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BEIJING – According to the newspaper, hackers stole the passwords of reporters and other employees in an effort to break into their email accounts. Security experts say there is little doubt the cyber-attack came from China. NBC’s Ian Williams reports.
Jonathan Nackstrand / AFP - Getty Images
The 2012 Nobel Literature Prize laureate, Mo Yan of China, poses for photographers during a press conference of the 2012 Nobel Literature Prize laureate in Stockholm.
BEIJING — When the Swedish Academy selected Chinese writer, Mo Yan, as this year’s recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature, the move was hailed by the state media, only two years after blasting the same committee for awarding the peace prize to fellow countryman and outspoken dissident Liu Xiaobo.
However, outside of the country, some critics pointedly questioning Mo’s Communist Party membership, his unwillingness to speak up for freedom of speech on the mainland and his apparent reluctance to speak out for his fellow laureate. "Giving the award to a writer like this is an insult to humanity and to literature," declared noted Chinese artist and activist, Ai Weiwei, at the time.
Perhaps sensing the backlash, Mo spoke out the evening his Nobel victory was announced, telling journalists he hoped Liu — who is currently serving an 11-year sentence for his work on a direct call for political liberalization known as Charter 08 — could “achieve his freedom as soon as possible.”
The supportive words seemed to help give Mo the benefit of the doubt among critics and the foreign press, but comments he gave on Thursday regarding Chinese censorship and Liu’s plight have reinvigorated criticism of the acclaimed writer.
'The highest principle'
During an interview in Stockholm, Mo surprisingly defended China’s suppression of free speech, saying that censorship should not prevent the truth, but that rumors and defamation "should be censored."
"But I also hope that censorship, per se, should have the highest principle," Mo added.
Mo Yan's Nobel win celebrated -- and panned -- in China
Mo went on to liken censorship to the airport security he passed through flying to Stockholm.
"When I was taking my flight, going through the customs ... they also wanted to check me even taking off my belt and shoes," he said. "But I think these checks are necessary."
Special coverage of China: Behind the Wall on NBCNews.com
Mo caused further ripples when he told reporters he did not plan to sign an appeal being passed around by his peers calling for the immediate release of Liu and his wife, Liu Xia.
It has been signed by134 fellow Nobel laureates, including South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
Always an 'independent'
Mo explained his unwillingness to sign as a desire to maintain his independence.
"I have always been independent. I like it that way. When someone forces me to do something, I don't do it," he said.
For Chinese winner's wife, Nobel is no prize
Mo’s comments and reticence in voicing support for his compatriot, Liu, was seen as particularly appalling as it came the same day as the publishing of a distressing interview with Liu’s wife, Liu Xia.
The interview, made possibly only after AP reporters slipped by Chinese security away at lunch, was the first she had given in 26 months and graphically showed the emotional stress of being under home detention since her husband’s imprisonment.
China’s reception of Liu Xiabo and Mo Yan’s Nobel victories couldn’t have been any more different.
While Mo Yan’s award this year has been hailed in state media – despite many of his books being censored in China – Liu’s victory was roundly rejected by Beijing.
In a statement issued by the foreign ministry soon after the 2010 announcement, the government wrote that Liu’s victory "runs completely counter to the principle of the prize and is also a blasphemy to the peace prize.”
China Daily via Reuters, file
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao shakes hands with local workers in earthquake-hit Mianzhu, Sichuan province in this Jan. 25, 2009 file photo.
BEIJING – When news broke earlier this year that the family of disgraced Chongqing party boss, Bo Xilai, had amassed $160 million in ill-gotten earnings, the story was seen as a proverbial pin in the balloon China’s ruling Communist Party has long floated to its people about its leadership.
In China the storyline went something like this: local-level officials could be and have been corrupted. But China’s highest leaders were incorruptible, pious men who were sympathetic to the plight of the country’s citizenry.
