Germany Investigates 3 Suspected of Spying for China

Raids were carried out on the homes and offices of the three people
By Melissa Eddy

The Chinese Embassy in Berlin. A spokesman for Germany’s federal prosecutor said the Chinese intelligence service was involved in the inquiry.

BERLIN — German authorities raided the homes and offices of three people suspected of spying for the Chinese government, officials said on Thursday, giving no details about their identities or the nature of the alleged espionage.

“This is a preliminary investigation against three known persons,” said Markus Schmitt, a spokesman for the German federal prosecutor, Peter Frank. 

None of the three have been arrested, he said.
The raid comes amid an intensifying debate in Berlin over the country’s relationship with Huawei, the Chinese technology giant used for espionage by Beijing.
On Thursday, Angela Merkel met with senior lawmakers in her party as part of continuing efforts to resolve a dispute over whether to allow Huawei to help build the country’s 5G next-generation mobile network.
Germany has been concerned about the threat posed by Chinese hackers seeking to steal information from the country’s companies, research facilities and ministries. 

But if sufficient evidence is found in the current case, it would be one of the first in years involving old-fashioned human espionage.
German officials were sifting through evidence gathered in the raids, which were carried out early Wednesday on nine homes and offices in Brussels and Berlin, as well as in the German states of Baden-Württemberg and Bavaria, Mr. Schmitt said.
The Chinese intelligence service is also involved in the inquiry, Mr. Schmitt said.
The German newsmagazine Der Spiegel, which first reported the raids, said that the three people targeted were suspected of passing private and social information to China’s ministry of state security.
Der Spiegel said that one of the three was a German national who had worked as a diplomat for the European Union until 2017, when he switched to a well-known consulting company. 

The other two work for a different consulting company, the report said.
Although some of the searched properties are in Brussels, a spokeswoman for the Brussels-based European Commission said on Thursday that none of its premises had been searched. 

She also said it had not received any requests to work with the German authorities or to hand over any evidence.
“No searches were conducted in the premises of our buildings, we haven’t been contacted by the German authorities,” said the spokeswoman, Virginie Battu-Henriksson.
European Union diplomats are normally senior envoys from their own member states who join the bloc’s diplomatic ranks. 

Many go on to join lobby firms or think tanks after retirement. 

If proven that the suspect was indeed spying for China, it would be a first for the bloc’s foreign policy branch.
China is one of Germany’s most important trading partners, and the two countries collaborate on international issues like climate change and hold regular government-level discussions.
But the relationship has come under scrutiny since the Chinese acquired several German technology companies in 2016. 

The next year, Germany’s domestic intelligence agency accused China of using LinkedIn and other social media sites to infiltrate the government in Berlin.
A year ago, Poland arrested two people, including a Chinese employee of Huawei, and charged them with spying for Beijing.

Germany Probes Chinese Spy Ring

Three Germans passed sensitive information such as company data to Chinese handlers
By Bojan Pancevski

The German domestic intelligence service in Cologne. The agency warned last year that Chinese authorities have used agents posing as diplomats to recruit Germans.

BERLIN—German prosecutors have launched an international investigation into a suspected Chinese spy ring centering on three German nationals, including a former senior diplomat.
The three individuals, who prosecutors didn’t identify, haven’t been charged, according to a spokesman for the prosecutor in charge of the probe.
The spokesman said the three are suspected by investigators of having passed on sensitive information, including commercial data, to Chinese handlers.
German security officials have warned about a recent rise in Chinese spying activities focused on industrial and commercial secrets, military technology and intelligence, and Chinese dissidents abroad.
Germany’s domestic intelligence service warned in its annual report last year that, in addition to carrying out cyberattacks, Chinese authorities have used agents posing as diplomats to recruit Germans, often under the guise of economic or scientific exchanges, to bring them to China and try to recruit them as spies.
Still, investigations and prosecutions, especially involving German nationals, have been rare, making this probe notable.
The investigation centers on the co-manager of a German lobbying firm with offices in China who previously worked as a senior diplomat, including in ambassadorial posts, according to people familiar with the case.
A lawyer for the lobbying firm, which hasn’t been identified by prosecutors, declined to comment.
The spokesman for the German prosecutor in charge of the probe declined to confirm the identity of the suspects, and under German privacy laws their names can’t be disclosed by authorities or the media.
Officials at the Chinese Embassy in Berlin couldn’t be reached for comment.
Police searched the offices and private residences of the three suspects in the early hours of Wednesday across Germany and in Belgium, where officers secured potential evidence including computer drives, according to the prosecutor’s spokesman.
The German investigation was earlier reported by the German magazine Spiegel.

