Memoir (or Is It?) of Sex and Opium

By JOYCE HOR-CHUNG LAU
Sir Edmund Backhouse from 1943 by S. Vargassoff.

HONG KONG — There are things we know about Sir Edmund Trelawny Backhouse, 2nd Baronet, of England: He was one of few Europeans to live among the Chinese in the early 20th century, and his writings greatly influenced the way the West saw Peking.
Then there are fuzzier facts, like his claim that he had affairs with both Oscar Wilde and the Empress Dowager Cixi.
At the peak of his career, Backhouse was a respected expert in the field of Orientalism.
He worked for The Times of London as a researcher and translator, and his books on China were best sellers.
Two works he wrote with the British journalist J.O.P. Bland, “Annals and Memoirs of the Court of Peking” (1914) and “China Under the Empress Dowager” (1910), shaped 20th-century views of the empress.
But some of his sources and claims have since been proved fraudulent (he was roundly criticized after it was discovered that a diary he quoted turned out be a forgery), and historians are divided on the significance of his contribution to Western understanding of Chinese life — and whether it is significant at all.
Next week, two Hong Kong companies will release English and Chinese versions of a previously unpublished manuscript by Backhouse that purports to be a memoir.
The sexually explicit “Décadence Mandchoue,” written in 1943, when Backhouse was 70 and dying, recounts his time as a young man as he explored Peking’s gay haunts and what he described as wanton practices within the Imperial Court.
Set largely from 1898 to 1908, the book starts in the ironically named House of Chaste Pleasures, where princes and other high-ranked officials buy the services of young men.
The memoir will primarily be distributed in Hong Kong, with a limited number of copies also available in the United States and Europe, but not widely in mainland China.
Beijing has not explicitly banned the book, but the publishers are reluctant to do battle with censors.
Bao Pu, the head of New Century Press, which is publishing the Chinese translation, said there had been an attempt to contact mainland publishers.
“They were all fascinated, but they would have to cut out of the sex parts, and that’s a third of the book,” he said.
Backhouse (who claimed his name was pronounced “Bacchus”), however, is a footnote in history.
The real figure of historical interest in “Décadence” is the Empress Dowager Cixi, the de facto ruler of the Middle Kingdom for 47 years.
According to Backhouse, he met the aging empress after he helped restore looted works to her palace.
He was then called in for a private audience, during which the empress complained about the barbaric behaviors of foreign diplomats.
While there is documentation linking Backhouse to political life in Beijing, it is not known whether he actually returned treasure or had this conversation.
What seems really far-fetched is an alleged affair that began when Backhouse — or the Backhouse-like character in this book — was washed and perfumed by eunuchs and called up to the 69-year-old Empress’s bedchambers to perform like a slave girl in a harem.
According to his manuscript, the liaison lasted until the Empress’s death in 1908 at the age of 73.
“Décadence Mandchoe” was written several months before Backhouse died.
His Swiss physician, Reinhard Hoeppli, commissioned the memoir, but then never published it.
The manuscript was eventually passed to the British historian Hugh Trevor-Roper, who also chose not to publish.
Instead, Trevor-Roper wrote his own biography, “Hermit of Peking: The Hidden Life of Sir Edmund Backhouse” (1976), which cast Backhouse as a fraud and which has, until now, been the last word on him.
Backhouse’s original texts from 1943 gathered dust on a shelf at the Bodleian library in Oxford until Derek Sandhaus, the chief editor of Earnshaw Books, which is producing the English-language edition of “Décadence,” found them while researching another book.
“There are two reasons the manuscript was never published,” Mr. Bao of New Century Press said.
“The first is that Trevor-Roper destroyed his reputation. The second is because of the greasy paragraphs about sex.”
Trevor-Roper had called Backhouse’s memoirs “worthless historic documents,” as well as snobbish and pornographic.
In the first paragraph, Backhouse manages to drop in Shakespeare, Wilde and Verlaine.
He is a writer who will never say “rickshaw” if “charrette chinoise” will do.
The famously multilingual author uses a mish-mash of French, Latin and Chinese, rendering a few parts hard to read, even if one has a background in those languages.
As for its historical merit, even the new publishers admit that the book may not be entirely true.
Instead, they say, its value comes in its details of that era.
“These descriptions are historically significant because these accounts are not found in other sources,” Mr. Sandhaus said.
“While there may be some inconsistencies, it is fundamentally based on fact. Even if he didn’t experience everything personally, this book may have been a way for him to relay things he had heard.”
“No Chinese living then paid much attention to, or bothered to document, the details of daily life — certainly not like an outsider living among them,” Mr. Bao added.
“On the other hand, no Westerner lived quite in Backhouse’s situation.”
Bret Hinsch, a history professor at Fo Guang University in Taiwan and the author of “Passions of the Cut Sleeve: The Male Homosexual Tradition in China,” added that documents about gay life in that period were scarce.
“Compared to Japan, where there are hundreds of books documenting homosexuality at this time, there’s very little such material from China,” he said.
“Writing personally about sex was seen as improper, even shameful, especially if one was describing an emotional dependence with the socially inferior, which is what these relationships were between rich patrons and the young opera singers who worked at these places.”
Ultimately, “Décadence” does not clear up confusion over whether anything Backhouse wrote was believable.
“It’s not an easy book to classify,” Mr. Sandhaus admitted.
“Is it autobiography, fiction or non-fiction?”
The same question could be asked of most of Backhouse’s work.
When he was writing, there was little information about China available in the West.
Backhouse, who was fluent in Mandarin, Manchurian, Mongolian and Japanese, had a certain amount of clout — and it was almost impossible for his readers to verify his claims.
The critical modern reader would probably see “Décadence” as a fictionized memoir, with accurate details drawn from real life, but an outrageous plot.
Backhouse knew full well European stereotypes of China — as an exotic, and erotic, fantasy world of empresses and opium smoke — and he gave his readers exactly what they wanted.
“Why were Westerners so willing to believe these outrageous stories?” Mr. Hinsch said.
“Would anyone believe a Chinese guy who said he went to England and had sex with Queen Victoria?”

China Hedges Over Whether South China Sea Is a ‘Core Interest’ Worth War

By EDWARD WONG

BEIJING — When President Hu Jintao of China dropped in on Washington this winter, one hot-button topic was notably absent from the agenda: the South China Sea.
Nor will Chinese officials be keen to discuss it during a summit meeting between the countries planned for May in Washington.
In the past year, it has been one of the most delicate diplomatic issues between China and the United States. Perhaps no other point of tension has been as revealing of the difficulties American officials have reading and responding to Chinese foreign policy.
But in recent months, Chinese leaders have apparently been happy to let the issue quiet down, perhaps for the sake of smoothing over relations with the Obama administration.
China and four Southeast Asian nations have been wrangling for years over territorial claims to the South China Sea.
Then last July, amid heightening tensions in the waters, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton rallied with Southeast Asian nations to speak out against China.
She bluntly said in Hanoi that the United States had a “national interest” in the area, and that China and other countries should abide by a 2002 agreement guaranteeing a resolution of the sovereignty disputes by “peaceful means.”
Chinese officials were shocked that the United States was getting involved, analysts say.
A public debate erupted in China over this question: Should China officially upgrade the South China Sea to a “core interest,” placing it on par with other sovereignty issues like Tibet, Taiwan and Xinjiang that could justify military intervention?
Some Chinese officials appeared to have floated that idea in early 2010 in private conversations with their American counterparts.
Several American officials told reporters in Beijing and Washington last year that one or more Chinese officials had labeled the South China Sea a “core interest.”
But despite those remarks and the public debate that came later, Chinese leaders have not explicitly come out with a policy statement describing the South China Sea as such — nor have they denied it.
“It’s not Chinese policy to declare the South China Sea as a core interest,” said Zhu Feng, a professor of politics and international relations at Peking University.
“But the problem is that a public denial will be some sort of chicken action on the part of Chinese leaders. So the government also doesn’t want to inflame the Chinese people.”
The Foreign Ministry and the State Council, China’s cabinet, did not answer questions on the issue, despite repeated requests.
Michael Swaine, an analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for Peace, has published a paper with the China Leadership Monitor looking at China’s growing use of the term “core interest.”
Since 2004, Chinese officials, scholars and news organizations have increasingly used the term to refer to sovereignty issues.
Initial references were to Taiwan, but the term now also encompasses Tibet and Xinjiang, the restive western region.
After examining numerous Chinese print sources, Mr. Swaine concluded that China had not officially identified the South China Sea as a “core interest.”
Some “unofficial differences in viewpoint, along with the likely dilemma involved in confirming whether the South China Sea is a core interest, together suggest the possibility of disagreement among the Chinese leadership on this matter,” Mr. Swaine wrote.
That is not to say that China has refrained from asserting its sovereignty claims.
On March 24, a Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Jiang Yu, said at a news conference that China held “indisputable sovereignty” over the Spratly Islands.
By spring 2010, it seemed to some American officials that Chinese officials were pushing beyond the standard sovereignty claims, calling the South China Sea a “core interest.”
In a November interview with The Australian, Mrs. Clinton said Dai Bingguo, the senior foreign policy official in the Chinese government, told her that at a summit meeting in May 2010.
“I immediately responded and said, ‘We don’t agree with that,’ ” Mrs. Clinton said, though some scholars in the United States and China question whether Mr. Dai made the remark.
Then in July 2010, at a meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in Hanoi, Mrs. Clinton made the statements that enraged the Chinese.
M. Taylor Fravel, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who studies China’s territorial issues, said Mrs. Clinton’s move was in reaction to a long series of episodes in the South China Sea that American officials believed reflected greater assertiveness by China.
After Mrs. Clinton’s statements, the English-language edition of Global Times, a populist Chinese newspaper, published an angry editorial that linked the South China Sea to China’s core interests — “China will never waive its right to protect its core interest with military means,” it said.
Senior military officers weighed in on both sides.
Han Xudong, an army colonel and a professor at National Defense University, wrote in Outlook, a policy magazine, that “China’s comprehensive national strength, especially in military capabilities, is not yet enough to safeguard all of the core national interests. In this case, it’s not a good idea to reveal the core national interests.”
The Web site of People’s Daily, the official mouthpiece of the Communist Party, posted a survey asking readers whether it was now necessary to label the South China Sea a “core interest.”
As of January, 97 percent of nearly 4,300 respondents had said yes.
Muddying the whole issue has been the parallel use of “core interests” advanced by Mr. Dai.
In 2009, he broadened the definition of the term by saying China had three core interests: maintaining its political system, defending its sovereignty claims and promoting its economic development.
Some Chinese officials might now see the South China Sea and all other sovereignty disputes as falling under “core interests.”
The debate in the Chinese news media seemed to reflect a divide among Chinese officials.
Then in the fall, news organizations were ordered to stop writing about it.
“Now I think they are backing away and downplaying the question because of the trouble it is causing with the U.S. and the ASEANs,” said Joseph Nye Jr., a professor of international relations at Harvard and a former Pentagon official.
Monitoring China’s actions in the South China Sea is a more reliable way of gleaning its intentions, said Lyle Goldstein, director of the China Maritime Studies Institute at the U.S. Naval War College.
His research shows that in August, Modern Ships, a publication linked to the Chinese Navy, detailed how two civilian surveillance ships planted a Chinese flag in the southern part of the sea; Mr. Goldstein said the fact that the ships were unarmed showed that China was taking a cautious approach.
But “there has been an increase in hawkish declarations by Chinese naval leaders since last summer, reflecting a dangerous escalation of tensions,” Mr. Goldstein said.
In November, Modern Ships quoted Admiral Hu Yanlin as saying that “international anti-China forces led by America” had stirred up discord in the region.
“We are peace-loving,” Admiral Hu said, “but we also need to make the appropriate plans and preparations.”

