Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
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.
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.
More world stories from NBC News:
Follow World News from NBCNews.com on Twitter and Facebook
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.
More world news from msnbc.com and NBC News:
Follow us on Twitter: @msnbc_world
China has been shutting down internet and social media sties that have been fuelling rumors of a military coup, ITV's Angus Walker reports from Beijing.
China's government shut down some social media websites this week after photos of tanks on the streets were posted online. The images sparked false rumors of a coup.
ITV News' Angus Walker reports from Beijing.
Check out more China coverage on msnbc.com's Behind The Wall blog.
More from msnbc.com and NBC News:
Follow us on Twitter: @msnbc_world
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.
/
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.
BEIJING -- It was, as one China observer called it, the revolution that wasn't.
On Saturday, websites run by overseas Chinese began circulating a mysterious call for a Jasmine Revolution, apparently taking the lead from the wave of mass demonstrations across the Middle East and North Africa. The Chinese campaign urged people to gather on Sunday afternoon in thirteen cities across the country, including Beijing and Shanghai, whereupon participants would shout:
"We want to eat. We want to work. We want houses. We want fairness. We want justice. Protect private property. Maintain independent justice. Start political reform. Finish one party rule. Finish media censorship. Freedom of news. Long live freedom. Long live democracy."
The hashtag #CN220, named after Sunday’s date, also began making an appearance on Twitter.
The would-be Jasmine Revolution
On Sunday, large crowds of people could be seen at the designated Beijing location -- a popular and heavily-congested shopping thoroughfare called Wangfujing, only blocks away from the site of Beijing’s last convulsion, the 1989 student-led demonstrations in Tiananmen Square -- but it was hard to tell how many were protesters. Many were clearly journalists, carrying cameras and the like. And this being China, where it doesn't take much to attract a crowd, onlookers or passersby stopped to gawk, thinking there might be a celebrity in attendance.
Carlos Barria / Reuters
A man is arrested by police after calls on social networks for a "Jasmine Revolution" protest in front of the Peace Cinema in downtown Shanghai on Sunday.
But the biggest indicator something was amiss were the ranks of uniformed and plainclothes Chinese police. Some scuffling and pushing ensued, and at least one man carrying jasmine flowers was reported to have been taken away. However, it didn't take long for everything to return to normal outside the McDonald’s restaurant.
Journalists in Shanghai reported similar scenes in their own city whilst no notable gatherings could be confirmed in the rest of the locations.
It would seem, however, the real action had been taking place offline.
A crackdown on activists was already in force across several cities by Sunday. In Beijing, for example, dissidents confirmed they have been under surveillance or house arrest. When we tried to reach one veteran of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, he sent a text message saying, "Not convenient" to speak. And one of the authors of Charter 08, a manifesto calling for democratic reforms and greater human rights (its most famous signatory is Liu Xiaobo, last year’s Nobel Peace Prizewinner), said he was instructed by Chinese police not to leave his home.
Senior leaders were busy all weekend, exhorting for tighter social controls. On Saturday, President Hu Jintao called for stricter oversight of the "virtual society." This was echoed at another meeting of government leaders on Sunday, in which provincial and ministerial-level government officials were urged to step up “social management.”
The virtual controls were also in place. A mass text messaging service on China Mobile was not available in Beijing on Sunday, according to one report. And all day Sunday, users of Weibo, China’s biggest microblog, complained of hiccups, and searches on Weibo and elsewhere online for the word "jasmine" were blocked or did not go through.
Eugene Hoshiko / AP
Police officers urge people to leave as they gather in front of a cinema that was a planned protest site in Shanghai on Sunday.
The Great Firewall in action
Heavy-handed it may all be given that no one seemed to heed the call for action, but these measures are all part and parcel of Beijing's predictable handling, too, of the coverage of tumult in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, and elsewhere in the region.
Thus far, the Chinese government has been adept, wily, fast, and far tech savvier than their Middle Eastern and North African counterparts appear to have been when it comes to controlling the information flow on the Internet. As writer Evgeny Morozov put it, protesters in Egypt "were blessed with a government that didn't know a tweet from a poke."
China, on the other hand, is believed to have the most sophisticated and wide-ranging Internet filtering system known as the Great Firewall.
Not coincidentally, only days after U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton unveiled a new plan to finance programs to help Internet users around the world, a rare interview with the father of China’s Great Firewall was published in a state-run Chinese newspaper.
Although Fang Binxing refused to divulge how the firewall works, there were notable tidbits – including the revelation that he uses no fewer than six VPNs (virtual private networks), “but only to test which side wins.”