China's Final Solution: A Tale of Two Nazisms

China Uses DNA to Map Faces, With Help From EuropeBeijing’s pursuit of control over a Muslim ethnic group pushes the rules of science and raises questions about consent.
By Sui-Lee Wee and Paul Mozur

Images from a study in 2013 on 3-D human facial images.

TUMXUK, China — In a dusty city in the East Turkestan colony on China’s western frontier, the authorities are testing the rules of science.
With a million or more ethnic Uighurs and others from predominantly Muslim minority groups swept up in detentions across East Turkestan, officials in Tumxuk have gathered blood samples from hundreds of Uighurs — part of a mass DNA collection effort dogged by questions about consent and how the data will be used.
In Tumxuk, at least, there is a partial answer: Chinese scientists are trying to find a way to use a DNA sample to create an image of a person’s face.
The technology, which is also being developed in the United States and elsewhere, is in the early stages of development and can produce rough pictures good enough only to narrow a manhunt or perhaps eliminate suspects. 

But given the crackdown in East Turkestan, experts on ethics in science worry that China is building a tool that could be used to justify and intensify racial profiling and other state discrimination against Uighurs.
In the long term, experts say, it may even be possible for the Communist government to feed images produced from a DNA sample into the mass surveillance and facial recognition systems that it is building, tightening its grip on society by improving its ability to track dissidents and protesters as well as criminals.
Some of this research is taking place in labs run by China’s Ministry of Public Security, and at least two Chinese scientists working with the ministry on the technology have received funding from respected institutions in Germany. 

International scientific journals have published their findings without examining the origin of the DNA used in the studies or vetting the ethical questions raised by collecting such samples in East Turkestan.
In papers, the Chinese scientists said they followed norms set by international associations of scientists, which would require that the men in Tumxuk (pronounced TUM-shook) gave their blood willingly. 

But in East Turkestan, many people have no choice. 

The government collects samples under the veneer of a mandatory health checkup program, according to Uighurs who have fled the country. 

Those placed in concentration camps — two of which are in Tumxuk — also have little choice.The police prevented reporters from The New York Times from interviewing Tumxuk residents, making verifying consent impossible. 

Many residents had vanished in any case. 

On the road to one of the concentration camps, an entire neighborhood had been bulldozed into rubble.
Growing numbers of scientists and human rights activists say the Chinese government is exploiting the openness of the international scientific community to harness research into the human genome for questionable purposes.
Already, China is exploring using facial recognition technology to sort people by ethnicity. 

It is also researching how to use DNA to tell if a person is a Uighur. 

Research on the genetics behind the faces of Tumxuk’s men could help bridge the two.
The Chinese government is building “essentially technologies used for hunting people,” said Mark Munsterhjelm, an assistant professor at the University of Windsor in Ontario who tracks Chinese interest in the technology.
In the world of science, Dr. Munsterhjelm said, “there’s a kind of culture of complacency that has now given way to complicity.”

Mapping China’s Faces
Sketching someone’s face based solely on a DNA sample sounds like science fiction. 

It isn’t.
The process is called DNA phenotyping. 

Scientists use it to analyze genes for traits like skin color, eye color and ancestry. 

A handful of companies and scientists are trying to perfect the science to create facial images sharp and accurate enough to identify criminals and victims.
The Maryland police used it last year to identify a murder victim. 

In 2015, the police in North Carolina arrested a man on two counts of murder after crime-scene DNA indicated the killer had fair skin, brown or hazel eyes, dark hair, and little evidence of freckling. 

The man pleaded guilty.
Despite such examples, experts widely question phenotyping’s effectiveness. 

Currently, it often produces facial images that are too smooth or indistinct to look like the face being replicated. 

DNA cannot indicate other factors that determine how people look, such as age or weight. 

DNA can reveal gender and ancestry, but the technology can be hit or miss when it comes to generating an image as specific as a face.
Phenotyping also raises ethical issues, said Pilar Ossorio, a professor of law and bioethics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. 

The police could use it to round up large numbers of people who resemble a suspect, or use it to target ethnic groups. 

And the technology raises fundamental issues of consent from those who never wanted to be in a database to begin with.
“What the Chinese government is doing should be a warning to everybody who kind of goes along happily thinking, ‘How could anyone be worried about these technologies?’” Dr. Ossorio said.
With the ability to reconstruct faces, the Chinese police would have yet another genetic tool for social control. 

The authorities have already gathered millions of DNA samples in East Turkestan. 

They have also collected data from the hundreds of thousands of Uighurs and members of other minority groups locked up in concentration camps in East Turkestan.