China warns of military competition in Asia

By Kathrin Hille in Dallas

China has raised concerns over attempts by other countries to contain its growing power, as the US seeks to boost its influence in the region.
“Suspicion about China, interference and countering moves against China from the outside are on the increase,” Beijing said in a key military policy document released on Thursday, underscoring the growing friction in the Asia-Pacific region.
The 2010 white paper was the first to be published since Hillary Clinton, US secretary of state, angered Beijing by calling for a resolution of territorial disputes in the South China Sea involving China and its neighbours, in a speech at a regional summit last July.
The release of the biennial white paper also follows a string of stand-offs over regional security issues ranging from US military exercises in Asian waters to North Korea’s hostile acts against South Korea and flare-ups in territorial disputes between China and several of its neighbours.
The publication of the white paper for 2010 had been delayed for more than two months over what military experts in Beijing said were China’s efforts to navigate the multiple issues it considered sensitive, and a desire to include any potential outcome from the visit of Robert Gates, US secretary of defence, to Beijing, and of Hu Jintao, China’s president to the US in January.
The recent publication of new military strategies from Japan and the US are also believed to have been reasons behind the long delay.
“They wanted to carefully study these and the result has obviously been a policy document as uncontroversial as possible,” said a foreign defence official in Beijing.
In the document, China also reiterated previous warnings of “fierce” regional competition and an increasingly “volatile” security picture in Asia.
“Major powers are stepping up the realignment of their security and military strategies, accelerating military reform and vigorously developing new... military technologies.”
China started publishing the biennial white papers on its defence policy in 2000 in response to criticism from foreign militaries, especially the US, that it was not transparent enough about its armed forces.
This year Beijing repeated its pledge of transparency, and said it would increase joint exercises and military exchanges with other countries.
But the new document included even less detail on the armed forces than the last white paper.
Introductions to the different services were shorter than in the 2008 paper, and Beijing did not address the development of key new weapons systems about which the US, Japan and several other neighbours are concerned.
The People’s Liberation Army has been overhauling an old aircraft carrier it purchased from Ukraine, and is expected to start using it for fighter aircraft training this year or next.
However, the defence ministry evaded questions about the carrier programme, according to a transcript of the press conference for the paper’s launch.
The document did not contain any information on a new missile system designed to target US aircraft carriers in the region.
China said earlier in March that it would resume double-digit growth of its official defence spending this year. It has said this year’s military budget will be Rmb601.1bn ($91.8bn), 12.7 per cent higher than 2010. However, independent analysts believe the country is spending at least twice its officially declared amount.

La Chine veut s’emparer du monde

Antoine Brunet – « La Chine veut s’emparer du monde »
Une mise en perspective inédite, éclairante et surtout alarmante des ambitions chinoises
Par Philippe Plassart

Il faut lire attentivement cet entretien.
Si la vision du monde de l’économiste, qui s’exprime ici est la bonne, alors il faut vite nous ressaisir, quand il est encore temps pour échapper à… la domination chinoise sur le monde.
Car pour Antoine Brunet, il ne fait pas de doute que la Chine entend devenir “le nouveau maître du monde” à la place des Etats-Unis et de l’Occident.
Pour tracer cette perspective inquiétante, l’expert pratique un mélange de genres trop peu pratiqué : il mobilise son savoir économique et son aptitude à prendre en compte la dimension géopolitique des rapports de forces.
Il décortique dans le détail la stratégie mercantiliste de la Chine.
Féru d’histoire, Antoine Brunet sait aussi combien les acteurs peuvent peser sur le cours des événements.
Et pour lui, l’évidence est là : les Chinois ont désormais la main.
“La crise de l’euro, à laquelle les Chinois ne sont pas pour rien, a fourni à Pékin les moyens d’accélérer son projet hégémonique”, lance-t-il.
Lucidité exagérée d’un économiste obsédé par son sujet ? En partie peut-être.
Mais sans aucun doute un exercice salutaire par ces temps de “chinomania” aiguë et aveugle.
Au lieu de tenter de mettre en équation le monde, il aurait été bien plus utile de focaliser toute l’attention sur l’énorme pays totalitaire, qui a surgi dans la globalisation : la Chine !
Comme toutes les puissances ascendantes, ce pays met en œuvre une stratégie de conquête basée sur un mercantilisme forcené.
Or ce dernier n’est rien d’autre qu’une forme de cannibalisme économique passant par la formation de gigantesques excédents commerciaux au bénéfice du pays à la manœuvre et leurs symétriques, les déficits tout aussi gigantesques infligés aux rivaux.
Par le passé, l’Angleterre, les Etats-Unis, le Japon ont successivement pratiqué cette politique de recherche permanente d’excédents par tous les moyens et artifices au détriment de leurs concurrents.
C’est depuis quinze ans le tour de la Chine.
En engrangeant des excédents, la puissance mercantiliste cherche à obtenir pour elle une croissance saine et robuste, tandis que les pays déficitaires voient leur croissance s’affaiblir et devenir de plus en plus artificiel et problématique et s’exposent à la déstabilisation.
Le mercantilisme est un système par essence déséquilibré : les pays excédentaires recueillent tous les avantages, les autres tous les problèmes.
Les bons apôtres du “gagnant - gagnant” du libre-échange nous trompent.
C’est une loi de l’histoire : les états créanciers finissent toujours par imposer leurs règles du jeu, et par se payer, en cas d’insolvabilité, en s’emparant des actifs réels des Etats débiteurs ou en s’emparant même de leur souveraineté.

La double option du capitalisme et du totalitarisme
Retour au capitalisme et totalitarisme politique : ces deux options, prise la première par Deng Xiaoping en 1978 et confirmée pour la seconde en 1989 avec les massacres de Tiananmen, expliquent les succès économiques du pays obtenus par la Chine depuis lors.
Un constat déchirant à dresser, car il tend à prouver que le capitalisme totalitariste est plus efficace économiquement que le capitalisme démocratique.
Quant à l’idée que le capitalisme porte avec lui l’avènement de la démocratie – l’élévation du niveau de vie de la population incitant cette dernière à exiger les libertés –, la Chine administre depuis 20 ans la preuve de son inanité.
La population chinoise reste toujours terrorisée par un régime, pour qui la préservation de son pouvoir a justifié dans le passé une répression monstrueuse.
Le parti communiste chinois va mobiliser une stratégie tous azimuts avec un seul objectif : bâtir un rapport de forces international à l’avantage de la Chine.