With additional reporting from Eric Baculinao and Bo Gu
Thanks to the East Coast blizzard of 2010, it took me five days to travel back to Beijing from my vacation. So there was much joy and relief at landing today.
But it was all short-lived after being greeted by (1) gale force winds and temperatures below zero and (2) the news that Skype may soon be unavailable in China.
The People’s Daily, a Chinese-language newspaper run by the Chinese Communist Party, reported today that services providing voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) would be illegal unless they’re provided by telecom carriers China Unicom and China Telecom.
Technically, Skype is illegal in China, according to the Ministry of Information and Industry, which is responsible for granting VoIP licenses.
What’s more, China -- which counts 450 million Internet users – is the largest market for internet phone calls, which cost far less than landline calls. That also means unlicensed providers like Skype are cutting into a lucrative market for the state telecoms.
In October 2009, the top Chinese VoIP – UUCall, with 30 million registered users – was suspended by a provincial telecoms bureau. The company reopened for business last February by relocating its domain name in Hong Kong.
On Sina.com’s microblog, many users criticized the decision by the Ministry of Information and Industry. “The Ministry of Information and Industry must be desperately poor,” observed a Chinese woman who goes by the name Amanda114.
If Skype is blocked (and it's not clear when that would happen), it would join a club of illustrious Western Internet companies that includes Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.
With additional research by Zhu Tong
China has banned websites, publishers and newspapers from using “unnecessary” English words, prompting a wave of online sarcasm and criticism.
The General Administration of Press and Publication, which supervises all media in the country, said on Monday that foreign languages, in particular “English, English words and acronyms,” have diluted Chinese in recent years.
“Such abuse of language … destroys the harmonious and healthy cultural environment and causes an unhealthy social impact,” the government media watchdog said.
As a result of practices that damage the “purity of the Chinese language,” the regulator prohibited the “arbitrary” use of English words or acronyms from foreign languages mixed with Chinese. It also forbade the use of “ambiguous” words that are neither Chinese nor foreign.
When words in a foreign language have to be used, the government decreed that a note or annotation in Chinese must be added. And the names of foreign people, places and science terms also have to be translated into Chinese.
If the order was to be strictly exercised many English acronyms Chinese people often use, such as DNA, GDP, CEO and WTO, would have to disappear or be replaced by Chinese equivalents.
Sarcasm
While decrees like this one alarm few – such government notices are rarely followed – they do elicit bouts of pungent sarcasm.
In April, TV channels were told to ban English acronyms like NBA, which translated into Chinese in as long as 10 characters: “Mei Guo Nan Zi Zhi Ye Lan Qiu Lian Sai.”
One commentator responded to the ban in April with: “Ban English acronyms? Fine, don’t call yourself CCTV anymore.” CCTV, a.k.a. China Central TV, is China’s biggest official TV service and displays its logo with four English-language letters on-screen.
The most recent notice elicited similarly acerbic responses.
“I suggest we get rid of Arabic numbers too, they’re also foreign,” one person said in the comment section on news giant Netease.com.
Another said: “Dear Administration, can you tell me how to say ‘iPad,’ ‘iPhone’ in Chinese?”
Some commentators seemed to take the issue a bit more seriously: “Tell me, in modern science, which word comes from Chinese? They are nice enough to let you use their words, and now you want to protect your ‘language purity’?”
Authorities’ obsession with power is at the root of the decision to ban English, one commentator says.
“(The government) is so proud now as China’s economy is booming,” Zhu Xueqin, a history professor at Shanghai University, told BBC News in an interview. “They think foreigners ought to learn from us, we do not need to learn from them anymore.”
It isn’t only the use of English that is imperiled, Zhu said. A large number of frequently used Chinese words in science and sociology come from Japanese, such as constitution, cadre, and socialism.
“If we are not allowed to use such words we simply won’t be able to speak anymore,” he said.
NBC’s Beijing Bureau requested an interview with the General Administration of Press and Publication but received no answer.
The cyber cold war between China and the U.S. just got a little chillier. Twice this year, China demonstrated its ability to "substantially manipulate" the Internet, a congressional commission said in a report issued on Tuesday. In one incident, traffic headed to 15 percent of the world's websites was redirected through Chinese servers for about 20 minutes.
The high-level hijacking included bits and bytes headed for the U.S. Senate, the Army, the Navy, the Marine Corps, the Air Force, the secretary of defense, NASA, and other government offices, along with commercial entities like Dell, Yahoo, Microsoft, and IBM, the report said.
Chinese officials disputed the findings. But several technology firms said
they charted the hijacking in April.
Read more in Bob Sullivan's Red Tape Chronicle blog.
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.
E-mail updates
Follow on Twitter
Subscribe to RSS