Tuesday China links:

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon arrives in China today for a four-day visit aimed at cementing ties with China’s new leaders. It will be his sixth as UN Chief but his first since China’s leadership transition. Ahead of Ban’s trip the United Nations’ launched a WeChat account. In an interview with Xinhua, Ban said that the Korean Peninsula, Syria, Mali, and the Democratic Republic of Congo will all be on the agenda of his talks with Chinese leaders.

In a trip to Khartoum, Chinese special envoy to Africa Zhong Jianhua appears to have successfully mediated (for now at least) the latest spat between Sudan and South Sudan over oil sales, the Sudan Tribune reports. For more on China’s involved in the Sudanese conflict, read U.S. Ambassador David H. Shinn’s piece on The Diplomat from last September.

On Monday the Communist Youth League of China (CYLC), which has close ties to former President Hu Jintao and current Premier Li Keqiang, began its 17^th National Congress. Politburo Standing Committee Member and Propaganda Czar, Liu Yunshan, delivered the keynote opening speech.

Many are accusing China’s national football (soccer) team of corruption after Saturday’s loss to Thailand—which is ranked 47 places below the Chinese team.

In his weekly Dealbook column, Bill Bishop gives an overview of the State Council’s (Cabinet) new package to combat air pollution. Bloomberg News reports that part of this package will include providing easier financing to China’s already troubled solar panel makers.

Over at the Lowy Interpreter, Peking University’s Simone van Nieuwenhuizen throws cold water on China’s recent Middle East initiative. “While China appears to have the intention of playing a greater role in the Middle East peace process, it still lacks the capacity,” she writes.

What did we miss? Want to share an important article with other readers? Please submit your links in the comment box below!

Over June 7 and 8, Chinese President Xi Jinping met with his U.S. counterpart President Barack Obama at the Annenberg Estate at Rancho Mirage, California, in what was the first face-to-face encounter between the two leaders since China’s change of government.

The summit attracted particular attention for two reasons. First, the nature of the meeting: no salutes, no banquets, no cumbersome protocol...indeed, no neckties. On the surface, at least, it was more like a gathering of friends, with a relaxed atmosphere yet deeper exchange.

The second factor is the sheer importance of Sino-U.S. relations to the world. China is the planet’s largest developing country and the leading representative of the emerging world. The U.S. is the largest developed country and the principal force behind the creation and maintenance of the current world order. To a considerable extent, their relationship will set the direction of world affairs for the foreseeable future.

Perhaps even more importantly, the summit will have unusual symbolic significance for the two countries themselves. Commentators and analysts in both countries view bilateral relations at a critical crossroads: there are some major opportunities to move forward, but also some significant constraints.

Whither the China-U.S. relationship? That depends very much on the political wisdom and strategic judgments of the two countries’ leaders. The summit sought to set a general direction, and will surely have a strategic impact on relations.

For one thing, whether we look at China and the U.S. themselves or at the evolving international situation, the bilateral relationship is clearly entering a new phase. The question now is how to build a new type of relationship between great powers that features equality and trust, tolerance, mutual learning and win-win cooperation. To answer this, both Xi and Obama should draw on the lessons to be learned from the development of relations to this point.

And whether it is the bilateral relationship, or security in Northeast Asia, or the global economic recovery and other global challenges, Beijing and Washington need strategic communication and long-term planning to coordinate positions, control differences and seek common ground.

In Sino-U.S. relations, we can identify both traditional and emerging issues. In fact, traditional issues, like Taiwan, are to some extent predictable, manageable and controllable. Both sides have made their principles clear and the questions have been extensively considered over many years. In other words, although these problems may not be able to be solved in the short term, they are not the variables in contemporary Sino-U.S. relations.

In contrast, emerging issues like cybersecurity, intellectual property protection or escalating tensions between China and its neighbors are new factors with potential implications for Sino-U.S. relations. These factors may be more significant and more difficult to predict and control.

The recent agenda for negotiations and the first China policy document produced during Obama’s second term, Military and Security Developments Involving the People's Republic of China 2013, offer a glimpse of the new factors influencing bilateral relations. The two leaders must promptly and effectively communicate on these strategic issues involving national security and the development of bilateral relations. Indeed, that’s why the Xi-Obama summit was moved forward.

