China Reform Monitor: No. 1059

September 18:

A covert Chinese group known as Hidden Lynx has up to 100 skilled hackers carrying out prolonged information collection campaigns on behalf of their clients. Software company Symantec has been tracking the group for two years and found them to be behind at least six major online attacks. Most of Hidden Lynx’s targets are U.S.-based, although organizations in Taiwan, Germany, Russia and China have also been targeted. The Telegraph reports that governments or rival corporations employ Hidden Lynx to obtain advanced technologies in areas such as aerospace in order to gain knowledge of other states’ capabilities.

September 19:

African governments have begun scrutinizing resource deals and challenging China’s major state oil companies. Chad shut down a Chinese operation in mid-August after discovering they were dumping crude oil in ditches south of the capital, N’Djamena, then making local Chadian workers clean them with no protection. There would be no resumption until the Chinese constructed treatment facilities, the Chadian government said. Gabon’s government has withdrawn Sinopec’s oil permit and turned the find over to a new national oil company. In 2008, China National Petroleum Corp. and Niger’s former autocratic ruler, Mamadou Tandja, signed an unpublicized deal for a $980 million oil refinery that included a $300 million “signing bonus.” Foumakoye Gado, Niger’s new oil minister, told The New York Times: “In the context of this fight, we are revisiting these contracts, to correct them. In the future, we will pay closer attention, to not make the same mistakes.'”

September 20:

Beijing has issued a circular and sent investigation teams to conduct a school-by-school “audit” of primary and secondary educational institutions in an effort to crack down on the use of “compulsory educational fees by any name.” Arbitrary “registration fees” and “testing fees” should all be returned to the students’ families or school administrators will face punishment, the official Beijing Youth Daily reports. All fees must be uniform and made public “through brochures, bulletin boards, publicity walls and other school networks.” The new policy also aims to strengthen school financial management and “prohibit the use of public funds to increase administrators’ income via allowances, subsidies or bonuses in kind.”

September 25:

The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, part of China’s new Silk Road international transportation project, will include a $2.8 billion railway link from Peshawar to Karachi. Pakistan Railways has also purchased 58 locomotives from China with 28 to be supplied from November 2013 to March 2014, the Associated Press of Pakistan reports.

September 26:

While in Xian, Shaanxi, Afghan President Hamed Karzai gave strong support for Beijing’s new Silk Road plan and said Kabul “is ready to play its historic role as one of the important trade routes between Asia and Europe.” Karzai noted that the construction of roads, railroads, and border transportation infrastructure in Afghanistan are critical to the success of China’s ambitious transcontinental endeavor, the Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press news agency reports. Karzai invited Chinese state-run companies as well as private traders and investors into the country: “Afghanistan offers investment and trade opportunities. We have great untapped natural resources including minerals, hydrocarbons and other materials, which neighboring countries need to establish and sustain their modern industrial economies.” Karzai later travelled to Beijing where he met with President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang, the Associated Press reports.