La pression pour le maintien des coûts du travail au plus bas
L’arme essentielle est le maintien des coûts du travail les plus bas au monde.
La Chine dispose en effet des coûts du travail exprimés en dollars bien plus faibles que n’importe quel autre grand pays émergent.
Au Mexique, Brésil, Inde, Corée, les coûts du travail sont à peu près quatre fois plus élevés qu’en Chine.
En affirmant que les coûts chinois étaient 40 fois plus faibles que dans les pays développés – ce que l’on a longtemps avancé –, on était très loin du compte.
Un écart de 1 à 80 est bien plus près de la réalité, si l’on en croit les chiffres donné en 2004 par un grand groupe manufacturier.
Il est vrai que les salaires minimums ont été augmentés de 20 % en 2010.
Une telle mesure ne modifie toutefois pas les ordres de grandeur.
Le relèvement demeure on ne peut plus modeste et on ne sait d’ailleurs pas comment il a été répercuté dans l’échelle des salaires.
Pas de quoi accréditer l’idée que le système est en train de changer de pied pour passer d’un modèle de croissance tirée par l’exportation à tout-va à une croissance tirée par la consommation intérieure.
Cette dernière reste la portion congrue du PIB (de l’ordre de 33 %), une proportion d’une faiblesse sans équivalent dans les autres pays du monde.
Cependant, les autorités chinoises sont tout sauf stupides.
Elles sont attentives aux signes de mécontentement, d’où par exemple leur inquiétude face à la hausse des prix des loyers et de l’alimentation.
Officiellement, l’inflation est de 5 %.
Mais pour le petit peuple, la hausse du coût de la vie en fonction de sa consommation est plus proche de 10%. D’où la concession sur le salaire minimum.
La performance chinoise consiste à tout faire pour conserver l’avantage compétitif des bas coûts salariaux en s’appuyant sur les ressources du totalitarisme.
Le premier facteur – commun à tous les pays émergents – est un chômage rural énorme, qui pèse sur la formation des salaires.
Mais en Chine, la pression des zones rurales sur les zones urbaines et industrielles est amplifiée par le système des hukou et des minyang. 
Le hukou, c’est le passeport intérieur maintenu depuis Mao et les minyang sont les personnes titulaires de ce passeport intérieur, mais qui ne disposent de quasiment d’aucun droit.
Logés dans des dortoirs attenants aux usines, ils sont incapables de revendiquer.
Une réalité propre aux régimes totalitaires.
Le deuxième élément, c’est la politique de l’enfant unique, deuxième ingérence après le passeport intérieur dans la vie privée des gens.
On est ici dans un scénario digne du 1984 d’Aldous Huxley.
L’enfant unique est en effet à la base d’un “business model” de la famille spécifique : celui dans lequel les deux conjoints travaillent et confient la garde du petit enfant aux grands-parents : une configuration généralisée, où deux salaires nourrissent seulement trois personnes, ce qui réduit considérablement la revendication salariale. Troisième facteur : l’absence de tout droit démocratique.
Il n’y a eu aucune élection, ni nationale, ni locale, ni professionnelle depuis 60 ans.
Aucun droit d’expression, d’association et de manifestation.
Plus fort : le régime parvient même à instiller l’idée que la démocratie est un poison.
Il s’appuie sur le relativisme et le confusionnisme en affirmant que les valeurs chinoises ne sont pas les valeurs occidentales et que le modèle totalitaire devrait même servir d’exemple à d’autres pays.
La démocratie serait un système inopérant pour mettre en œuvre une vision de long terme, le rythme des élections imposant une gestion court termiste.
Quant aux “droits de l’homme”, le régime les caricature comme la revendication de l’individualisme et leur oppose la subordination, que chaque individu doit à sa famille, et celle que chaque famille doit à la nation. C’est toute l’idéologie de la “société harmonieuse”.

Le verrou monétaire par le contrôle des changes
L’arme la plus décisive reste la monnaie, qui renvoie là aussi aux pratiques d’un Etat totalitaire.
Une longue histoire.
Il y a vingt ans, les autorités ont bâti un système leur permettant de stabiliser la valeur extérieure du yuan, non sans l’avoir préalablement fortement dévalué.
Mais en cette matière, le dispositif essentiel a consisté à maintenir (en dépit même du retour au capitalisme en 1979) le contrôle des changes draconien, qu’avait instauré Mao en 1949.
Il s’applique à tous, résidents, non-résidents, à l’argent, qui entre et qui sort.
Et gare aux contrevenants.
Ils sont menacés de très fortes amendes, de très fortes peines de prison et à l’extrême, à la peine capitale.
De fait, personne ne se risque en Chine à “jouer” avec les yuans.
Et pourtant le pays si immense, avec ses millions de kilomètres de frontières, autoriserait n’importe où ailleurs toutes les contrebandes.
Mais rien de tel ici, tout le monde se plie à la loi.
C’est que derrière la loi, c’est la terreur, qui règne.
La force du parti communiste chinois est de tirer les leçons des erreurs et des échecs des autres.
En matière monétaire, le Japon, sous la pression américaine, a abandonné le contrôle des changes en 1980. Cela ouvrit la voie à la fameuse endaka, un processus de revalorisation du yen, résultant d’entrées massives de capitaux américains orchestrées par Washington, qui mirent à genoux l’économie nipponne.
Et voilà comment se débarrasser d’un concurrent devenu trop gênant.
Analysant cette expérience, les Chinois se sont jurés qu’on ne les y prendrait pas, d’où le maintien de ce contrôle des changes.
Quant aux devises encaissées par les exportateurs chinois et celles reçues pour financer les investissements directs étrangers sur place, c’est la Banque centrale chinoise, qui les rachète aux opérateurs chinois contre yuans sur la base d’un cours administré.
Cela vaut pour le dollar, mais aussi pour l’euro, le yen, le won, le real. Voilà qui ferme pour longtemps tout mouvement de réévaluation du yuan.

Les termes d’un pacte inégal
Disposant des coûts horaires du travail les plus bas possible dans le monde, la Chine est parvenue à attirer les entreprises multinationales sur le sol chinois sous de multiples modalités : sous-traitance, joint-ventures.
Du point de vue de la pure rationalité économique, il est difficile de blâmer ces entreprises d’utiliser un système mis à leur disposition.
L’erreur se situe en amont. 
Elle incombe à quelques groupes comme Wal-Mart, Apple, Motorola, qui ont exercé un lobbying surpuissant pour convaincre l’administration Clinton d’accepter l’intégration de la Chine à l’OMC, Washington se laissant fléchir facilement au nom du libre-échange, une faiblesse coupable.
Car une fois la porte ouverte devant elle, la Chine s’est trouvée devant un boulevard, attirant les multinationales du monde entier par des perspectives de rentabilité inégalées.
Le machiavélisme des Chinois est tout entier ici : ils ont “topé” avec les multinationales via les gouvernements au détriment des intérêts des populations occidentales.
Et à chaque fois, les Chinois sauront prendre appui sur le lobby prochinois américain pour étouffer toute velléité de réaménager les règles.
Cette capacité d’un pays à organiser une divergence d’intérêt au sein des pays tiers – Apple, Wal-Mart d’un côté, la population américaine de l’autre – est sans précédent dans l’histoire mondiale.
Ils sont parvenus à exploser l’axiome constitutif de la symbiose américaine – le fameux “ce qui est bon pour GM est bon pour les Etats-Unis”.
Car objectivement, l’intérêt de Wal-Mart à pactiser avec la Chine ne correspondait absolument pas à celui de l’Amérique et de la population américaine.
Que pèsent en effet les quelques gains de pouvoir d’achat résultant de l’achat de produits chinois importés moins chers face aux cohortes d’emplois définitivement perdus ?

L’Occident pris au piège chinois
Washington s’est pris au piège chinois.
A partir du début des années 90, les Américains ont cru pouvoir user de leur soi disant “benign neglect”, cette facilité réservée au pays émetteur de la monnaie mondiale de tolérer des déficits extérieurs sans dommage. Mais ce qu’ils n’avaient pas prévu cette fois c’est que la source de ces déficits, au lieu de provenir de multiples pays, se serait concentrée sur un seul, la Chine.
Si bien que l’économie mondiale se réduirait à cette équation : déficits américains = excédents chinois.
Idem pour bon nombre d’autres pays, qui certes vont voir quelque peu augmenter leurs ventes vers la Chine mais dans des proportions sans commune mesure avec l’accroissement de leurs importations de produits chinois.
Ne nous trompons : les pays occidentaux constituent le débouché de la production chinoise bien plus que la Chine ne leur sert de débouchés.
Meilleure preuve, la part de marché mondiale croissante de produits manufacturés “made in China”.
Et la dynamique est bien lancée.
Electronique, téléphonie mobile, panneaux solaires, éoliennes, trains à grande vitesse…: la Chine occupent le terrain sur tous les marchés porteurs à venir.
Cette situation produit des effets extraordinairement déstabilisateurs sur à peu près tous les pays occidentaux, qui sont accablés par des déficits avec la Chine à l’exception d’une poignée (essentiellement Japon et Corée du sud).
Les effets de cette déstabilisation ont commencé à se faire sentir durement à partir de fin 2001, date d’intégration de la Chine au sein de l’Organisation mondiale du commerce, après l’aval donné fin 1999 par l’administration Clinton.
En très peu de temps, le déficit commercial américain double de taille, passant de 3 à 6 % du PIB et l’ensemble des pays du G7 passe alors d’une situation d’équilibre à un déficit commercial de 3 %.
Une variation, que d’aucuns considèrent alors comme anodine, alors qu’elle va être tout simplement le facteur déterminant, qui, avec un délai de maturation de cinq ans, provoquera la crise du G7 en 2007.
Car quand un pays subit un déficit extérieur de 3 % de son PIB, il est obligé, pour maintenir une croissance trimestrielle de 1% de son PIB de rendre sa demande intérieure supérieure de 4% au PIB du trimestre antérieur.
Comment ?
En créant et en renouvelant un écart égal à 4% du PIB entre l’endettement et l’épargne du pays.
C’est cette martingale qu’avaient cru pouvoir jouer impunément les apprentis-sorciers que furent Greenspan et Bernanke.
Ils abaissèrent fortement et durablement le prix de l’argent entre 2002 et 2007 pour décourager l’épargne et stimuler l’endettement.
Et voilà comment un peu partout, aux Etats-Unis, mais aussi en Europe, les compteurs de l’endettement se sont mis à s’affoler.
On connait aujourd’hui la fin de l’histoire : des pays occidentaux exsangues et en pertes d’emplois accélérés. Derrière les délocalisations – phénomène assez marginal, si on les réduit stricto sensu aux seuls véritables déménagements d’usines existantes – le plus déstabilisant est l’exacerbation d’une pression concurrentielle, qui condamne des pans entiers de notre industrie et qui concentre les investissements manufacturiers sur le seul territoire chinois.