Bo’s corruption and the transgressions of his inner circle have been very publicly renounced by the Communist Party. His wife, Gu Kailai, was found guilty of the murder of British businessman Neil Heywood while his former deputy police chief, Wang Lijun, was jailed and held up as a traitor after his now infamous flight to the American Consulate in Chengdu this past winter.
News Friday that Bo had been stripped of his last party title appears to pave the way for a convenient resolution of the scandal before a critical once-in-a-decade leadership changeover on Nov. 8 at the 18th Communist Party Congress.
But the revelation in Friday’s New York Times that the family of Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao controlled assets of at least $2.7 billion dollars posed a grave threat to the Party’s preferred narrative of being the honest broker that brings prosperity to all.
NYT report: China leader Wen Jiabao's family has amassed billions in assets since '98
So much so that Beijing was forced Friday to kick the censorship gears up a notch, blocking the English- and Chinese-language websites of the New York Times, blacking out mentions of the story on independent cable news channels carried in China, and censoring the names of Wen’s family and other mentions of the story on China’s Internet.
At a Foreign Ministry briefing Friday, a spokesman gruffly stated that the Times’ report "blackens China's name and has ulterior motives." When asked why the paper’s website was being censored, he said, "China manages the Internet in accordance with laws and rules."
One piece of information not censored, however is a report released Thursday by the research group, Global Financial Integrity, which estimated $3.7 trillion dollars had been pilfered and smuggled out of China from 2000 through 2011.
The report also estimated that $472 billion -- or 8.3 percent of China’s 2011 gross domestic product -- had been stolen last year alone.
Just how guilty Wen is in his family’s nationwide money grab is up for debate. As the Times’ report noted, a 2007 diplomatic cable published by Wikileaks quoted an executive who noted that the premier was aware of his family’s lucrative business ventures: “Wen is disgusted with his family's activities, but is either unable or unwilling to curtail them."
Wen’s failure to reign in his family’s financial activities threatens to undermine the carefully scripted public persona he has cultivated over the years.
AFP - Getty Images
A click-through history of modern relations between the United States and China.
Nicknamed “Grandpa Wen” by state media, the premier has relished opportunities to be photographed connecting with members of rural communities and blue-collar workers. During the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, he was a near-daily presence in news reports about the disaster and government rescue and recovery efforts.
He has also been dogged in his calls for economic reform and greater income equality. At this year’s National People’s Congress, during what was likely his last major press conference in a 45-year-long political career, Wen called for reform.
“Even with a single breath left, I am ready to dedicate myself fully to the cause of China’s reform,” he was quoted as saying.
Although Wen was speaking months before the release of the Times piece, he still apparently felt the need to address whispers about relatives trading on the family name. “I have never pursued personal gain,” declared Wen, before adding, “History will have the final say.”
Communist Party officials hope to control the writing of history. But the institution is starting to feel the strain of having to push an ever heavier stone uphill. The Internet has made information more widely available than ever before on the mainland; what censors just 10 years ago could make disappear – sometimes literally -- has become more problematic today.
Still, while completely squashing a story in China seems to no longer be possible, it may not be Beijing’s intention or even in its best interest to stifle information. Some Chinese have found ways to circumvent the Great Firewall, while millions have gone abroad, where they have been exposed to the world beyond. Allowing them the safety valve of relatively free information does not pose an immediate threat to Party rule for now.
That’s because the vast majority of China’s population appears to be apolitical, disinterested in or unwilling to engage in any meaningful political discourse. This situation is changing, quickly at times.
For now, however, the censorship of unpalatable stories is an effective albeit cumbersome tool for the Party to wield.
As for the New York Times, its fate in China looks dim. Just two months ago, Bloomberg ran a similar story that showed how the family of China’s likely future president, Xi Jinping, had also accumulated a vast business fortune – though unlike Wen’s kin, Xi’s immediate family did not appear to be reaping the same economic benefits.
Bloomberg’s website has since been blocked on the mainland.
