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Reuters
Apr 14, 2011
By Brian Grow and Mark Hosenball

ATLANTA (Reuters) – As America and China grow more economically and financially intertwined, the two nations have also stepped up spying on each other. Today, most of that is done electronically, with computers rather than listening devices in chandeliers or human moles in tuxedos.

Joel Brenner, former counterintelligence chief for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and author of a forthcoming book on cyber-espionage tentatively titled ''America the Vulnerable'', reviews his contents page in his office in Washington, March 22, 2011. As America and China grow more economically and financially intertwined, the two nations have also stepped up spying on each other. Today, most of that is done electronically, with computers rather than listening devices in chandeliers or human moles in tuxedos. And at the moment, many experts believe China may have gained the upper hand. Credit: Reuters/Hyungwon Kang

And at the moment, many experts believe China may have gained the upper hand.

Though it is difficult to ascertain the true extent of America’s own capabilities and activities in this arena, a series of secret diplomatic cables as well as interviews with experts suggest that when it comes to cyber-espionage, China has leaped ahead of the United States.

According to U.S. investigators, China has stolen terabytes of sensitive data — from usernames and passwords for State Department computers to designs for multi-billion dollar weapons systems. And Chinese hackers show no signs of letting up. “The attacks coming out of China are not only continuing, they are accelerating,” says Alan Paller, director of research at information-security training group SANS Institute in Washington, DC.    [FULL  STORY]

Epoch Times
By Matthew Robertson
Mar 25, 2011

Chinese dissident Liu Xianbin was paraded into court on Friday and after two hours sentenced to ten years in prison. Liu had been convicted with the vague but perilous charge of “inciting subversion of state power,” through essays he had written advocating democracy.

The judge in the Suining court in Sichuan Province repeatedly interrupted Liu as he attempted to make a statement, his wife told various Western media outlets in China. But he managed to cry out “I’m not guilty.”

Observers see the harsh sentence as part of an overall attempt, ramped up in recent years, to extinguish the growing cohort of human rights lawyers, democracy activists, and other voices calling for civil society in China.    [FULL  STORY]

Authorities believed responsible

Epoch Times
By Matthew Robertson

The friends and family of Chinese college student Zhao Wei do not know exactly what happened to him between 3am and 7:20am on Jan. 23 this year, but they believe authorities murdered him. So too do Chinese netizens; a Hong Kong media research group says it’s “very possible.”

His friend last saw him alive at 3am. At 8am Zhao’s parents got a call from police telling them that their son was dead.

Zhao Wei's corpse in the morgue in funerary vestments. A coin is in his mouth with a red string protruding, part of Chinese funerary traditions. The images, taken by the parents and distributed online, have triggered enormous indignation with the authorities. (Courtesy of victim's family)

The case has begun attracting attention on the Chinese Internet, and authorities have been fast in clamping down on the news’ spread.

Similar cases of mysterious deaths of young people—often later discovered to have been murders by the authorities—have in the past resulted in mass riots.

Zhao was a fourth-year student at the Hebei University of Technology, on his way home to Inner Mongolia for the Chinese New Year.    [FULL  STORY]

Epoch Times
By Cheryl Chen & Jane Lin

The ever-growing storm of demonstrations against authoritarian rulers in the Middle East and North Africa has made the Chinese regime extremely jittery. Recently, foreign journalists were assaulted and detained. Prominent Chinese human rights lawyers and activists have also been arrested or harassed by Chinese police.

Chinese police surround a group of foreign journalists as security is ramped up, with at least 300 hundred uniformed police guarding the entrance to the Jasmine rally site, designated in an online appeal, in the Wangfujing shopping street in central Beijing on Feb 27. (AFP/Getty Images)

Hundreds of uniformed and plainclothes policemen in Beijing and Shanghai patrolled likely protest sites on Feb. 27, the second Sunday of high alert, following calls on the Internet for China’s own “Jasmine Protests.”

Foreign journalists were followed, and those with cameras were blocked from entering the Wangfujing area–Beijing’s main shopping street–located a short walk from the heavily policed Tiananmen Square.    [FULL  STORY]

Five years on, efforts to tell world about forced organ harvesting continue

Epoch Times
Mar 9, 2011
By Joshua Philipp

Organ Harvesting in China
The story was hard to stomach—gruesome, at the very least. What started as a rumor, however, would later unfold into a campaign of brutality and horror perpetrated by the Chinese regime.

International human rights lawyer David Matas was in his office when the story broke in March 2006. It flowed into his e-mail box along with the flood of human rights updates he reads daily.