L’ambition démesurée des Chinois
Les Chinois ont une ambition simple : gagner, devenir la puissance dominante et imposer leur hégémonie. D’abord, ils gardent le souvenir d’avoir été antérieurement la puissance dominante mondiale (jusqu’en 1840). Ensuite, en termes de population ils sont de loin les premiers.
Et surtout, le PCC considère que la condition à la survie de son régime totalitaire passe par la défaite définitive des pays capitalistes démocratiques.
Le projet hégémonique de la Chine ne fait en tout cas aucun doute.
La meilleure preuve est la montée en puissance méthodique et multidimensionnelle de la Chine.
Le Parti communiste chinois pense le développement du pays dans toutes ses dimensions.
Population ? Elle est la première.
Superficie ? La Chine est troisième et représente un continent à elle seule.
Le PIB est, selon moi, déjà le premier du monde (calculé avec les bonnes parités de pouvoir d’achat).
La Chine dispose de réserves de changes considérable d’un montant de 4 210 Mds $ (car aux 2 850 Mds $ de réserves officielles s’ajoutent 830 dans les Sovereign Wealth Funds – SWF – de la Chine, 270 Mds $ de réserves à Hong Kong et 260 dans le SWF de Hong-Kong).
Jamais une telle concentration de moyens financiers dans les mains d’un seul pays – 30 % des réserves mondiales – n’a été observée dans l’histoire moderne.
Et ce trésor n’est qu’une arme parmi d’autres du jeu chinois.
Force est de constater que Pékin ne s’est pas inscrit dans la démarche concertée de désarmement Russie - Etats-Unis et accélère sa militarisation.
Il faut le savoir, les Chinois ont construit un tunnel de 5 500 km de long, perforé pour y loger des lance-missiles rétractables, dans lequel il y a des vivres, des médicaments, de l’eau potable, des munitions et tout ce qu’il faut pour organiser une riposte de deuxième frappe consécutive à une éventuelle attaque nucléaire surprise.
Ainsi si les Etats-Unis bombardaient nucléairement la Chine, les Etats-Unis sont avertis de ce que la Chine aura la capacité de les punir avant de mourir en leur infligeant une deuxième frappe.
Une capacité défensive, dont les Américains eux-mêmes ne disposent pas.
Dernière “cerise sur le gâteau” de la volonté hégémonique chinoise : en échange de sa participation au financement du FMI en 2008 / 2009, Pékin a obtenu à titre permanent un poste, nouveau, de numéro 2 du fonds.
C’est comme si, en pleine guerre froide, l’URSS avait obtenu le poste de N°2 à l’OTAN.

Le cheval de Troie de la zone euro
Avec la crise de la zone euro, l’histoire s’est accélérée à l’avantage du plan hégémonique de la Chine.
Ces derniers, non sans avoir au préalable fortement instillé le poison du doute, ont pris la main.
Forte de ses connaissances privilégiées quant à l’état financier réel des pays de la zone -percevant leurs faiblesses, la Chine est devenue ces dernières années le créancier d’à peu près tous les pays de la zone- (un degré d’information sans doute plus élevé que celui dont dispose le président de la BCE, Jean-Claude Trichet lui-même), la Chine n’a eu de cesse de supplicier ces pays pour mieux se présenter en chevalier blanc valeureux et généreux face à une Allemagne un brin égoïste.
On l’a bien vu avec le rachat du Pirée en Grèce et les offres faites au Portugal, et même à l’Espagne.
Une opération dans le ventre mou de l’Europe en passe d’être gagnée, tant les Européens donnent l’impression de se résigner à accepter “l’aide chinoise” en recevant à chaque fois leurs représentants avec tous les égards.
Mais ce n’est sans doute qu’une étape : la Chine table sur le fait que l’Allemagne elle-même sera amenée à solliciter le financement chinois.
Plus l’Allemagne se voit contrainte de jouer le prêteur en dernier ressort pour maintenir la zone euro, plus ses finances publiques seront déstabilisées et plus elle aura besoin de recourir au financement de la Chine, financement qui ne lui sera pas accordé sans contreparties…
Quelle revanche sur l’histoire après les humiliants “accords inégaux”, qu’avaient imposés les puissances européennes du XIXe siècle à l’Empire du Milieu !
Outre l’abandon de la revendication de la réévaluation du yuan contre dollar, outre l’abandon de toute menace de protection douanière, les Européens se verront imposer de multiples contreparties : la fin de l’embargo sur les technologies et les matériaux sensibles, le maintien d’une politique d’euro fort contre dollar, (calamiteuse pour nous, mais bénéfique pour eux), l’ouverture de tous les marchés, celui des OPA dans le secteur des sociétés, mais aussi celui des marchés publics d’infrastructures telles que les autoroutes, les aéroports ou les chemins de fer (débouchés de construction et de maintenance pour leurs “champions” nationaux et source de royalties ultérieurement).
Pékin ne s’est-il pas institué maître-d’oeuvre du futur TGV eurasiatique ?
Rallier Londres et Pékin en 48 heures ! N’est-il pas beau le monde à la sauce chinoise ?

La seule riposte possible
La Chine veut s’emparer du monde.
Elle est actuellement en train de vassaliser l’Europe continentale, qu’elle a prise pour cible à la faveur de la crise de la zone euro.
Mais les Etats-Unis et le Royaume-Uni ne devraient pas tarder à suivre.
Pour stopper ce scénario cauchemardesque, il faudrait rapidement une réaction collective de tous les pays occidentaux – Etats-Unis, Royaume-Uni, Japon et Europe continentale.
Il s’agirait pour eux de prendre acte de la guerre économique, que leur livre la Chine.
Il leur faudrait définir une stratégie de contre-offensive.
Celle-ci devrait viser à retirer à la Chine son arme centrale, le privilège de compétitivité, dont elle s’est artificiellement arrogé.
L’axe consisterait pour les pays du G7 et leurs alliés à quitter soudainement l’OMC en protestation contre le refus réitéré de la Chine de réévaluer très significativement le yuan.
Pour éviter le retour paralysant de protections douanières de chacun contre tous, il faudrait simultanément instituer une nouvelle Organisation Mondiale du Commerce, une sorte d’OMC BIS, une OMC BIS, où seuls seraient admis les pays, qui renonceraient définitivement au contrôle des changes et qui s’engageraient à respecter des cours de change jugés loyaux par les instances de l’OMC BIS.
La Chine et ses alliés préféreraient sans doute rester dans l’OMC 1.
Mais les pays du G7 et leurs alliés pourraient enfin se protéger par des protections douanières efficaces (droits, quotas,…) de la concurrence déloyale de la Chine.
Cela changerait tout et permettrait d’interrompre rapidement la montée en puissance sidérante de la Chine.
Si l’Occident ne prend pas très vite cette option, il sera jugé par la Chine comme un vulgaire "tigre de papier", ce qui encouragera la Chine à accentuer encore sa marche à l’hégémonie.
Il y a urgence.
Le sort de la démocratie est en jeu.

Why Taiwan Will Fail

Taipei has a plan to make a virtue out of the necessity of greater integration. But Beijing will demand reunification and time is on its side.
By JOHN LEE
Last weekend, Taiwan's Ministry of Economic Affairs was quick to attribute the country's continued double-digit growth in industrial production to the cross-Straits Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement that came into force at the beginning of the year.
However, while ECFA is an economic boon for the country, it accelerates trends that will lead to the island losing its sovereignty.
ECFA is the most significant pillar of Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou's program of enhanced engagement with the mainland.
The deal is important because China has indicated that it will not stand in the way of Taiwan signing free trade deals with other countries in the region—something Beijing has so far successfully blocked.
It is also heavily tilted in favor of the Taiwanese economy.
For example, Taiwan is able to export 539 categories of goods to China tariff-free, while Taiwan will remove tariffs on only 260 types of products.
Taiwanese investors will have privileged access to important sectors such as banking on the mainland.
However, Taipei knows this deal is all about politics.
Whereas Chinese sabre-rattling in the mid-1990s ultimately achieved very little politically, this is about enmeshing the two economies in such a way that Taiwan's future is tied to China's.
And like the Chinese grand strategy of easing America out of Asia, the Chinese ideal is always to win without fighting. Even before ECFA, China gave preferential treatment to Taiwanese businesses and college students. As far as China is concerned, the largesse of ECFA is one more step in proving to the Taiwanese people and population that there is nothing to fear and everything to gain when it comes to future mainland proposals for reunification.
Greater economic and social integration with the mainland is inevitable.
But Taipei's decision to accelerate integration is not an unthinking one.
There is a plan.
Taiwanese are well aware that the mainland's apparent largesse is an act of economic seduction designed to accelerate eventual reunification on Beijing's terms.
But Taipei believes increased integration can lead to a different endgame—one that will strengthen the prospect of Taiwanese preserving their democratic way of life.
During a recent conference in Taipei discussing the implications of ECFA, a senior Taiwanese official put it to me this way: When ECFA really kicks in, the numbers of mainlanders entering Taiwan will be in the millions every year.
These millions of mainland elites will stay in hotels with uncensored news reports.
They will read newspapers in fearless disagreement with the government and surf an uncensored Internet.
In short, millions of mainland Chinese tourists and businesspeople will go home having experienced the Taiwanese way of life.
So by accelerating integration Taiwan is trying to make a virtue out of necessity.
China is gaining in political leverage, military power and economic influence.
If Taiwan cannot change momentum, it can at least try to change elite attitudes in the mainland, and this might ultimately soften Beijing's policies towards Taiwan.
The desperate hope is that social and economic elites in China will more likely persuade political elites to preserve the Taiwanese way of political governance and economic life—whether through an indefinite extension of the status quo or a meaningful settlement using the China-Hong Kong model.
But there are three reasons why Taipei's strategy is unlikely to succeed.
First, gaining physical and not just de jure or symbolic control of Taiwan is an essential element of Beijing's and the People's Liberation Army's strategy to break free of the constraints of the first island chain.
Symbolic rather than actual control over Taiwan will not be enough.
Second, mainland urban and social elites support the Chinese Communist Party and its authoritarian system simply because they are the primary beneficiaries.
Chinese elites have been shaped by the CCP's version of modern history—a narrative of victimhood and the belief that China's time to redress these are fast arriving.
As the primary beneficiaries of the system, they underestimate the P.R.C.'s weaknesses such as inequality and corruption, and they mostly see the P.R.C.'s strengths.
Not surprisingly then, Chinese elites tend to be the most enthusiastic advocates of a muscular mainland foreign policy, especially when it comes to Taiwan.
It seems unlikely that time spent in Taiwan will change this mindset.
Third, China is no longer ruled by a charismatic leader like Mao Zedong or Deng Xiaoping but relies on a consensus model of decision-making, especially during a crisis.
Unconditionally getting Taiwan back is deeply ingrained in the political culture, meaning that the default position on Taiwan is an uncompromising one.
None of this is to deny that Taipei faces a diabolical predicament.
Greater economic integration is probably inevitable and that momentum is on the mainland's side.
True, Taiwan feels confident that its people enjoy a superior system of government and free enterprise.
But this does not mean that Beijing will allow it to persist.