The summit covered topics of pressing concern for both parties, and saw some extremely frank and constructive discussion. For example, when talking about cybersecurity issues – a major concern for the United States – Xi pointed out that new technology was a double-edged sword, and cybersecurity issues were one of the side effects. He then stressed that cybersecurity was not only of concern to the United States; as a victim of attacks China also seeks security in cyberspace.

Meanwhile, Xi turned attention to Sino-U.S. military relations. During the joint press briefing, China’s president said the two countries should “improve and develop bilateral military ties and push forward the construction of a new type of military relations.” This reflects both the self-confidence of new China's leader and is a demonstration of China's strategic transparency.

It is well known that military issues are both a weak point and a barometer of the bilateral relationship, and are one of the major strategic concerns that the U.S. has about China. One of the key features of the Obama administration's China policy has been to build military exchange mechanisms to attenuate concerns, reduce misperceptions and remove the risk of miscalculation. Xi’s words can be taken as a positive response to Obama’s recommendations, and that in turn will provide an important platform based on which the two countries can build mutual trust.

Of course, one summit is not going to resolve the thorny structural problems that exist between Beijing and Washington. Yet summits like this one have an important role to play in changing the way leaders communicate, as they enhance understanding of policy positions and serve as clear expressions of goodwill.

Nothing worthwhile is easy at the start. Now that Xi and Obama have taken a solid first step, the rest of us can feel more optimistic about the future of Sino-U.S. relations.

Chen Jimin Ph.D is an Assistant Research Fellow for the Institute for International and Strategic Studies at the Party School of Central Committee of C.P.C

Ever since President Xi Jinping announced his anti-graft campaign last January, China’s central government has launched numerous investigations attempting to weed out government corruption by swatting “flies” (low-level officials) and killing “tigers” (high-level officials).

The Political Bureau of China’s Central Committee released a document in December outlining eight ways for public officials to avoid corruption. Some points involved rejecting extravagant lifestyles and keeping close grassroots connections to address social problems more effectively.

Armed with this document, Chinese citizens have taken it upon themselves to help the central government find corrupt officials and bring them to justice. This has unsurprisingly made many local officials nervous.

WantChinaTimes reported on a People’s Tribune magazine survey of over 2,000 officials across China, which asked them what they thought about the Internet’s role in fighting corruption. 70 percent of those surveyed said they supported using the Internet to identify corruption despite 50 percent of the respondents indicating that they feared microblogs and other websites could ignite social unrest.

Of course, those guilty of unethical behavior should be worried about this development the most. However, the survey noted many are concerned about false accusations damaging their reputation, and also resent how a couple of unethical officials’ actions may shape public opinion of local officials in general. 

Officials fear the Internet’s potential to spark unrest because many Chinese citizens use social media sites like Weibo to spread information about corruption in their localities. Sometimes these posts go viral and spark protests on the Web and in the streets. These protests pressure the central government into launching corruption investigations, whether the allegations are credible or not. If officials are charged, they are usually ousted from office, fined, and/or arrested.

Some Chinese netizens have made a hobby out of scouring the Internet and exposing officials based on negative information they’ve found online. These vigilantes are referred to as renren sousuo, or “human flesh search engines.” While they do not represent a new phenomenon, “human flesh search engines” have risen in popularity and frequency over the last five years.

For instance, one of the more noteworthy scandals involved Yang Dacai, a Shaanxi province’s official who was accused of using public funds to purchase extravagant items for his own personal use. Chinese netizens found photos of him wearing expensive watches and other luxurious apparel, and accused him of “amassing a luxury wardrobe worth up to £110,000” (US$173,250), according to The Telegraph. These posts went viral, and online protests eventually caught the attention of the central government – who launched an investigation and sacked Yang Dacai last September.

Because of how effective Weibo and other social media websites are in diffusing information, China’s central government can use the Internet to restrain local government power in addition to weeding out corruption. In an interview with The Next Web, Michael Anti – a Chinese journalist who specializes in media censorship – argued that China’s national government “is able to leverage its oversight of the domestic Internet to keep regional officials in check.” Anti added, “The only definite loser is the local government.”