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Updated at 12:42 p.m. ET: BEIJING – Released this past summer, Korean pop star Psy's "Gangnam Style" quickly became a global phenomenon. Within months, the infectious song has been watched over 530 million times and recently earned the distinction of being the most “liked” video in YouTube history according to the Guinness Book of World Records.
It seems that everyone has tried to get in on the Gangnam rage, including Google's executive chairman Eric Schmidt, our very own TODAY team, and just this week, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon.
Ai Weiwei, China’s dissident artist who was detained last year for nearly three months, on Wednesday became the latest to jump on the Gangnam bandwagon, uploading his own version of “Gangnam Style” on YouTube. The video, which shows Ai dancing in handcuffs, is entitled "Grass Mud Horse Style."
"Grass Mud Horse," a homonym of a Chinese phrase that suggests a very lewd act with one’s mother, is popular among anti-censorship activists in China.
PSY, the South Korean pop singer whose "Gangnam Style" viral video sensation made him an international star, returns to his home country, where crowds are going wild. NBC's Ian Williams reports.
Ai told journalists that the idea to cover the dance craze came from one of the many donors who helped him out last year when Ai was ordered to pay back taxes that the government claimed that he owed. Donations to help pay Ai’s government fine flooded in online and supporters even visited his studio home in Beijing to toss money over the wall to him.
YouTube is banned in China and the video has not appeared on Chinese video sites.
The artist's tongue-in-cheek and at times hilarious -- at one point Ai can be seen swinging a pair of handcuffs around his head -- anti-censorship send-up may have been received with silence by Chinese state press, but it has been picked up by the New York Times, the Washington Post and NPR.
Grass Mud Horse
The Grass Mud Horse, which has its origins in a 2009 collection of hoax entries in a popular Chinese web-based encyclopedia called Baidu Baike, became a popular and irreverent way to poke fun at the heavy-handed censorship of China’s ruling Communist Party.
Special coverage of China: Behind the Wall on NBCNews.com
The fabled Grass Mud Horse soon found itself the inspiration of a slew of cute online animations, stories and web board chatter. Stuffed animal versions of the alpaca-like animal were soon available online for sale and can still be seen periodically in shops and cafes across China.
Government censors though were left in the uncomfortable position of having to decide whether to let this pun-based challenge to their power go unchecked or to be seen censoring a fuzzy cartoon character.
Complete Asia-Pacific coverage on NBCNews.com
In addition to Grass Mud Horse, the term “River Crab” also became a popular way for internet users in China to challenge censors as it is a homonym for “harmonious.” The principle of a “Harmonious Society” has been a signature principle of current Chinese President, Hu Jintao’s ideology.
In China, then, when content runs afoul of censors, users often say it has been “harmonized.” The term river crab became another way to jokingly get around online censorship in China.
Reuters
A man covers an art piece by Beijing-based artist Chi Peng with paper after government officials from the cultural bureau deemed it unfit for display before the inauguration of the SH Contemporary Art Fair at the Shanghai Exhibition Center on September 6, 2012.
Reuters
Government officials from the cultural bureau inspect artworks before the inauguration of the fair.
Reuters reports — The pot-bellied official in a tan golf shirt paused in front of a poster-sized image for a few seconds, asked a member of his entourage to make a note of it, then continued to lead the group on its awkward march through the Shanghai Exhibition Center.
A few hours later, the digitally manipulated photo of China's legendary Monkey King facing Tiananmen Gate, by Beijing-based artist Chi Peng, was pulled from the wall, one of several works at the SH Contemporary Art Fair deemed unfit for display by Shanghai's culture police.
"It's especially sensitive this year because the 18th Party Congress will start soon," said a fair organizer after trying to convince another booth to remove a painting that censors didn't like because it appeared to include images of Mao Zedong. Read the full story.
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Reuters
Workers cover an art piece after it was deemed unfit for display. Censorship of political content has long been a feature of the Chinese art world under Communist Party rule, but gallery owners and artists at SH Contemporary were told on Thursday that city officials were being extra careful ahead of a once-a-decade leadership transition set to take place in Beijing next month.
