China's Censors Thrive in Obscurity

Google Outage Shows How 'Great Firewall' Benefits From Official Silence
By LORETTA CHAO And JASON DEAN
People use the computer at an Internet cafe in Taiyuan, Shanxi province March 31.
BEIJING—The confusion over a major outage in China of Google Inc.'s search sites on Tuesday spotlights one of the most remarkable aspects of the Chinese government's Internet censorship apparatus: It is designed to be obscure.
By Wednesday, access to the sites appeared to have returned to normal—searches for some terms, but not all, were blocked.

Government officials declined to comment when asked if they were the source of Tuesday's outage, leaving the situation and Google's future in China a mystery for users.
China operates one of the most extensive and sophisticated Internet-filtering systems in the world, according to analysts who have studied it.

The system, unofficially dubbed the Great Firewall after China's most famous ancient defense installation, blocks access to a range of foreign content, from criticism of China's leaders to information about sensitive historical events.
China generally doesn't tell its people when it is interfering with their Web access, unlike some other countries, such as Saudi Arabia, that give explanatory warning messages when users are denied access to forbidden sites.
Instead, China's filtering can look to users like a technical glitch—an error message in a user's browser that makes it seem like his connection to the Internet malfunctioned.

Authorities don't discuss the methods or tools they use.
Isaac Mao, director of the Social Brain Foundation, a Shanghai-based Internet and new media research group, said the government's tactics cause users to "think it's just a problem with the server of some sites, not a problem with the Great Firewall."

This works to the advantage of authorities because people are more likely to tolerate or even support censorship if "they don't have a clear concept of the criteria," he says.

Unpredictability also makes the system harder to circumvent.
Chinese authorities also maintain tight control of information such as print publications, digital music and film.

As with Internet censorship, details of what is censored and how the censorship works generally aren't disclosed.
The Great Firewall's mercurial nature makes it hard to tell when authorities are stepping up their filtering efforts, and helps explain how Google was befuddled on Tuesday over what caused its search sites to become unusable in China for nearly 12 hours.
Because the block was a departure from the regular workings of the Great Firewall, many users saw it as an attempt to target Google, likely in response to the company's refusal to comply with Chinese censorship.

Google on March 22 stopped operating its self-censored Chinese site, Google.cn, and began redirecting users in China to the Hong Kong site—which China censors for users on the mainland.
Google's first statement on the problem came more than seven hours after users across China started reporting that they couldn't execute searches on Google's Hong Kong site, Google.com.hk, and its main global site, Google.com.
In that first statement Google blamed itself, saying that—for reasons it didn't explain—the company had started adding the letters "gs_rfai" into the Web addresses of all search results pages (every Google search produces a unique Web address encoded to return the right results). Because the string contained the initials for Radio Free Asia, an organization China's government dislikes, it triggered the Great Firewall to block access in China to all results pages, Google said.
About four hours later, Google issued another statement saying that the "rfa" string had actually been added into results addresses a week earlier, so that "whatever happened today… must have been as a result of a change in the great firewall."
By Wednesday, Google posted a brief statement on its Web site saying it "will continue to monitor the situation, but for the time being this issue seems to be resolved."
It remains unclear what happened.

China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, which oversees the Internet industry, declined to comment Wednesday, as did other agencies.
Web sites based in China such as Google's former Chinese search site and its rival Baidu.com, are required to remove search results containing forbidden material.

Self-censored local sites are the most popular among Chinese users, in part because access to them is consistent.
The Great Firewall is used to screen content on sites based overseas, such as Google.com.hk. Much like its namesake, which is actually an array of fortifications built over centuries rather than a single Great Wall, the Great Firewall involves a number of different tools for controlling content.

On one level, access to some overseas sites, such as YouTube and Facebook, is blocked completely.

Other sites are filtered with software that can interrupt access when it spots forbidden keywords. Users get a message saying their connections were "reset," or "timed-out." After a few minutes, they can access the sites again.
The filtering is often implemented by government-owned Internet service providers at the local level, so blocks often don't happen simultaneously or uniformly.

The filtering pattern can seem random. Sometimes one sensitive search term alone won't trigger the interruptions, but a string of such keywords will.
Many Google users in China—accustomed to using Google.cn, which is inside the Great Firewall—have been confused by their experience using Google sites on the other side of the censorship divide, in part because the criteria for what triggers blocking are sometimes unpredictable.

For example, a search on Google.com.hk of the Chinese word for "carrot" causes an error message and temporary disruption of access to Google—apparently because one of its three characters is the same as the surname of Hu Jintao, China's top leader.

Likewise, searching the word "warm" sparks the filter because it contains the character for the surname of Premier Wen Jiabao.
Mr. Mao says the carrot problem wasn't new.

" 'Carrot,' " he says, seems to have been "part of censorship criteria for a long time."

Dalai Lama Juggles Dilemmas

An exile on the march in a new film about Tibet's fight against Chinese domination.

By NEIL GENZLINGER
“The Sun Behind the Clouds: Tibet’s Struggle for Freedom,” a documentary by Ritu Sarin and Tenzing Sonam, is so awkwardly executed that at first it may come across as just another chorus of a familiar song: that Tibetans think they have been done terrible injustices by China.

But pay close enough attention, and eventually another, entirely different theme emerges: the Dalai Lama may be losing his ability to keep the more radical elements of the free-Tibet movement in check.
The film looks at the protests against China that sprang up in 2008 in Tibet and among Tibetans living abroad, which coincided with the Chinese government’s efforts to improve its image as it prepared to host the summer Olympics.

The Dalai Lama long ago backed away from calling for independence for Tibet, which has been under Chinese control for half a century, instead endorsing a so-called middle way that emphasizes preservation of culture. But many of the protesters wanted a return to a more militant stand.
The filmmakers, chronicling the Dalai Lama’s somewhat muddled attempts to respond to the protesters’ calls while not antagonizing China, do a fair amount of muddling themselves.

They lurch awkwardly between reverence for the Dalai Lama and hints that he has become, politically, irrelevant or an obstacle.
Western viewers, accustomed to a less timid style of documentary, may come away from this one feeling that it only scratches the surface of a complex issue.

The presence of this film at the Palm Springs International Film Festival in January caused China to withdraw two movies from that event, but the documentary is as much a challenge to the Dalai Lama as it is to the Chinese.

The Sun Behind the Clouds: Tibet’s Struggle for Freedom Opens on Wednesday in Manhattan. Directed by Ritu Sarin and Tenzing Sonam; written and narrated by Mr. Sonam; directors of photography, Graham Day, Jaimie Gramston, Mr. Sonam, Stephen McCarthy, John Sergeant, Dilip Varma and Tensin Tsetan Choklay; edited by Anupama Chandra, Mahadeb Shi and Mr. Sonam; music by Gustavo Santolalla; produced by Ms. Sarin; released by Balcony Releasing.

At Film Forum, 209 West Houston Street, west of Avenue of the Americas, South Village.

In English, Tibetan and Mandarin, with English subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 19 minutes. This film is not rated

China Begins Cranking Out iPad Clones

By John Paczkowski

With the iPad, Apple hopes to create a new category of device, one that — in the words of CEO Steve Jobs — is “more intimate than a laptop and so much more capable than a smart phone.” And though the iPad is, as of yet, unproven at market, a number of Chinese electronics manufacturers are betting that it’s going to succeed in doing just that.

And they’re cloning the hell out of the device.
Among them, Teso which debuted two tablets at a Chinese trade show last week — an Intel Atom-based “iPhone-style” tablet that runs Windows 7 and another Arm-based device runs Android; Yinlips, which is planning an iPad look-a-like with a 6-inch E-Ink display; Micro-Star International (MSI), which will show off an Android-based tablet with a 10 inch screen at the Computex electronics show in June; Asus, which is prepping two iPad rivals for launch in the coming months — one for Android and another for Windows.

Asus, of course, is the company that earlier this month disparaged the iPad as “one big screen iPhone” and said it was something it could improve.

Finally, there is Shenzhen Huayi, which expects big things from its ridiculous-looking iPad knock-off.

“We basically made the designs to look like a jumbo iPhone,” president Xiong Yiwei told Korea IT Times.

“The profit margin of counterfeit cell phones reached up to 30 percent in the past, but only 10 yuan (US$1.50) profit margin is made per one product. We had a great expectation of netbooks last year, but only 100 yuan (US$15) profit margin was made. The success of iPhonish product is a matter of life or death for us.”
No wonder microprocessor outfit ARM is predicting we’ll see some 50 iPad clones by year’s end…

Chinese Continued Financial Support of N. Korea Questioned

By Kurt Achin
North Korea's leader appears poised to travel to China, as his country reels from what regional analysts describe as an economic policy fiasco.

China has long been a generous patron of Pyongyang, but at least one Beijing scholar warns in blunt terms that China will not rescue the North this time.
A spokeswoman for South Korean President Lee Myung-bak said Wednesday there is a "high possibility" that North Korean leader Kim Jong Il will make a rare trip outside his country to visit China.
Mr. Kim's government is believed to be undergoing extreme strain because of the fallout from failed currency and market reforms. South Korean media speculated he may go to China to seek help in bolstering the economy.
At a forum devoted to the North Korean economy Wednesday in Seoul, regional political analysts warned the North's economic policy blunders are pushing the totalitarian system to the brink of a collapse.
Peking University Professor Zhu Feng, one of the forum participants, issued a frank warning to the North not to expect any large handouts from China.
"Bailing out North Korea's economy [is] easy. We have the capability. We have no intention," said Zhu.
Three decades after opening its economy and encouraging market activity, Beijing is one of the three largest economies in the world.