Chinese officials have depicted the camps as benign facilities that offer "vocational training", though documents describe prisonlike conditions, while testimonies from many who have been inside cite overcrowding and torture.

Images from a 2018 study on age estimation and age-related facial reconstruction of Uighur men by analyzing 3-D facial images.

Even beyond the Uighurs, China has the world’s largest DNA database, with more than 80 million profiles as of July, according to Chinese news reports.
“If I were to find DNA at a crime scene, the first thing I would do is to find a match in the 80 million data set,” said Peter Claes, an imaging specialist at the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium, who has studied DNA-based facial reconstruction for a decade. 

“But what do you do if you don’t find a match?”
Though the technology is far from accurate, he said, “DNA phenotyping can bring a solution.”

The German Connection
To unlock the genetic mysteries behind the human face, the police in China turned to Chinese scientists with connections to leading institutions in Europe.
One of them was Tang Kun, a specialist in human genetic diversity at the Shanghai-based Partner Institute for Computational Biology, which was founded in part by the Max Planck Society, a top research group in Germany.
The German organization also provided $22,000 a year in funding to Tang because he conducted research at an institute affiliated with it, said Christina Beck, a spokeswoman for the Max Planck Society. 

Tang said the grant had run out before he began working with the police, according to Beck.
Another expert involved in the research was Liu Fan, a professor at the Beijing Institute of Genomics who is also an adjunct assistant professor at Erasmus University Medical Center in the Netherlands.
Both were named as authors of a 2018 study on Uighur faces in the journal Hereditas (Beijing), published by the government-backed Chinese Academy of Sciences. 

They were also listed as authors of a study examining DNA samples taken last year from 612 Uighurs in Tumxuk that appeared in April in Human Genetics, a journal published by Springer Nature, which also publishes the influential journal Nature.
Both papers named numerous other authors, including Li Caixia, chief forensic scientist at the Ministry of Public Security.
In an interview, Tang said he did not know why he was named as an author of the April paper, though he said it might have been because his graduate students worked on it. 

He said he had ended his affiliation with the Chinese police in 2017 because he felt their biological samples and research were subpar.
“To be frank, you overestimate how genius the Chinese police is,” said Dr. Tang, who had recently shut down a business focused on DNA testing and ancestry.
Like other geneticists, Tang has long been fascinated by Uighurs because their mix of European and East Asian features can help scientists identify genetic variants associated with physical traits. 

In his earlier studies, he said, he collected blood samples himself from willing subjects.
Tang said the police approached him in 2016, offering access to DNA samples and funding. 

At the time, he was a professor at the Partner Institute for Computational Biology, which is run by the Chinese Academy of Sciences but was founded in 2005 in part with funding from the Max Planck Society and still receives some grants and recommendations for researchers from the German group.
Beck, the Max Planck spokeswoman, said Tang had told the organization that he began working with the police in 2017, after it had stopped funding his research a year earlier.
But an employment ad on a government website suggests the relationship began earlier. 

The Ministry of Public Security placed the ad in 2016 seeking a researcher to help explore the “DNA of physical appearance traits.” 

It said the person would report to Tang and to Li, the ministry’s chief forensic scientist.
Tang did not respond to additional requests for comment. 

The Max Planck Society said Tang had not reported his work with the police as required while holding a position at the Partner Institute, which he did not leave until last year.
The Max Planck Society “takes this issue very seriously” said will ask its ethics council to review the matter, Beck said.
It is not clear when Liu, the assistant professor at Erasmus University Medical Center, began working with the Chinese police. 

Liu says in his online résumé that he is a visiting professor at the Ministry of Public Security at a lab for “on-site traceability technology.”
In 2015, while holding a position with Erasmus, he also took a post at the Beijing Institute of Genomics. 

Two months later, the Beijing institute signed an agreement with the Chinese police to establish an innovation center to study cutting-edge technologies “urgently needed by the public security forces,” according to the institute’s website.
Liu did not respond to requests for comment.
Erasmus said that Liu remained employed by the university as a part-time researcher and that his position in China was “totally independent” of the one in the Netherlands. 

It added that Liu had not received any funding from the university for the research papers, though he listed his affiliation with Erasmus on the studies. 

Erasmus made inquiries about his research and determined there was no need for further action, according to a spokeswoman.
Erasmus added that it could not be held responsible “for any research that has not taken place under the auspices of Erasmus” by Liu, even though it continued to employ him.
Still, Liu’s work suggests that sources of funding could be mingled.
In September, he was one of seven authors of a paper on height in Europeans published in the journal Forensic Science International. 

The paper said it was backed by a grant from the European Union — and by a grant from China’s Ministry of Public Security.

