The People’s Liberation Army may have been funding a massive group of Chinese hackers since 2006, according to a 74-page report by the US-based security firm Mandiant. Reading like the backpage of a Michael Crichton novel, the report details how a large hacking group, APT1, based in the Pudong district of Shanghai has been responsible for hundreds of cyber attacks in the last seven years.

87 percent of APT1’s hacking victims were based in English-speaking countries, according to the report, and include “development agencies, foreign governments in which English is one of multiple official languages, and multinational conglomerates that primarily conduct their business in English.”

We believe that organizations in all industries related to China’s strategic priorities are potential targets of APT1’s comprehensive cyber espionage campaign. While we have certainly seen the group target some industries more heavily than others (see Figure 13), our  observations confirm that APT1 has targeted at least four of the seven strategic emerging industries that China identified in its 12th Five  Year Plan.

APT1 also has many suspicious structural similarities to a PLA unit. Mandiant believes APT1’s offices are located in a 12-story building fitted out by China Telecom and employs hundreds to thousands of employees, while “PLA Unit 61398 is also located in precisely the same area from which APT1 activity appears to originate.”

For its part, China/PLA has denied the allegations, the Washington Post reports.

The Mandiant report goes into the nitty-gritty of the hacking process, but the takeaway is really this: never, ever open a strange attachment. Ever.

It’s hard to ignore giant killer smog when it descends on your nation’s capital – and also as Hurricane Sandy proved in Manhattan and Brooklyn, it’s hard for the media to ignore it when it affects many of your nation’s top journalists.

It’s not just coverage of killer smog, though, that’s taking over the news, but the environment in general. As of something like 10 am Beijing time, all of Xinhua’s lead stories were about environment-related issues: China’s entry into the International Renewable Energy Agency, plans to look more into nuclear power, petrochemical leaks, crude oil, etc.

My cyber-crush Sinocism had really excellent coverage of this phenomenon in the Monday roundup:

The front page of Monday’s People’s Daily has two articles on the pollution crisis–美丽中国，从健康呼吸开始 (Beautiful China Starts With Healthy Breathing) and 雾霾还将持续几天 各地应对重点：尾气、燃煤、扬尘. The Saturday and Sunday CCTV Evening News, watched by hundred of millions of people, both devoted much of the broadcasts to the air pollution crisis. Today’s Global Times has a very interesting editorial on China’s environmental challenges–环保和发展如何取舍应由社会决定.

This is not an atypical media response: a major crisis happens, the mainstream media latches on, and then something else happens and everyone moves on. (In Chicago, my hometown, it’s like we totally forget we’re the murder capital of America when there’s coverage of shootings elsewhere.)

It’s interesting that though the smog crisis pushes a debate about press censorship/Southern Weekend off the national radar, it does open up an opportunity for another sort of media transparency, as man-made environment problems continue to plague many of China’s cities. That’s because environment contamination, etc., is a tangible thing your correspondents can suffer through, whereas censorship and transparency are abstract concepts.

Sinocism had further things to say:

Media coverage of the crisis is remarkable. Clearly it is impossible to pretend that the air is not polluted or that the health risks are not significant, so are the propaganda authorities just recognizing reality in allowing coverage? Or is there something more going on here, as perhaps the new government wants to both demonstrate a commitment to transparency and accountability as well as use this crisis to further the difficult reforms towards a more sustainable development model?

This probably isn’t a watershed moment, but environmental reporting could maybe kinda be a stepping stone for greater transparency.

This is why all journalism anthologies have stories about chemicals leaks and cancer: because it’s easier to connect the dots there than in a story about, say, how corporate ownership of media in America is limiting press freedom by eradicating local reporting. Stick with stuff you can measure.

(Sinocism; image via Bill Bishop’s Twitter, @niubi)

China’s Internet censors are really outdoing themselves with the Southern Weekend scandal. Not only have they blocked searches for “Southern Weekend” on Sina Weibo and other microblogs, they’re making some attempts to block discussion within the Chinese diaspora.

Some writers at Tech in Asia conducted a little experiment today with WeChat (Weixin), a Chinese texting app developed by Tencent, and found trying to type Southern Weekend in Chinese resulted in this Orwellian message:  

The message “南方周末” you sent contains restricted words. Please check it again.

Not easily defeated, they tried again.

We’ve tested it out going from users in China to Thailand (blocked), Thailand to China (blocked), and even Thailand to Singapore (blocked); the prohibited words are not sent at all. The name of the magazine can be sent in English.