That’s where China’s burgeoning public relations (PR) industry comes in. Several “black,” or illegal, PR firms have reportedly been commissioned by local officials to clean up their public image online. Officials use these firms to prevent Chinese netizens from discovering scandals and to prevent sparking mass protests. These services therefore protect local officials from citizen-based and central government investigation; allowing them to continue to engage in corruption.

Martin Johnson, from GreatFire.org – a website that monitors blocked websites and keywords in China – told TNW that officials aren’t really scared of the negative information posted online itself, but rather what the Chinese people will do with it. “They don’t need to have people actually believing the information, they care more about stopping people from taking any kind of action.” (Harvard Professor Gary King’s recent research, as noted last week on The Diplomat, explains how China’s local and national governments are concerned with the potential for the Internet to spark collective action as well.)

Since officials are deathly afraid of dealing with protests in response to their own corruption, and many hope to retain their lavish lifestyles– black PR firms like Yage Times,  Xinxun Media, and Origin of Brightness are capitalizing off of their fears.

“It does not matter how big or sensitive the story is, we can make it disappear," Yage Times promises its clients, according to The Telegraph.

The newspaper also interviewed a representative of another firm who said that his company’s services were not limited to deleting information from forums, but from news portals as well. “We can clean your name from blogs, forums, news websites, Weibo, everything. It costs 13,000 yuan [approx. US$2,120] to have a story deleted from the People's Daily website or from Xinhua.”

As a result of Xi’s anti-graft campaign and Chinese netizens’ efforts to expose government corruption, the black PR business has been booming thanks to local officials.

A recent Caixin report claimed that Yage Times had made over 50 million RMB (US$7.9 million) in profit. These sorts of profits are possible because black PR firms charge anywhere from 1,000 – 10,000 RMB to delete a post, and can charge over 100,000 RMB (US$16,000) to have a search keyword blocked.  

According to the report, Black PR firms use their guanxi, or relationships, with employees from the website or news portal where a post needs to be deleted, and then bribe them to get rid of the information. If that doesn’t work, firms bribe local police officials to send a deletion order to the website and force a post to be removed. Some companies have gone so far as to “create fake government stamps and use them to send faux-official takedown notices to get articles pulled from the web,” according to Tech In Asia.

Since these services require high-level connections, and many officials are desperate, firms can charge high prices to get rid of information.

Because the PR firms’ actions impede on the central government’s ability to identify local corruption, the Xi administration has reportedly started to crack down on these companies, including raiding the offices of Yage and XinXun Media. However, more efforts will be needed to deal with the rest of China’s web-scrubbing industry, and success will require the new government to make it a continued priority.

Elleka Watts is an editorial assistant at The Diplomat.

Built in the 7^th century, the Jokhang Temple is one of Lhasa’s most recognizable and sacred structures. The temple and its surrounding street, Barkhor Street are of historical and symbolic importance to the culture and identity of millions of Tibetan people in the Tibet Autonomous Region and now scattered around the world. It is also a UNESCO World Heritage Site as part of the “historical ensemble of the Potala Palace”.

Yet, the Chinese government has now revealed plans to build a shopping mall on the site, and fears that this may seriously endanger the site are escalating among the Tibetan and international community.

This is not the first time Chinese development policies have caused such concerns and outrage. The ancient city of Kashgar in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous region has become unrecognizable with the destruction of many of its historical sites. The government’s narrative then was that most of the city’s structures were faulty and vulnerable to earthquakes. This had some credibility and was especially relevant in the backdrop of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, which claimed the lives of around 70,000 people. Yet today more than half of the city’s old town has been destroyed and replaced with high rise apartments and shopping malls.

The European Parliament passed a resolution calling for “culture-sensitive methods of renovation” and condemning Beijing’s past demolition of “historical buildings without considering the loss of priceless historical and cultural heritage” and “without giving priority to their preservation”.