The Question of ConsentTang said he was unaware of the origins of the DNA samples examined in the two papers, the 2018 paper in Hereditas (Beijing) and the Human Genetics paper published in April. 

The publishers of the papers said they were unaware, too.
Hereditas (Beijing) did not respond to a request for comment. 

Human Genetics said it had to trust scientists who said they had received informed consent from donors. 

Local ethics committees are generally responsible for verifying that the rules were followed, it said.
Springer Nature said on Monday that it had strengthened its guidelines on papers involving vulnerable groups of people and that it would add notes of concern to previously published papers.

In the papers, the authors said their methods had been approved by the ethics committee of the Institute of Forensic Science of China. 

That organization is part of the Ministry of Public Security, China’s police.
With 161,000 residents, most of them Uighurs, the agricultural settlement of Tumxuk is governed by the powerful East Turkestan Production and Construction Corps, a quasi-military organization formed by decommissioned soldiers sent to East Turkestan in the 1950s to "develop" the region.

Images from a study in April on how gene variants influence facial morphology in a Eurasian population.

The state news media described Tumxuk, which is dotted with police checkpoints, as one of the “gateways and major battlefields for East Turkestan's security work.”
In January 2018, the town got a high-tech addition: a forensic DNA lab run by the Institute of Forensic Science of China, the same police research group responsible for the work on DNA phenotyping.
Procurement documents showed the lab relied on software systems made by Thermo Fisher Scientific, a Massachusetts company, to work with genetic sequencers that analyze DNA fragments. Thermo Fisher announced in February that it would suspend sales to the region, saying in a statement that it had decided to do so after undertaking “fact-specific assessments.”
For the Human Genetics study, samples were processed by a higher-end sequencer made by an American firm, Illumina, according to the authors. 

It is not clear who owned the sequencer. 

Illumina did not respond to requests for comment.
The police sought to prevent two Times reporters from conducting interviews in Tumxuk, stopping them upon arrival at the airport for interrogation. 

Government minders then tailed the reporters and later forced them to delete all photos, audio and video recordings taken on their phones in Tumxuk.
Uighurs and human rights groups have said the authorities collected DNA samples, images of irises and other personal data during mandatory health checks.
In an interview, Zhou Fang, the head of the health commission in Tumxuk, said residents voluntarily accepted free health checks under a public health program known as Physicals for All and denied that DNA samples were collected.
“I’ve never heard of such a thing,” he said.
The questions angered Zhao Hai, the deputy head of Tumxuk’s foreign affairs office. 

He called a Times reporter “shameless” for asking a question linking the health checks with the collection of DNA samples.
“Do you think America has the ability to do these free health checks?” he asked. 

“Only the Communist Party can do that!”

Chinazism: State Terrorism

'Think of your family': China threatens European citizens over East Turkestan protests
Uighurs living in Germany, the Netherlands, Finland, Sweden, and France have complained of intimidation by Beijing
By Benjamin Haas in Munich

Demonstrators holding Uighur flags in Berlin before a meeting between German chancellor Angela Merkel and Li Keqiang. 

Two days after Abdujelil Emet sat in the public gallery of Germany’s parliament during a hearing on human rights, he received a phone call from his sister for the first time in three years. 

But the call from East Turkestan, in western China, was anything but a joyous family chat. 

It was made at the direction of Chinese security officers, part of a campaign by Beijing to silence criticism of policies that have seen more than a million Uighurs and other Muslim minorities detained in concentration camps.
Emet’s sister began by praising the Communist party and making claims of a much improved life under its guidance before delivering a shock: his brother had died a year earlier. 

But Emet, 54, was suspicious from the start; he had never given his family his phone number. 

Amid the heartbreaking news and sloganeering, he could hear a flurry of whispers in the background, and he demanded to speak to the unknown voice. 

Moments later the phone was handed to a Chinese official who refused to identify himself.
By the end of the conversation, the façade constructed by the Chinese security agent was broken and Emet’s sister wept as she begged him to stop his activism. 

Then the Chinese official took the phone again with a final warning.
“You’re living overseas, but you need to think of your family while you’re running around doing your activism work in Germany,” he said. 

“You need to think of their safety.”
In interviews with more than two dozen Uighurs living across Europe and the United States, tales of threats across the world are the rule, not the exception. 

Uighurs living in Germany, the Netherlands, Finland, Sweden, and France all complained of similar threats against family members back in East Turkestan, and some were asked to spy for China.
More than a million Uighurs, a Muslim Turkic ethnic group, and other minorities are being held in concentration camps, according to the UN, with some estimates saying the number is “closer to 3 million”.
Emet, originally from Aksu in East Turkestan, has lived in Germany for over two decades and is a naturalised citizen. 