Google Losing Ground in China

Business Slips a Year After Moving Search Services to Hong Kong in Feud with Beijing
By LORETTA CHAO And OWEN FLETCHER

Baidu and Google websites display a map of Beijing.

BEIJING—A year after Google Inc. moved its search services out of China, the Internet giant is struggling to maintain traction on a range of businesses in the country despite its executives' desire to keep growing in the wake of a feud with the Chinese government.
Chinese online media company Sina Corp. said this week that it dropped Google's Web search service from its popular portal site, marking an end to one of its most important remaining partnerships in the market.
At the same time, Google's Gmail free email service has become difficult to use in China; the company blames stepped up efforts by censors to disrupt Gmail access.
Meanwhile, new regulations to tighten oversight of online map providers make the future of Google's map service in China unclear.
On Thursday—the deadline for applying for new online mapping licenses—Google said it was in discussions with the government on how it can continue operating the service.
It wouldn't comment on the likely outcome of those talks.
The developments are the latest signs that significant parts of Google's business in China, home to more than 450 million Internet users, have been unraveling since last March.
It was then that Google replaced its self-censored China search service with an unfiltered version based in Hong Kong, citing censorship and cyberattacks that the company said were traced to Chinese hackers.
The company's share of search market revenue in China dropped to 19.6% last quarter from 35.6% a year earlier, or just before Google's announcement, according to research firm Analysys International.
Chinese rival Baidu Inc. has thrived in the wake of weakened competition from Google, increasing its share of search market revenue to 75.5% in the fourth quarter from 58.4% in the last three months of 2009, according to Analysys.
Meanwhile, Android phones shipped officially in China from Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc. come pre-installed with links to search products by Baidu and Microsoft Corp.'s Bing, but not Google.
Still, Google has fared better than the most dire expectations after that move, which some analysts said might trigger a complete block of its services in China.
Google still offers music-search service in China and maintains operations such as sales and research.
While its Web search services are now hosted overseas, and are often unstable due to sporadic connection disruptions by China's Web filters, the search sites remain accessible.
Google president of Asia-Pacific operations Daniel Alegre said in January that Google is still committed to China and continues to invest "aggressively."
He didn't provide details.
Google spokeswoman Jessica Powell said Thursday growth in China isn't dependent on Web search traffic there, and that the company continues to experience growth in revenue from China through sales of ads on its international websites purchased by Chinese companies targeting overseas users, as well as display ads on third-party websites.
But in the past year, Google's deals to provide technical support and Web search services to partners such as online forum operator Tianya.cn and Tom Group Ltd., also have ended—in part because the company is phasing out agreements to provide censored content to its partners.
Executives have said the partnerships with these popular Chinese websites played an important role in helping the company boost its popularity among Chinese Internet users.
Ms. Powell said the company continues to work with "hundreds of partners," large and small, in China.
Google's own Transparency Report shows that traffic from users in China has gradually decreased as a percentage of overall global traffic, to below 20% now from around 30% before the change.
State media outlets are also launching Web search and microblogging products of their own.
In February, the People's Daily, flagship newspaper of the ruling Communist Party, hired the former head of Google's research institute in China as its chief scientist.
Many Google users in China lament that products like Gmail are now harder to use—especially in recent weeks as Chinese authorities have stepped up controls in the wake of online threats to hold "Jasmine Revolution" protests in China.
Google said earlier this month that government blocks were to blame for Gmail disruptions.
A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman rejected that claim, saying "We do not accept this type of accusation."
"The most obvious difference for me" since Google made its decision "is that many functions that were previously available are not accessible now," said Doris Yin, a 29-year-old Google user from Suzhou. Google's decision was "a bit pedantic," she said.
"It should fight on to the end against dark forces" and continue operating in China.
"From the perspective of the development of China's Internet and user choices," Google's move was "definitely a setback," said Hao Wu, general manager of Daodao, the China subsidiary of Expedia Inc.'s TripAdvisor travel site.
Others say Google is the biggest loser from its decision.
"The Chinese Internet has moved on," said Bill Bishop, a Beijing-based investor who follows the Chinese Internet industry, pointing to the continued growth of Chinese Internet firms, including a slew of initial public offerings in the sector since Google's decision.
Google is "just basically descending into irrelevancy here," he said.
Google's top executives were split about how to handle China ahead of last year's decision, executives have said, with co-founder Sergey Brin particularly unhappy over the country's strict censorship rules.
Then-Chief Executive Eric Schmidt, who initially advocated opening a search engine in China, resisted Mr. Brin's push to cease censoring, people familiar with the matter have said.
Google announced in January that co-founder Larry Page will replace Mr. Schmidt as CEO starting Monday. Mr. Schmidt is remaining as executive chairman.

Crackdown in China spreads terror among dissidents

More than 20 people have been detained and others are missing after anonymous calls for 'jasmine revolution'
By Tania Branigan in Beijing

Lawyer Jiang Tianyong pictured in 2009. His wife says police told her they do not know where he is. 
China has launched the most severe crackdown on dissidents and activists for more than a decade, human rights campaigners have warned.
At least 23 people have been detained, mostly in relation to charges of incitement to subversion or creating a disturbance; three more have been formally arrested; and a dozen people are missing, including several prominent human rights lawyers.
Rights groups say they are increasingly concerned that those who have vanished may be at physical risk.
The move follows anonymous online calls for "jasmine revolution" protests, echoing the uprisings in the Middle East.
Although the posting was on an overseas website, and there was little sign of domestic support for the appeal, officials began detaining and harassing people within hours of its appearance.
"I think the crackdown is partly to find out who is behind it," said Wang Songlian of the Chinese Human Rights Defenders network, which has been monitoring the detentions.
It believes about 200 more people had their movements controlled for shorter periods.
Wang added: "But part of it is an opportunity to retaliate against certain people… The terror of this current crackdown is that it is very difficult to know whether you are going to be next. That in itself is very unsettling for activists."
The group is one of several to describe the campaign as the harshest since 1998, when the government imprisoned around two dozen activists for organising the China Democracy political party, although some argue that the troubled regions of Xinjiang and Tibet have seen equally sweeping "anti-separatist" drives in the interim.
Many of the latest detainees appear to have been targeted for publicly criticising the authorities on Twitter or other online services, or have a history of rights activism.
Although three men in Sichuan have been formally arrested for incitement to subversion – well-known blogger Ran Yunfei, Chen Wei and Ding Mao – the greatest concern is for those who have simply disappeared. In several cases, they were last seen being taken away by police.
"We are worried and can't eat well or sleep properly each night. They are doing good deeds for people; why should they be taken away?" said Pang Jinhua, mother-in-law of lawyer Teng Biao, who has been missing since mid-February.
Jiang Tianyong's wife, Jin Bianling, said police told her they did not know his whereabouts, while Chinese Human Rights Defenders reported that Tang Jitian is now thought to be held in "soft detention" in his hometown in Jilin.
Other lawyers missing are Li Tiantian of Shanghai and Liu Shihui from Guangzhou.
The latter vanished shortly after telling the Guardian he had been hooded and beaten on his way to a demonstration.
Another Guangzhou lawyer, Tang Jingling, may also be missing.
Their friends and supporters are increasingly fearful that they may face long prison terms or lengthy illegal detentions and even physical abuse.
Chinese law states that police must inform an individual's relatives or place of work within 24 hours of detention, unless there is no way to do so or it would "impede the investigation".
Joshua Rosenzweig of the Dui Hua foundation, which supports political prisoners, said that the China Democracy party activists had at least gone through a judicial process, however flawed.
"One of the things disturbing about this latest crackdown is how apparently routine it has become for security agents to essentially ignore the legal procedures in their treatment of activists," he said.
He added: "The possibility of torture – whether in reality or in suspicion – is a bigger deterrent and much more chilling than jail… [People] wonder if they are next on the list."
Nicholas Bequelin, an Asia researcher for Human Rights Watch, warned: "We are very apprehensive about the risk of torture and ill-treatment.
"We are seeing the government trying to roll back the space that has opened up in the last 10 years, particularly in terms of the assertion of rights.
"It's an effort to instil fear for internet users so they exercise self-censorship. It's also an attempt to decapitate civil society by taking away its most visible figures."
Many usually outspoken government critics have become reluctant to speak to diplomats, journalists or other foreign contacts.
Police did not respond to faxed questions about the missing lawyers.
Asked about concerns for their whereabouts and physical safety, a foreign ministry spokeswoman, Jiang Yu, told a regular press briefing: "China's judicial authorities work independently.
"China, as a country under the rule of law, protects its citizens' basic rights and freedoms – including freedom of expression – but citizens while exercising their rights have an obligation to abide by the law and should not bring harm to the public interest."
Earlier this week China dismissed a call from a UN rights agency to free human rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng, who has not been seen for almost a year and is thought to have been detained for two years.
There is also concern for the whereabouts of Australian novelist and writer Yang Hengjun.