Barkhor and Jokhang’s symbolic importance have made it the site of protests by Tibetans against the policies and actions of the Chinese government. In 2008, unrest in the region led to a crackdown by the authorities that left 12 people dead. According to reports, a self immolation may have taken place in front of the temple. Since 2009, more than 100 Tibetans have set themselves on fire protesting Chinese “repression” and calling for the return of the fourteenth Dalai Lama, currently in exile in India to Tibet.

Activists now allege that the transformation of the region into a commercial zone may be aimed at preventing such movements. Further, the forced resettling of people from the region will also lead to fewer Tibetans inhabiting one of their most important areas. Currently, Han Chinese outnumber ethnic Tibetans in the Tibet Autonomous Region. 

The Chinese government however claims that they are simply updating Barkhor’s infrastructure by building “heating facilities, removing fire hazards, improving sanitation services, regulating signs and dismantling illegally built structures.”

Still young, already the 21st century has seen the tragic destruction of ancient sites of global importance, with the dynamiting of the Buddhas of Bamiyan by the Taliban in 2001 and the more recent torching of the Ahmed Baba institute and the razing of ancient Sufi shrines in Mali’s Timbuktu by Ansar Dine being painful examples. A study by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) states that more than 80 percent of historical sites that have been damaged in this century have been due to human action, adding “the fact that even designated UNESCO World Heritage sites are suffering neglect, damage, and loss suggests the large scale of the global crisis”.

As for Tibet, these developments are simply the latest in a series of Chinese policies that have been destroying the social fabric and cultural heritage of an ancient land and its people. 

Friday China links:

There is something of a delayed controversy coming out of the Sunnylands summit between Presidents Xi Jinping and Barack Obama last week. On Wednesday, Japan’s The Asahi Shimbun reported that Japanese officials had told the newspaper that President Xi told Obama during the summit that the Diaoyu Islands were a “core interest” for China. From China’s perspective, that would put the islands on par with places like Tibet and Taiwan. However, as the Japan Times reported, Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary, Yoshihide Suga, immediately denied the report, saying in a press conference “Our understanding is that the Chinese side did not directly connect the Senkakus to (their) core interests.”

On a related subject, the New York Times reports there is a growing push in China to claim Japan’s Okinawa islands, which hosts U.S. military personnel.

The Economic Observer reports on ballooning local government debt in China, noting that the peak repayment period for much of it is 2013 and 2014. Little wonder then that the China Securities Journal is advocating for interest rate cuts.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Finance’s treasury bond sale on Friday was disappointing at best, as the IMF, World Bank, and major international investing firms sour on China’s short-term economic outlook.

Reuters’ Editor Gary Regenstreif sees a looming rivalry between China and the U.S. over Latin America, while the New Yorker uniquely wonders if China is the new imperialist power in Africa.

Over at the Lowy Interpreter, Stephen Grenville wonders if China already is a responsible economic stakeholder.

What did we miss? Want to share an important article with other readers? Please submit your links in the comment box below!

In the wake of the recent summit meeting between Chinese President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Barack Obama, two interesting phenomena could be observed in China: media inconsistency and a sharp distinction between political pronouncements and the focus of ordinary Chinese.

Though the Chinese government had high hopes for the summit, state-owned media outlets such as People’s Daily, Xinhua News Agency and the Global Times failed to come up with anything profound or insightful in their coverage. Instead, they relied on enthusiasm, with lines like “the Sino-America relationship is entering a new era” proving very popular. One specialist said, “The two leaders set the tone for the bilateral relationship for the coming decade,” apparently forgetting that Obama at least will be out of office in four years, with all the possible changes in White House policy that may imply.

The sugarcoating was designed to convey the message that Beijing was enjoying better relations with the Washington. For more politically aware readers, however, the claims ring hollow. Most realize that improving the world’s most important relationship will require more than an informal handshake.

The cliché-driven coverage in fact served only to undermine the significance of the summit, reducing what should have been a positive step in building the image of China’s new leader to mere propaganda.