He does volunteer work for the World Uyghur Congress and is a part-time imam in his community. He has never told his family about his activism, hoping the omission would protect them.
“I will not keep my silence and the Chinese government should not use my family to threaten me,” Emet said. 

“I was clear with them on the phone: if they harm my family, I will speak out louder and become a bigger problem for the government.”

‘China threatening people in Germany should never become normalised’
Most Uighurs remain silent, and have found little help from European authorities. 

But Margarete Bause, a member of the German parliament representing Munich, said Chinese interference was unacceptable and urged Uighurs to contact their MPs.
“We need to protect visitors to the Bundestag. Observing parliament is a fundamental right in any democracy,” she said. 

“It’s also important for the German public to know how China is trying to exert influence here. The Chinese government threatening people in Germany should never become normalised.”
Bause has been interested in Uighur issues for over a decade, after she was admonished by Chinese diplomats in 2006 for attending an event hosted by the World Uyghur Congress. 

In August she was denied a visa as part of a parliamentary visit to China and the trip was eventually cancelled in response.
Beyond discouraging activism, Chinese officials have also tried to recruit Uighurs living abroad to spy on others in their community, asking for photos of private gatherings, names, phone numbers, addresses and licence plate numbers. 

Some are recruited when they go to Chinese diplomatic missions in Europe to request documents, and others are contacted by security agents over WeChat, a popular Chinese messaging app. 

Emet’s number is likely to have been leaked to Chinese security agents this way, he said, with his number well known in the Uighur community in Munich.
Chinese agents offer cash, the promise of visas to visit East Turkestan or better treatment for family members as a reward, but also dangle the threat of harsh consequences for those same family members if their offers are refused. 

Uighurs described having crucial documents withheld from Chinese embassies and consulates unless they agreed.
One Uighur living in Germany who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation said a Chinese agent asked for photos of Eid and other celebrations, and specifically asked for information on Uighurs who had recently arrived in Europe.

A group of people stage a protest against China’s human rights violations against members of the Turkic Uighur minority.

The recent surge in activism among Uighurs overseas is mostly a direct response to the increasingly repressive policies in East Turkestan, and as more people speak out China has doubled efforts to silence them and control the narrative over what it calls “re-education camps”.
There are some signs China’s campaign to silence Uighurs in Europe is working. 

Gulhumar Haitiwaji became an outspoken critic of policies after her mother disappeared into one of the camps in East Turkestan, appearing on French television and starting a petition addressed to French president Emmanuel Macron that garnered nearly half a million signatures. 

But after threats from Chinese officials targeting her mother, Haitiwaji cancelled a planned appearance in March at a human rights summit in Geneva, according to two sources familiar with her plans. 

Haitiwaji and the organisers of the meeting did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Adrian Zenz, an independent researcher who focuses on East Turkestan, said European governments needed to do more to protect their citizens from Chinese intimidation.
“The biggest mistake European Union countries make is that once they allow China to get away with something, that emboldens Beijing,” he said. 

“China has systematic strategies in place and the threats to Uighurs in exile show that. Europe needs its own unified strategy to stand up to China and respond to these threats.”
The Chinese embassy in Berlin did not respond to requests for comment.

Demonstrators in London stand in solidarity with Hong Kong protest movement

HKFP Lens

Thousands rallied in over 40 cities around the world over the weekend in opposition to totalitarianism, and in solidarity with protesters in Hong Kong who also took to the streets en masse. Events were held in the US, UK, Australia, Canada, Germany, France, Italy, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Norway, South Korea, Taiwan, and other places. 

Photographer Darcy Miller captured the rally in London.

Photo: Darcy Miller.

Photo: Darcy Miller.

Photo: Darcy Miller.

Photo: Darcy Miller.

Photo: Darcy Miller.

Photo: Darcy Miller.

Photo: Darcy Miller.

Photo: Darcy Miller.

Photo: Darcy Miller.

Photo: Darcy Miller.

Photo: Darcy Miller.

Photo: Darcy Miller.

Photo: Darcy Miller.

Photo: Darcy Miller.

Photo: Darcy Miller.

China's Final Solution

China secretly abducted in Germany a university president and convicted him in a sham trial. He may be executed

• A prominent Chinese Uyghur may be facing imminent execution by the Chinese goverment. 
• Tashpolat Tiyip was seized in Germany while on a trip to a conference there, and has been held in unknown conditions since.
• As many as 3 million Chinese Muslims, including Uyghurs, are being held in concentration camps in China's East Turkestan colony. 
• They face interrogation, torture, and indoctrination by the Chinese Communist Party.