What a cyberwar with China might look like

Former U.S. diplomat describes hypothetical scenario
By Jaikumar Vijayan

It's August 2020.
A powerful and rising China wants to bring the city-state of Singapore into its fold as it has with Hong Kong, Macau and Taipei.
Its first physical attacks against Singaporean assets are still weeks away.
But already, China has launched a massive cyber campaign, designed largely to degrade and disrupt the communications capabilities of the U.S., Japan and other allied nations.
Members of the Chinese military's 60,000 strong cyber warfare group have deeply penetrated U.S. defense, government and corporate networks and are already manipulating and controlling them.
When the Chinese army finally launches its first attack against a Singaporean guided missile frigate in the South China Sea in September, U.S armed forces quickly find their communications capabilities severely compromised.
Personal computers, radio, satellite communications capabilities and battlefield communication hardware are all but crippled.
Key military networks and servers come under crushing denial of service (DoS) attacks, hampering the military's efforts to mobilize conventional forces.
Deliberately injected misinformation flows over the networks to field commanders and to ships at sea.
The conflict ends 55 days later in a standoff between the U.S and the Chinese navy, with a general war being avoided, and Singapore retaining its independence.
But it's the first truly full scale cyberwar launched against the U.S by China, and it's very different from what many had assumed it would look like .
The hypothetical scenario is described in detail in a report in the latest issue of the U.S. Air Force's Strategic Studies Quarterly (PDF document).
The report is authored by Christopher Bronk, a former diplomat with the U.S. State Department and a fellow in IT policy at Rice University's Baker Institute.
The scenario depicts just one way in which a real life cyberwar could unfold and is designed to highlight how such conflicts are very unlikely to be a bolt from the blue.
"Most likely, cyber conflict will be an 'always on' engagement, even if international policy is enacted to forbid it," Bronk writes in the article.
"The only certainty in cyber conflict is that conflict there will not unfold in the ways we may expect."
Speaking with Computerworld this week, Bronk downplayed popular perceptions of a cyber Pearl Harbor, in which critical infrastructure targets such as the electrical grid are attacked and taken out.
Such attacks cannot be ruled out entirely but it's unlikely that a nation state would launch one because of the catastrophic response it would trigger.
"I did not try to make the case that it would be some sort of an apocalyptic event. I did not make the case that it would occur in isolation," he said.
Instead, a cyberwar will most likely always be part of a broader war, or broader campaign as they were in Georgia and Estonia, he said.
In such a war, cyber attacks will be designed to degrade and disrupt communications and will be terribly hard to purge, Bronk said.
The goal will be not so much to completely disable an opponent's networks but to own as much of it as possible in order to control it during a conflict, he said.
The effort will be "to get inside the other guy's decision process rather than shutting it off entirely," Bronk said. "You don't want your adversaries to abandon their information technology."
In Bronk's hypothetical scenario, for instance, China's cyber offensive is noisy and highly visible but also extremely disruptive.
The attacks are not targeted just at America's highly-secure and classified networks.
Instead, China's cyber army has deeply penetrated many of the unclassified networks used by the government and the military for relatively low-level internal communications and for tasks such as routing supply information.
"Although unclassified, when aggregated, the information passing across these networks provided highly useful intelligence to the Chinese on U.S. dispositions and strategy," Bronk writes in his report.
The information gleaned from such networks can provide adversaries with detailed information on troop movements, cargo operations, demand for fuel and other basic supplies.
Long before the conflict, China's cyber warriors have already penetrated the networks of U.S. corporations based in China, and now they are using information from these networks to add to the chaos.
False information is being deliberately injected into these systems.
Companies such as Fedex and UPS are forced to halt operations because their systems are routing packages everywhere except to the correct destinations.
"For defense planners at the Pentagon, it was hard enough to know what U.S. forces were doing, let alone the enemy," he writes.
"Ships at sea in the Pacific encountered all manner of navigation and datalink issues."
Bronk says his scenario is just one way a cyberwar is likely to play out.
But one thing he is relatively sure of is that such a war, if it happens, will not necessarily involve power grids being knocked offline and planes falling from the sky.
To counter the attacks, the U.S. will have to muster all available resources from the NSA, DHS, DISA, CIA, State Department, the Department of Justice and other agencies.
Also roped would be top theoretical staff, engineers and even linguists from academia, as well as from the private sector.
And even then it would several weeks to disassemble the Chinese attacks, mount a defense against them and to reestablish trust in U.S. networks and systems.
"I don't see these cascading set of attacks, where by the end of Day Three we are all sitting in darkness eating beans and heading out into the mountains with our guns," he said.

China Lays Out Vision for Its Military

By EDWARD WONG and JONATHAN ANSFIELD
BEIJING — The Chinese military said Thursday that while the security situation in Asia and the Pacific was generally stable it was becoming “more intricate and volatile,” with no clear solutions for tension points like the divided Korean Peninsula and with the United States increasing its involvement in regional security issues.
The military’s vision was laid out in a national defense white paper, a document published every two years since 1998.
The paper tries to walk a line between trumpeting the modernization efforts of the Chinese military and assuaging fears by foreign governments and analysts that the fast-growing People’s Liberation Army will be used for expansionist purposes or regional dominance.
The paper stressed that China’s military buildup is purely defensive in nature, a line that Chinese leaders have long espoused.
The paper had more detail than previous editions on China’s attempts to establish confidence-building measures with foreign militaries.
In the past year perceptions by foreign countries of China’s military growth and of a more assertive Chinese foreign policy have resulted in diplomatic discord and discomfort, particularly between China and the United States.
“China attaches importance to its military relationship with the United States and has made ongoing efforts towards building a sound military relationship,” Sr. Col. Geng Yansheng said at a news conference on Thursday, reading from a text.
“The Chinese military is now taking steps to advance exchanges with the U.S. military this year.”
But “there’s no denying that in developing military relations, we still face difficulties and challenges,” he added.
The white paper observed that in the Asia-Pacific region “relevant major powers are increasing their strategic investment. The United States is reinforcing its regional military alliances, and increasing its involvement in regional security affairs.”
Colonel Geng said that the army’s Chief of General Staff, Gen. Chen Bingde, would visit the United States in May.
Robert M. Gates, the United States defense secretary, flew to Beijing in January to smooth over military-to-military relations that had been frozen after the Obama administration announced arms sales to Taiwan in January 2010.
In June Mr. Gates got into a prickly dispute with General Ma Xiaotian at a security summit meeting in Singapore, an episode that revealed the deep fissures in the military relationship.
Mr. Gates had to navigate yet another tricky diplomatic situation here when the Chinese military tested a J-20 stealth fighter jet in Sichuan Province while he met in the Chinese capital with President Hu Jintao.
In December Admiral Robert F. Willard, the commander of United States Pacific Command, told a Japanese newspaper that China had a working design for an antiship ballistic missile that could strike at aircraft carriers and could soon be ready for deployment.
The missile, known as a “carrier killer,” has become a symbol in Western military circles of the Chinese army’s technological advances.
The weapon “is not science fiction,” Andrew S. Erickson, a professor at the United States Naval War College, said in an e-mail interview earlier this year.
“It is not a ‘smoke and mirrors’ bluff,” he wrote.
“It is not an aspirational capability that the U.S. can ignore until some point in the future.”
Of equal or greater import is China’s plan to soon deploy an aircraft carrier known to be under construction. But the white paper, while ostensibly aimed at making China’s military development more transparent, did not discuss the carrier project.
Colonel Geng dodged a question about it at the news conference.
The paper noted that China still faced challenges from “separatists” striving for the independence of the restive western regions of Tibet and Xinjiang and the self-governing island of Taiwan.
“Pressure builds up in preserving China’s territorial integrity and maritime rights and interests,” it said.
“Non-traditional security concerns, such as existing terrorism threats, energy, resources, finance, information and natural disasters, are on the rise. Suspicion about China, interference and countering moves against China from the outside are on the increase.”
The Chinese government has announced that the military budget for 2011 is about $92 billion, up 12.7 percent from 2010.
The previous announced annual increase was 7.5 percent, the first time in years that the reported growth had dipped below double digits.