In November, Pyongyang enacted what economists say is the mirror opposite of the Chinese reforms; clamping down on markets, and extinguishing the savings of small traders with a surprise currency revaluation.
Reports from North Korea indicate the measures strangled economic activity and sparked hyperinflation in prices for basic foods.
Zhu says Pyongyang needs to adjust its course, and unless it does, China will not help.
"Offering North Korea sizable aid, and keeping it [afloat], without any change to their very bizarre policy, is detrimental to the China national interest," said Zhu.
Soon after North Korea invaded the South in 1950, China sent hundreds of thousands of troops to aid the North. In the past, the two countries have said their relationship was as close as "lips and teeth."

Zhu says times have changed.
"The Korean War is over. Beijing changed tremendously. Our relation also altered almost completely," he said.
Zhu says China will continue to engage with the North on humanitarian issues to prevent mass starvation. However, he says Beijing's North Korea policy is not centered on preserving Kim Jong Il's rule.
"China is now ready for any form of very substantive change in North Korea -- including collapse," he said.
It is not clear if the Chinese government backs Zhu's comments. But such blunt language from China about North Korea is unusual.

Beijing has been Pyongyang's biggest economic supporter for nearly 20 years, and, regional security experts say, it wants to avoid an economic collapse in North Korea that would send hundreds of thousands of refugees across the border.

Google Links Web Attacks to Vietnam Chinese Mine Dispute

By BETTINA WASSENER
HONG KONG — Google, fresh off a dispute with China over censorship and intrusion from hackers, says it has identified cyber-attacks aimed at silencing critics of a controversial, Chinese-backed bauxite mining project in Vietnam.
In attacks it described as similar to but less sophisticated than those at the core of its spat with China, Google said malicious software was used to infect “potentially tens of thousands of computers,” broadly targeting Vietnamese speaking computer users around the world.
Infected machines had been used to spy on their owners and to attack blogs containing messages of political dissent, wrote Neel Mehta of the company’s security team in a post late Tuesday on Google’s online security blog.
McAfee, the computer security firm, said in a separate blog posting that it believed “the perpetrators have some allegiance to the government of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.”
It added: “This incident underscores that not every attack is motivated by data theft or money. This is likely the latest example of hacktivism and politically motivated cyberattacks, which are on the rise.”
Google said that while the malware itself was not especially sophisticated, “it has nonetheless been used for damaging purposes.”
“Specifically, these attacks have tried to squelch opposition to bauxite mining efforts in Vietnam, an important and emotionally charged issue in the country.”
Bauxite is a key mineral in making aluminum and one of Vietnam’s most valuable natural resources.

Plans by the Vietnamese government to exploit bauxite in the Central Highlands region, in partnership with a Chinese state-run company, have generated much local criticism, including from a well-known war hero, Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap.
General Giap and other opponents say the project will be ruinous to the environment, displace ethnic minority populations and threaten the south-east Asian country’s national security with an influx of Chinese workers and economic leverage.
The role of China in the bauxite project also has stirred up anger in a nation that still fears its bigger neighbor: Vietnam was a tributary state of China for 1,000 years and was invaded by China in 1979, and the two countries continue to joust for sovereignty in the South China Sea.

China Body-Dumping Case Highlights Clash of Values

By GORDON FAIRCLOUGH
SHANGHAI—The discovery of 21 dead fetuses and babies allegedly dumped along a river in the hometown of Confucius has provoked a bout of national soul-searching, and highlighted the gap between the values of newly affluent urban China and the traditional attitudes that persist in many less-developed parts of the country.
Amid the online outcry that erupted following media reports of the grim discovery Monday in Jining, a city in Shandong province recognized as the birthplace of the ancient Chinese philosopher, China's state-run Xinhua news agency Wednesday carried a story blaming the incident on "local custom and a lack of regulation."
Police detained two morgue workers from the Affiliated Hospital of Jining Medical University, the hospital said.

Authorities said the men had been paid to dispose of the bodies, and had secretly taken them to a river bank for burial, but failed to complete the job.
The bodies—some in diapers, at least one in a plastic bag marked "medical waste"—were found under a bridge. Eight of them still had hospital identification tags around their ankles.

The local health bureau issued a public apology for failing to adequately supervise the hospital's handling of human remains.

Cao Yongfu, deputy director of the Medical Ethics Institute at Shandong University, said in an interview that traditionally some parents don't view a fetus or a baby who died in the first days of life as "one of their family members." He said such views could cause them "not to care much about the dead babies."
He added that "every parent has the right and obligation to arrange a funeral for their kids." But he said current law is vague on how to properly handle dead bodies, especially those of fetuses or newborns.
Xinhua cited Ma Guanghai, the deputy dean of Shandong University's School of Philosophy and Social Development, as saying that in some poor, rural parts of China, parents are reluctant to take the bodies of dead babies home for burial.

He said abandonment of dead babies was a holdover from days of high infant mortality. Police didn't disclose any count of the sex of the bodies or how many were full-term.
Another academic, Cui Shuyi, a researcher in the demography institute of the Shandong Academy of Social Science, said that among rural Chinese, the traditional preference for boys over girls can lead to the abandonment of dead baby girls. The bodies of babies born out of wedlock are also sometimes discarded, he said.
Thousands of people have commented on the Jining case online.

Web portal Sina.com on Wednesday said a story about the incident ranked third in terms of comments. Another account ranked as the most-viewed on another big portal, Netease.
Many people expressed outrage that the dead babies were dumped in a city that celebrates itself as the birthplace of Confucius —who among other things taught familial loyalty and ancestor worship—and other ancient Chinese philosophers.
One blogger wrote: "I am very shocked that such thing could happen in a city that was the hometown of Confucius and Mencius. It is already very cruel for a baby leaving the world. How could we adults do something totally unconscionable?"
A person from Hubei said in a Netease forum: "This is horrible. These babies are so pitiful. They were sick when they were alive. Now, even though they are dead, they can't have a peaceful end. How could their parents be so cruel-hearted?"

On China’s Hainan Island, the Boom Is Deafening

Fishermen return to their neighborhood where more than 1,000 residents live in cramped alleyways across the water from luxury developments in Sanya, China.

The apartments - sweeping sea views, bathtubs on balconies, and sofas wrapped in velvet - are being pre-sold for an average of $885 per square foot, comparable to New York prices.

"People are coming with entire bags full of cash," said Raymond Hau, general manager of the Sun Valley Golf Resort, which is building the 220 luxury villas.

By EDWARD WONG

SANYA, China — One developer is building what he calls Asia’s largest hotel, with space for a casino and a greyhound racetrack.
The Visun Royal Yacht Club, China’s largest, plans to buy a helicopter for the use of its members. A golf course that charges $180 per round is opening 220 villas, each with its own butler, swimming pool and spa — “I want to get it into the Guinness Book of World Records for the most spas anywhere,” the manager says.
Then there are the property speculators flying to this resort town from across China with bagfuls of cash, to buy apartments whose cost per square foot rivals parts of Manhattan.

Five-star hotels during the recent Lunar New Year holiday charged $1,500 or more per night; one company charged $80 just to camp out in a tent.
In the last two months, Hainan, an island the size of Belgium in the South China Sea, has become a potent symbol of China’s economic vitality — or, perhaps, its excesses.

Even in a country where new wealth spawns new tales of luxury living every day, Hainan is viewed with a mix of awe, envy and disgust.
The boom here, unfolding as much of the world grapples with a recession, is fueled by a first-of-its-kind edict from the nation’s top leaders: On Dec. 31, the State Council, the Chinese cabinet, issued a memorandum that said Hainan had been designated a “test case” in developing an “internationally competitive tourist destination.”
Investors are interpreting that as a no-holds-barred effort to remake Hainan into the Chinese equivalent of Monaco, Las Vegas and Hawaii.

While there is no clear indication that the authorities will permit the introduction of licensed casino gambling, some are betting that Hainan could overtake Macao, the former Portuguese colony that is now under Chinese sovereignty, as China’s preferred island of iniquity.
“It’s as if they’ve injected a growth hormone into the economic development here, and people are wondering how it will all turn out,” said Xie Xiangxiang, the head of the Sanya Tourism Association.
The Hainan gold rush is the buzz across China.

One American businessman in Beijing, Christopher Reynolds, said a group of Chinese artists told him to invest in Hainan real estate.

Chinese couples on dates in Beijing restaurants chatter about it.

In February, the average sales price of property in Sanya and Haikou, Hainan’s two main cities, showed a 50 percent increase over the same month last year, five times the national rate, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.
“People are coming with entire bags full of cash,” said Raymond Hau, general manager of the Sun Valley Golf Resort, which is building the 220 luxury villas.

“I’ve seen this myself. A man had a bag and unzipped it. Boom. ‘Here’s the deposit,’ he said. ‘I want two apartments.’”

Mr. Hau shook his head. “It’s crazy. It can only happen in China.”
The golf resort is popular with the privileged. The president of Kazakhstan shot a hole in one here.