Thoughts on why it’s not blocked in English?

In related matters, China Digital Times has a full rundown of search terms blocked on Sina Weibo thanks to Southern Weekend:

January 6-7
- south (南): nán
- place (方): fāng
- week (周): zhōu
- end (末): mò

January 7 onwards
-Southern

-Weekend

- nf + zm

- nanfang
- read and understand China (读懂中国): Southern Weekly’s motto is “Here, read and understand China” (在这里，读懂中国)
- China dream (中国梦): The title of the original Southern Weekly editorial was “China’s Dream, the Dream of Constitutionalism” (中国梦宪政梦).
- constitutional government (宪政): Also translated as “constitutionalism.”
- censor (审查)
- propaganda department (宣传部)
- Central Propaganda [Department] (中宣)
- violate the constitution (违宪)
- dedication message (献词)
- message of greeting (贺词)

Nonetheless, South China Morning Post assures us that celebrities are finding their way to voice their opinions via social media:

[Former Google China chief Li Kaifu], a Taiwanese-born American, said on his microblog: “From now on, I will only talk about east, west and north, as well as Monday through to Friday” – omitting references to the south or the weekend. The newspaper’s Chinese name is literally translated as “Southern Weekend”.

Personally, I think “restricted words” sounds like a great title for a high school poem, or a linguistics dissertation.

UPDATE, 1/12, 2:09 pm: Tencent called the case a “glitch,” but Tech in Asia replies, “But there’s clear evidence (see the screenshot collage above) of very specific ‘sensitive’ phrases being blocked by the app – particularly the Chinese name of the outspoken magazine Southern Weekend.”

Now China’s WeChat App is Censoring Its Users Globally (Tech in Asia)

China may finally be reforming its frightening system of “re-education through labor” (RTL), according to state news agencies – but to what extent? While state media initially reported Monday that the CPC Central Committee would be pushing through a proposal to end the system by 2013, officials quickly backpedaled and settled on “reforming” the system, according to China Digital Times.

Since 1957, the system has allowed police to “detain people for up to four years without an open trial,” and has been a convenient way for the government to deal with political dissidents and critics. Yet the Ministry of Justice has been seeking ways to reform it for some time, according to the Dui Hua Foundation’s Human Rights Journal, a US-based NGO that focuses on prison justice in China:

After a brief lull in coverage in the run-up to the 18th Party Congress, the Chinese press has given renewed attention to cases in which RTL has been used in questionable ways. Significant coverage was devoted recently to the cases of Ren Jianyu, one of several individuals from Chongqing who have challenged the RTL decisions made against them for things they posted online, and Zhao Meifu, a 54-year-old woman sent to RTL in Gansu after a visit last month to Beijing, where her son is a university student.

Ren Jianyu spent 15 months imprisoned without trial for criticizing disgraced politician Bo Xilai, while Zhao Meifu was a Lanzhou land-grab petitioner who was sentenced despite her frail health. These two cases, along with others (including dubious ones as the “slave labor letter” found in Oregon), have put China’s forced labor system in the international limelight.

Dui Hua also translated coverage by Xiaoxiang Morning News reporters who in November investigated pilot reform projects to limit sole police involvement in case handling and sentencing in Gansu, Shandong, Jiangsu, Henan, Chongqing and Heilongjiang.

As of 2008, according to China Daily, 160,000 people were officially imprisoned in the country’s 350 forced labor camps – the latest data available from the Ministry of Justice. In 2009, the United Nations estimated the figure was closer to 190,000 detainees at 320 camps. For the entire country, the International Labour Organization reports around 11,700,000 people worked in forced labor conditions in China in 2012, a figure that includes everything from the sex trade to manufacturing.

While China’s critics are viewing the latest announcement with skepticism, we have seen official criticism of forced labor, however tacit, within the legal community. According to Dui Hua’s translation of the Xiaoxiang Morning News:

“Something that originally was supposed to be done together by civil affairs, public security, and labor [bureaus] is now being done by public security alone,” says Peking University Law School Professor Jiang Ming’an. This situation where “the player is also the referee” has long been the subject of public criticism.

“Although they are convenient for public security organs to use, in actual practice the procedures aren’t clear, which leads to all sorts of problems,” says one legal scholar. The mutation of the RTL system has not only turned it into a stability-maintenance tool for controlling petitioners but also become a hotbed for avoiding the risks involved in handling cases and blending interests.

Meanwhile, human rights organizations are continuing calls for a total abolition of the system.

(Photo CFP)