Australian Novelist Disappears in China

By JEREMY PAGE

Activists say China is quashing dissent. Above, Tiananmen Square in Beijing
BEIJING—The Australian government said it is seeking information about Yang Hengjun, a spy novelist and popular political blogger who disappeared shortly after saying he was being followed at an airport in southern China.
Human-rights activists and friends of Mr. Yang, an Australian citizen who worked for the Chinese foreign ministry before moving to Australia, said he is the latest person swept up in a clampdown on dissent triggered by anonymous online calls for a "Jasmine Revolution" in China.
Mr. Yang, 46 years old, hasn't been heard from since he telephoned his sister in Guangzhou Sunday evening, according to Feng Chongyi, who supervised Mr. Yang's doctorate at the University of Technology in Sydney.
"He told her he was having a long chat with his old friends, then the phone was cut off," Prof. Feng said.
"By 'old friends,' I'm sure he meant secret police. He was sending a message that he'd been taken away. We're still unable to locate him."
China has detained, arrested or confined to their homes dozens of activists, lawyers and bloggers since the Jasmine appeals began in mid-February.
Beijing also has stepped up Internet controls and tightened restrictions on foreign journalists in what many human-rights activists say is the country's most severe political crackdown in a decade.
Mr. Yang's case could cast a shadow over a visit to China next month by Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard, her first to the country since taking office last year.
Diplomats said relations between China and Australia already had been strained by other examples of high profile Chinese-Australians taken into custody in China in the past two years.
Matthew Ng, a businessman who emigrated to Australia in 1992, disappeared in the southern city of Guangzhou before being charged with embezzlement last November.
Stern Hu, an executive for mining company Rio Tinto, last March was sentenced to 10 years in prison for receiving bribes and commercial secrets.
A spokesman for Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said the government was concerned by reports that Mr. Yang had disappeared.
The Australian Consul General in China was "urgently seeking to confirm Mr. Yang's whereabouts and well-being and provide him with consular assistance if needed," the spokesman said.
A spokeswoman for China's foreign ministry said at a news briefing Tuesday that she had never heard of Mr. Yang.
Mr. Yang's disappearance was reported on his own Twitter account Sunday by an unidentified assistant who manages the writer's blogs.
"I received a phone call this evening from Teacher Yang saying he was at Baiyun airport in Guangzhou and had discovered he was being followed by three people," the assistant wrote.
"Since then I haven't been able to contact Teacher Yang."
Prof. Feng said Mr. Yang had been dividing his time between Guangzhou and Sydney, where his wife and children live, and had spent the last three months or so in China.
Mr. Yang had planned to travel to Hong Kong on Wednesday or Thursday before returning to Australia later in the week, Prof. Feng said.
"He had been quite frustrated in recent weeks due to the crackdown on the Internet," Prof. Feng said.
"He felt very tense and uneasy."
Mr. Yang was born in China's central province of Hubei and studied law at Fudan University in Shanghai before going on to work for the foreign ministry in Beijing.
He moved to Sydney around 2003 and began writing spy novels, one of which, "Fatal Weakness," is about espionage and corruption involving China and the U.S.
It has been published on the Internet in China.
Mr. Yang also contributes frequently to about 10 blogs, including some that run on Chinese portals that receive millions of hits daily.
Prof. Feng said he was sure that Chinese authorities were holding Mr. Yang and expressed concern that they would try to charge Mr. Yang with espionage because he had a foreign passport.
Human-rights groups expressed concern about Mr Yang's disappearance.
"The Chinese government is going to extraordinary lengths to intimidate prominent critics in the wake of calls for reform," Bob Dietz, Asia program coordinator for the Committee to Protect Journalists, said in a prepared statement.
"Police in Guangzhou must clarify Yang Hengjun's status and ensure his freedom."
Human-rights groups said Monday that two other political activists, Ran Yunfei and Ding Mao, had been arrested on subversion charges.
Another, Liu Xianbin, was sentenced to 10 years in prison on similar charges on Friday.
The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention on Monday urged China to release Gao Zhisheng, a Chinese human-rights lawyer who has been detained for nearly a year and has said he was tortured in previous rounds of detention.
The Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said she had no information about Mr. Gao.

New Arrest as China Pushes Crackdown on Rights Advocates

By EDWARD WONG
BEIJING — A rights activist in Sichuan has been formally arrested and charged with inciting subversion against the state, according to a statement on Wednesday by China Human Rights Defenders, an advocacy group that tracks violations by the Chinese government.
The advocate, Chen Wei, was charged on Monday, and his family was notified on Tuesday.
Mr. Chen is the third person in recent days to be charged with inciting subversion in an extraordinarily harsh crackdown on progressives in China that has been unfolding since late February.
The other two, Ran Yunfei and Ding Mao, are also from Sichuan and are known, like Mr. Chen, to be promoters of rule of law and democracy-oriented reforms.
Parts of Sichuan Province, a rugged, populous area in western China, are known to be havens for liberal thinkers, and the region has had a long literary and philosophical tradition.
The authorities there are now at the forefront of pressing charges against people advocating political reform.
On Friday, a court in Sichuan sentenced Liu Xianbin, a veteran democracy activist, to 10 years in prison for slandering the Communist Party in his writings; Mr. Liu has been imprisoned before and was detained in June, before the current clampdown.
The recent wave of disappearances and detentions began when a Chinese-language Web site hosted in the United States posted a call in late February for frustrated Chinese to take to the streets in a so-called Jasmine Revolution to protest corruption and unjust rule.
The Chinese government, fearing the kinds of protests that have swept through the Middle East, has apparently ordered that any signs of dissent be nipped in the bud.
China Human Rights Defenders estimates that at least 23 people have been detained for criminal investigation. ChinaGeeks.org, an English-language Web site based in Beijing, compiled a list this week of about 50 Chinese who have been recently detained, formally arrested or made to disappear; the list is based on various reports and is incomplete.
One person on the list is Yang Hengjun, an Australian spy novelist and pro-democracy blogger who went missing on Sunday after reportedly making a call from the airport in the southern city of Guangzhou; he had said three men were following him.
The Australian government said on Tuesday that it was concerned about Mr. Yang’s whereabouts, and one friend in Australia said Mr. Yang, a former employee of the Chinese Foreign Ministry, had indicated over the telephone to his sister that he had been taken away by security officers.
On Wednesday, the mystery over Mr. Yang deepened when at least three friends of Mr. Yang said on their microblogs that he had telephoned them that morning to say he was in a hospital.
He had been unable to charge his cell phone and had not made any calls earlier, he said, but would explain everything in a few days.
One friend, Li Huizhi, wrote that Mr. Yang had said everything was “a misunderstanding.” Another friend, Wu Jiaxiang, told Reuters that Mr. Yang coughed a few times.
“It’s impossible for me to say whether Yang was really in the hospital,” he said.
The cryptic calls made by Mr. Yang have fueled theories among many of his supporters that he is being held by the state at a secret site.

Hu Jintao warns Sarkozy on Libya strikes

By Philippe Alfroy

BEIJING — Coalition military strikes on Libya could violate the "intention" of the UN resolution if civilians suffer, Chinese President Hu Jintao on Wednesday told visiting French leader Nicolas Sarkozy.
The tough talk from Hu came during a meeting at the start of Sarkozy's mini-tour of Asia, which will include a G20 meeting on global monetary reform and a stop in disaster-struck Japan.
Britain, France and the United States on March 19 launched air strikes on Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi's forces under the auspices of a UN Security Council resolution authorising "all necessary measures" to protect civilians.
"The aim of the UN's resolution is to stop violence and protect civilians," Hu said in talks with Sarkozy in Beijing, according to comments published on China's foreign ministry website.
"If the military action brings disaster to innocent civilians and creates a bigger humanitarian crisis, that would violate the original intention of the Security Council resolution," Hu said.
"China disapproves of using military force in international affairs."
Kadhafi's forces are embroiled in a battle with rebels looking to put an end to the Libyan strongman's 41 years in power.
Sarkozy has said France recognised the rebel council as the only legitimate representative of the Libyan people.
China, which consistently opposes moves deemed to interfere in the affairs of other countries, abstained from the UN Security Council vote, although it did not use its veto power.
"Dialogue and other peaceful means are the only way to resolve this problem," Hu said, adding that China supports an immediate ceasefire to prevent the further loss of civilian life and restore stability as soon as possible.
Sarkozy -- who has spearheaded the coalition operation against Kadhafi -- told Hu that the strikes had not caused any civilian casualties "as far as we can make out", a French official told reporters after the talks.
"There is just a subtle difference and slightly worried questioning coming from China," the official said, adding that Hu and Sarkozy had also discussed nuclear issues in light of the atomic crisis in Japan.
"Where safety is concerned, the two want high standards and also want to share our experiences, our scientific data," the official added.
The French leader was due to head later to the eastern Chinese city of Nanjing, where he will open a meeting on Thursday of finance ministers and central bankers from G20 nations on global monetary reform.
France currently holds the rotating presidency of the Group of 20 leading economies.
The meeting -- which comes as the global recovery faces major challenges such as Japan's quake-tsunami disaster and the ongoing eurozone debt woes -- aims to hone in on key ways to reform the monetary system.
Sarkozy said Wednesday he hoped the seminar would spark a debate about "a hugely necessary reform of the international monetary system".
"We must fight against... monetary instability that risks reducing to nothing the competitive efforts that you are all making," he said.
However presidential aides have already made clear that Paris is not expecting any "decision" or "conclusion" from the Nanjing meeting, which will feature a speech from International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn.
At a meeting in Paris in February, the G20 agreed to a set of indicators to measure economic imbalances between surplus exporters such as China and nations with structural deficits such as the United States.
But China has baulked at many of the indicators amid fears they could result in more pressure over its yuan currency, which critics argue is massively undervalued, giving the Asian powerhouse an unfair trade advantage.
After Sarkozy delivers the opening speech, he will head to Japan in a show of solidarity from France and both the G8 and G20 after the March 11 disaster, which has left nearly 11,000 confirmed dead and sparked a nuclear crisis.
The French leader will meet Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan in Tokyo before heading home.