And on a recent afternoon, when an attendant opened the passenger door of a black sport-utility vehicle that had just pulled up, a pile of large-denomination Chinese bills fluttered to the ground.

Billboards across Hainan advertise property for sale in developments with names like Miami and East Bahamas.

The face of Zhang Ziyi, one of China’s most popular actresses, is plastered on some of the advertisements.

The most prominent development is a series of four luxury apartment towers and a “seven star” hotel on Phoenix Island, a spit of sand off the coast that was created by the provincial government as a cruise ship dock.
The apartments — sweeping sea views, bathtubs on balconies and sofas wrapped in velvet — are being pre-sold for an average of $885 per square foot, comparable to New York prices, said Wu Lei, a spokeswoman for the real estate company.
The hype over Hainan has inspired criticism from many quarters.

In an interview, Han Han, China’s most popular blogger, expressed contempt for the investment pouring into the island.

Last month, People’s Daily and China Youth Daily, both official newspapers, ran editorials lamenting the rising housing and hotel prices.

The editors appeared concerned that the stratospheric prices could highlight, for many Chinese, the growing class divide in this country.
“How can we create a stable and harmonious living environment if the island’s ordinary residents do not have the ability to buy housing?” wrote the editors of People’s Daily.
Even officials in Hainan seem worried.

In mid-January, the provincial government announced a temporary halt to new commercial development projects.

Gambling is another uncertainty. Some officials have said only modest forms of betting will be allowed, while others say Hainan could push the limits.
At the moment, gambling is banned across China, except in Macao.

The history of Hainan in the 1990s offers a cautionary tale. Early that decade, after the Chinese government had designated Hainan one of the country’s “special economic zones,” property speculators flocked to the island.

Some of China’s most successful real estate magnates, including Pan Shiyi of Soho China and Feng Lun of the Vantone Group, made their first fortunes on Hainan.

Across China, the island’s freewheeling capitalism became synonymous with corruption. The bubble burst after a few years, and the island stagnated.
Now, in Sanya, even those benefiting from the current boom say property and hotel prices have reached absurd levels.

“There’s no real economy,” said Lin Mingkun, the manager of the yacht club and a condo owner. “It’s a bubble economy.”
Some residents say they are being priced out of housing options.

On the west side of the yacht marina, there is a neighborhood where more than 1,000 fishermen and family members live in cramped alleyways.
The families have lived here for generations, but local officials and the real estate company that owns the yacht club, Hongzhou Group, are trying to persuade them to move off the land.

Four women sitting outside one home said the Hongzhou Group was offering less than $20 a square foot as compensation.
“If we get kicked out, there won’t be a house for the next generation,” said one, Ms. Shi, 48, who agreed to speak on the condition that only her last name be printed.
Mr. Lin said the Hongzhou Group was building an apartment complex across the harbor for the families and would pay them more than $40 per square foot for their property. The fishing boats would be moved into another bay, he said.
The Hongzhou company, with its gleaming Times Coast condominium development by the marina, is in the vanguard of Hainan’s transformation. The yacht club already boasts more than 80 members who have each paid $92,000 for the privilege of parking their boats here for 23 years.
“In China, Sanya will be the leader in luxury leisure,” Wang Dafu, the owner of Hongzhou, said one afternoon while cruising the bay in his 72-foot Pershing yacht.
He puffed on a Cohiba cigar. “The reason you earn money,” he said, “is to spend it.”

Journalists’ E-Mails Hacked in China

By ANDREW JACOBS
BEIJING — In what appears to be a coordinated assault, the e-mail accounts of more than a dozen rights activists, academics and journalists who cover China have been compromised by unknown intruders.

A Chinese human rights organization also said that hackers disabled its Web site for a fifth straight day.
The infiltrations, which involved Yahoo e-mail accounts, appeared to be aimed at people who write about China and Taiwan, rendering their accounts inaccessible, according to those who were affected.

In the case of this reporter, hackers altered e-mail settings so that all correspondence was surreptitiously forwarded to another e-mail address.
The attacks, most of which began last Thursday, occurred the same week that Google angered the Chinese government by routing Internet search engine requests out of the mainland to a site in Hong Kong.

Google said the move was prompted by its objections to censorship rules and by a spate of attacks on Google e-mail users that the company suggested had originated in China.
Those cyberattacks, which began as early as last April, affected dozens of American corporations, law firms and individuals, many of them rights advocates critical of China’s authoritarian government.
The victims of the most recent intrusions included a law professor in the United States, an analyst who writes about China’s security apparatus and several print journalists based in Beijing and Taipei, the capital of Taiwan.
“It’s very unsettling,” said Clifford Coonan, the China correspondent for Variety magazine, whose e-mail account was rendered inaccessible last week after Yahoo detected that someone had gained access to it remotely.

“You can’t help but wonder why you’ve been targeted.”
In an e-mail exchange, Dana Lengkeek, a Yahoo spokeswoman, declined to discuss the incidents, citing company policy.

“We are committed to protecting user security and privacy and we take appropriate action in the event of any kind of breach,” Ms. Lengkeek said.
Kathleen McLaughlin, an American freelance journalist in Beijing who sits on the board of the Foreign Correspondents' Club of China, said the group has confirmed that 10 journalists, including herself, had their accounts compromised.
Like the others, she received a message from Yahoo on Thursday indicating that her account had been disabled because, according to an automated message, "we have detected an issue with your account."
She said she contacted Yahoo but has yet to receive an explanation of what happened.

“Someone is clearly targeting journalists,” she said. “It makes me feel very uncomfortable.”

Yahoo, which in 2005 sold its China operations to the Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba, has faced criticism for cooperating with government security officials in the past.

In 2004, Yahoo turned over data that officials used to help prosecute several dissidents. One, a journalist named Shi Tao, was later given a 10-year sentence for leaking a secret propaganda directive.
Although the company owns a 39 percent stake in Alibaba, Ms. Lengkeek, the Yahoo spokeswoman, stressed that Yahoo no longer has operational control over the China business.
Unlike Google and Microsoft, the company maintains servers in China, a factor that has driven many privacy-conscious Chinese away from Yahoo's e-mail services.
Computer security experts say infiltration of Yahoo’s e-mail service once again highlights the challenges that Internet companies face in protecting their customers from hackers.
Paul Wood, a senior analyst at the Symantec Corporation, said a growing number of malignant viruses were tailored to specific recipients, with the goal of tricking them into opening attachments that would insert malware onto their computers.

Mr. Wood said his company, which designs anti-virus software, now blocks about 60 such attacks each day, up from 1 or 2 a week in 2005.

“They’re very well crafted and extremely damaging,” he said.
A report issued by Symantec on Monday found that nearly 30 percent of attacks originated from computers in China; about 20 percent of those came from Shaoxing, a relatively obscure city in Zhejiang Province previously known for winemaking.
Mr. Wood and other experts point out that attacks appearing to come from a certain location can just as easily be emanating from computers infected with botnets, a virus that allows them be controlled remotely by other computing systems.
It is this kind of rogue software that is probably responsible for crippling the Web site of Chinese Human Rights Defenders, a group that has been an assertive critic of China’s human rights violations.

Since last Thursday, the group’s Chinese-language site has been overwhelmed by hackers flooding it with junk requests, a tactic known as denial of service.

Although the site has been attacked before, the attacks did not last more than a few hours.
Renee Xia, the international director for the human rights group, said the assault began the same day the American company that is host to its site, Go Daddy, announced that it would stop registering domain names in China.

“Maybe it’s a coincidence, but we don’t think so,” Ms. Xia said.

Google Finds New Cyberattack
SAN FRANCISCO — Google said Tuesday that it had discovered a cyberattack aimed at Vietnamese Internet users around the world.

The attack was less sophisticated than those that originated in China and aimed at Chinese human rights activists.
Google said the attack may have infected the computers of tens of thousands of people who downloaded Vietnamese keyboard language software.

Translation: “A Record of the Ancient Dove’s Migration”

By C. Custer

The story in the Chongqing Evening News
On March 27th, the Chongqing Evening News published a remarkable story.

Defying the direct orders of official government bureaus forbidding Chinese media to hype the Google fiasco, the Chongqing Evening News ran a story about a mythical bird whose name sounds just like the Chinese word for Google and whose story sounds, well, familiar.

You may have seen this story in brief on EastSouthWestNorth, but we wanted to translate it in full because we found it so remarkable that something this brazen was published in a mainstream newspaper.

We imagine some heads at the Chongqing Evening News will roll because of this.

Translation
We have translated this somewhat loosely in the hopes of conveying more clearly the parallels with the real Google story, but readers of Chinese should read the Chinese for the full, pun-tastic effect.

We also moved one sentence from the middle of the text to the beginning because it read oddly in English otherwise.

The “Ancient Dove” [sounds like "Google"] is clearly very close to extinction within China, it is a bird hard to find when one “searches” [...] It is held that this bird is the forbear of all modern birds, so it is called “Ancient Dove”.
This species originated in North America according to biologists, who believe the bird to have come from the area of present-day Santa Clara.

By the turn of the century, the bird could be found everywhere.

After March 23, 2010, the species began a large-scale costal migration in China, towards a southern port, and vanished from China.
Google: the Ancient Dove
Ecologists suspect the bird’s odd behavior is connected to the extreme climate changes happening in recent years, especially the ecological, environmental, climate and geological calamities in China.