It told the story of a woman under the pseudonym “Annie,” whose husband suffered nightmares, as he suffered for the terror he had inflicted on more than 2,000 people.    [FULL  STORY]

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL
PRESS RELEASE

An ethnic Uighur website manager who was sentenced to seven years in jail in China after a secret trial is the latest in a series of Uighur writers imprisoned for peaceful expression of cultural or political views, Amnesty International said today.

Tursunjan Hezim, a 38-year-old former history teacher, was reportedly detained shortly after the 5 July, 2009 protests in Urumqi in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), which turned violent after police cracked down on initially peaceful protesters.

His family was never informed of the charges against him and his whereabouts remain unknown. The government has not publicly stated the grounds for his detention.

“This trial is typical of the way the Chinese government has worked in secrecy to persecute Uighurs in China for peaceful expression of their views,” said Catherine Baber, Amnesty International’s Asia-Pacific deputy director.    [FULL  STORY]

Mao Hengfeng has been repeatedly detained because of her work for human rights. As a result of her efforts to call attention to forced abortions and forced evictions in China, she has been subjected to torture and ill-treatment by authorities.

The most recent detention of Mao Hengfeng stems from her 2009 protest of the arrest of Liu Xiaobo, a prominent human rights defender in China. (Liu Xiaobo was recently named the recipient of the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize for his human rights activism.) On December 25, 2009, Mao Hengfeng protested outside the court building in Beijing where Liu Xiaobo was on trial. On March 4, 2010, she started an 18-month sentence under China’s “Re-education Through Labor” (RTL) system for “disturbing public order.” In April, officials sent her to the Anhui Provincial Women’s facility where she has to work at the RTL dumpsite. The police refused to allow Mao Hengfeng’s family and lawyers to visit her.    [FULL  STORY]

Epoch Times
Mar 10, 2011
By Matthew Robertson

The Chinese authorities have shot themselves in the foot with their heavy-handed response to calls for a Chinese “Jasmine Revolution,” according to the revolutionaries themselves.

In an e-mail interview in English with The Epoch Times a male in his late 20s calling himself “Gracchus,” a core member of the group, said that the Western media has failed to understand the impact that calls in China for a Jasmine Revolution are having.

The announcement calling for peaceful strolls at major cities in China every Sunday afternoon, and the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) paranoid response, has actually helped the revolutionaries’ cause, he says.

For example, an open letter the organizers sent to China’s youth on March 5 resulted in blockades of university campuses by security forces across the country. “This unusual treatment almost certainly antagonizes the young energies and triggers their curiosity to explore the cause,” Gracchus wrote.

Gracchus calls himself and his peers “dedicated and professional revolutionaries for constitutional democracy.” They are small in number and located in China and the United States. Gracchus would not say where he was. “We don’t have a hierarchical structure; everyone is dedicated with high-level group coherency.”

Though only a few have come to the streets for fear of persecution, this does not indicate the total impact.    [FULL  STORY]

PC World
Feb 20, 2011
By Michael Kan, IDG News

China has suspended searches for content on the country’s popular microblog, an apparent move to stifle mention of a “Jasmine Revolution” that was to be staged in Chinese cities on Sunday.

On Sunday afternoon, searches in Chinese for the word “Jasmine” had been blocked on a Twitter-like service operated by Sina. But by the evening, Sina had appeared to suspend searches for all content on the microblog, only allowing users to query for screen names, events and other criteria. Another microblog operated by Tencent also blocked searches relating to the word “Jasmine” or “Jasmine Revolution”.

Mention of a “Jasmine Revolution” appear to have begun on the Web, telling Chinese users to demonstrate in 13 cities across the country, including the capital Beijing. The call for the demonstrations seem to be inspired by the anti-government protests in Egypt and Tunisia, but it’s unclear who or what group started it. A Chinese site at Boxun.com was reportedly the first to post the call to protest.

China’s Internet blocking extended to other social networking websites in the country. Renren.com, a popular Facebook-like service, would not allow users to post using the words for “Jasmine Revolution.” Such attempts returned a message, “Please do not release politically sensitive content, salacious content, business advertisements or any other inappropriate content.”    [FULL  STORY

I find it puzzling that while the US government is pressing Egypt’s government to transition it’s government to democracy according to the people’s will, they have never put this much pressure on Communist China.  It’s a fact that dictatorial, Communist China is far more repressive to it’s people than Egypt ever was.

While Communist China has blocked all search engines from bringing up anything about Egypt, the people of China have very little information about whats going on in Egypt.  Sadly, the spark that ignited the freedom movements in the middle east will not come to the oppressed people of Communist China.

I suspect that our government hasn’t pressured Communist China in the same way they have Egypt because China keeps buying our debt and US-based, multinational companies don’t want the apple cart upset.  These companies depend upon Communist China’s cheap labor in order to make inordinate profits from the sweat of the Chinese people.