Category: Relations – Sino-American

GhostNet At The Feast

David Gelernter, the computer scientist who was maimed by the Unabomber a few years back, discusses the discovery of a Trojan horse program originating from China:

Last weekend, a report by researchers at the Munk Center of the University of Toronto revealed "GhostNet," a computer espionage virus that had infected around 1,300 computers worldwide–including many "high value" targets where diplomatic and national security information was stored . . .  Experts disagree on whether the evidence proves China's guilt or merely suggests it overwhelmingly.  [emphasis added]

Nice turn of phrase there.  The Chinese government's reaction was certainly telling.  Chinese officials COULD have calmly announced that **ahem** freelance hackers must be at fault, and that they'd launch an investigation to find those responsible.

Instead what the world heard was the shoe on the table.  LIES, LIES, these are all LIES!  Those devious CANADIAN schemers are trying to start a new COLD WAR for their own malicious purposes!

Very . . . Kremlinesque.  China launches Cold War-style cyber attacks — then accuses the VICTIMS of its attacks of trying to start a Cold War.

Gelernter outlines why China's cyberwarfare was so difficult to uncover:

The focused nature of the attack helped it succeed. Businesses and other organizations that detect viruses are less likely to notice and get hold of a new virus that attacks a mere thousand computers instead of hundreds of thousands. Until the target organizations do get hold of the virus, they can't analyze it and use "signature detection" and related techniques to warn users when infected cyberstuff arrives on their machines.  [emphasis added]

His conclusion?

GhostNet reminds us that the new Cold War won't be fought with the threats and weapons of the old one.  Americans might have less trouble keeping in mind occupied Tibet, the war on Chinese Christianity, the imprisonment and torture of political dissidents and members of Falun Gong, the one-child-only decree and other specimens of PRC tyranny if they didn't find Asian-on-Asian violence so deucedly boring.  Instead of paying attention to those issues, we simper about mutual respect and cooperation–without acknowledging the fact that China is today the world's most powerful Evil Empire.  The Soviets favored large armies and nuclear arsenals, but China is our new Cold War enemy, and her favorite weapons will also be novel: financial weapons, trade weapons, cyberweapons.  Welcome to Cold War II.  [emphasis added]

UPDATE:  Just ran across reports of Chinese cyber-warfare against India, from the Truth about China blog.  More about that from the Times of India.

China, America and the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea

Ill-informed be the reader who relies on Taiwan's China Post for knowledge of this subject.  From an editorial on March 24th:

The 1982 U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea [UNCLOS – The Foreigner], to which the U.S. is not a signatory . . .

Wrong.  President Bill Clinton signed the treaty all the way back in 1994.  What IS true is that the American senate has never RATIFIED the agreement. 

A distinction without a difference?  Hardly, as we shall next see:

But the U.S. does not subscribe to [UNCLOS] rules on [Exclusive Economic Zones].

Wrong again.  Ever since the Reagan administration, the American government has committed itself to abiding by the terms of the treaty — EXCEPT for the provisions governing deep sea mining.  So the U.S. DOES subscribe to UNCLOS rules on EEZs (for the most part), despite the fact that America hasn't ratified the agreement.

(And, just to make this clear, those deep sea mining provisions are utterly irrelevant to the current disagreements America & China are having over China's EEZ in the South China Sea.)

[An American research ship's visit to China's EEZ] could be even more provocative than the USNS Impeccable's mission that led to the recent standoff.

Beijing's stance on its EEZ over the Impeccable incident should give the Columbia University scientists pause for thought.  Right or wrong, it has accused the U.S. of violating international and Chinese laws by conducting surveillance in its exclusive zone.

Much of this is not merely wrong; it's wrong BY DEFINITION.  The Post makes the incredible claim here that the Impeccable's surveillance mission was an American provocation, REGARDLESS of whether China's legal arguments are right or wrong.

That's tantamount to saying that ANYTHING is a provocation, just as long as Beijing says it is.  International law don't mean squat, in other words.

We can dismiss out of hand the Post's bizarre implicit claim that China's whims make it the ultimate authority on international law.  But we should be willing to admit that if the UNCLOS prohibits intelligence-gathering in EEZs, then international law is on China's side.  And, and if this is the case, then the presence of the Impeccable in China's Exclusive Economic Zone WAS an American provocation.

