When the Lion Wakes: The Global Threat of the Chinese Communist Party
I want to bring to your attention some shocking information about the activities of the Chinese government. The source of this information is Quilette, an online news site that has been founded in 2015. Quilette is focused "on science, technology, news, culture, and politics […] [and] associated with the 'intellectual dark web,'" according to Wikipedia. 'Intellectual darb web' is a term coined by Eric Weinstein and "refers to a group of public personalities who oppose what they see as the dominance of progressive identity politics and political correctness in the media and academia," again according to Wikipedia.
I found this article very informative, I'm impressed with Quilette and with the author of this particular article, Aaron Sarin, when I checked out his other work about modern-day power structures and the nation state. So I'm excited to share three paragraphs of Aaron Sarin's article here:
Today, the Communist Party stifles criticism and dictates policy far beyond Chinese borders, controlling NGOs and businesses, silencing dissidents, and filling Western university boards with CCP sympathisers. Academic institutions are increasingly reliant on Chinese money—$12.55 billion in student tuition fees in 2016—and so it’s easy to buy their silence. “We don’t talk about Taiwan independence,” says Perry Link, Professor of East Asian Studies at Princeton University. “We don’t talk about the occupation of Tibet. We don’t call the June 4 Massacre ‘massacre.’” The same subjects are off-limits for British lecturers, who have been warned by staff from London’s Chinese embassy that they should never talk about “the three Ts” (Tibet, Tiananmen, and Taiwan). Those who do stray into the forbidden areas of discussion are summarily punished. Funding was removed for visiting scholars at the University of California San Diego in response to the Dalai Lama’s appearance at the university. The Communist Party considers him to be an “enemy element,” and it will not tolerate its business associates maintaining any kind of relationship with him.
The Party’s iron grip extends to society far beyond academia. Many foreign companies with business interests in China have been forced to apologise for referring to Taiwan or Tibet in the ‘wrong’ terms. The German manufacturer Leica made the mistake of referring to the Tiananmen Square Massacre in one of its adverts, and was forced to issue a full apology. Meanwhile, Mercedes-Benz was forced to apologise for quoting the Dalai Lama in an Instagram post. The quote itself was as banal as you might expect: “Look at the situation from all angles, and you will become more open.” But Party stooges quickly registered their displeasure online, and so Mercedes-Benz deleted the offending post, adopted the penitent posture, and issued the ritual confession: “We will promptly take steps to deepen our understanding of Chinese culture and values, our international staff included, to help standardise our actions to ensure this sort of issue doesn’t happen again.”
This craven behaviour is making the Party confident—so confident, in fact, that it has begun arresting the citizens of other countries. A Swedish citizen was abducted in Thailand and flown to China after publishing books critical of the Chinese authorities, and a British citizen from Hull was snatched in Beijing airport and jailed for comments he’d made on Facebook. He was on his way from the Philippines to the UK and only stopping off briefly in the airport, but he ended up spending two weeks in prison for the crime of “not being a friend to China.” The Party’s thugs have physically assaulted journalists in the US for publishing anti-CCP content, they have kidnapped and tortured booksellers in Hong Kong, and they have attempted to murder independent journalists in Australia. They locked British businessman Peter Humphrey into an iron chair inside a steel cage and drugged him in order to elicit a confession. They hounded New Zealand academic Anne-Marie Brady, punishing her for researching the CCP’s foreign influence by sending their goons to break into her home in Christchurch, tamper with her car, burgle her office, and send her threatening letters.
"When the Lion Wakes: The Global Threat of the Chinese Communist Party", Aaron Sarin, Quilette, 22 Jul 2019
During my time as a student of Asian Studies at the University of Bonn, I attended a panel discussion with a represetative of the Chinese government in 2008 or so. I was impressed then about how unapologetic he was about the Tibet issue, completely denying Tibetan history and culture and just pretending it's always been China. It was so weird to hear that in Germany, a supposedly free country, and you could see that everybody in the room was so taken aback while he was visibly angry that anybody would dare bring up Tibet. I wonder if such a discussion would still take place in that university today.
Last year, a Chinese friend in Berlin told me that his parents asked him if he would like to come back to China at some point. I asked him what he responded and without a millisecond of hesitation he burst out "never!"
