China Reform Monitor: No. 1028

April 4:

Thailand will be the first foreign client for Beidou – China’s homemade satellite navigation network. Last week in Bangkok the two countries inked an agreement to use Beidou in Thailand’s public sector in disaster relief, power distribution and transportation, etc. China will sponsor the lion’s share of the 2 billion yuan cost for the construction of a Beidou national remote sensing system in Thailand, including a large satellite ground station and an industrial park to produce Beidou receivers, the Bangkok Post reports. Beijing will subsidize the project to build trust in Beidou and chose Thailand as a testing and promotion site because it is a U.S. ally and its military relies on America’s GPS. If Thailand likes Beidou, Beijing believes others will follow. Beidou is a regional system but plans a global service with 30+ satellites by 2020.

April 7:

Prosecutors in Seoul have arrested three South Koreans who were working with a China-based North Korean hacker to steal millions of people’s email accounts and spam them. The ringleader, a 28-year-old man named Choi, has been detained and charged with working with and providing financial assistance to the North. His brother and another man were charged as accomplices. While in China from 2007 to 2012 Choi held meetings with a North Korean hacker, Han, and DPRK security agents. Han gave Choi millions of South Korean email addresses, which Choi spammed with gambling and pornography messages. Han also gave Choi computer programs: one for mass spam distribution and the other a malignant code to steal subscribers’ personal information from companies’ websites, Yonhap reports.

April 8:

The municipal government of Nanjing, Jiangsu has ordered “all wholesale and retail poultry and bird markets to suspend trading and be disinfected” – a euphemism for killing the birds. Poultry from other cities is banned from entering Nanjing, the official China Daily reports. By April 9 all Nanjing residents were required to kill their chicken, ducks, geese, pigeons, rabbits, and goats or the infamous chengguan (city patrol) will do so, Xiandaikuaibao, a local Nanjing newspaper run by Xinhua reports. Two more people, one from Anhui and another from Jiangsu, have been killed by the avian flu (H7N9) virus, bringing the total number of fatalities to nine. So far, Chinese officials have confirmed 28 cases of the virus in humans, including at least six in Jiangsu, the New York Times reports.

Dai Xu, a senior colonel in the People’s Liberation Army Air Force, has said that China’s avian (H7N9) flu outbreak is a U.S. conspiracy. On April 6 Dai posted on his Sina Weibo micro-blog: “China’s leadership should not pay much attention. Or else it’ll be like SARS in 2003! At that time, America was fighting in Iraq and feared that China would take advantage of the opportunity to take other actions. So they used bio-psychological weapons against China. All of China fell into turmoil and that was exactly what the U.S. wanted. Now, the U.S. is using the same old trick. China should have learned its lesson.” In response to Dai, Luo Changping, deputy editor of Caijing magazine, posted: “I’m confident that the vast majority of soldiers would not endorse this. Dai must step down and apologize to the families of the diseased.” But Dai unapologetically fired back: “It is common knowledge that a group of people in China have been injected with mental toxin by the U.S. Now a group of fake American devils are attacking me. I will not retreat!” Dai now has over 40,000 Weibo followers, South China Morning Post reports.

[Editor’s Note: In 2011, outspoken nationalist Peking University Professor Kong Qingdong, the 73rd generation descendant of Confucius, blamed the U.S. for Beijing’s smog and said the U.S. is waging a “climate war” with China. Last year, China instituted and enforced strict anti-rumoring laws, but has not used them to punish those who make unfounded attacks on foreign countries.]

April 15:

Amid rising tensions in the Korean Peninsula China has moved a People’s Liberation Army (PLA) mechanized infantry unit based in Shenyang, Liaoning to the North Korean border and held live-fire exercises with tanks, Chosun Ilbo reports. The PLA has also stepped up vehicle patrols along the North Korean border and at least one city, Hunchun, Jilin (on the North Korea and Russia border) has conducted air raid drills. During a 30-minute drill citizens were evacuated to underground shelters and medical teams were deployed, the South China Morning Post reports. The official Xinhua news agency denied reports of a PLA build up on the North Korean border.