Then there was a rather odd inconsistency. The first summit meeting and subsequent press conference were broadcast live on Phoenix TV, which is based in Hong Kong, with reporting direct from its U.S. station. The same effort was also made by Sina Weibo, China’s version of Twitter, in the form of a live video broadcast. Yet nothing live was shown on China Central Television, the dominant state broadcaster. All viewers got were a few words by the announcers at the beginning of the hourly news without even an image, and then later a five-minute video segment pre-edited by the network’s journalists in the U.S. By that point, it was hardly news at all.

At any rate, the interests of the general public in China were not necessarily in tune with the official line.

While authorities tried to focus on the summit’s political significance, the average Chinese was more concerned with gossip: why Michelle Obama stayed home, what the price tag of the Maotai shared by Xi and Obama was, and whether China’s First Lady Peng Liyuan would visit with her daughter, who is studying at Harvard. These items were hugely popular topics for China’s social networks.

The Maotai story came courtesy of Hong Kong media. The interest lay in its price, more than RMB2000, or about $300. Maotai is considered the national liquor of China and is frequently given as gifts to government officials. Or at least it was: Xi had recently cracked down on high living by government officials. Some wags joked that with the summit stamp of approval, Maotai might be about to make a comeback in government circles.

On a more sober note, Xi spoke at the summit dinner of his experience as a rural laborer during the Cultural Revolution. It was a personal insight rare enough to catch the attention of the public. As the Cultural Revolution was instigated by Mao Zedong, it has long been regarded as a taboo issue. Yet many senior government officials, especially those who had helped Mao build the new China, were persecuted during the Cultural Revolution. Among them was Xi’s father. The young Jinping himself was sent to the remote countryside in China’s northwest to labor for years.

In referring to his experience at the summit, could Xi be signaling that his administration will be more open to reflecting on the Cultural Revolution? That’s how many Chinese are interpreting it. 

That might not be the message the authorities wanted to send, but it seems ordinary Chinese have other priorities.

Some Wednesday China’s links:

South China Morning Post reports that Apple’s iOS7 will be better integrated with popular Chinese websites, and will finally include Sina Weibo. This leads the newspaper to predict that the new operating system will help Apple conquer a larger share of China’s mobile market. Perhaps, but this doesn’t solve the issue of the high cost of Apple’s products nor the angst the company apparently creates among the senior Chinese leadership.

As former Railway Minister Liu Zhijun prepares for sentencing, Caixin looks back at its investigative reporting on the high-speed railway system and the corruption surrounding it. Final conclusion: it was worth the trouble.

Meanwhile Tea Leaf Nation's Liz Carter highlights a witty Weibo post, which reads: “Warmly congratulate Liu Zhijun on being the 1st top official to disclose assets.”

Over at the UK Guardian, the West’s favorite Chinese dissent Ai Weiwei opines that the U.S. is behaving like China with surveillance operation like the recently leaked PRISM program. At least as peculiar, Ai Weiwei also fears that America’s domestic spying operations will embolden the Chinese government to expand its own.

China Whisper profiles the nine most powerful women in China of 2013.  

Wu Zhenglong, a research fellow at the China Foundation for International Studies, argues on U.S.-China Focus that the U.S. needs to rethink its Japan policy. According to Wu, Japan’s policy makes it appear like “Japan [is] paying lip service to US objectives, but in all reality Abe’s government is exploiting its US backing in order to serve the Japan’s strategic interests.” 

For what it’s worth, Japan’s former Defense Minister, Satoshi Morimoto, recently told Foreign Policy’s Issac Stone Fish that Japan faces “a very serious Chinese military threat.”

China File has a discussion up on how to advance human rights in China.

What did we miss? Want to share an important article with other readers? Please submit your links in the comment box below!

The agreement struck by Presidents Barack Obama and Xi Jinping over the weekend on climate change is the latest indication that the new Chinese administration is serious about tackling rising pollution and environmental issues.

Under the agreement, China and the U.S. pledge to support an amendment to the Montreal Protocol that aims to phase down the consumption and production of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), which are greenhouse gases found in commonly used appliances like refrigerators and air conditioning units. The amendment has been jointly proposed by the U.S., Canada, and Mexico for the past four years and, according to Politico, China had previously joined with Brazil and India in being the major opponents to its adoption.