Conversely, if the UNCLOS doesn't prohibit such intelligence gathering, then international law is on America's side.  Which makes the Impeccable incident, in actuality, a CHINESE provocation.

Let's go to the treaty to decide for ourselves, shall we?

Part V of UNCLOS describes the rights and jurisdiction of coastal states over their EEZs.  The reader will find that there is nothing — NOTHING — in this part of the treaty forbidding naval surveillance in Exclusive Economic Zones.  Oh sure, you might find that Article 60.5 permits coastal states to establish 500 meter "no-go" zones around oil rig platforms and the like.  Which of course is interesting and commonsensical, but has no bearing on the Impeccable case.

If one looks a bit back in the treaty, one DOES find that Part II, Article 19.2 (c) prohibits acts "aimed at collecting information to the prejudice of the defence or security of the coastal State".  But Part II of the treaty deals only with TERRITORIAL SEAS, which international law defines as extending 12 nautical miles from land (UNCLOS, Part II, Article 3).

Since the Impeccable was operating 65 nautical miles (120 kilometers) from Hainan Island (and not 12 nmi), it was within China's EEZ, not China's Territorial Seas.  Therefore, the relevant part of UNCLOS is Part V, not Part II.

Ergo, the Impeccable was well within its rights under international law to conduct intelligence operations.  By interfering with those operations, it was China that was the provocateur, as I have demonstrated.

Let's go back to the Post's editorial, which in spite of getting all this wrong, does manage to get at least ONE thing right:

A U.S. survey vessel is risking another confrontation in the waters around China when it arrives in the region this week . . .

The operators of the [civilian] research ship, the Marcus G. Langseth . . . have permission to conduct a seismic survey of the ocean floor from the governments of Taiwan, the Philippines and Japan.  Beijing was not informed.

This IS true, because Part II, Article 56.1 (b) (ii) of the UNCLOS clearly states:

In the exclusive economic zone, the coastal State has . . . jurisdiction as provided for in the relevant provisions of this Convention with regard to . . . marine scientific research.  [emphasis added]

Thus, while international law was on America's side in the case of the Impeccable conducting intelligence work in China's EEZ, it's on CHINA'S side if the Langseth performs marine research in those very same waters without Chinese permission.

May seem strange that coastal states can legally prevent innocent research but not OPEN SPYING within their EEZs, but there you go.  It wasn't me who drew up the document.

UPDATE:  Interestingly enough, the Marcus G. Langseth's mission is being conducted mostly for Taiwan's benefit.  From the Langseth's pre-survey statement:

This project will provide a great deal of information about the nature of the earthquakes around Taiwan and will lead to a better assessment of earthquake hazard in the area. The information obtained from this study will help the people and government of Taiwan to better assess the potential for future seismic events and may thus mitigate some of the loss of life and economic disruptions that will inevitably occur.

UPDATE #2:  During her Jan 13/09 confirmation hearing, Hillary Clinton revealed that the Obama administration will press for U.S. ratification of the UNCLOS.  (You'll have to scroll down almost halfway through the transcript, to her question session with Senator Murkowski)

CLINTON: Yes, [ratification will be a priority for the administration], and it will be because it is long overdue, Senator. The Law of the Sea Treaty is supported by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, environmental, energy, and business interests. I have spoken with some of our — our naval leaders, and they consider themselves to be somewhat disadvantaged by our not having become a party to the Law of the Sea.

Our industrial interests, particularly with seabed mining, just shut up.  I mean, there's nothing that they can do because there's no protocol that they can feel comfortable that gives them the opportunity to pursue commercial interests.  [emphasis added]

Seems pretty damn arrogant for the Secretary of State to dismiss America's mining companies so rudely.  Reminded me of an old song, from back in the day:

Joe Dolce's Shaddup You Face

I notice Samuel L. Jackson has his own unique take on some of the lyrics.  Heh.

[Mar 30/09:  A commenter informs me that Mrs. Clinton wasn't telling the mining companies to shut UP; she was really trying to say that the mining companies had shut DOWN their deep sea operations.  You gotta admit though, the words, "shut up," really leap off the transcript.]