BEIJING – Google has started telling users in China when web searches contain keywords that could be tracked by the country's keen-eyed censors, one of the company's top officials announced.
“Starting today we’ll notify users in mainland China when they enter a keyword that may cause connection issues,” Alan Eustace, a Senior Vice President for Google, wrote on the company's Inside Search blog on Thursday. “By prompting people to revise their queries, we hope to reduce these disruptions and improve our user experience from mainland China.”
As the video on Eustace's blog shows (see below), triggering connectivity issues on Google.com.hk can be as easy as searching for one of the country’s greatest natural landmarks: The Yangtze River.
Presumably in this case, "Jiang" the Chinese character for river, is a sensitive term because it is also the last name of former Chinese President Jiang Zemin. The 85-year-old, who is thought to still be politically connected, is the focus of constant erroneous rumors and reports about his death.
Consequently, if you are looking for "Chang Jiang," the popular name of the Yangtze River here in China, you could run afoul of sensors looking to block rumors of the former leader's death and have your connection to Google temporarily terminated.
Online coup rumors spark China crackdown on social media websites
The video on Eustace's blog shows how it took about 90 seconds after each sensitive search for the connection to be re-established on several Internet browsers and devices.
This graphic shows the message that will appear when users try to search for these restricted words:
Google’s move will ostensibly allow users on the mainland to see when their searches are being censored and understand why the service is disrupted. Other Google products, such as Google Mail and Documents, often fail to load and frequently require refreshing or an enabled virtual private network (VPN) to access freely.
However, since Google’s high profile “pullout” of its search engine from China in 2010, Google’s share of the search market here in China has shrunk from 30 percent in 2009 to 16.6 percent in 2012, according to Beijing-based research firm Analysys International.
Much of that share has been ceded to its Chinese rival, Baidu, which now dominates the arena with 78.5 percent of the search market. Even Google Maps, which was the most popular online mapping service on the mainland for some time, recently lost the top spot to a competitor.
One tweet, 10,000 followers: Dissident artist Ai Weiwei slips, briefly, through China censor
Those dwindling mainland users who have undoubtedly already encountered search restrictions and disconnection issues before, but continue to rely on Google, will probably not benefit too much from the company's new measures. After all, many of the users who suffered through 90-second connection resets in the past have already turned to other ways to bypass the restrictions.
What this move will do, though, is help Google regain the moral high ground internationally by reclaiming “Don’t be Evil,” it's informal corporate motto. Google has long fought for a more open Internet around the world, and even created “Transparency Report,” which looks closely at net freedom issues.
Read more news from Behind the Wall
However, privacy issues in the United States and a European Union warning to Google to review its recently revamped privacy policies have haunted the Silicon Valley giant, forcing its data mining practices to the forefront.
Google’s new service may help some mainland Chinese users better understand how Beijing restricts its netizens from accessing certain material, but for the message to be really effective, Google first needs to get people to use its service again.
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SEOUL, South Korea – It’s a strange thing to be reading about China’s continued crackdown on the Internet from our temporary perch in Seoul.
The last time I was here was in 1989. The Pre-Internet Age.
This time, on my first visit in more than 20 years, South Korea owns the mantle of the world’s fastest Internet connection, according to a quarterly survey known as the State of the Internet by Akamai. It's on average four times as fast as that of the U.S.
But that just isn’t fast enough.
By the end of next year, the South Korean government plans to have every home in the nation hooked up to the Internet at a speed of one gigabit per second. Imagine being able to download the entire Godfather trilogy in 20 seconds.
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A woman walks past the logo of Google in front of its headquarters in Beijing in this January 2011 file photo.
Gmail service, interrupted
In the meantime, over in China, land of the Great Firewall, reports are emerging that the download speed of Gmail has plunged. We won’t get into the technicalities of kbps, but let’s just say Gmail is now operating 45 times slower than the most popular free Chinese instant messaging service known as QQ.
