China Reform Monitor: No. 943

December 28:

The biggest leak of user information in the history of the Chinese internet has resulted in 110 million user passwords hacked and posted online. Hackers leaked the registration details of users on Tianya.cn, one of the mainland's largest internet forums, and the e-commerce website 360buy.com has also confirmed that a security loophole resulted in a data leak. Several other websites including douban.com, a social networking site devoted to films, book and music reviews, and Meituan.com, a group-buying website, have warned their users to change their passwords if they use the same passwords to log in to other websites, the South China Morning Post reports.

Railways minister Sheng Guangzu has announced railway construction spending in 2012 will be cut to 400 billion yuan ($65 billion), down from 2011’s 469 billion yuan ($75 billion). The rail ministry’s reported debt is 2 trillion yuan ($300 billion), well above its projected revenues. China has scaled back plans to expand its 91,000 km rail network, which is overloaded with passengers and cargo, amid concerns about whether the railway ministry can repay its mounting debts. Critics claim authorities have overspent on high-speed lines while failing to invest in cheaper, slower routes to serve China’s poor majority. A failure to expand rail capacity could slow economic growth because exporters inland from China’s coast rely on railroads to get goods to port, the New York Times reports.

January 2:

The New York Times reports that conflicting reports have surfaced about the causes for a violent confrontation among a group of young Uighurs and China’s security services in Pishan, Xinjiang, along the southern edge of the Taklimakan desert near the border with India and Pakistan. China’s official media reports that police officers had engaged in a shootout with 15 terrorist suspects who had abducted two people on their way to jihad training, and that seven of the suspects and one police officer had been killed. By contrast, Radio Free Asia reports that that four of the people detained after the confrontation were children, ages 7 to 17, and that they had been part of a group that got lost attempting to flee to Pakistan to escape repression of Islam in China.

January 3:

This month scientists from China’s National Astronomical Observatory will assemble a telescope designed for the U.S. Navy at Antarctica’s highest point, over 4,000 meters above sea level. The telescope, built by California-based Semiconductor Technology Associates (STA), has a capacity of 100 megapixels and converts light into electronic signals to produce an extra-high-definition digital image of the sky. The technology could also be used to lock onto enemy countries’ satellites orbiting the earth so it required the U.S. Commerce and State Departments’ approval before export. The device captures only visible light and is blind to infrared radiation, which would allow it to distinguish civilian satellites from military ones. The U.S. government approved the sale under pressure from England’s E2V Technologies, which was poised to strike a deal with China to produce a similar device if the STA’s export was banned, the South China Morning Post reports.

January 5:

“University Communist Party organs must adopt firmer and stronger measures to maintain harmony and stability in universities. Daily management of the institutions should be stepped up to create a good atmosphere for the success of the Party’s 18th congress,” Xi Jinping, China’s vice president told Communist Party members at a meeting attended by the country’s university chiefs in Beijing. “Young teachers have many interactions with students and cast significant [political and moral] influence on them,” Mr Xi said. A paramount task for universities is to “instruct” the thoughts of young lecturers and recruit more of them as party members since “they play a very important role in the spread of ideas,” Xi said in comments carried by Britain’s Telegraph.