Skip to content

All posts by LLD - 50. page

China to Introduce New Security Regulations on Data across its Border

On October 29, the Cyber Administration of China (CAC), China’s Internet regulator, released a draft regulation on the security assessment for data “leaving the country,” aiming to further tighten controls on the cross-border flow of data.

The draft regulation proposes that data operators should conduct a risk assessment before sending data outside the country. The assessment should include the quantity, scope, type and sensitivity of the data, as well as the risk that the outflow of the data may bring to national security, public interests and the legitimate rights and interests of individuals or organizations.

After the Chinese ride-sharing giant Didi Chuxing went public in the U.S. in late June, the CAC launched an immediate probe into the company and suspended its new user registration, citing “safeguards against national data security risks.”

The state media later claimed that the IPO of companies such as Didi in the U.S. would inevitably involve data leaving the country. The Data Security Law passed by China’s National People’s Congress in June prohibited them from providing domestically stored information to foreign law enforcement agencies.

According to the authorities, the draft regulation is based on China’s Cybersecurity Law, its Data Security Law, and its Personal Information Protection Law.

China’s Cybersecurity Law, which came into effect in 2017, already stipulates that critical information infrastructure operators shall store important data within China and shall conduct security assessments if they really need to provide it outside of China. The Data Security Law, which came into effect in September this year, specifies penalty standards for operators who provide important data outside of China in violation of the aforementioned provisions. The Personal Information Protection Law, which came into effect on November 1, stipulates that critical information infrastructure operators and personal information processors that handle personal information up to the amount specified by the state cyber authorities shall store the relevant personal information within China, and if they really need to provide it outside China, they must pass the security assessment conducted by the state cyber authorities.

That means that, several years ago, the Chinese government had already begun to regulate the way information processors stored data. It has also placed a higher threshold on the security assessment of data leaving the country.

The draft regulation stipulates several situations in which data processors should make a declaration of a security assessment to cyber authorities when providing data outside the country. 1) Outgoing data contains important information; 2) Data provided by operators that process personal information on up to one million people; 3) Data that contains personal information on more than 100,000 people or sensitive personal information on more than 10,000 people. The cyber authorities should complete the security assessment within sixty working days.

Source: People’s Daily Online, October 29, 2021
http://finance.people.com.cn/n1/2021/1029/c1004-32268844.html

Briefings | | |   Information/Technology

China Bans Flightradar24 as Espionage App

The flight tracking service website Flightradar24 uses the signal receiving device “ADS_B” to monitor aircraft and track real-time flight information around the world. Recently the service attracted the attention of the Chinese government, which calls it as a “spy tool.” The application can no longer be downloaded in China.

The Chinese government recently said that ADS_B devices can receive data from military aircraft in addition to real-time data from civil flights, allowing users to send data abroad. According to a report by China Central Television (CCTV), Chinese national security authorities have discovered that, since 2020 several foreign organizations have launched websites and used social media platforms to provide Chinese aviation fans with data receiving devices and other benefits. The purpose was to recruit volunteers to collect relevant data and send it overseas.

The ADS_B device, which Flightradar24 offers to its members, is used to monitor and collect flight data within a radius of more than 300 kilometers by placing it window side. With an Internet connection, the data can be transmitted outside the country.

Chinese authorities have studied the possibility of setting up about 300 ADS_Bs in China to monitor aircraft signals in the country’s airspace. The collected information would cover both civilian and military aircraft. Beijing city’s National Security Bureau said this poses a direct threat to military aircraft. Revealing their whereabouts could lead directly to failure with “incalculable consequences.” The authorities reportedly have launched investigations, picked up hundreds of illegal devices, and temporarily confiscated the equipment of aviation fans.

Flightradar24 was founded in Sweden in 2006 to provide real-time flight details, including basic flight information, the path of the flight, the altitude and the airspeed. In the past, media outlets would use the service to search for information about plane crashes.