By Ellen Ioanes

Uyghur intellectual Tashpolat Tiyip may be facing imminent execution by the Chinese government after two years of languishing in secret detention, Amnesty International reports.
Tiyip was the president of East Turkestan University, and was visiting Germany with students for a conference in 2017 when he was forcibly detained while traveling, one of hundreds of prominent Uyghurs who have disappeared as Chinese authorities have relocated millions of these Muslim citizens to concentration camps in the country's west.
Tiyip underwent a secret and "grossly unfair" trial where he was convicted of "separatism" and sentenced to a "suspended death sentence" — where the detainee is eligible for commutation after two years provided they have committed no other crimes — two years ago this September, according to Amnesty International. 

The rights group reports that he is being held in unknown conditions, and that his execution could be imminent, as the two-year reprieve period comes to an end this month.
Patrick Poon, a researcher at Amnesty International's East Asia Regional Office, told Insider that it's not uncommon for Uighur intellectuals to be targeted by the Chinese government.
"From my research and interviews with other Uyghurs, some other Uyghur intellectuals were also accused of this [separatism] charge, not mention the famous case of Ilham Tohti," he told Insider via email.
Tohti is a Uyghur scholar who has been detained by the Chinese government for the past five years. He was given a life sentence after being convicted of separatism in a two-day trial. 

Ilham is a well-known scholar on Uyghur issues and an advocate for Uyghur rights, according to PEN America.
Frank Bencosme, Amnesty's U.S.-based Asia Pacific advocacy manager, told Radio Free Asia that no exact timeline regarding Tiyip's case has been made available, and there has been no communication from the Chinese government about their plans to execute him.
The Uyghur Human Rights Project counts 386 cases of Uyghur intellectuals currently detained, disappeared, or imprisoned as of March of this year, including scholars, students, journalists, and artists.
Darren Byler, a scholar at the University of Washington who focuses on Uyghur culture, explained the purpose of targeting Uyghur intellectuals. 

"In the past these figures served as models for younger generations of Uyghurs," he told the Uyghur Human Rights Project.
"Their criminalization sends the message throughout Uyghur society that the space for permitted difference, for Uyghur-ness, has now been drastically reduced. It makes it clear that any self-determined celebration of Uyghur values is no longer permitted."
"Ordinary Uyghurs hold great hopes for these elites," Tahir Hamut, a Uyghur poet, said. 

"Therefore, the attack on these elites will destroy the hope of Uyghur society and plunge Uyghurs into despair. Perhaps the Communist Party of China would like to see this result."
The Chinese government has been targeting ethnic Uyghur minorities in East Turkestan colony for years, particularly since 2017, keeping them in so-called "re-education camps" under brutal conditions.
The Chinese government claims the camps are "vocational education centers" aimed at stemming Islamic extremism. 

But Randall Schriver, the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Indo-Pacific Security Affairs, said "The (Chinese) Communist Party is using the security forces for mass imprisonment of Chinese Muslims in concentration camps," during a Pentagon briefing in May, Reuters reported. 

Schriver said at the same meeting that close to 3 million Chinese Muslims, including Uyghurs, are in the camps.
Detainees have reported being interrogated, tortured, and forced to consume Communist party propaganda at the camp, where they are guarded from watchtowers and fenced in my razor wire. Some have committed suicide, according to Reuters.

Thuggish China Doesn't Deserve Respect

I won't stop meeting Chinese activists, says German foreign minister

By Thomas Escritt and Joseph Nasr

German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas speaks during the budget debate in the Bundestag, the lower house of parliament in Berlin, Germany September 11, 2019. 

BERLIN -- German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said he would continue to meet Chinese human rights activists and lawyers, both at home and on trips to China, after his meeting this week with a Hong Kong democracy activist drew Beijing’s ire.
“When the chancellor is in Beijing she meets human rights lawyers and activists,” Maas told reporters at a news conference on Thursday. 

“When I’m in Beijing I do the same. And I do the same in Berlin. And that won’t change in the future.”
Maas exchanged words with Hong Kong democracy activist Joshua Wong at a Berlin reception earlier this week, prompting Beijing to summon the German ambassador in protest.
“Our fundamental position on China -- one country, two political systems -- is unchanged,” Maas added. 

“We support the rights enjoyed by the people of Hong Kong under this policy.”

My town is the new Cold War's Berlin: Hong Kong activist Joshua Wong

Joshua Wong spoke to Foreign Minister Heiko Maas on protests situation, free election and democracy in Hong Kong

By Thomas Escritt

Joshua Wong spoke to Germany's Foreign Minister Heiko Maas

BERLIN --  Comparing the struggle of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protesters to the role of Berlin during the Cold War, activist Joshua Wong told an audience in the German capital that his city was now a bulwark between the free world and the “dictatorship of China”.

