The Chinese media recently reported attacks by Falun Gong members on the Sinosat-1 satellite aimed at blocking China Central Television broadcasts. The media used this as an excuse to launch fierce criticism against Falun Gong, reminiscent of the Cultural Revolution.
Since the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) said that the attacks were launched from outside China, the police in Hong Kong hurriedly began an investigation. Some reports even said the attack was launched from Yangmingshan in Taiwan. At the time of writing, however, no Falun Gong member has claimed responsibility for the attack. Some believe, in fact, that this is a plot by the CCP designed to further discredit the Falun Gong movement.
No matter what one believes, however, beginning on Jan. 1 this year, Falun Gong has interrupted cable-TV broadcasts in Chong-qing, Changchun, Harbin and certain cities in Shandong Province in order to refute various misconceptions stemming from the CCP's defamation campaign. Despite the CCP's best efforts, these broadcast interruptions still occur. What's more, the cities in which broadcasts have been interrupted have large numbers of unemployed workers -- an indication that Falun Gong's influence is stronger among disadvantaged populations in those areas. This is an attempt to break the party's monopoly on information.
Another important weapon for Chinese dissidents -- including Falun Gong members -- is electronic warfare. This is also carried out by some media in the West. Apart from building Web sites to disseminate information to people in China, dissidents also send information that the party refuses to allow to be made public to private e-mail addresses.
This is, however, becoming more and more difficult, since the party, with the help of US-based high-tech companies such as Cisco, has established increasingly effective firewalls. It is regrettable that those US multinationals, considering only their own profits, happily help the Chinese dictators to suppress China's democracy movement.
E-mail in China has also begun to show security flaws. In April, the overseas headquarters of the China Democracy Party (CDP) made an announcement that e-mails sent to China by way of Yahoo China were completely accessible to China's Internet police. The Internet police have not only succeeded in preventing the CDP's second-tier organizations within the country from sending or receiving e-mail, but have also invaded and damaged e-mail accounts while monitoring the organization's on-line recruitment of members. This is because the server for Yahoo China is located inside China.
In June, President Jiang Zemin (江澤民) visited Iceland and on July 1 he went to Hong Kong for the celebrations marking the fifth anniversary of Hong Kong's return to China. In both cases, Beijing gave the local authorities lists of people to be denied entry into the country. It is suspected that some of the names were stolen from e-mails because certain people who regularly appear at demonstrations got through without any trouble, while others, who hadn't previously appeared in person but had participated in the transmission of e-mails, were blacklisted. This has prompted some Falun Gong practitioners and dissidents to change e-mail addresses that may have been compromised.
There have also been reports that during routine exercises northwest of Okinawa, the electronic communications of the aircraft carrier group of the US Seventh Fleet were interfered with by a Chinese warship that had come to monitor the exercise. In response, the US military launched the largest electronic battle that region has seen in years to thoroughly paralyze all PLA communications along the entire coast of China north of Fujian Province.
Similar skirmishes have occured before -- for example in May 1999 when NATO mistakenly bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade and in April last year when a Chinese J-8 fighter crashed after bumping into a US EP-3 surveillance aircraft. On both occasions, Beijing is said to have turned a blind eye to Chinese hackers who attacked US government Web sites. If these rumors are true, electronic warfare is already very much a feature of Sino-US interaction.
This smokeless war that Western nations and grassroots activists in China are waging represents a major threat to China's authoritarian regime. For US high-tech companies to lose sight of the big picture and aid Beijing in its tyranny, however, would be most unfortunate for China, the US and the entire world.
Paul Lin is a political commentator based in New York.
Translated by Perry Svensson and Ethan Harkness
In their recent op-ed “Trump Should Rein In Taiwan” in Foreign Policy magazine, Christopher Chivvis and Stephen Wertheim argued that the US should pressure President William Lai (賴清德) to “tone it down” to de-escalate tensions in the Taiwan Strait — as if Taiwan’s words are more of a threat to peace than Beijing’s actions. It is an old argument dressed up in new concern: that Washington must rein in Taipei to avoid war. However, this narrative gets it backward. Taiwan is not the problem; China is. Calls for a so-called “grand bargain” with Beijing — where the US pressures Taiwan into concessions
The term “assassin’s mace” originates from Chinese folklore, describing a concealed weapon used by a weaker hero to defeat a stronger adversary with an unexpected strike. In more general military parlance, the concept refers to an asymmetric capability that targets a critical vulnerability of an adversary. China has found its modern equivalent of the assassin’s mace with its high-altitude electromagnetic pulse (HEMP) weapons, which are nuclear warheads detonated at a high altitude, emitting intense electromagnetic radiation capable of disabling and destroying electronics. An assassin’s mace weapon possesses two essential characteristics: strategic surprise and the ability to neutralize a core dependency.
Chinese President and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Chairman Xi Jinping (習近平) said in a politburo speech late last month that his party must protect the “bottom line” to prevent systemic threats. The tone of his address was grave, revealing deep anxieties about China’s current state of affairs. Essentially, what he worries most about is systemic threats to China’s normal development as a country. The US-China trade war has turned white hot: China’s export orders have plummeted, Chinese firms and enterprises are shutting up shop, and local debt risks are mounting daily, causing China’s economy to flag externally and hemorrhage internally. China’s
During the “426 rally” organized by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party under the slogan “fight green communism, resist dictatorship,” leaders from the two opposition parties framed it as a battle against an allegedly authoritarian administration led by President William Lai (賴清德). While criticism of the government can be a healthy expression of a vibrant, pluralistic society, and protests are quite common in Taiwan, the discourse of the 426 rally nonetheless betrayed troubling signs of collective amnesia. Specifically, the KMT, which imposed 38 years of martial law in Taiwan from 1949 to 1987, has never fully faced its
RSS