China is planning to restrict and scrutinise the use of wireless filesharing services between mobile devices, such as airdrop and Bluetooth, after they were used by protesters to evade censorship and spread protest messages. The Cyberspace Administration of China, the country’s top internet regulator, has released draft regulations on “close-range mesh network services” and launched a month-long public consultation on Tuesday. Under the proposed rules, service providers would have to prevent the dissemination of harmful and illegal information, save relevant records and report their discovery to regulators. Service providers would…
Category: Plain
US feels pressure to respond to China’s expanding nuclear capability: senior Pentagon official
“Ensuring that we have the capabilities we need to maintain deterrence remains a number one priority for the United States as it relates to our allies and partners.” [embedded content] One pillar in response to the changing dynamic in northeast Asia has been funding America’s nuclear modernisation. In 2021, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that Washington would spend US$634 billion over the next decade to upgrade its nuclear arsenal, a 28 per cent uptick compared with a previous 10-year projection. Advertisement The projects include ongoing development of a new W76-2…
Cuba reportedly permits China to build a spy facility for monitoring US communications
Ultimately, though, such an outpost could have the capability to monitor a range of communications, including emails, phone calls and satellite transmissions throughout the southeastern region of the US. “While I cannot speak to this specific report, we are well aware of – and have spoken many times to – the People’s Republic of China’s efforts to invest in infrastructure around the world that may have military purposes, including in this hemisphere,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told the Journal. Advertisement Asked about the reports, a representative of China’s…
China reportedly reaches secret deal with Cuba to host spy base on island
China has reached a secret deal with Cuba to establish an electronic eavesdropping facility on the island roughly 100 miles from Florida, the Wall Street Journal has reported, citing US officials familiar with classified intelligence. Such a spy installation would allow Beijing to gather electronic communications from the south-eastern United States, which houses many US military bases, as well as to monitor ship traffic, the newspaper reported. The US Central Command headquarters is based in Tampa. Fort Liberty, formerly Fort Bragg, the largest US. military base, is based in North…
Uyghur student convicted after posting protests video on WeChat
A Uyghur student who was detained in Xinjiang in December after posting a video on WeChat of the “white paper” protests has been convicted of “advocating extremism”. Kamile Wayit, 19, was detained in Atush on 12 December the day after returning home from university in Henan, a province in central China. She has not been heard from since, but last week a spokesperson from China’s ministry for foreign affairs confirmed to the Economist magazine that Wayit had been sentenced on 25 March “for the crime of advocating extremism”. The spokesperson…
Why US push for high-level military talks with China is getting nowhere for now
The US blamed “unsafe and unprofessional” manoeuvres from the People’s Liberation Army Navy for the Taiwan Strait incident, but China said it viewed some patrols as a provocation. Lloyd Austin, right, and Li Shangfu, left, listening to a speech during the opening dinner of the Shangri-La Dialogue. Photo: AP Photo Although the two countries’ defence ministers met in Cambodia in November, there have been no contacts since, even though a hotline remains in place. Beijing declined a request for a phone call between Austin and then defence minister Wei Fenghe…
Taiwan’s ruling party rocked by sexual harassment claims
Taiwan’s ruling party has been rocked by a wave of sexual harassment allegations, as the country grapples with a #MeToo movement that has encompassed politics and the media. On Tuesday, President Tsai Ing-wen apologised for the second time in a week in response to sexual harassment claims against senior staff in the Democratic Progressive party (DPP). “Our society as a whole must educate ourselves again. People in sexual harassment incidents are victims,” she wrote in a Facebook post. Hours earlier, Tsai’s national policy adviser Yan Chih-fa resigned after being accused…
Does German firms’ hot take on China business show limits of Beijing’s charm offensive?
However, more than a third of those polled expected that their own industrial situations would worsen – 6 percentage points higher than last year. “Geopolitics have a profound impact on companies on the ground, prompting them to drive forward localisation and diversification strategies as risk-management measures,” said Jens Hildebrand, executive director of the chamber’s north China chapter. Advertisement Although almost 55 per cent of the surveyed firms said they intended to increase their investments in China over the coming two years, enthusiasm for doing so has waned in the German…
Chinese quantum computer is 180 million times faster on AI-related tasks, says team led by ‘father of quantum’ Pan Jianwei
In the experiment, the team used Jiuzhang to solve a problem that is challenging for classical computers. It used more than 200,000 samples to solve the problem. The researchers, for the first time, used the quantum computer to implement and accelerate two algorithms – random search and simulated annealing – that are commonly used in the field of AI. The fastest classical supercomputer in the world would take 700 seconds for each sample, meaning it would take nearly five years to process the same number of samples. Advertisement It took…
Taiwan says 37 Chinese military aircraft entered its air defence zone
Taiwan activated its defence systems on Thursday after reporting 37 Chinese military aircraft flying into the island’s air defence zone, some of which then flew into the western Pacific, in Beijing’s latest mass air incursion. China, which views democratically governed Taiwan as its own territory, has over the past three years regularly flown its air force into the skies near the island, though not into Taiwan’s territorial airspace. Taiwan’s defence ministry said that starting from 5am it had detected 37 Chinese air force planes, including J-11 and J-16 fighters as…