UPDATE #3:  Enough fun stuff.  Here's an article by Robert D. Kaplan that ought to be required reading.  Somewhat sensationally titled, "How We Would Fight China," the fighting Kaplan refers to is more like the Cold War kind.  Written in 2005, some of it's obviously out of date — concerns over the possibility that Taiwan might unilaterally declare de jure independence have surely given way to concerns over Taiwan's Finlandization by its neighbor to the west.

The piece is quite prescient with regards to China's games of naval brinksmanship, however:

What we can probably expect from China in the near future is specific demonstrations of strength—like its successful forcing down of a U.S. Navy EP-3E surveillance plane in the spring of 2001. Such tactics may represent the trend of twenty-first-century warfare better than anything now happening in Iraq—and China will have no shortage of opportunities in this arena. During one of our biennial Rim of the Pacific naval exercises the Chinese could sneak a sub under a carrier battle group and then surface it. They could deploy a moving target at sea and then hit it with a submarine- or land-based missile, demonstrating their ability to threaten not only carriers but also destroyers, frigates, and cruisers. (Think about the political effects of the terrorist attack on the USS Cole, a guided-missile destroyer, off the coast of Yemen in 2000—and then think about a future in which hitting such ships will be easier.) They could also bump up against one of our ships during one of our ongoing Freedom of Navigation exercises off the Asian coast. The bumping of a ship may seem inconsequential, but keep in mind that in a global media age such an act can have important strategic consequences. Because the world media tend to side with a spoiler rather than with a reigning superpower, the Chinese would have a built-in political advantage.

UPDATE #4:  Move over China Post, the Beeb gets it wrong, too.

Once more people: the Impeccable was operating in China's Exclusive Economic Zone, NOT its Territorial Sea.  Like the China Post, the BBC gets the two hopelessly confused.

UPDATE #5:  The pre-survey statement of the Marcus G. Langseth is quite explicit about what route the ship will be taking:

The survey would take place from March through July 2009 in the Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ) of Taiwan, China, Philippines, and Japan, in water depths ranging from <100 to >1000 m.  [emphasis added]

It seems highly unlikely that Columbia University would have accidentally overlooked the importance of asking the Chinese for permission to conduct the survey. 

So it's speculation time.  Perhaps the reason the Chinese were not approached was that the U.S. Government wished to send them a message:  If you're not going to abide by the terms of the treaty, then why should WE?

Chinese Deny American Vessels Shelter During Storm

On Saturday, Taiwanese papers reported that the U.S.S. Kitty Hawk was refused entry into Hong Kong at the last minute by Beijing authorities.*  Beijing’s still seething over the Dalai Lama’s visit to Washington.

Today’s AP however**, featured a story detailing another incident which was of even greater concern to the U.S. Navy:

[Admiral Gary Roughead] said he was even more troubled by China’s refusal, several days before the Kitty Hawk incident, to let two U.S. Navy minesweepers enter Hong Kong harbor to escape an approaching storm and receive fuel. The minesweepers, the Patriot and the Guardian, were instead refueled at sea and returned safely to their home port in Japan, he said.

"As someone who has been going to sea all my life, if there is one tenet that we observe it’s when somebody is in need you provide (assistance) and you sort it out later," the admiral said. "And that, to me, was more bothersome, so I look forward to having discussions with the PLA navy leadership," he said, referring to the People’s Liberation Army.

[Admiral Timothy] Keating made a similar point. He called the denial in the case of the minesweeping ships "a different kettle of fish for us – in some ways more disturbing, more perplexing" than the Kitty Hawk case because the Chinese action violated an unwritten international code for assisting ships in distress.  [emphasis added throughout]

Next time the American navy needs a safe port during a storm, it might want to consider Keelung or Kaohsiung, instead.  It’s, ah, entirely possible that Taiwan would provide it a more hospitable reception.

The Chinese want to send little messages?  Well, perhaps its time they learned that that’s something other people can do as well.

(Hat tip to The Tank.)

* In it’s coverage of the Kitty Hawk incident, Taiwan’s China Post couldn’t help emphasizing the anti-American angle, with the lurid front page headline, ‘World of Suzie Wong’ hurt by aborted visit.  ‘Cause like, isn’t it obvious that hookers losing their income is the most important part of the story?