The disruptions to Gmail don’t end there. For weeks now, ordinary Gmail users have complained about interrupted service. Writer Wang Lixiong tweeted that he received this message from Gmail when he tried to log in: “Your account is locked, because abnormal activities are detected. You may have to wait 24 hours before you can log in again.”
Another user told my colleague Bo Gu that China Unicom appears to be blocking Gmail entirely from mobile devices.
And in the wake of calls for Jasmine rallies foreign journalists in China have been vigilant about attempts to hack into their email accounts.
The disrupted service coincides with a surge in reported failures of several VPNs (virtual private networks), designed to circumvent China’s Internet firewall.
On Monday, Google accused the Chinese government of obstructing access to its Gmail service, saying the company had checked everything on its own end and concluded that the problems are the result of a “blockage carefully designed to look like the problem is with Gmail.”
The Chinese Foreign Ministry has denied the accusation.
Speedy Internet = Open Internet
South Korea’s drive to lead the way globally in broadband access originated in the mid-1990s, but its efforts stepped up immediately after its economy was crippled by the 1997 Asian financial crisis. And technology became a cornerstone of the government’s strategy to reboot and refashion its economy.
Seoul's approach to the Internet is instructive. Although there are many reasons it has managed to power ahead of the pack, there is one that stands out in sharp relief against what’s happening in China: the open (and highly competitive) nature of its telecoms market.
“The idea behind an “open” system is essentially that, for a fee, broadband providers must share the cables that carry Internet signals into people’s homes,” says one report. “Companies that build those lines typically oppose this sharing. A number of governments, including South Korea and Japan and several European countries, have experimented with or embraced infrastructure-sharing as a way to get new companies to compete in the broadband market.”
China doesn’t allow that kind of openness—either in its infrastructure or in its content.
By NBC News' Adrienne Mong and Bo Gu
BEIJING -- We’ve written a lot about China’s Great Firewall, or Net Nanny. In the process, we’ve always tried to make the point about how straightforward it is for people here with wherewithal to circumvent the government’s Internet controls.
But what really impresses us is how easily people here get around not just by using VPNs (virtual private networks) but by using the Chinese language.
Take the would-be Jasmine Revolution. Last weekend, an anonymous circular made the rounds on various Chinese sites run outside of China, calling for an uprising fashioned after those in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain and elsewhere. The note called on people to show up at designated locations in 13 cities to protest corruption and censorship and to demand a more democratic government. Since then, there have been calls for regular attempts to gather every Sunday.
The Chinese authorities responded immediately. In addition to rounding up the usual suspects of dissidents, lawyers and other activists, the government cracked down on the Internet.
Searches for the word “jasmine” were blocked in online chat rooms and Chinese social networking sites like Sina.com’s Weibo. (Like major Western social networking sites like Facebook and YouTube, Twitter is not accessible inside China.)
One report noted that it might be tough for officials to completely ban the word “jasmine” from online use, apparently because it’s also the name of a Chinese folk song popular with the Communist Party leadership.
Regardless, plenty of folks have already come up with ingenious ways to get around the controls. New “codes” have been adopted to circumvent the Great Firewall and help spread the call for another round of protests.
Boxun.com, the website where the original call for China’s “jasmine revolution” was issued, just put up a new post encouraging netizens to use the phrase “two sessions” as a substitute for “jasmine.” “Two sessions” here refers to the annual National People’s Congress and Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, held in Beijing every March.
In this vein, the phrase “to protest at a square” becomes “to hold two sessions at a square.” This tactic would greatly embarrass the authorities if they tried to censor the phrase as they would need to delete anything related to their own Party events that will dominate China’s media in fewer than two weeks.
Another example of playing around with language is the word “protest.” The act itself is now being represented by the phrase, “to take a stroll,” when people want to discuss online mass demonstrations without being censored.
Of course, as we write this, searches for the name of the U.S. ambassador to China, Jon Huntsman, Jr., is now a sensitive “term” on Chinese microblogs. See our earlier blog about Huntsman being spotted outside a McDonald's where some protests were coincidentally being held.