Hong Kong's pro-democracy activist Joshua Wong attends the summer party "Bild 100" of German publisher Axel Springer at the Reichstag building in Berlin, Germany, September 9, 2019. 

The 22-year-old activist, who was in Berlin for a newspaper-sponsored event at the German parliament celebrating human rights activists around the world, pledged that protests would not be lulled into complacency by the decision of the city’s government to drop a contested new extradition law.
“If we are in a new Cold War, Hong Kong is the new Berlin,” he said in a reception space a stone’s throw from the Berlin Wall on the roof of the Reichstag building, which for decades occupied the no-man’s land between Communist East Berlin and the city’s capitalist western half.
Hong Kong has been convulsed by months of unrest since its government announced attempts to make it easier to extradite suspects to China, a move seen as a prelude to bringing the pluralistic autonomous region more in line with the mainland.
Wong, leader of the Demosisto pro-democracy movement, has become a prominent face of the protests.
“We urge the free world to stand together with us in resisting the Chinese autocratic regime,” he added, describing Chinese leader Xi Jinping as “not a president but an emperor.”
The city’s leader, Carrie Lam, announced concessions this week to try to end the protests, including formally scrapping the bill, but Wong said protesters would not be lulled into complacency.
He said they would try to hold the city’s government responsible for human rights violations committed against protesters, adding that Lim’s climb-down was a ruse to buy calm ahead of China’s Oct. 1 national day.
He had briefly been detained by Hong Kong authorities before his departure earlier in the day for breaching bail conditions following his arrest in August when he was charged along with other prominent activists with inciting and participating in an unauthorized assembly.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel has just returned from a trip to China, during which she faced criticism from Germany for not engaging more directly with the Hong Kong protesters, whose cause is popular in Germany, though she did call for a peaceful solution to the Hong Kong unrest.

President Trump warns China is 'ripe' for new tariffs and suggests Vietnam could be next

President Trump also attacks Germany and Japan as he set off for the G20 summit in Osaka

The Guardian

President Donald Trump issued stark warnings before departing Washington for the G20 summit in Japan. 

President Donald Trump flew to the G20 summit on Wednesday sounding warnings that China was “ripe” for new tariffs and suggesting that Vietnam, which he called “the single worst abuser of everybody”, could be next.
Air Force One took off on a fiercely hot day from Washington and President Trump seemed to promise heat of his own when he meets leaders of the G20 countries in Japan.

Declaring that he enjoyed a strong hand in the trade war with China, he made clear he’ll be in no mood to give much ground when he holds closely watched talks with Xi Jinping on Saturday.

“China’s economy is going down the tubes – they want to make a deal,” President Trump said in an interview with Fox Business Network.

President Trump has already imposed levies on $200bn of Chinese imports in an effort to force Beijing to adhere to intellectual property laws. 

The president indicated he was also ready to slap tariffs on all remaining Chinese imports, worth more than $300bn.
“You have another $325bn that I haven’t taxed yet – it’s ripe for taxing, for putting tariffs on,” he told Fox.
During Wednesday’s interview, President Trump also hinted he might impose tariffs on Vietnam, describing the country as “the single worst abuser of everybody”.

“A lot of companies are moving to Vietnam, but Vietnam takes advantage of us even worse than China. So there’s a very interesting situation going on there,” President Trump said.

President Trump said that that the China trade tariffs were only hurting China, while the US was benefiting from the situation.
“What is happening is people are moving out of China. Companies are moving out of China, by the way, some are coming back to the United States because they don’t want to pay the tariff,” he said.
President Trump did say that a previous threat to tax remaining trade at 25% could be changed to a less harsh 10%.
The two sides said they were close to a deal before talks broke down in May.
“We were about 90% of the way there,” the treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, told CNBC television, adding he was looking forward to the Trump-Xi talks but stressing there would be no deal for “the sake of a deal.”
“I hope the message that we want to hear is that they want to come back to the table,” Mnuchin said.
President Trump’s aggressive attempt to rewrite the rules with China are part of a wider policy of fixing what he says is a system rigged against the United States.
“Almost all countries in this world take tremendous advantage of the United States. It’s unbelievable,” he said in his lengthy interview.
Casting his eye over the wider landscape, President Trump also lashed out at close partners Germany and Japan.

He described Germany – part of the bedrock of the US alliance with western Europe – as “delinquent” for not paying enough to NATO’s budget.
“So Germany is paying Russia billions and billions of dollars for energy, okay,” he said. 