When met with adversity, the Ancient Dove cannot persevere as tenaciously as the Grass Mud Horse, so it raised the flag of retreat, attracting the disdain of some of the world’s animal lovers.

Special Characteristics
Its shoulders are draped with blue, yellow, red, and green feathers, and it is a bit bigger than the common dove. Its call sounds like the English word “googol”; Native Americans believe that this sound represents an “unbelievable number”.

Mathematicians performed rigorous calculations and believe this number is probably ten to the hundredth power.

Environment
The Ancient Dove has an extremely strong capacity for adaptation, and can evolve quickly to become a new, indigenous subspecies.

For example, at present there are large populations of American Ancient Doves, Japanese Ancient Doves, British Ancient Doves, and other subspecies.

Because archaeology has proven the original Ancient Dove came from America, we often refer to the American Ancient Dove as “Ancient Dove”, and attach the name of the country they are located in to identify other subspecies.
Early research has shown that the Ancient Dove’s leaving may give rise [to the dominance] of another, long-clawed bird that looks just like the Ancient Dove but is actually a bird of prey: the “Paidu Bird” [sounds like "Baidu", Google's chief domestic competition].

The numbers of this ancient legendary domestic bird are presently expanding explosively. Now, Chinese people can only use this poisonous, ferocious bird, whose calls are in Chinese and who loves only money to fulfill the Ancient Dove’s function.

Habits
Living in groups, the subspecies in each country may excel at different things.

The Ancient Dove eats anything with words on it, and can naturally estimate the relative worth of food. It performs advanced calculations to decide the proper sequence [in which to eat].
As you know, its mortal enemies are the “River Crabs” [sounds like "harmony", a reference to government censorship], the “Wenzuo Crabs” [sounds like "the Chinese Writer's Association", which is also associated with censorship], and other types of Chinese crabs.

Current Population
In the world, there are an estimated 120 billion Ancient Doves, but they have already mostly disappeared from the Chinese mainland.

What were once Chinese Ancient Doves have migrated to Hong Kong, so there is a downward trend in the worldwide population.
Many animal lovers went to the Beijing Ancient Dove santuary before March 23, 2010, to express their grief.

It is fascinating that the talking-about-it-without-talking-about-it approach to discussing politics in China has spilled over from the internet and into the real world.

This is, of course, not the first time, but it is the latest example of a kind of “news” that could never have been written or understood anywhere but China, where it seems sometimes a true story can be told only mythologizing and anthropomorphizing it.

Could it also be the beginning of a trend, or will the censors head it off at the pass by making an example of the folks at the Chongqing Evening News?

What will happen to them remains to be seen.

But their having the guts to publish a story like this in the face of harsh warnings not to address the Google issue sympathetically shows a spirit that I think the now-exiled Ancient Doves would be proud of.

Critics of Vietnam Chinese Mine Face Online Attack

HANOI, Vietnam (AP) -- Google Inc. says malicious software has been used to spy on Vietnamese computer users opposed to a controversial bauxite mine in the Southeast Asian country.

Computer security firm McAfee said the perpetrators may be linked to the communist government.
The ''malware'' has targeted ''potentially tens of thousands'' of people who downloaded software allowing users to type in Vietnamese, a posting on Google's online security blog said Tuesday.

It said the malware has been used for ''damaging purposes'' -- to attack blogs containing messages of political dissent.
''Specifically, these attacks have tried to squelch opposition to bauxite mining efforts in Vietnam, an important and emotionally charged issue in the country,'' Google engineer Neel Mehta wrote in the posting.
The Chinese-built mine is planned for Vietnam's Central Highlands and has attracted strong opposition -- including from Vietnam's most famous military hero -- because of fears it would cause major environmental problems and lead to Chinese workers flooding into the strategically sensitive region.
McAfee, which has investigated the malware, also discussed the attacks in a blog posting Tuesday.
''We believe that the perpetrators have some allegiance to the government of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam,'' wrote George Kurtz, McAfee's chief technology officer.
Vietnamese officials could not immediately be reached for comment Wednesday.
Last week, Google shut down its search operations in China, Vietnam's northern neighbor, after complaints of cyberattacks and censorship there. Google redirected queries from China's mainland to the freer Chinese territory of Hong Kong.
Vietnam also tightly controls its flow of information and has said it reserved the right take ''appropriate action'' against Web sites it deems harmful to national security.
Last fall, the government detained several bloggers who had criticized the bauxite mine, and in December, a Web site called bauxitevietnam.info, which had drawn millions of visitors opposed to the mine, was hacked.
The malware apparently began circulating at about that time, according the McAfee blog.

It said someone hacked into the Web site run by the California-based Vietnamese Professionals Society and replaced a keyboard program that can be downloaded from that site with a malicious program.
Google's blog said the incident underscored the need for Internet users to run regular antivirus checks, and for the international community to take cybersecurity seriously ''to keep free opinion flowing.''
Among the bauxite mine's opponents is the legendary 98-year-old Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap, who led Vietnamese forces in victories against French and U.S. troops. Giap's photograph is prominently featured on the bauxite Web site.
Suspicion of China runs deep in Vietnam, which has a long history of conflict with its northern neighbor.
The two countries fought a bloody border war in 1979 and they have ongoing disputes about two archipelagoes in the South China Sea, the Spratlys and the Paracels.

Google's lonely stand for human rights in China

By Richard Cohen
In 1992, Francis Fukuyama published a book with what may be the best title ever: "The End of History and the Last Man."

In it, he argued that the end of the Cold War represented the triumph of liberal democracy as the "final form of human government."

Recently, Sergey Brin, Google's co-founder and a thoughtful man, begged to differ. The Great Wall of China stood in the way.
Google, as you must know, has pulled out of China proper and relocated to Hong Kong.

The company took this action after it was hacked in China by persons apparently looking to spy on the e-mails of Chinese dissidents.

Those who know Brin, though, say that the hacking was just the last straw.

Mostly, he was weary of adhering to China's censorship policies, which, he said in a brief interview with the Wall Street Journal, had gotten increasingly severe after the 2008 Olympics. When the world looked away, China took off the gloves.
For Brin, this was something of a personal disappointment.

He is a Russian immigrant and the son of a man who suffered under the old communist regime. He is one of those people who thought that China's acceptance of American companies would liberalize the country.

Above all, the Internet was going to do wonders. It was the ultimate liberalizing machine -- a communications medium that by its very nature could evade the censors with their clumsy, antediluvian red pencils.

Bill Clinton, no naif about anything, struck just the right cliche when in 2000 he mocked China's attempt to control the Web: "Good luck. That's sort of like trying to nail Jell-O to the wall."

Now look: The Jell-O's on the wall.
Maybe more to the point, the optimistic note struck by Fukuyama and others has been forcefully challenged, if not rebutted, by the Chinese.

Their view of progress, they emphasize, is not our own. The free expression of ideas leads to chaos. Dissent is treason. China is too unmanageable not to be severely and ruthlessly managed. The Internet should not be a force for liberalization. It should be a force to encourage conformity. Let a thousand intellectual flowers bloom -- as long as they all bloom identically.
What's particularly chilling about the Chinese position is that it is unapologetic.

From Beijing, you do not get sweet equivocations and buttery lies -- the adamant claim that there is no censorship or, as with the old Soviet Union, the insistence that all those dour people you saw on the street were really brimming with happiness.

On the contrary, the Chinese say that their system is their system -- take it or leave it. Brin and Google chose to leave it.
I quote now from this year's State Department report on human rights regarding China: "On Feb. 8, Li Qiaoming was reportedly beaten to death in a detention center... Prison officials initially claimed he died after accidentally running into a wall during a game of 'hide and seek.' "
I quote some more: "In March Li Wenyan died while in custody... The Xinhua official press quoted a senior prison official as stating that Li died while having a 'nightmare.' "
I could quote even more.

But the point is that this is China and this is where American firms have elected to do business.

I understand the constraints and imperatives -- the amorality of business, the virtue of profit, the belief that shareholder equity trumps human rights, the vast size of that vast market and how, by golly, if they could open a plant in China they could make that country a bit more like Switzerland.
This bald hypocrisy is why virtually no American firm has joined Google -- not Microsoft and not Yahoo -- or said they could not do business in a place where people were seized by the police and executed without so much as even a show trial.

Business, as we all know from the "Godfather" movies, is business.
Maybe in the end, the Internet will actually ameliorate conditions in China and maybe the Chinese will succumb to exogenous pressures and liberalize their system.

But Google, which admirably walked away from the biggest cellphone market in the world -- that and not its search engine was the real prize -- has shown that in the meantime the price of doing business in China is not its overvalued currency but its undervalued human rights.

In this sense, history has not ended.

Along with too many American businesses, it has just moved offshore.

Bodies of 21 babies found in China river

A man fishes out several bags that contain 21 bodies of babies under the Gunagfuhe bridge in a village in Jining, Shandong province, on March 28, 2010.

By CHI-CHI ZHANG

BEIJING — The bodies of 21 babies, believed dumped by hospitals, have washed ashore on a riverbank in eastern China, state media reported Tuesday.
Video footage showed that the bodies — stashed in yellow plastic bags, at least one of which was marked "medical waste" — included some infants several months old.