China’s reversal comes less than a month after it was reported that Beijing is seriously considering capping its greenhouse gas emissions by 2016, raising hopes that Beijing will drop its opposition to international efforts to impose limits on the emissions of developing countries. China has also recently begun experimenting with cap-and-trade schemes in seven localities—Shanghai, Guangdong, Tianjin, Hubei, Beijing, Shenzhen, and Chongqing.

The reason for the central government’s renewed vigor in addressing climate change is not hard to discern—the Communist Party undoubtedly fears that social stability will be threatened if the smog problem engulfing many of China’s cities is allowed to continue unabated.

But just because the central government may now be serious about tackling climate change, doesn’t necessarily mean change will be forthcoming. After all, much of the actual environmental policies will need to be implemented at the local level. In a country as large and diverse as China, translating the central government’s will into concrete actions at the local level has been a reoccurring challenge throughout history.

The Party uses personnel decisions as one of its primary mechanisms for ensuring compliance at the local levels. Specifically, local leaders are promoted up the Party hierarchy based on how well they adhere to the Politburo’s key concerns in their jurisdiction. Two long-standing Party concerns have been maintaining social stability and achieving high economic growth. Thus, local leaders who are able to prevent or effectively deal with social unrest and preside over economic expansions should theoretically (in reality personal connections are important) be promoted faster than their counterparts who perform poorly in these categories.

If the Party leadership continues to give these two indicators priority over reducing greenhouse gas emissions in making promotions, there is unlikely to be much change on climate change policies. In this scenario, local leaders will likely gamble that they should continue focusing on economic growth regardless of environmental impact. Of course, some will lose this gamble if environmental unfriendly initiatives lead to social unrest as they did in Kunming last month.

Still, if local leaders believe more strident climate policies will constrain economic growth, making this gamble is rational as environmental degradation may not be apparent immediately, and thus the social unrest it creates will not materialize until after the leaders have been reassigned elsewhere in the country.

At the same time, more economically-friendly policies could increase local consumption at least over the longer-term, which is a key goal of the current government and likely to factor into personnel decisions. As Michael Pettis argues convincingly in his most recent book, environmental unfriendly policies can reduce current consumption if households calculate their long-term health care costs will be higher because of the impact of living in eco-unfriendly areas. Logically, then, if consumers believe the government is seriously addressing environmental problems they may decide they will need less for future health care costs, and thus are able to increase their current consumption.

This factor, while likely true, is somewhat abstract and hard to measure. Local leaders, many of whom are reassigned fairly frequently, are unlikely to include it in their calculations in making decisions about how seriously to implement green-friendly policies.

Another way that climate change politics in China is local is in the central government determining which areas suffer from the highest emissions. According to a new study, China’s climate policies are increasingly aimed at “outsourcing” high-emissions production away from the populated coastal areas of China and into the sparsely-populated poorer inner-land regions.

In this way, China is merely tweaking the policies of the developed world; as one of the researchers explained to the BBC: “China is treating its own hinterland just the way the whole world treats China, which is outsourcing its dirty pollution to the poorer regions…. These regions have lower efficiency and less valuable technology, so they create more pollution per unit of output than the richer regions.”

This policy will not ultimately lower overall emissions levels— in fact it could heighten them. At the same time, it could very well reduce the risk of pollution creating large-scale social instability for the Party. After all, the CCP has long shown it can handle local, isolated protests in rural areas even in large numbers. It’s far more concerned about mitigating protests in big cities with more people and media coverage.

Some Tuesday China links:

The Financial Times reports that China’s state-owned Cnooc is making a bid for Arctic oil, the first time a Chinese company has done so.

After the U.S. ramped up its charges of cyber-espionage against China, Beijing responded by charging the U.S. with collecting mountains of data on China. In typical fashion, the Western world didn’t give much consideration to Beijing’s claims at the time, but over at Foreign Policy, Matthew Aid confirms that Beijing was spot on. From the report, “A highly secretive unit of the National Security Agency (NSA), the U.S. government's huge electronic eavesdropping organization, called the Office of Tailored Access Operations, or TAO, has successfully penetrated Chinese computer and telecommunications systems for almost 15 years, generating some of the best and most reliable intelligence information about what is going on inside the People's Republic of China.”