** Or possibly yesterday’s AP.  Things get tricky when you’re dealing with the International Date Line…

UPDATE (Nov 30/07): Yesterday’s Taipei Times featured this story as well.

UPDATE (Dec 16/07):  Tardy in posting this update, but the View from Taiwan had some really excellent analysis of this:

Anyone who has observed China’s relations with the outside world for any length of time has seen this pattern again and again. In the midst of negotiations with the Vatican, it consecrates two bishops for the state Church. In the midst of negotiations over the Torch coming to Taiwan, it denies a visa to the representative of the city of Kaohsiung to discuss games held there in 2009. Arriving in India for negotiations, its ambassador announces a whole Indian state is part of China. Some months back the Chinese government shut down an expat magazine in China that was widely considered the most sympathetic and supportive expat rag in the nation. China gets the Olympics, and crackdowns on the internet, and journalists intensify, while state security arrests double. Catch the pattern?

Now Bejing has denied Kitty Hawk a berth in Hong Kong, thus abusing the one service in the US government that has consistently supported it, to the extent that the previous head of PACOM apparently instructed his underlings not to hold military exercises using Beijing as the imagined target. The one service that has consistently displayed an eagerness to form relationships with China. The one service that has imagined itself in partnership with China.

The fact is that in doing all these things, the Navy demonstrated that it had arrayed itself in the proper position of suppliant to the Dragon Throne. Just like those petitioners living in the petitioner’s village outside of Beijing, or the local peasant who comes before the mighty magistrate to ask for his benevolence. The Navy thinks it has a right to reciprocity, since it has given so much. But in China there are no rights that apply to one’s superiors — superiors give things out of benevolence, and in both receiving petitions and in handing out benevolence, the great demonstrate their greatness. (In addition to displays of benevolence, the Throne also demonstrates its greatness by abusing those who abase themselves before it. They should be grateful for Our Attention.) From this perspective, when the Navy petitioned China for openness, it validated the greatness of China, and presented itself as a suppliant for imperial benevolence. When it made offerings of information and access to the Throne, that is only right, for gift-making is the proper behavior of suppliants, and the Throne in its Benevolence accepts all gifts. Most regrettably, with its insistence on reciprocity, the Navy has defined itself as a collection of small children making wearisome demands on the Throne. If the Navy really understood its relationship to the greatness of the Dragon Throne, it would wait humbly for some display of benevolence, just like those petitioners in the petitioners village outside of Beijing.

Finally, my tongue-in-cheek suggestion that the U.S. Navy should have paid a visit to a Taiwanese port turned out to be not entirely off the mark – the Kitty Hawk steamed through the Taiwan Strait in response to being denied harbor privileges in Hong Kong.  Michael Turton has more on that here.

Hello Dalai

The Drudge Report featured a photo of the Dalai Lama shaking hands with President Bush a few days ago with the headline, "Take that, China!"  Meanwhile, yesterday’s Taipei Times detailed China’s calm, measured response to the U.S. Congress’ decision to award the Dalai Lama with the Congressional Gold Medal

"The move of the United States is a blatant interference with China’s internal affairs which has severely hurt the feelings of the Chinese people and gravely undermined the relations between China and the United States," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao (劉建超) told a regular news briefing.

He said Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi (楊潔箎) had summoned US Ambassador Clark Randt to express a "strong protest to the US government."

"China urges the United States to take effective measures immediately to remove the terrible impact of its erroneous act, cease supporting and conniving with the separatist activities of the Tibet independence forces … and take concrete steps to protect China-US relations," Liu said.

It’d be nice to think the Chinese over-reaction gives Americans some insight into what Taiwan faces whenever its gargantuan neighbor hyperventilates over trivialities.  The next time China hyperventilates over some supposed Taiwanese "provocation," Taiwanese leaders and overseas representatives need to remind Americans of the 2007 Dalai Lama affair, and tell them China’s tantrum de jour is all par for the course.  As Michael Turton says, for China, acting provoked isn’t an honest reaction, but a policy choice.

