’s party chief Cai Dongjia, protector of the drug gangs, was among those captured in the raid. The police began cracking down in Lufeng in 2011, but manufacturing continued as Cai used his influence to free suspects. Boshe’s groundwater is polluted with chemicals and is now unfit farming.