Source: Radio Free Asia, November 5, 2021
https://www.rfa.org/mandarin/Xinwen/wul1105c-11052021053208.html

Briefings | | |   Defense/Military

Chinese University Cancels Left-wing Scholar Event for Speaking Ill of CCP Leaders

China’s Nanjing University (NJU) had previously made an agreement with Zizek, a well-known Slovenian left-wing scholar, to hold a “Colloquium on Zizek’s Philosophical Thought” from October 29 to 31, 2021. At the event, Zizek himself was scheduled to deliver a lecture online and conduct a dialogue with Chinese scholars. However, at the last minute, news came out from the NJU Department of Philosophy that Zizek would not be allowed to speak at the conference to discuss his philosophical ideas. The conference was later cancelled with the excuse of “epidemic prevention and control” and “adjustment of schedules of participating experts.” The incident sparked widespread concern and discussion among netizens in mainland China.

An anonymous source at NJU told a reporter that Zizek, a famous Marxist scholar, was “silenced” and the event was even cancelled because his speech involved politically sensitive contents and even “made presumptuous remarks about the leaders of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).”

“The simple fact is that what he said in his speech was all about political issues, criticizing many social phenomena that do not fit the CCP’s intention of ‘positive energy’ and its ‘main theme.’” The source said, “What frightened the NJU leaders even more was that he actually made direct comments about the central leadership, mentioning Xi Jinping without naming him, saying that he was engaging in capitalism by cracking down on big companies and opening the Beijing Stock Exchange. He also directly named Wang Huning as a neoconservative. The event, if it were held, would have violated a political taboo. That’s why he was not allowed to speak. The fact that Zizek’s own seminar did not allow Zizek to speak would become a laughingstock. As the university leadership could not afford to lose face, they simply found an excuse to cancel the event.”

Wang Huning, who ranks no. 5 on the 7-member Politburo Standing Committee, China’s top decision making body, is in charge of the CCP’s propaganda.

Source: Boxun, October 30, 2021

左翼学者齐泽克发言稿妄议中共领导人，南大“齐泽克哲学思想研讨会”将其“禁言”后取消

Briefings | | |   Government/Politics

German Federal Minister of Education Minister Calls for Termination of Confucius Institutes

According to the German weekly news magazine Der Spiegel, Anja Karliczek, the Federal Minister of Education and Research, has called for the termination of all Confucius Institutes in Germany.

Karliczek has written a letter to the German Rectors’ Conference and to the Conference of Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs. She advises to reassess the roles of Confucius Institutes in German higher education and to draw the right conclusions.

The Confucius Institutes at the universities of Duisburg-Essen and Hanover received wide attention last week, as a planned online lecture about a book on the head of state, Xi Jinping, was canceled because of the intervention of Chinese government representatives.

Karliczek writes that for some time she has been “very concerned” with the activities of the 19 Confucius Institutes at German universities. Their influence on the work at the universities is “unacceptable.” The minister recommends that universities “carefully analyze their cooperation with institutes” and “resolutely counter China’s influence.”

Karliczek said that, In addition, universities should maintain closer contact with the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution and the Federal Intelligence Service,.

Confucius institutes, installed at the university campuses of many Western countries as a Chinese language teaching facility, are considered a propaganda and infiltration tool of the Chinese Communist Party.

Der Spiegel commented that university policy falls into the purview of the individual federal states. It is a matter of concern when a German federal minister expresses explicit concerns and criticism over with the work of universities and their cooperation agreements.

Source: Radio France International, October 31, 2021
https://rfi.my/7sNG

Briefings | | |   Geo-Strategic Trend

The Fourth World Laureates Forum

The Fourth World Laureates Forum opened on November 1 in Shanghai. China’s state newspaper People’s Daily reported that more than 130 of the world’s top scientists, including 68 Nobel Laureates, are participating in the 3-day event.

The forum organizers announced the creation of the World Laureates Association Prize, including two individual awards: the Mathematics and Intelligence Science Award, and the Medical and Life Science Award. Each is to be awarded once a year, with an award amount of RMB 10 million (US$1.6 million). The awards will be launched formally and awarded in 2022. The award money comes from the Shanghai World Laureates Development Fund, with a contribution of 500 million yuan ($78 million) from Sequoia China.

The World Laureates Association and the Chinese Association for Science and Technology (CAST), jointly organized the 4th World Laureates Forum under the guidance of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and the Chinese Academy of Engineering.  (CAE). CAST, CAS, and CAE are all Chinese government agencies.