Another Chinese friend, an artist based in Beijing, is desperately looking for ways to leave the country. She says people in China "have no soul," the environmental situation is terrible, there is no freedom, it just goes on and on.
I truly admire Chinese history. The Daodejing, the Zhuangzi and some other Chinese classics are my all-time-favorite books. But when I had the chance to learn Chinese at university and maybe eventually live and work in China, I figured it would break my heart to go there because of the political situation. I learned Mongolian instead, and I'm still very glad about this. Of course, if you look at other countries, they are no beacons of freedom and human rights either, but from all I can gather, China is truly a hellhole to live in.
Whether or not China is really such a threat after all, I don't know. It all seems so orchestrated to me in a way. David Rockefeller's infamous 1970's New York Times article "From a China Traveller," praising the Chinese governement. China getting all these UN awards. The economic reforms under Deng Xiaoping that turned China into the world's factory for whatnot certainly had the blesing of the West's power elites in one way or another. And with so much mismanagement that destroys the Chinese environment to the point where it's seriously questionable how long it's gonna be possible to sustain agriculture and to provide their people with drinking water, I really wonder how dangerous the Chinese government really is and how much it's just another puppet in a global theater play.
Portray China as the villain, distract from the loss of liberty in other countries around the world, have wars among the countries to keep people poor, distracted and subservient to their governments.
Re: When the Lion Wakes: The Global Threat of the Chinese Communist Party
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Economic globalization has always been regarded as the highest state of human society’s progress. In the eyes of some Leftists, it has even been crowned as “political correctness.” Anyone who criticizes economic globalization is acting “incorrectly.”
acting incorrectly on China, could mean going to jail (or worse) :censored:
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It was an illusion of governments and World Trade Organization (WTO) officials that the CCP would consciously keep all the promises it made prior to joining. They even believed absurdly that the CCP’s entry into economic globalization will lead to its democratization.
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It now seems that rather than being effectively constrained by WTO rules, the CCP has set a precedent for successfully circumventing WTO rules. Most WTO members do not want to take up with the CCP due to their own financial interests, and the result is that the WTO keeps making concessions to Beijing’s foul play. In this sense, the WTO has lost its ability to restrain violations, and its existence is therefore in doubt.
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Re: When the Lion Wakes: The Global Threat of the Chinese Communist Party
When I see what's happening in China I feel a cold shiver on my spine. I lived for 43 years in a communist country (Romania) so I kind of know how it is, but what's now in China is inimaginable. Big Brother pushed to extreme!
Re: When the Lion Wakes: The Global Threat of the Chinese Communist Party
I watched this video a week or two ago. He explains why he really liked and approved of China his first few years. Then things started to change and life became more confusing and started to become dangerous.
It's a bit 'light weight', perhaps because his wife is Chinese and he wants to protect her and her family in China.
Why I Changed my Opinion on China
Re: When the Lion Wakes: The Global Threat of the Chinese Communist Party
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Posted by
Franny
I watched this video a week or two ago. He explains why he really liked and approved of China his first few years. Then things started to change and life became more confusing and started to become dangerous.
It's a bit 'light weight', perhaps because his wife is Chinese and he wants to protect her and her family in China.
Why I Changed my Opinion on China
Very, very interesting, recommended. In his very next video (below), his Chinese wife explains why she's also now changed her mind on China. And they both live in American now.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=_Ym5gKiNv4g
Re: When the Lion Wakes: The Global Threat of the Chinese Communist Party
Jon Rappoport‘s 2 cents on China and Apple bowing down for the money (like the NBA did as well)
https://blog.nomorefakenews.com/2019...-before-china/
Also interesting that you mention Mongolia, I talked to a woman from Mongolia last weekend and they also seem to have some deep-seated resentments about China.
Also yes, globalization made in China, and with that, notoriously dangerous (exploding batteries) and toxic stuff being brought into every corner of the world.
Re: When the Lion Wakes: The Global Threat of the Chinese Communist Party
In alignment with the premise of under handed tactics by the Chinese Communists government in the opening post by Christian.
The following article further illustrates there are no limits as to what the Chinese Communists government will do. In this case illegal technology procurement to develop an airliner.