China dismisses UN calls to release rights lawyer

Geng He, the wife of Chinese dissident Gao Zhisheng participates in a press conference
BEIJING (AFP) — Beijing on Tuesday dismissed calls by a United Nations human rights agency to free prominent rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng, saying the body should respect China's judicial sovereignty.
The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention demanded China release Gao, alleging his incarceration breached numerous UN conventions and China's own law, according to a statement released by advocacy group Freedom Now.
"The Working Group requests the Government (of China) to proceed to an immediate release of Mr Zhisheng Gao and provide for reparation of the harm caused as a result of his situation," the statement said.
Written in the form of a judicial opinion, the statement, which Freedom Now said was given to them on Monday also called on the China "to bring the practice in the matter of arrests, detention and trials in conformity with international law."
But China's foreign ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu on Tuesday maintained she was unaware of the "specifics" of the case.
"We attach importance to cooperation with the UN human rights' monitoring mechanism and urge the mechanism to respect China's judicial sovereignty," Jiang told reporters.
Gao, who the Working Group called a "a brilliant lawyer known for the defence of human rights", was arrested in February 2009 and has been held incommunicado by the authorities.
Gao briefly reappeared in March last year when he was apparently released by police, speaking with a few friends and colleagues, many of whom reported that he continued to be tailed by authorities and was in ill-health.
Soon afterwards, he disappeared again and has not been heard from since.
The UN statement said police and judicial authorities have refused to issue an arrest warrant, name the charges against Gao, publicly acknowledge he is in custody or tell his family why he has been detained.
It also noted Gao was subject to torture and numerous beatings while in police custody before February 2009.
The statement added that the Chinese government had refused to provide the UN body with information on Gao's case.
The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, made up of human rights experts, investigate cases of arbitrary arrest and detention around the world.

Chinese Democracy Activist Is Given 10-Year Sentence

By ANDREW JACOBS

In August, protesters in Hong Kong demanded the release of Liu Xianbin, one of China's most seasoned democracy activists.
BEIJING — A Chinese court sentenced one of the country’s most seasoned pro-democracy activists to 10 years in prison on Friday on charges that his writings slandered the ruling Communist Party and were part of an effort to end its monopoly on power, his lawyer said.
The activist, Liu Xianbin, 43, a resident of Sichuan Province who previously served nine years for organizing an outlawed political party, was convicted of “inciting subversion of state power,” a grave charge often subject to broad interpretation by judicial authorities.
The conviction was largely based on articles Mr. Liu wrote for overseas Chinese-language publications that advocate for human rights and democracy.
Rights groups say the unusually harsh sentence is another worrying sign that the government’s crackdown on dissent is growing. In recent weeks nearly two dozen writers, lawyers and civil society advocates have been detained on criminal charges and 11 more people have vanished into police custody.
The wave of detentions and disappearances started in February after an American Web site posted anonymous calls for people in a number of Chinese cities to protest Communist Party rule.
Inspired by the uprisings in the Arab world, the protests were promptly quashed by the police, who pre-emptively swept up many of the nation’s best-known rights lawyers but also low-profile activists who simply forwarded the protest calls on their microblogs.
Rights groups said that at least half of the 22 people arrested might face charges of subversion.
“To have this many people disappeared or accused of subversion is unprecedented and very worrying,” said Wang Songlian, a researcher at Chinese Human Rights Defenders.
“People are scared, and no one knows when the crackdown is going to end.”
Mr. Liu is no stranger to China’s unforgiving judicial system.
A veteran of the 1989 democracy protests in Tiananmen Square, he was arrested two years later and given a two-and-half-year term for “counterrevolutionary propaganda and incitement,” stemming from posters he made calling for an end to government repression.
In 1999, after helping to establish the China Democratic Party, he was given a 13-year sentence.
In the months after his release, Mr. Liu promptly resumed his agitation for political reform.
He signed Charter 08, an online petition calling for expanded liberties and universal suffrage, and wrote articles that promoted nonviolent protest.
A number of essays stridently criticized the Communist Party.
During his two-hour trial on Friday at the Suining Intermediate People’s Court, prosecutors introduced two articles as evidence, including one titled “Street Protests are an Important Tactic for the Chinese Democratic Movement.”
One of his lawyers, Mo Shaoping, dismissed the accusations against Mr. Liu, saying his writings were protected under China’s Constitution, which guarantees free speech.
He and others rights advocates have criticized the government’s handling of the case, including the many months Mr. Liu was denied access to a lawyer.
“Not only is this sentence wrong and unfair, but it is a total abuse of judicial procedure,” Mr. Mo said.
In a telephone interview Mr. Liu’s wife, Chen Mingxian, who was in the courtroom on Friday, said her husband had been repeatedly cut off by the judge as he tried to speak.
She said she doubted he would appeal, given his unhappy experiences with the judicial system.
A middle-school teacher, Ms. Chen spoke fondly of the 20 months she and her 13-year-old daughter spent with Mr. Liu before his latest arrest in June.
But public security agents did not make life easy, she said.
When Mr. Liu found a job, they would pressure the prospective employer to rescind the offer. They also would not let him seek work outside Suining.
Ms. Chen suggested that the restrictions and the harassment frustrated Mr. Liu, nudging him back to his old dissident ways.
“They deprived him of a chance to live a normal life,” she said with resignation.
“He was forced to live abnormally and again ended up where he is now.”

Vietnam Eyes China ‘Threat’

By Jason Miks
With an eye on China's alleged claims to the South China Sea, Vietnam is significantly boosting defence spending.
Southeast Asian nations may be struggling to get their act together over how to present a united front in response to China’s territorial claims, but this isn’t stopping some of them preparing for potential military eventualities.
Jane’s Information Group has compiled data for Vietnam that suggests the country is significantly boosting defence spending this year, in large part because of concerns about China.
As Jane’s noted last week, deciphering what exactly Vietnam’s budget numbers mean is no easy task—the government views defence spending as a state secret, and it’s unclear what exactly is included in the numbers that are actually released.
Still, Jane’s notes: ‘In January 2011 Defence Minister Phung Quang Thanh told the 11th National Party Congress that Vietnam's defence budget would increase to VND52 trillion ($2.6 billion) in 2011. The allocated expenditure represents an increase of 70 percent over 2010 spending.’
One of the key concerns for countries like Vietnam are what appear to be China’s expansive claims to most of the South China Sea (with a little intimidation of Vietnamese fishing vessels thrown in for good measure).
Last March, there was speculation that China had explicitly referred to the South China Sea as a ‘core interest’ in the same way it sees Taiwan, Tibet and Xinjiang.
This view was given some additional weight after reporters were briefed following a closed-door meeting between US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and influential Chinese State Councillor Dai Bingguo that Dai had described the South China Sea as ‘a core national interest.’
But according to China military analyst Michael Swaine, of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, this information has been misreported.
He says: ‘As Beijing sought to limit US interference in territorial disputes in the South China Sea and as tensions rose with its neighbours during 2010, news surfaced that China was for the first time labelling the South China Sea a core interest on par with Taiwan and Tibet. This, however, is a misreading of the facts. Despite news reports to the contrary, China did not explicitly identify the South China Sea as a core interest.’
Still, despite the story making a splash around the world last summer as tensions in the region mounted, China appears to have done little to correct this misunderstanding—if indeed that is what it was.
The consequence is some smaller neighbours believing they need to do a little muscle-flexing of their own.

China spies hack Gillard

By Simon Benson

Julia Gillard's computer is among those believed to have been hacked.
THE computers of at least 10 ministers including Prime Minister Julia Gillard, the Foreign Affairs Minister and Defence Minister are suspected of being hacked.
It is believed that several thousand emails may have been accessed.
Senior sources in the Government have confirmed that the espionage occurred over more than a month beginning last month.
Four Government sources confirmed that they had been told Chinese intelligence agencies were among a list of suspected foreign hackers.
An investigation is believed to have been started by ASIO after Australian intelligence agencies were tipped off to the cyber spy raid by US intelligence officials within the CIA and FBI.
The cyber attack is believed to have occurred on the Australian Parliament House email network used mainly for MPs' correspondence and not on the more secure departmental network, which ministers use for sensitive communications.
An intelligence brief to the Government is believed to have revealed that hackers had been accessing the APH computers of several Cabinet ministers.
Among the ministers' parliamentary computers believed to have been compromised were Foreign Affairs Minister Kevin Rudd's and Defence Minister Stephen Smith's.
It is also believed Ms Gillard's parliamentary computer was compromised.
Attorney-General Robert McClelland would neither confirm nor deny the incident.
He said: "It's the long- standing practice of successive Australian Governments not to comment on the operations of security and intelligence agencies.
"Australia's security and intelligence agencies, as a matter of course, work closely and co-operatively with their international counterparts on cyber security. The Australian Government takes the issue of cyber security very seriously and is constantly strengthening cyber security.
"Australia has in place a range of measures including the Cyber Security Operations Centre within the Defence Signals Directorate and a dedicated cyber investigations unit within the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation."
However, several Government sources confirmed to the Herald Sun that they had been made aware of the breach to the parliamentary network.