Well-known Chinese news site Sina recently reported on an article from Taiwan’s Central News Agency (CNA). The article indicated that the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has its online warfare headquarters hidden in two Beijing hotels. The two hotels are the Jingtang Hotel and the Seasons Hotel in the Haidian District, Beijing. The Fourth Division of the General Staff of the Central Military Committee used to own the hotels, either directly or indirectly. The Fourth Division was once called the Electronic Warfare and Radar Operations Unit. With the latest Chinese military reform, the Fourth Division was assigned new roles to handle Strategic Support, Foreign Electronic and Intelligence Warfare, and Internet Attacks. Network Intelligence assignments are typically highly classified operations. It therefore makes sense to use the hotels as “under cover” headquarters locations. According to sources from the U.S. intelligence community, some guests who stayed at the Jingtang Hotel in 2012 left guest notes there mentioning the Fourth Division’s ownership of the hotel. In 2015, researchers attempted to book rooms in the two hotels and encountered booking system errors or received apologies from the hotel for closures.
Source: Sina, January 5, 2017
http://dailynews.sina.com/gb/news/int/cna/20170105/19597680155.html