news from China & Taiwan

5-11-16  Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) (& Communist Party boss) sent a message to North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, congratulating him on his election as ruling party chairman at a congress    http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/world/archives/2016/05/11/2003646019
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5-6-16   Chinese leader Xi Jinping was named commander-in-chief of the Joint Command Headquarters (JCH) of the Central Military Commission (CMC) on April 20.   http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/2057912-xi-jinping-becomes-military-commander-in-chief/
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5-5-16  China’s Beidou Satellite System (北斗衛星) poses an information security risk to Taiwan in that the satellite is able to track smartphone users via embedded malware in devices with Chinese-manufactured chips directly tied into the system or phones manufactured in China, according to the latest mobile device security report that the Ministry of Science and Technology submitted to the Legislative Yuan.  The ministry reported that China’s satellite system, despite claims of being commercial in nature, was primarily for military use   http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2016/05/05/2003645526
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5-10-16  agreement, announced by President Barack Obama and Chinese leader Xi Jinping, on Sept. 25, 2015, to end the use of cyberattacks for economic theft.

Obama stated, at the time, “We’ve agreed that neither the U.S. or the Chinese government will conduct or knowingly support cyber-enabled theft of intellectual property, including trade secrets or other confidential business information for commercial advantage.”

There is mixed reporting on how effective the agreement was. A “60 Minutes” segment on Jan. 17 noted that the day after the announcement, Chinese cyberattacks on U.S. businesses continued as usual. Cybersecurity company FireEye claimed the agreement did reduce the number of Chinese cyberattacks on U.S. companies, but its claims are also contested by other cyber researchers.

As I mentioned in an article around that time, however, the key problem with the cyber agreement is that it only addressed cyberattacks used for economic theft, and it only addressed economic theft conducted through cyber.

In other words, the agreement does nothing to stop cyberattacks used for intelligence gathering. This means the Chinese cyberattacks on the Office of Personnel Management, which stole 21.5 million records on current and former U.S. federal employees, falls outside the program.

http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/2060975-agreement-on-cyberattacks-will-not-stop-chinas-economic-theft/

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5-6-16

Chinese underground rings and military hospitals backed by the state’s vast security agencies profiting from the gruesome business of stealing organs.  

http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/2057811-chinese-man-gets-surgery-finds-his-kidney-stolen/

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5-3-16   Headquartered in Beijing, LeEco is a Chinese technology company and one of the largest online video companies in China.

Founded in November 2004 by Jia Yueting, LeEco offers a range of products including smartphones, televisions, mountain bikes, and more recently, electric cars....The company is also spending $1 billion to build a production facility in Nevada   http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/2053863-chinese-tech-firm-buys-yahoos-land-in-silicon-valley/