Some wore identification tags with their mothers' names, birth dates, measurements and weights.

The official Xinhua News Agency said there were also fetuses among the bodies.
Residents discovered the remains under a bridge in the city of Jining, Shandong province, over the weekend.

Tags on the feet of eight of the babies traced them back to a hospital in Jining, according to the People's Daily Web site.

Three of them had been admitted earlier to the hospital in critical condition, the report said. It did not say when.
The other 13 bodies were unidentified. The number of girls or boys was not reported.
More girls than boys are aborted in China because of the traditional preference for male offspring, especially in rural areas.

Although gender-selection abortions are illegal in China, the practice remains widespread and has led to a skewed sex ratio at birth in China with 119 males born for every 100 females. In industrialized countries, the ratio is 107 to 100.
An official from the general office from the Affiliated Hospital of Jining Medical College confirmed it was involved.
"Several of the bodies of babies with (identification) tags were from our hospital, but not all of them. The officials from the health bureau are still in the hospital doing an investigation," said the official, who like most Chinese officials would not give his name.
Xinhua said medical staff were suspended after the discovery.
"The hospital medical staff involved have been suspended from their work during the investigation," Zhong Haitao, a spokesman at the Jining Health Bureau, was quoted as saying.
Local residents and firefighters recovered the bodies Monday after they were discovered under a bridge spanning the Guangfu River in the outskirts of Jining, Zhong said.
Interviews with residents who discovered the bodies floating near the shore over the weekend were broadcast on the Web site of the Shandong Broadcasting Company, IQILU.com.
The footage shows bodies lying on parts of the bank of the river. Some are uncovered, and others are in bags. They are all small and covered in dirt. A leg sticks out from under one bag.

At least one of the bags has "medical waste" written on it.
The IQILU.com report said the babies ranged from newborns to several months old.

One of the bluish-green identification tags visible in the video indicates the baby was born in April 2009.
People's Daily said all the bodies were babies, while Xinhua said several were fetuses.
An official from the information office of China's Health Ministry said she was not aware of the case, while telephone calls to the Jining Health Bureau and the Shandong Health Bureau rang unanswered Tuesday.

Australia worries about Rio Tinto verdict

Tom Connor, Australia's consul-general in Shanghai, center briefs journalists near Shanghai's No. 1 People's Intermediate Court in Shanghai, China, Monday, March 29, 2010. The Chinese court Monday sentenced four employees of mining giant Rio Tinto to jail terms of seven to 14 years on bribery and commercial secrets charges, in a case seen as a barometer of China's treatment of foreign business as trade frictions increase.

By ROHAN SULLIVAN
SYDNEY — Australia's prime minister said Tuesday that secrecy surrounding China's trial of four Rio Tinto workers for commercial spying leaves room for doubt about the convictions and a major Australian commerce group said the result could harm business confidence.
The Chinese government rejected criticism that the trial was not open enough and accused Australia of making "irresponsible remarks."
Canberra says the jail sentence handed to Australian citizen Stern Hu on bribery charges was harsh, and has criticized the decision to keep media and diplomats out of the court while it considered the other charges of stealing commercial secrets.

Nevertheless, Australia says the case will not harm its relations with China.
Hu, Rio Tinto's executive in charge of iron ore negotiations in China before his arrest last July, was sentenced in a Shanghai court on Monday to a total 10 years in prison. Three Chinese colleagues were imprisoned for between seven and 14 years.
The case was closely watched by foreign companies operating in China.

The rulings suggest Chinese authorities are taking a sterner stance toward foreign companies caught violating the country's often selectively enforced corruption code.
Australia Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, a Chinese-speaking former diplomat to Beijing, said closing the court during the commercial secrets part of the trial left "serious unanswered questions about this conviction."
"In holding this part of the trial in secret, China I believe has missed an opportunity to demonstrate to the world at large transparency that would be consistent with its emerging global role," he told reporters.
In Beijing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang was asked at a briefing to respond to the Australian claim about transparency.
"We express serious concern about that," Qin said.

"The Rio Tinto case is an individual criminal case and relevant judicial authorities have issued the verdict of the first trial. The Australian side should respect that result and should stop making such irresponsible remarks."
London-based Rio Tinto is a key industry negotiator in price talks with China's state-owned steel mills, and the arrests of its employees last August were initially thought linked to Beijing's anger over high prices it paid for iron ore — a key commodity for China's booming economy.

That belief was shaken last week after the four pleaded guilty to taking bribes from steel mills trying to get preferential access to ore supplies.
Australia said Hu's sentence wouldn't affect ties with China, but some experts said the trial underlined worries companies already have about doing business in a country where legal proceedings are often opaque.
The Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, which represents 350,000 companies, said Hu's case raised issues about foreigners operating in China that need to be clarified.

These included rules in China about detention without trial and a lack of transparency.
"These broader issues are important for the Australia-China relationship and the necessary confidence Australian business executives require when doing business abroad," said Nathan Backhouse, the chamber's international affairs spokesman, in a statement.
The verdict also comes as other faultlines appear between Beijing and the global corporations eager to tap its fast-growing market of 1.3 billion people.
A recent survey showed a growing number of foreign businesses in China feel shut out under government policies meant to promote homegrown technology.

Internet search giant Google's high-profile decision to move its Chinese site to Hong Kong after a spat over censorship and hacking added to the unease.
China has chronic problems with corruption so the Rio case "is not as simple as China sending a warning message to a particular country or company" said Jin Linbo, a senior research fellow with the China Institute of International Studies.

"It's time China should deal with this problem or more serious cases will emerge."
Beijing has staged repeated anticorruption crackdowns but big foreign companies are rarely targeted.
Australian Foreign Minister Stephen Smith and Rio Tinto said separately they were satisfied that there was substantial evidence that bribery had occurred.
Rio Tinto said if would fire Hu and his colleagues.
"I am determined that the unacceptable conduct of these four employees will not prevent Rio Tinto from continuing to build its important relationship with China," CEO Tom Albanese said in a statement.

The company is increasingly dependent on its business with China.
Smith said corporations would be disappointed at the secrecy of the commercial secrets elements of the trial.
"Clearly the international business community has been watching and transparency and clarity on this point would have been of assistance," he told reporters.

Kevin Rudd says Rio Tinto verdicts leave 'unanswered questions'

The Australian prime minister has said that the verdicts in the trial of four Rio Tinto employees, including an Australian citizen Stern Hu, left serious unanswered questions about China's legal system.
Mr Rudd, a former diplomat in Beijing and fluent Mandarin speaker, said his government condemned bribery

The Telegraph

However, Mr Rudd said that disagreement with Beijing's decision to hold a crucial part of the trial dealing with theft of commercial secrets in closed court would not dent Australia's booming resource trade with its biggest export partner, he said.

"In holding part of the trial in secret, China I believe has missed an opportunity to demonstrate to the world at large transparency that would be consistent with its emerging global role," Mr Rudd said.
A Chinese court convicted four employees of Rio Tinto of taking bribes and stealing commercial secrets, including Mr Hu, with sentences ranging between 7 and 14 years in prison.
Mr Rudd, a former diplomat in Beijing and fluent Mandarin speaker, said his government condemned bribery, but believed that the commercial espionage part of the trial should have been held in public to reassure the world of complete transparency.
"I believe the bilateral relationship will sustain these sorts of pressures.
"We've had disagreements with our friends in Beijing before. I'm sure we'll have disagreements again," he said.
Rio Tinto has sacked the men following their convictions, branding their behaviour "deplorable".
The firm said it was up to the defendants and their lawyers to decide whether they would appeal their convictions, and the company was not involved.
But concerns remain over how deeply the trials could affect Australian business links to China.
The influential Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, which covers 85 per cent of the country's mining and energy companies, said it was seeking urgent talks with Chinese authorities to get clarity in the wake of the Rio trials.
"These broader issues are important to the Australia-China economic relationship, and the necessary confidence Australian business executives require when doing business abroad," said Nathan Backhouse, manager of trade and international affairs.
In Hong Kong, the Beijing-controlled Wen Wei Po newspaper said the verdicts were a "landmark" and China's handling of the case showed a Beijing "already melded into the world", understanding how to defend its national interests.
"Although the Australian foreign minister asserted that the sentence was excessively harsh, the depoliticised verdict not only won over the international community, it also left Australia unable to pick holes," the officially-sanctioned paper said.

Amnesty slams China in death penalty report

Amnesty International has called on China to say publicly how many people it executes each year

By Robin Millard

LONDON — Amnesty International called on China Tuesday to say publicly how many people it executes each year, as the rights group published an annual report on the use of the death penalty worldwide.
More people are put to death in China than in the rest of world altogether, and estimates based on the publicly available statistics "grossly under-represent" the actual numbers, said the report.
The true figure is likely to be "in the thousands," said the London-based human rights group, which also highlighted executions in Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and the United States.
"The Chinese authorities claim that fewer executions are taking place. If this is true, why won't they tell the world how many people the state put to death?" said Claudio Cordone, Amnesty's interim secretary general.
"The death penalty is cruel and degrading, and an affront to human dignity... No-one who is sentenced to death in China receives a fair trial in accordance with international human rights standards," he added.
The report said that at least 714 people were executed in 18 countries in 2009, while at least 2,001 people were sentenced to death in 56 states.
Besides China, the countries that executed the most people last year were Iran (at least 388); Iraq (at least 120); Saudi Arabia (at least 69); and the United States (52).
"The past year saw capital punishment applied extensively to send political messages, to silence opponents or to promote political agendas in China, Iran and Sudan," Amnesty said.
It said Iran executed 112 people in the eight weeks between President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's disputed re-election in June and his inauguration in August.
Burundi and Togo abolished the death penalty for all crimes, taking to 95 the number of countries to have done this by the end of 2009.
Nine further countries have abolished it for ordinary crimes.
Some 35 countries retain the death penalty but are considered abolitionist in practice as they have not executed anyone in the past 10 years.
That leaves 58 countries that retain the sentence for ordinary crimes.
Methods used included beheading, electrocution, hanging, lethal injection, shooting and stoning.
"Secrecy surrounds the use of the death penalty in countries such as China, Belarus, Iran, Mongolia, North Korea and Vietnam. Such secrecy is indefensible," the report said.