Wonder what great euphemism netizens might come up for him if that’s the case.
China launches sanitized state-run search engine
LinkedIn site disrupted in protest-wary China
BEIJING – In a sure sign that China is gearing up for a major censorship battle with Western media agencies in the lead up to Friday’s presentation of the Noble Peace Prize to Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo, major foreign news websites were blocked in China Thursday.
The tell-tale error message, “Your Connection has been reset” now comes up online when trying to access popular news websites like the BBC and Norwegian state broadcaster, NRK.
Earlier Thursday, CNN’s website was also blocked, but as of 9 a.m. ET, the site was loading smoothly in China.
In recent years, China has proved willing to block foreign websites it deems critical of the government or a potential source of political unrest.
During the Tibetan riots of 2008 and the Uighur unrest in Xinjiang last year, popular social media sites like Facebook and Twitter were blocked after censors became concerned that protest organizers were using the sites to communicate and disseminate anti-government messages.
Similarly, YouTube has remained blocked since 2009.
Even popular movie website, IMDB was blocked earlier this year by censors after it provided details about a documentary on the Dalai Lama that was critical of China’s government.
Meanwhile on TV throughout the week, news broadcasts like BBC, CNN and French satellite channel TV5 have all been regularly blacked out when stories on Liu Xiaobo and the Nobel Prize come up.
State television broadcaster, CCTV, has not been reporting on the Nobel Prize presentation.
By Adrienne Mong/NBC News File
The charred shell of the CCTV complex's north wing has been an eyesore on Beijing's modern landscape since the fire in February 2009.
For a while on Monday afternoon it seemed the only place to get immediate information about the devastating high-rise fire in Shanghai was through the Internet, not Chinese state-run television.
Among those who kept up a steady pace of reporting were Shanghaiist.com and various Twitter accounts – although the Shanghai Daily, a local Chinese newspaper, did tweet headlines throughout the afternoon.
“It’s a major breaking news story happening in the city that we cover,” said Dan Washburn, who started Shanghaiist.com in 2005. “One service that we can provide to our readers is to sift through all the noise that’s out there, help try to make sense of a tragic situation, and give our readers information as we get it.”
It’s a service that some Chinese believe the official media fails to provide to its audience.
“The city missed a perfect chance to show its people that unlike some other places in this country, Shanghai is capable of telling the truth in a difficult time,” wrote one blogger in a critique of local media coverage that made the rounds overnight.
“People’s trust issue with the government…have become so clear today, that people resorted to each other, not the news media for news,” continued the writer.
But while the volume of citizen journalism was large, it was hardly surprising.
“It was in a big city where everyone has a cell phone or a camera,” said Jeremy Goldkorn, founding editor of danwei.org. “Any area of national interest, too, would have attracted a lot more attention. And because more people are online.”
In fact, there’s been plenty of precedent.
A blaze in Beijing in February 2009 enveloped the newly-completed adjunct building in the new CCTV complex, killing one firefighter.
“The CCTV fire was all over the Internet before there was any official reporting on it,” recalled Goldkorn, whose danwei.org took a close look at the media coverage at the time.
In the meantime, unconfirmed reports say the government has cracked down on domestic coverage of the Shanghai fire and that Chinese news organizations have been ordered to remove the story from the headlines and to use only the government-run Xinhua news agency as their source.
“Some of those [citizen journalism] videos have been taken down already from sites like Youku and Tudou,” observed Kenneth Tan, an editor-at-large at Shanghaiist.com.
“This has become routine for every disaster,” blogged Han Han, arguably China’s most popular writer.
Noted Washburn, “It will be interesting to see whether local journalists pursue investigations on the cause for the fire,” building safety, or the adequacy of the firefighters’ response.
Journalists from China Daily, Reuters, and Beijing News on Tuesday posted status updates on Sina.com and Netease saying that they were detained at a funeral home in Shanghai, apparently for trying to follow up on the story from the perspective of the victims’ families.
With additional reporting from Bo Gu.
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