As China’s water crisis worsens, China’s central government has pledged to spend US$3.3 billion over the next five years on desalination plants in the northeastern part of the country, the BBC reports. This comes in addition to other actions Beijing is taking to solve the country’s water woes.

The honorary chairman of Taiwan's Kuomintang (KMT), Wu Poh-hsiung, will meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping to discuss cross-strait relations on Thursday, South China Morning Post reports.

CNN’s Nic Robertson is the only Western journalist on hand for China’s space launch. He reviews the “super-secret space base.”

Matt Schiavenza of The Atlantic highlights a recent survey on how Chinese people view the U.S.

One American Chinese social media users are particularly fond of these days is Edward Snowden, according to Vocativ’s review of Weibo. China Real Time confirms this.

Plus new issues of the Jamestown Foundation’s China Brief and the Hoover Institution’s Chinese Leadership Monitor.

What did we miss? Want to share an important article with other readers? Please submit your links in the comment box below!

A massive government backed state campaign of cyber espionage, with little accountability and almost limitless personnel and funds, which is regarded as a fundamental attack on hard won liberties and fundamental values. One would have expected concerns in this area to top of the list of issues President Obama would raise with President Xi Jinping when they met for their one-off summit in California over the weekend.

Domestic issues however overtook events. With extraordinary timing, a whistleblower working with the  U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) a document showing similar things were being done – but by the American government against its own citizens. Suddenly the discussion between the U.S. and China on the long standing issue of cyber-espionage became even more complicated than it already was.

Some years ago, an official in the UK government airily told me that Chinese activity in the cyber area was “off the scale.” It would be interesting to see if they were willing to revise this opinion in view of the current information we have. The simple fact is that when Xi and Obama met, they both shared a big dirty secret, although now a pretty open one. Despite them following one of the first rules when accused of infidelity – deny, deny and then deny again – everyone has plenty of reason to believe both governments are deeply engaged in creative ways of exploiting the internet, and very little assurance that they are able to restrain themselves.  This gift is too good.

In The Net Delusion, Evgeny Morozov maps out the ambiguous moral space of the internet. Yes, it is an amazing enabler of greater transparency as liberals love. But everyone has secrets. And the governments of any country can see an amazing new field in which, by consent, people release an enormous amount of information. Citizens can be empowered by the internet, but circumscribed by its shadowy forces. We have no excuses to surrender our vigilance even in this “new world” of connectivity and virtual free space.

For China, the internet is having profound social impact. Propagandists like Liu Yunshan, in charge of macro-information on the standing committee, show only hazy understanding of the new dynamics being created by social media in their country. They are grappling with a framework which allows them access to the positive things the internet gives them, but sees off the negatives. One of the wiser moves the Party might now consider it has made was to keep Facebook, Twitter and other US companies out of China and try to make their own versions of these popular sites instead. Beyond debates about freedom of expression, there is the hard issue of why you would allow your citizens to hand over so much information to foreign companies who have, at best, highly ambiguous relations with their host government. Best keep these things in house. China may well have saved us from a world wholly subject to the tyranny of Facebook!

The internet in China is, in many ways, a wonderful map of contention in society. It brings to the fore fissures, splits and forms of diversity we never used to see. The bland statement that China is 1.3 billion people lined up behind one particular view point was always suspicious. Now we have the proof. China is like a carnival of opinions. The internet maps this wonderful diversity.

And finally, the internet poses deep questions to both the U.S. and China, with their profoundly different polities, about the role of freedom versus stability and resistance to extremists groups, about how far they can covertly seek to break into each other’s spaces and use the internet’s penetrative abilities with malign intent. There are no good guys in this struggle. And the most remarkable thing about the revelations of the last few days is that, yes, we were right to worry about the ways in which forces of surveillance and invasiveness were swirling around us all. They were. But not from one source, or one dominant country, nor even from outside. It is time to move on from the complacent moans about one power like China being the bad guy in all of this. It is now becoming clearer that it was way, way, way more complicated than that.