"If capital punishment is a legitimate act of government as these nations claim, there is no reason for its use to be hidden from the public and international scrutiny."
The majority of the world's executions took place in Asia, the Middle East and north Africa, the 41-page report said.
In Asia, there were no executions in Afghanistan, Indonesia, Mongolia and Pakistan last year, the first execution-free year in those countries in recent times, it said.
Thailand conducted its first two executions since 2003.
And for the first time since Amnesty began keeping records, there were no executions in Europe in 2009 -- though Belarus killed two people in March this year, it said.
The report accused Iran and Saudi Arabia of violating international law by executing people at least seven people between them for crimes commited whilst they were aged under 18.
Kenya, which has not carried out an execution since 1987, commuted the death sentences of 4,000 people to imprisonment, the largest such move Amnesty had seen.
And at least 17,118 people were under sentence of death as at the end of 2009, it said.
"Fewer countries than ever before are carrying out executions," Cordone said.
"As it did with slavery and apartheid, the world is rejecting this embarrassment to humanity. We are moving closer to a death penalty free world, but until that day every execution must be opposed."

Chinese censors disable Google searches

Chinese censors have disabled all Google searches on the mainland, blocking the US company's Hong Kong servers from delivering results.
By Malcolm Moore in Shanghai
In almost every major Chinese city, users reported that trying to access Google searches returned an error page.
The hiatus began at around 5pm on Tuesday in China. Although it was still possible to access Google's websites, searches on any topic delivered an error message.
Google was unable to immediately confirm the cause of the problem, but said it was investigating. Chinese internet users blamed the "Great Firewall" for blocking Google searches. Google's email services were unaffected.
In addition, Google said its mobile search has been partially blocked in China, leaving mobile phone users unable to use the Google search function.
The developments suggest that the Chinese government is preparing to make its move against Google, after the company moved the servers of its search engine to Hong Kong last week to avoid censorship.
At first, the move seemed to be a neat solution that would allow Google to provide Chinese users with its service without having to continue to censor search results.
Sergey Brin, the company's co-founder, even suggested, in an interview with the Wall Street Journal, that the idea to move to Hong Kong had come "indirectly" from the Chinese government itself.
Under the "one country, two systems" motto dreamed up by Deng Xiaoping, China's former leader, Hong Kong retains the freedom of speech and British law left behind after the UK ceded the territory to China in 1997.
However, Google's move to Hong Kong has opened the eyes of many Chinese to the fact that they are being censored by the Communist party while their cousins in Hong Kong are not.
Since Google began redirecting mainland users to its Hong Kong site last week, the company has come under criticism from the state media, which has accused it of being part of a US "plot" to destabilise China.
The Communist party has been deeply concerned by the public's reaction to Google's departure from the mainland, and the Education ministry has even asked a selection of university students to write their "thoughts" about Google.

Similar student polls are usually conducted after major catastrophes, such as the riots in Xinjiang last year or in Tibet in 2008.
Meanwhile, the government has kept a tight leash on the domestic media, forbidding newspapers from publishing anything that deviates from the party line.
Instructions from the Central Propaganda Department to newspapers and websites said: "Only use Central Government media content. Do not use content from other sources. It is not permitted to hold discussions or investigations on the topic of Google. Please remove text, images, sound and video that supports Google."
Only the Chongqing Evening News was able to publish a report expressing remorse about Google's exit, after using the code words "Valley Dove", which sounds like Google in Chinese. Other Chinese reporters have been banned from Google's offices in Beijing and all content expressing support for Google on the Chinese internet has been erased.
Meanwhile, other attacks on Google include the removal of the company's page on Renren, the Chinese equivalent of Facebook, and the blocking of a translated version of the company's blog post, in which it explains the reasons for its departure from the mainland.
Other websites which partner with Google for advertising have been told not to carry links to the blog, or its Chinese version.

China Blocks Google

By Gady Epstein
BEIJING -- Just how angry is China at Google?

Internet users behind the government's Great Firewall may have just found out: All searches on Google appeared to be blocked starting late Tuesday afternoon, the latest indication that tensions between the Internet giant and the Chinese government have mounted since Google shut down its mainland search engine earlier this month.
Searches of innocuous terms like "Beijing Olympics" returned error messages on Google.com.hk, Google.com in the U.S. and other international Google sites beginning at about 5 p.m. in Beijing. Users in many other major Chinese cities, including Shanghai, Chongqing, Chengdu, Shenzhen and Guangzhou, shortly reported the same problem.
Google, announcing it would no longer censor its search results, began redirecting users a week ago from its mainland China search engine, google.cn to google.com.hk in Hong Kong.

That switch took place sometime after 2 a.m. Beijing time last Tuesday.

The blocking of Google searches began at about 2 a.m. Tuesday in Mountain View, Calif., where Google's headquarters are located.
If this is an intentional, long-term move on the part of Chinese authorities, it would be rare in its scope.

China routinely blocks Web sites that the government deems sensitive or subversive, including some sites related to Tibet, the Falun Gong spiritual movement and the Tiananmen Square crackdown of 1989.

Some Western news sites have been blocked as well.

Google, meanwhile, has usually been subjected to subtler filtering, especially service slowdowns. In the last year China has been more aggressive in blocking two leading foreign social media sites, Facebook and Twitter.
It is unclear when or if Chinese authorities will explain the latest move. Officials typically have not responded to questions about specific sites being blocked.
Google's e-mail service, Gmail, remains unaffected, though Google's YouTube has been blocked for some time.

China making anime push as Japan hits slump

Giant figures of Anpanman, left, and Top Detective Conan, right in the air, popular Japanese anime cartoon series characters, greet visitors during the business day of the Tokyo International Anime Fair 2010 in Tokyo, Japan, Thursday, March 25, 2010. More than 200 anime-related companies and organizations gathered in this annual event that opens to public on March 27 and 28.

A man walks by a screen showing Japanese animation Fairy Princess Minky Momo on the business day of Tokyo International Anime Fair 2010 in Tokyo

A visitor poses with Son Goku, the main character of Japan's popular manga series Dragon Ball, for a snap during the business day of Tokyo International Anime Fair 2010 in Tokyo

By TOMOKO A. HOSAKA

TOKYO — Yoko Komazawa had been at the Tokyo International Anime Fair for nearly six hours when she fell in love with a brown-and-white stuffed panda — a character in one of the fair's featured cartoons.
"It's so adorable and interesting," she said, staring into its gleaming pink eyes. "I want it."
Unfortunately, the panda wasn't for sale and Komazawa had to settle for a photo.

But she walked away from the small booth impressed by the panda's creators — from China.
"Japan is certainly an amazing anime country," said the 30-something anime fan and collector of all things cute and cuddly.

"China has some intriguing characters though. They're different, and that definitely catches my attention."
Komazawa's enthusiasm for something new is a small victory for China's fledgling animation industry, and could well represent a widening crack in Japan's global anime dominance.

Japan may be the birthplace of anime, but China is gunning for its future as it mounts an aggressive effort to expand the country's creative prowess and reputation.
In November, the government's cultural arm established the China Animation Comic Group Co. to foster a "great leap forward" in animation production, technology and marketing.

Part of the plan includes building a "China Animation Game City" in Beijing that would be a national hub.
With government subsidies, Chinese animation companies tripled their presence at this year's Tokyo anime fair even as the overall number of exhibitors declined.

The four-day event through Sunday, one of the world's biggest anime-related trade shows and festivals, featured a "China-Japan Anime Summit" along with multiple China-themed lectures.
"China is a big market, and everybody is trying to get in," said Jimmy Tse, chief executive of Top Art Investment Ltd., which makes the panda Komazawa craved.

"And the Chinese people, they are starting to think, 'How come I'm manufacturing for someone else?' Why are we not creating anything ourselves?'"
China's growing ambitions coincide with an ominous industrywide slump in Japan.
After peaking in 2006, the number of anime minutes made for television fell 20 percent to 108,342 in 2009, according to the Association of Japanese Animations.

A survey of the group's members shows that overseas anime revenue fell 21 percent between 2006 and 2009.
Matt Alt, a Tokyo-based author, blogger and longtime observer of Japanese pop culture, blames the industry itself for losing its edge.

The world's hunger for anime accelerated around 2000, with Hollywood incorporating anime scenes into films and children clamoring for Pokemon.
Since 2006, however, a trend toward adult-oriented (and often sexually explicit) niche titles have turned off the general audience.

