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A bipartisan 12-member board appointed by US Congress, said last week that Chinese spying is "growing in scale, intensity and sophistication." Photo: Xinhua


Less than a week after US President Barack Obama wrapped up his first official visit to China, the two countries have again crossed swords over espionage and currency manipulation, provoked by a report from a US congressional advisory panel.


The annual report on China "disregards facts, is full of bias and has an ulterior motive,"Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang said in a statement on the ministry's website Monday.


"We advise the so-called commission not to always look at China through tinted glasses and not to do things that interfere in China's internal affairs and undermine Chi-na-US relations,"Qin added.


The 2009 report by the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission, a bipartisan 12-member board appointed by US Congress, said last week that Chinese spying is "growing in scale, intensity and sophistication"and urges Congress to review the US' ability to meet the "rising challenge"of Beijing's espionage.


"China's peacetime computer exploitation efforts are primarily focused on intelligence collection against US targets,"it said.


The report was released Thursday, one day after Obama left China after a four-day visit. An Associated Press report said, "The commission tends to take a tougher stance on China than either Obama or his predecessor, George W. Bush."


Fu Mengzi, a researcher at the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, said, "Some US conservative forces have been discriminative toward China's technological advancement. That is why they frequently make up stories accusing China of stealing US high-technology."


Li Wei, director of the Center for Counterterrorism Studies at the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, said that individuals carried out most of the alleged hacking, and both the US and China are victims.


"The US' boasted ‘highest level of Internet security in the world' is attractive to most hackers, who naturally fancy technical challenges,"Li said. "But it is groundless to accuse China of being the biggest source of attacks.”


The report cited conclusions by Northrop Grumman Corp, one of the Pentagon's top contractors.
Any thorough description of the techniques used for forensic analysis of such suspected cyber espionage was omitted, though it claims to hold "a large body of both circumstantial and forensic evidence.”


The wide-ranging report also said that Beijing was building a navy that could block the US military from reaching the region if fighting should break out between the Chinese mainland and Taiwan.


Wang Baodong, spokesman for the Chinese embassy in Washington, last week called the commission's suggestion a "Cold War fantasy."


Competition inevitable


More broadly, the 367-page report criticizes China's trade policy, recommending that the US press Beijing to make the yuan more flexible and to turn to the World Trade Organization to fight what it termed predatory trade practices, and blamed China "for the creation of the economic imbalances that helped produce the global financial crisis."


While downplaying the real influence of the commission, which was set up in 2000 to analyze the implications of growing trade with China, Song Xiaojun, a Beijing-based strategy and military analyst, noted that the report comprehensively covers China's development.


"It aims to show that China will threaten the security of the US in every major area, including economics, finance and ideology, as well as military, and that it has already obtained the ability to challenge the US' hegemony,"Song said.


"The content concerning economic issues carries more weight, though the media is in favor of espionage warfare, which brings back cold war memories.”


In a separate espionage case, the US is seeking the release of Chinese-born, American geologist Xue Feng, who was allegedly detained two years ago on State-secrets charges after negotiating the purchase of an oil-industry database.


Chinese authorities say they have solid evidence to prove that Xue violated China's laws.
"Competition between China and the US is inevitable,"Song said. "But it's not likely to provoke any warfare, and a balance of power would be reached in a peaceful process."


Global Times

JCraven

It is a case of Freudian projection: attributing to others what one routinely does onself; in this case spying. When has China ever encircled the U.S. and threatened the U.S. with nuclear annihilation as the U.S. has done to China? When has China infiltrated missionaries and cults into the U.S. designed to undermine the social order of the U.S. as the U.S. has done to China? When has China ever armed and trained and financed separatist groups and covert armies in the U.S. as the U.S. has done to China? When has China ever propped up puppet regimes occupying parts of the territory of the U.S. as the U.S. has done to China?