The World Laureates Association was established in Shanghai in 2019. There are 72 scientist members, including 51 Nobel Prize Laureates, six Wolf Prize winners, six Lasker Award winners, four Turing Award winners, two MacArthur ‘Genius Grants’ winners, and one Fields Medal winner.

Source: People’s Daily, November 2, 2021
http://paper.people.com.cn/rmrb/html/2021-11/02/nw.D110000renmrb_20211102_4-13.htm

Briefings | | |   Geo-Strategic Trend

CCP Newspaper Blasts U.S. for Challenging UN Resolution 2758

In recent days, a senior State Department official  accused China of misusing the October 25, 1971, General Assembly resolution 2758 to deprive Taiwan of the opportunity to take part in multilateral organizations.

U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for China, Taiwan and Mongolia, Rick Waters, stated, “We have been actively encouraging member-states, civil society and individuals who care about the problem to support Taiwan’s robust, meaningful participation throughout the U.N. system.”

Global Times, a tabloid newspaper under the Chinese Communist Party’s flagship People’s Daily, published an editorial titled, “The U.S. Will Humiliate itself Challenging UN Resolution 2758, Undermining the one-China principle.”

The newspaper criticized the statement that Waters made as, “an attempt by Washington to issue a fundamental challenge to the one-China principle, trying to break the political status quo of the Taiwan question.”

It went on, “Even the United States, the No.1 Western country, arbitrarily falsified and fabricated the meaning of the UN resolution, completely ignoring its self-claimed responsibility of maintaining international rules. The US has turned itself into a complete political hooligan, which has been an eye-opener for the world.”

The newspaper then dealt a major blow saying, “The current US government is the most incapable and degenerate in the country’s history. The U.S.’ national strength has greatly lost its relative advantage, so the cards of trade and human rights that Washington plays to counter China have almost no effect at all. Meanwhile, the military deterrence from the Chinese mainland is also containing the Taiwan card the US plays. The US then has come to this cheap shot as a ‘new weapon’ to launch an alternative offensive against China.”

Global Times is famous for hawkish, anti-U.S. comments, but saying that the “current U.S. government is the most incapable and degenerate in the country’s history” is probably one of the harshest attacks on the Biden administration.

Source: Global Times, October 24, 2021
https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202110/1237157.shtml

Briefings | | |   US-China Relations

Beijing Tightens Control over Macau

Like Hong Kong, Macau is one of China’s other so-called special administrative regions that was supposed to enjoy a high degree of autonomy under the framework of “one country, two systems.” Now Beijing set up a special economic zone that encompasses Macau and the nearby Hengqin Island, which is in Zhuhapart of the neighboring Guangdong Province. It is a prefecture-level city as well as a Special Economic Zone. It is said to implement preferential taxation and other policies. The purpose is to diversify Macau’s economy which primarily centers around the gambling industry, to include finance, high technology, traditional Chinese medicine, tourism, exhibitions and trade.

China has recently exerted control over the casino business in the world’s largest gambling city. The Macau government announced a new measure that strengthens the government’s intervention in the casinos. In response, in mid-September this year, the stock shares of the casinos fell by nearly a third. The new regulation will also limit the number of casino licenses and install government personnel in casino operations.

For the first time, Macau has disqualified opposition candidates in this year’s Legislative Assembly election. In July of this year, Macau authorities disqualified 21 pan-democrats from candidacy on the grounds that they did not uphold Macau’s Basic Law and failed to meet the requirements of allegiance to the city. The turnout in this year’s mid-September legislative elections was only 42 percent, the lowest since the handover of the former Portuguese colony to China in 1999.

Although both the United States and the European Union condemned the Macau authorities’ disqualification of candidates for the Legislative Assembly as being contrary to the rights and interests enshrined in the Macau Basic Law, the Macau government said that the election is entirely an internal matter of Macau and that foreign forces have no right to interfere.

Source: Voice of America, October 18, 2021
https://www.voachinese.com/a/macao-china-control-20211018/6274834.html

Briefings | | |   Government/Politics