Moreover, the industry is losing young talent due to persistently low pay and poor working conditions, forcing Japanese animation companies to outsource much of their work.
"The Japanese anime industry basically gave China, Korea and all these countries the keys to the candyshop," Alt said.

"By outsourcing so much work to them, they trained this work force of people who are now far more ambitious and far more hungry than a lot of Japanese animators are."
The man behind the Tokyo anime fair acknowledges the global anime boom has waned.

But chief producer Hitoshi Suzuki brushes off suggestions that foreign competition poses a threat, expressing confidence that a new boom will emerge in time.
Japanese animation is rooted in a rich 60-year history that cannot be replicated elsewhere, he said, citing the work of Astro Boy creator and "godfather of anime" Osamu Tezuka.
"Everyone tries to copy the surface of Japanese animation," he said. "But real Japanese animation is different."
Different or not, the Japanese anime industry is beginning to realize that it cannot ignore China — as an emerging rival or a potentially lucrative new market.

For both countries, cooperating appears to be the best option for now.
One of the most successful joint projects so far is the "Romance of Three Kingdoms," a historical animated series currently airing across China.

The program, produced by Japan's Takara Tomy and a subsidiary of China Central Television, will begin airing soon in Japan and elsewhere in Asia.
Chinese startups are also actively courting Japanese content makers for their business.

A representative from the online video site joy.cn, China's version of Hulu, traveled to the Tokyo anime fair to convince Japanese companies that the Internet offered an alternative to mass media — subject to tight government restrictions — and that their copyrights would be protected in the process.
"It's a time of great change right now," said Yuji Nunokawa, chairman of the Association of Japanese Animations and a veteran anime producer.

"We need to determine how we can work together to foster the contents business. We've come to a point in time where both sides need to think about how we can do this."

It's big, it's back, it's the World Expo: China style

By Farah Master
SHANGHAI -- What's more expensive than the Beijing Olympics, covers a vast territory and is forcing countries and international companies to splash out millions of dollars?

It's China's latest publicity project.
If China was serious about creating a legacy after the Beijing Olympics, it is outshining all its past efforts for the Shanghai World Expo, spending $4.2 billion on reinventing the world's exhibition fair as a blowout extravaganza.
While previous expos in Zaragoza and Hanover went largely unnoticed on the global agenda, Shanghai is creating such a promotional ruckus, that countries are going all out to impress an expected 70 million visitors.
"It's for countries to cozy up. For countries like Australia or France, it's make-up money, a tribute to the emperor. They are apologizing for all the trouble caused in the last few years," said Paul French, chief China analyst with retail consultancy Access Asia in Shanghai.
Of 191 countries attending, most are investing record amounts to build pavilions, with governments taking the lead in providing the bulk of investment and heads of state, including French President Nicolas Sarkozy, promising to make an appearance.
"The Expo plays in the same league as the Olympic Games and the Soccer World Cup, said Dietmar Schmitz, commissioner general of Germany's Ministry of Economics and Technology.
Germany is spending $67 million on its pavilion which will let visitors sample traditional dishes like bratwurst sausage and Bavarian pork knuckle.
Saudi Arabia's spaceship pavilion, which features desert date palms and a 1,600 square-meter cinema screen (about a quarter the size of a soccer pitch), stands almost fully completed, gleaming against muddy construction rubble at adjacent unfinished sites.
The Saudi pavilion is the most expensive at $146 million, while Australia is spending $76 million and France is shelling out $68 million.

DOMESTIC PRIDE
China is the first developing nation to host the World Expo and officials hope the event, held from May 1-Oct 31, will improve Shanghai's position as a global city.
"It will let Chinese people understand foreign countries much better and help them better understand us," said Xu Wei, communication and promotion deputy director for the Expo.

The U.S. pavilion, he said, could serve as a place where Americans and Chinese could come together and better communicate.
"Shanghai will definitely be like New York in the future," said Tang Chunyan, 30, a shop assistant in a newly renovated mall in downtown Shanghai.
Shanghai's bustling, historic food street, Wu Jiang road, known for dumplings and smelly tofu, had to close ahead of the expo, with street vendors rehoused in the airconditioned mall.
Tang said redevelopment of the "xiao chi," or snack, food street was a good thing because of a cleaner environment.
"It is sad that the old style is gone but it shows Shanghai is developing fast."
While Shanghai is stripping hawkers and various eyesores off its streets as Beijing did before the Olympics, the event is not targeted primarily for an international audience.

Officials expect only 5 percent of the visitors to be from outside China.
"Much more of the focus is China and the Chinese government promoting themselves and promoting their capabilities to their own citizens," said Greg Hallahan, strategist at business risk consultancy PSA Group in Shanghai.

SECURITY IN OVERDRIVE
Shanghai's government has spent $45 billion to upgrade transport and infrastructure and $700 million on renovating the historic Bund riverfront promenade.

In just a year, the city has doubled the metro system to 420 km (260 miles) of track and opened a new airport terminal to accommodate tens of thousands of visitors per day.
Keeping the city safe is one of the biggest challenges, Expo officials said, with security measures already in overdrive.
Police stand guard with German shepherd dogs in the financial district and have distributed a brochure to office workers for identifying bombs.

Subway commuters pass through airport-style baggage checks.
While Shanghai prides itself on putting on a "World class event," complete with musical fountains from France, not all residents feel they are benefiting from the showcase exhibition.
"The Expo is just showing China has money, using ordinary people's money to make it," said a 54-year-old Shanghai taxi driver who identified himself only by his surname Chang.
"It is not showing China is developed. China still has so many poor people," Chang said, adding that his family could watch the Expo on television rather than pay 160 yuan ($23.50) for a ticket.

Japan suspicious of China poison dumpling arrest

By Hiroshi Hiyama
TOKYO -- Japanese media voiced suspicion Sunday about Beijing's motives after China announced the arrest of a factory worker accused of poisoning frozen dumplings destined for Japan.
The arrest came two years after Tokyo first pressed Beijing to investigate the case of the pesticide-tainted dumplings that made 10 people sick in Japan, including a small child, triggering a row between the two neighbors.
"This does not resolve the issue of food safety," the liberal Asahi Shimbun newspaper charged in an editorial, while others questioned why the investigation had taken so long and demanded an apology from China.
China's official Xinhua news agency said Friday that Lu Yueting, 36, had been arrested on suspicion of injecting poison into the dumplings while working at a factory in northern China.
Authorities described him as a disgruntled worker who acted out of revenge because he was dissatisfied with his pay and did not get along with colleagues.
"It is difficult for consumers inside and outside China to accept such a simplistic explanation," the Asahi Shimbun said.
Initially, China had insisted that the poison was injected into the dumplings after they had reached Japan, in a spat that adding to tensions over energy and territorial disputes between the neighbors.
"Undoubtedly, the initial Chinese reaction fuelled Japanese consumers' distrust. Why did the investigation take so long?" Japan's Mainichi Shimbun said in an editorial.
"We hope China will fulfill its responsibility to explain."
The dumpling incident led Japanese consumers to avoid Chinese frozen food, which temporarily disappeared from stores in Japan.
And concerns about Chinese food imports were further heightened in late 2008 after six Chinese infants died and almost 300,000 were made ill by milk powder laced with the industrial chemical melamine.
The incidents depressed Chinese vegetable imports to Japan by roughly 20 percent in 2008 from the previous year, although it still remained a major source of fresh and frozen food for Japanese consumers.
Taiwan and other regional countries increased their food exports to Japan to offset the reduction of Chinese products shipped to Japan.
"Japan must strengthen monitoring of food imports while demanding China to step up its food safety measures," the top-selling Yomiuri Shimbun said in an editorial.
The conservative Sankei Shimbun newspaper said that now Beijing had acknowledged that the suspect was a Chinese national, the Japanese government should push for an apology and compensation.
Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama has moved to improve ties with China since coming to power six months ago, but has also repeatedly said concerns over the safety of imported Chinese food were an "obstacle."
Hatoyama said on Saturday that Japan would remain in close contact with the Chinese authorities over the dumpling case.
"Hopefully this case will be resolved quickly in order for Japan-China relations to develop further."

Chinese city is world’s hacker hub

By Michael Sheridan

A CITY in eastern China has been identified as the world capital of cyber-espionage by an American internet security company.
The firm traced 12 billion emails in a study which showed that a higher number of “targeted attacks” on computers come from China than previously thought.
Researchers for Symantec found almost 30% of “malicious” emails were sent from China and that 21.3% came from the city of Shaoxing alone.

They were able to identify key targets for the hackers as experts in Asian defence policy and human rights activists, strongly suggesting state involvement.
Symantec is assisting the investigation into suspected hacking attacks on Google, which closed its website in China last week rather than censor itself on behalf of the ministry of state security.
Cyber-espionage uses emails sent in small volumes with legitimate-looking attachments or documents to fool the user into letting a malicious code infect their computer.

“The ultimate aim... is to gain access to sensitive data or internal systems by targeting specific individuals or companies,” the report said.
Symantec succeeded in tracing individual computer registration numbers, known as IPs, to find the true source of the attacks.

Previously, hackers in China had been able to camouflage themselves behind servers in Taiwan.
The findings show China was the source of 28.2% of global targeted attacks.

It was followed by Romania, with 21.1%, presumed to be mostly attempts at commercial fraud.