China Arms Islamofascists

One of the unstated corollaries to Kagan’s piece in the Policy Review is that China can be expected to play the role of the "Arsenal of Autocracy."  Some evidence for that over at the Weekly Standard (allowing that Islamofascism represents a peculiar kind of autocracy):

The Pentagon has known since last August that the Iranian Revolutionary Guards had supplied Chinese-made C-802 antiship missiles with advanced anti-jamming countermeasures to Hezbollah in Lebanon. One slammed into the Israeli destroyer Hanit killing four sailors on July 14, 2006, during the Lebanon war.

Furthermore:

This year, many truckloads of small arms and explosives direct from Chinese government-owned factories to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards have been transshipped to Iraq and Afghanistan, where they are used against American soldiers and Marines and NATO forces. Since April, according to a knowledgeable Bush administration official, "vast amounts" of Chinese-made large caliber sniper rifles, "millions of rounds" of ammunition, rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs), and "IED [improvised explosive device] components" have been convoyed from Iran into Iraq and to the Taliban in Afghanistan.

[…]

Why China is "doing it" need not be a mystery. In 2004, Beijing’s top America analyst, Wang Jisi, noted, "The facts have proven that it is beneficial for our international environment to have the United States militarily and diplomatically deeply sunk in the Mideast to the extent that it can hardly extricate itself." It is sobering to consider that China’s small-arms proliferation behavior since then suggests that this principle is indeed guiding Chinese foreign policy.

Jokes That Don’t Translate Well

Guess I’m going to have to stop the self-deprecating humor I occasionally use in Taiwan about my past life as a "professional student."  Because it turns out that the phrase has a rather more ominous connotation here than it does in the West:

Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) presidential candidate Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) office filed a defamation lawsuit [on July 3rd] against Cabinet Spokesman Shieh Jhy-wey (謝志偉) implying Ma served as a "professional student" for the party whenhe was at Harvard University.

In Taiwan, the term "professional student" usually refers to those who studied abroad on KMT scholarships and worked as campus spies for the party, reporting on pro-independence Taiwanese students. [emphasis added]

The story’s a bit old*, though I bring it up because I ran across this story about China sending its own "professional students" to America:

In a manner similar to Chinese espionage efforts, Chinese students are encouraged to gather seemingly innocuous data for the Chinese government.  For example, who has been saying anti-Chinese government things on campus?  Which Americans, especially Chinese-Americans, appear most likely to support the Chinese government?

As the article says, this too, is nothing new.  Relatively new however, are proposals by the KMT to allow Chinese students to study in Taiwan.  Left unaddressed in these proposals is the possibility probability that many of these Chinese students will be tasked with identifying future collaborators, and marking other Taiwanese students for blacklists, re-education camps – or worse.

It would indeed be a black joke – one translatable into any language – if the Taiwanese, having recently been freed of "professional students," were to elect an alleged one to the PRESIDENCY, and as a result, had their centers of higher education once more filled with that particular sub-set of humanity.

* The story may be old, but as the The View from Taiwan notes, it’s one that isn’t dying, and it may have significant ramifications on the Taiwanese presidential elections in 2008.

UPDATE (Aug 4/07):  Fixed the Strategy Page link.

Chinese Lebensraum in North America?

Over at The Corner, John Derbyshire comments on a purported speech given by one Chi Haotian, in which this apparently well-respected Chinese Communist party member (and former Secretary of Defense) stated his convictions that Hitler was too soft, a future China will need lebensraum, and to that end, the U.S.A. ought to be depopulated with biological weapons.

I think Derb gets it about right:

The authenticity of the piece needs addressing.  The Epoch Times is a Falun Gong publication and its journalistic standards have been questioned.  I take the speech to be authentic just on general grounds.  I.e. that is how old Party warhorses—like my father-in-law—tend to talk.  [Emphasis added]

To what degree Chi’s sentiments can be said to represent Chinese govt. policy is highly debatable.  Certainly these sentiments are widespread in China, particularly among young males.  There is a strong vein of amoral fascism in modern Chinese political thinking, along with the ancient conviction of racial superiority.

[…]

The value of documents like this is to show us a ruthless and amoral strain that is not uncommon in modern Chinese thinking, but which is inchoate and, in my opinion, not likely driving any current policy.

Just a little something to keep in mind next time Taiwan’s China Post airily dismisses the merest possibility that China could someday pose a danger to world peace.