Building China's Comac C919 airplane involved a lot of hacking, report says
One of China's most brazen hacking sprees involved intelligence officers, hackers, security researchers, and company insiders
By Catalin Cimpanu for Zero Day | October 14, 2019 -- 15:00 GMT (02:00 AEDT) | Topic: Security
A report published today shines a light on one of China's most ambitious hacking operations known to date, one that involved Ministry of State Security officers, the country's underground hacking scene, legitimate security researchers, and insiders at companies all over the world.
The aim of this hacking operation was to acquire intellectual property to narrow China's technological gap in the aviation industry, and especially to help Comac, a Chinese state-owned aerospace manufacturer, build its own airliner, the C919 airplane, to compete with industry rivals like Airbus and Boeing.
A Crowdstrike report published today shows how this coordinated multi-year hacking campaign systematically went after the foreign companies that supplied components for the C919 airplane.
https://zdnet2.cbsistatic.com/hub/i/...0dcb4/c919.png
The end goal, Crowdstrike claims, was to acquire the needed intellectual property to manufacture all of the C919's components inside China.
Crowdstrike claims that the Ministry of State Security (MSS) tasked the Jiangsu Bureau (MSS JSSD) to carry out these attacks.
The Jiangsu Bureau, in turn, tasked two lead officers to coordinate these efforts. One was in charge of the actual hacking team, while the second was tasked with recruiting insiders working at aviation and aerospace companies.
https://zdnet3.cbsistatic.com/hub/i/...-jssd-gang.png
The hacking team targeted companies between 2010 and 2015, and successfully breached C919 suppliers like Ametek, Honeywell, Safran, Capstone Turbine, GE, and others.
But unlike in other Chinese hacks, where China used cyber-operatives from military units, for these hacks, the MSS took another approach, recruiting local hackers and security researchers.
According to Crowdstrike and a Department of Justice indictment, responsible for carrying out the actual intrusions were hackers that the MSS JSSD recruited from China's local underground hacking scene. Crowdstrike says that some of the team members had a shady history going back as far as 2004.
These hackers were tasked with finding a way inside target networks, where they'd usually deploy malware such as Sakula, PlugX, and Winnti, which they'd use to search for proprietary information and exfiltrate it to remote servers.
In the vast majority of cases, the hackers used a custom piece of malware that was specifically developed for these intrusions. Named Sakula, this malware was developed by a legitimate security researcher named Yu Pingan.
In the rare occasions when the hacking team couldn't find a way inside a target, a second MSS JSSD officer would intervene and recruit a Chinese national working for the target company, and use him to plant Sakula on the victim's network, usually via USB drives.
The group, which Crowdstrike said it tracked as Turbine Panda, was extremely successful. The US cyber-security firm points out that in 2016, after almost six years of non-stop hacking of foreign aviation companies, the Aero Engine Corporation of China (AECC) launched the CJ-1000AX engine, which was set to be used in the upcoming C919 airplane, and replace an engine that had been previously manufactured by a foreign contractor.
Industry reporting points out that the CJ-1000AX displays multiple similarities [1, 2] to the LEAP-1C and LEAP-X engines produced by CFM International, a joint venture between US-based GE Aviation and French aerospace firm Safran, and the foreign contractor that supplied turbine engines for the C919.
US CRACKDOWN
But while the MSS JSSD's hacking efforts might have gone unnoticed, hackers made a mistake when they overstepped and went after targets a little too big -- such as healthcare provider Anthem and the US Office of Personnel Management.
Those intrusions yielded a lot of useful information for recruiting future insiders, but they also brought the full attention of the US government bearing down on their operation. It didn't take too long after that for the US to start piecing the puzzle together.
The first ones to go were the insiders since they were the easiest ones to track down and had no protection from the Chinese government since they were operating on foreign soil.
After that came Yu, the creator of the Sakula malware, who was arrested while attending at a security conference in Los Angeles, and subsequently charged for his involvement in the Anthem and OPM hacks.
Yu's arrest triggered a massive ripple in China's infosec scene. The Chinese government responded by prohibiting Chinese researchers from participating at foreign security conferences, fearing that US authorities might get their hands on other "assets."
Initially, this seemed an odd thing to do, but a subsequent Recorded Future investigation showed how the MSS had deep ties to the Chinese cyber-security research scene, and how the agency was secretly hoarding and delaying vulnerabilities found by Chinese security researchers, many of which were being weaponized by its hackers before being publicly disclosed.