The United States came third, followed by Taiwan and then Britain, with 12% of attacks.

China's influence silences Asia on yuan peg

By Leika Kihara and Abhijit Neogy
TOKYO/NEW DELHI -- China's increasing regional influence will keep Asian governments from pressuring the world's fastest growing economy into letting its currency strengthen for fear of economic or political repercussion.
China has repeatedly said a decision on unshackling the yuan would depend on domestic conditions, after effectively pegging it to the U.S. dollar for the past 20 months, even while it is under threat by Washington of being labeled a "currency manipulator" next month.
Policymakers from Bangkok to Tokyo told Reuters they are unwilling to challenge China on its currency, giving Beijing some diplomatic breathing room in the face of pressure from the United States, the euro zone, the International Monetary Fund and others who have said the yuan is undervalued.
The yuan has been flat at 6.83 per U.S. dollar since mid 2008.

Since a recovery began in March 2009 though, increasing capital flows have been pushing up other Asian currencies between 7 to 27 percent.
That has given Chinese exporters an edge over their competitors and tied the hands of policymakers who have been forced to keep intervening in markets to weaken their currencies.
The Asian officials interviewed separately over the past week were reticent to speak about yuan policy even on the condition of anonymity, keeping to their long-held practice of non-interference in Asia.
They also were worried about straining bilateral trade and diplomatic relations with China which has become strategically important.
"We used to say when the United States sneezes, Japan would catch a cold. Nowadays, when China sneezes, Japan catches a cold. Japan's economy has become that much more reliant on Chinese growth," a senior Japanese government official involved with financial diplomacy told Reuters.
The official said Japan, which has a third of its overseas production in China and hence is vulnerable to rising costs there, is increasingly worried about signs of rising asset prices in China, though did not want to publicly discuss the issue.
"We don't see much point telling China what their problem is because they themselves are well aware of it."

SYMPATHY WITH CHINA
Japan's export growth to China, on a three-month rolling basis, was at the quickest since 1985 at 55 percent in February, more than three times export growth to the United States.
This is precisely the dynamic that policymakers do not want to upset.
"Policymakers are likely asking themselves, do we really need to upset China the way the U.S. has and get all sorts of retaliatory actions, at a time when China... is becoming a source of demand for Asian exports," said Sanjay Mathur, Asia economist with Royal Bank of Scotland in Singapore.
"There is zero gain in upsetting China."
Japan's deputy finance minister publicly called on Beijing to hear calls for a more flexible yuan, though said sanctions against China would be wrong.

Similarly, the Indian commerce minister said China's currency policy created problems for domestic exporters, but stopped short of calling for an end to the peg.
David Mulford, a former U.S. Treasury official who was directly involved with a decision in 1988 to label South Korea and Taiwan "currency manipulators," believes the issue of China's exchange rate has become too politicized by the U.S. government, and other governments in Asia as a result do not want to get involved.
If emerging markets like China keep growing at a much faster pace than advanced economies such as the United States, then the intensity of disputes in trade and exchange rates will increase.
"If this spread is maintained for just a few years, the impact will become more political," said Mulford, now vice-chairman international at Credit Suisse.
South Korea actually aligns itself with China's position on the yuan: fast currency appreciation is economically dangerous.
"Koreans don't so much have complaints about China's currency peg but rather feel sympathetic with their concern that a fast appreciation of the yuan could end up shutting down factories, laying off workers and causing social unrest," a high ranking financial authority said.
Senior officials in India, which is not as dependent on exports like Japan and Korea, said they were not confident pressure they could apply on Beijing would be successful in speeding up currency reform.
"If the U.S. can't get China to change its stance on the yuan, I don't see India making much headway either," an official who deals with currency policy said.
India's $1.2 trillion economy is expected to post the second-highest growth in Asia this year, Reuters polling shows.
For now, Asian governments, especially those dependent on exports, have decided to absorb the disadvantage of having strengthening currencies.

If capital flows attracted by their rising currencies keep pouring into the region though, the pain will increase.
Manu Bhaskaran, chief executive of Centennial Asia Advisors and former consultant to the Singapore government on economic matters, said until China lets the yuan strengthen, Asian policymakers will have to keep intervening in markets to contain currency strength.
"Everyone is hurt by a weak RMB,"he said, referring to the renminbi, or yuan.

Europe unlikely to join any new yuan offensive

By Brian Love
PARIS -- If Washington picks a fight with China over the weakness of the state-managed currency, it will do so without European reinforcement, not least because the euro has weakened in tandem with Greece's debt crisis.
Preparation of a U.S. Treasury report that could potentially brand China a "currency manipulator" is rekindling tensions with Beijing prior to mid-April publication and raises questions as to how broad international support will be if things turned uglier.
The saber-rattling is growing in volume since U.S. lawmakers said they were crafting proposals to allow import duties to be slapped on Chinese goods on the grounds that American jobs are being lost and Beijing must now budge.
Despite the fact that governments in Europe also believe the yuan is undervalued, giving China an unfair edge in global trade competition, there appears to be little appetite here to up the ante simply because tempers are fraying in Congress, potentially weakening the U.S. diplomatic push.
Additionally, negotiations on an aid plan for Greece not only eclipsed most other policy issues in recent months but also exposed strains among euro zone governments that will hardly sharpen desire to renegotiate their position on China so soon.
"The view here (in Europe) is that this is a red flag to the Chinese. They sense it's not going to be very productive," said an official involved in preparation of a meeting of G20 finance ministers that will bring all sides together later this month.
German Economy Minister Rainer Bruederle signaled last week that Berlin understood nothing would happen overnight.

He told export executives Berlin wanted to see a fully flexible Chinese foreign exchange rate "one day" but that he realized the shift would be difficult for China.
Likewise, EU trade commissioner Karel De Gucht highlighted the contrast with the United States when he said in comments to the Financial Times newspaper: "At this moment, it is less of a political issue in Europe."
China and the United States have been at odds in 2010 over many other issues such as Google's decision to defy Chinese Internet censorship, Tibet, U.S. weapons sales to Taiwan, and sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program.
For many industrialists, the focus is often on more concrete issues of export access to China markets than the less tangible benefits a stronger yuan should confer in terms of the relative price competitiveness of euro zone firms on world markets.

THAT'S NOT THE ONLY REASON
While important, the diplomatic subtleties of how hard China can be cajoled into yuan appreciation is one of many considerations and the list of other motives has if anything lengthened, strengthening the case for further soft-peddling from Europe's perspective, officials and economic analysts say.
The most obvious is that the Greek debt crisis has produced a positive by-product to the extent that the euro exchange rate has weakened in tandem, providing some relief in theory even if it may prove temporary.
That, as French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde has said, can only be considered welcome news by euro zone exporters.
"Given the 15 percent fall we've seen in the value of the euro since July 2008 against the yuan as well as the pressing domestic issues facing the region at present, it is hardly surprising that Eurozone politicians have little appetite to tackle Chinese currency policy issues at present," said Simon Derrick, currency analyst at Bank of New York Mellon.
The euro has shed about eight percent versus the yuan since this year alone, primarily because it has retreated by roughly similar amount against the dollar, to which the yuan is pegged right now.
More strikingly, for much of the decade before the downturn and collapse in global trade in 2008, exports from the euro zone to China appear to have risen more or less continuously in spite of the yuan's increasing weakness vis a vis the euro.
Another development the Europeans should worry about is that a broad Asian exchange rate appreciation could in fact trigger a further bout of dollar weakness versus the euro, Brendan Brown, chief economist at Mitsubishi (UFJ) Securities, said.
"It is better to keep quiet and hope that the Chinese get away with only small currency changes," said Brown.

"European exporters are doing very well anyway."
China revalued the yuan by 2.1 percent against the dollar in July 2005 and then let it climb nearly another 19 percent before calling a halt in mid-2008 to help exporters weather the global financial crisis.
Europe if anything had more cause for complaint during that period because the reform did not lead to a yuan rise versus the euro. Indeed the euro rose roughly 10 percent versus the yuan in that period.
But in 2009, when the industrialized world was struggling to pull out of recession, China offered Europe a helping hand. Euro zone exports to China grew four percent while exports to Britain and the United States fell close to 20 percent, according to data collated by EU statistics office Eurostat.
That, combined with the desire to avoid public sparring and play for yuan appreciation in the longer term, may explain why European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet and other senior euro zone officials had little to show from their last visit to China to discuss the matter back in November.
Trichet is more likely worried that China's currency policy is not sustainable in the long-term if Beijing is serious about efforts to achieve a more balanced global economy and to discuss the necessary adjustments in the G20 forum.
There too, there is no mood to rush at China over the issue.
Canadian finance minister Jim Flaherty, whose country hosts a G20 summit later this year, said this week "there's no point in sweeping important issues under the rug."
But in private, G20 officials, including from Canada, have cautioned against expecting any kind of currency pronouncements before June or maybe even November, when another G20 summit is scheduled in South Korea.
And even if it proves to be a blip, China is tipped to post a trade deficit in March that would be the first since April 2004, which Beijing could at the very least exploit as proof that caution is needed when calling for yuan change.
"Although the timing of the (trade deficit) announcement may be political, the trend toward a sustained trade deficit is very real," Albert Edwards of Societe Generale banks global strategy team said in a note.