Sources told US diplomats that hacking attacks against Google were ordered by China’s top ruling body and a senior leader demanded action after finding search results critical of him, leaked US government cables show.
One memo sent by the US embassy in Beijing to Washington said a “well-placed contact’’ told diplomats the Chinese government coordinated the attacks late last year on Google Inc under the direction of the Politburo Standing Committee, the apex of Chinese Communist Party power.
The details of the memos, known in diplomatic parlance as cables, could not be verified. Chinese government departments either refused to comment or could not be reached. If true, the cables show the political pressures that were facing Google when it decided to close its China-based search engine in March.
The cable about the hacking attacks against Google, which was classified as secret by US Deputy Chief of Mission Robert Goldberg, was released by WikiLeaks to the New York Times and the Guardian newspapers.
The New York Times said the cable, dated early this year, quoted the contact as saying that propaganda chief Li Changchun (李長春), the fifth-ranked official in the country, and top security official Zhou Yongkang (周永康) oversaw the hacking of Google. Both men are members of the Politburo.
It said that it is unclear if Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao (溫家寶) were aware of these reported actions before Google went public about the attacks in January.
The Times, however, said doubts about the allegation have arisen after the newspaper interviewed the person cited in the cable, who denied knowing who directed the hacking attacks on Google. The Times did not identify the person it interviewed.
Another source said in that cable he believed an official on the top political body was “working actively with Chinese Internet search engine Baidu (百度) against Google’s interests in China.”
Google’s relations with Beijing have been tense since the US-based search giant said in January it no longer wanted to cooperate with Chinese Web filtering following computer hacking attacks on Google’s computer code and efforts to break into the e-mail accounts of human rights activists. Google closed its China-based search engine on March 22 and began routing users to its unfiltered Hong Kong site.
Google’s spokeswoman in Tokyo, Jessica Powell, said the company had no comment on the cables released by WikiLeaks, and on the hacking attacks, referred to a January statement that said it had evidence that the attack came from China. Google did not release any details then.
A man who answered the phone at the spokesperson’s office of the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said no one was around to comment yesterday. Calls to the Chinese State Council Information Office and the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs rang unanswered.
A separate cable released by WikiLeaks showed a Politburo member demanded action against Google after looking for his own name on the search engine and finding criticism of him.
The cable from May 18 last year cable did not identify the leader, but the New York Times reported it was Li.
The cable classified as confidential cited a source as saying the Chinese official had realized that Google’s worldwide site is uncensored, capable of Chinese language searches and search results, and that there is a link from the home page of its China site, google.cn, to google.com.
The official “allegedly entered his own name and found results critical of him” and asked three government ministries to write a report about Google and “demand that the company ceases its ‘illegal activities,’ which include linking to google.com,” the cable said.
The cable said US officials could neither confirm nor deny the details given by the source about the Chinese leadership’s action.
ROLLER-COASTER RIDE: More than five earthquakes ranging from magnitude 4.4 to 5.5 on the Richter scale shook eastern Taiwan in rapid succession yesterday afternoon Back-to-back weather fronts are forecast to hit Taiwan this week, resulting in rain across the nation in the coming days, the Central Weather Administration said yesterday, as it also warned residents in mountainous regions to be wary of landslides and rockfalls. As the first front approached, sporadic rainfall began in central and northern parts of Taiwan yesterday, the agency said, adding that rain is forecast to intensify in those regions today, while brief showers would also affect other parts of the nation. A second weather system is forecast to arrive on Thursday, bringing additional rain to the whole nation until Sunday, it
LANDSLIDES POSSIBLE: The agency advised the public to avoid visiting mountainous regions due to more expected aftershocks and rainfall from a series of weather fronts A series of earthquakes over the past few days were likely aftershocks of the April 3 earthquake in Hualien County, with further aftershocks to be expected for up to a year, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Based on the nation’s experience after the quake on Sept. 21, 1999, more aftershocks are possible over the next six months to a year, the agency said. A total of 103 earthquakes of magnitude 4 on the local magnitude scale or higher hit Hualien County from 5:08pm on Monday to 10:27am yesterday, with 27 of them exceeding magnitude 5. They included two, of magnitude
CONDITIONAL: The PRC imposes secret requirements that the funding it provides cannot be spent in states with diplomatic relations with Taiwan, Emma Reilly said China has been bribing UN officials to obtain “special benefits” and to block funding from countries that have diplomatic ties with Taiwan, a former UN employee told the British House of Commons on Tuesday. At a House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee hearing into “international relations within the multilateral system,” former Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) employee Emma Reilly said in a written statement that “Beijing paid bribes to the two successive Presidents of the [UN] General Assembly” during the two-year negotiation of the Sustainable Development Goals. Another way China exercises influence within the UN Secretariat is
Taiwan’s first drag queen to compete on the internationally acclaimed RuPaul’s Drag Race, Nymphia Wind (妮妃雅), was on Friday crowned the “Next Drag Superstar.” Dressed in a sparkling banana dress, Nymphia Wind swept onto the stage for the final, and stole the show. “Taiwan this is for you,” she said right after show host RuPaul announced her as the winner. “To those who feel like they don’t belong, just remember to live fearlessly and to live their truth,” she said on stage. One of the frontrunners for the past 15 episodes, the 28-year-old breezed through to the final after weeks of showcasing her unique