But the biggest hit to Turbine Panda came in late 2018 when western officials arrested Xu Yanjun, the MSS JSSD officer in charge of recruiting insiders at foreign companies.
The arrest of a high-ranking Chinese intelligence officer was the first of its kind, and the biggest intelligence asset transfer since the Cold War, besides Snowden's flight to Russia. Now, US officials are hoping that Xu collaborates for a reduced sentence.
However, Crowdstrike points out that "the reality is that many of the other cyber operators that made up Turbine Panda operations will likely never see a jail cell."
China has yet to extradite any citizen charged with cyber-related crimes.
HACKERS HAVE CONTINUED TO TARGET THE AVIATION INDUSTRY
In the meantime, Turbine Panda appears to have seized most of its operations, most likely crippled due to the arrests, but other Chinese cyber-espionage groups have taken over, such as Emissary Panda, Nightshade Panda, Sneaky Panda, Gothic Panda, Anchor Panda, and many more.
Attacks on foreign aviation firms are expected to continue for the foreseeable future, mainly because Comac's C919 jet isn't the success that the Chinese government expected (see 07:20 mark in the video below), and a fully Chinese airliner is still years away. Efforts are currently underway for building the airliner's next iteration, the C929 model.
For years it's been reported that China has been building its economical might on the back of other countries and its foreign competitors.
The full Crowdstrike report gives a glimpse at how China has been using hackers to do so, although they are not the only component.
The Beijing government itself has played even a bigger role. Historically, they've dangled carrots in the face of foreign companies, promising access to China's booming internal market. Foreign companies have seen themselves forced into joint ventures, only to be forced out later by their former partners after local companies grew with the help of state subsidies and the know-how acquired from the partnership.
In this process, Chinese hackers often helped with "forced technology transfer," breaching business partners and stealing their intellectual property, allowing the Chinese state-owned companies to put out high-end competing products in record time and at very low prices.
And in all of this, the aviation industry has been only one part of the puzzle. Similar hacking efforts have also targeted many other industry verticals, from the maritime industry to hardware manufacturing, and from academic research to biotechnology.
Links: https://www.zdnet.com/article/buildi...zen.yandex.com
Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comac_C919
Re: When the Lion Wakes: The Global Threat of the Chinese Communist Party
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Re: When the Lion Wakes: The Global Threat of the Chinese Communist Party
I wanted to crosspost this video from Houman's thread, it fits.
It reminded me of a few things.
In about 1989 or 1990 I read an article, perhaps NYT, which included a conversation between Kissinger and Nixon. It was about Nixon's upcoming trip to China. Kissinger told Nixon the plan was for Nixon to be the first US president to go to China and open it to the West, it would be a triumph and a big part of his legacy.
What still stands out to me 30 years later is Nixon was told that US manufacturing would eventually be moving there. Nixon seemed surprised and dismayed and said that it would destroy the middle class. Kissinger replied, "we don't want a middle class".
In about 2003 I read an article that was written shortly after Glass-Stegall Act was repealed. The gist of the article is about an 'insider' reporting that the plan was for China to ascend and West (especially the US) to descend. He said it would be about ten years before it would to start to show. I'm guessing the 2007-2008 financial debacle was the first sign as it wouldn't have occurred without repealing Glass-Stegall and fits the timeframe.
The majority of HRC's emails located on the illegal server went to China. (I just heard that the server was actually located in Ukraine.)
In the wake of the tweet supporting the Hong Kong protestors Katherine Austin Fitts recently posted this graphic of a few companies who rushed to kowtow to China.
Please click on it to enlarge for easier reading.
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China vs. the U.S. - Trade War to Cold War? (w/ Kyle Bass and Gen. Robert Spalding)
Is globalization breaking down before our eyes? Kyle Bass sits down with retired Brigadier General Robert Spalding to discuss what’s really happening inside China. Spalding spent years living in China as Defense Attache in Bejing and served as the chief China strategist for the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Spalding brings his deep knowledge of the people, culture, economy, and military posture of China to the table in discussing the multifaceted threat to the US posed by the rising Asian superpower. Filmed on September 27, 2019 in Washington D.C.