“So they are giving Russia billions of dollars yet we are supposed to protect Germany and Germany is delinquent! Okay?”
President Trump aired a similar complaint about Japan, Washington’s closest ally in Asia and host of the G20 summit, which has been under the protection of a US military umbrella since its defeat in the second world war.
“If Japan is attacked, we will fight World War III. We will go in and protect them with our lives and with our treasure,” he said. 

“But if we’re attacked, Japan doesn’t have to help us. They can watch it on a Sony television.”
Speaking to reporters at the White House, President Trump remained coy on expectations for his meeting at the G20 with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin.

President Trump has been criticised for what opponents see as an oddly opaque relationship between the two leaders and he did little to dispel the controversy.
“I’ll have a very good conversation with him,” President Trump told reporters. 

“What I say to him is none of your business.”

Stop Chinese Bullying

Germany may join US in opposing China by sending warship through Taiwan Strait, breaking decades of military non-confrontation

politico.com 

German navy supply vessel A1411 Berlin is moored during the opening parade of the 830th port anniversary in Hamburg in May. 

Germany is considering a break from decades of military non-confrontation.
High ranking officials are contemplating sending a warship through the Taiwan Strait – joining the United States and France in challenging Beijing’s claims to what the West regards as an international waterway.
If Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government actually goes ahead, it will be a remarkable revision of its we-keep-out-of-conflict reflexes. 

Germany will be openly backing its allies in a strategy certain to be found provocative by the country’s enforcers of non-combatant passivity.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel takes part in a disussion at an event in Frankfurt am Main on Wednesday.

Recent examples of Germany’s reluctance to engage include the withdrawal of its navy from the combat zone during the West’s Libyan intervention in 2011, caveats on its troop deployments in Afghanistan and its decision not to participate directly in attacks on Islamic State forces in Syria – unlike its Nato neighbours Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark and France.
A German official informed me of the Taiwan Strait plan last month. 

Last week, a second German official, at my request, confirmed its discussion by the defence ministry. No firm decision was expected before the end of the summer.
The strait in question is the body of water between China and Taiwan, which Beijing considers to be its territorial zone. 

When a French frigate transited in April, it was shadowed by Chinese military and warned to leave. Beijing said it made “stern representations” to Paris about the vessel’s “illegal” passage.
Later that month, the United States sent two destroyers into the strait “demonstrating the US’s commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific”, according to an American spokesman.
The US has prioritised countering China’s military rise since the early days of Barack Obama’s presidency. 

Why would Germany get involved? 

Members in Merkel’s government see a double opportunity, given Berlin’s lousy relations with US President Donald Trump and wide disrespect elsewhere for its hide-under-the-bed routine.
It certainly would not hurt to back up the US at a time when Washington has suspended threats of tariffs for six months on imported German cars.
The naval mission would also be an opportunity to show up France, which likes to portray itself as the European Union’s sole functional military power and which has responded to Merkel’s opposition to most of President Emmanuel Macron’s reform proposals for the EU by becoming one of Germany’s sharpest critics.

The guided-missile destroyer USS William P Lawrence practices ship maneuvers as it transits the Pacific Ocean in June 2018. 

France has just spent two years and €1.3 billion (US$1.46 billion) to refurbish its atomic-powered carrier, the Charles de Gaulle. 

French generals have accused Berlin of running a “non-combat” army. 

Macron himself has said that Germany’s growth model, based on profiting from imbalances in the euro zone, is at an end.
His openness has emboldened French commentators to pick up the now authorised lash. 

Zaki Laidi, a professor at Sciences Po, the French political science university, wrote last month that Merkel “has done absolutely nothing’’ to change Germany’s role as a rich global bystander protected by America.
The question now is whether the government, faced with deepening political weakness at home, will challenge that portrayal and actually follow through with the plan for projecting power.
The signs are not overwhelmingly promising. 

Merkel’s apparent valedictory speech at the Harvard University commencement last week was a time warp moment – a pretend flashback to a time when Germany was the uncontested European leader, bathing in cash, moderation and the overdrawn favour of Obama.
In reality, Germany is politically riven to the edge of instability. 

Its economic prospects are dim. 

Merkel’s paralytic coalition with the Social Democrats has “cave-in” scrawled all over it two years before she is expected to leave office in 2021.
Polls over the weekend measured the depth of Germany’s cracks.

A tugboat escorts French Navy frigate Vendemiaire on arrival for a goodwill visit at a port in Metro Manila, Philippines in March 2018. 

For the first time since the Green Party became a player in the early 1980s, the environmentalist movement surpassed Merkel’s Christian Democrats in a projection of national election results. 

The Social Democrats sank to a historical low, just a point ahead of the far-right Alternative for Germany.
Economically, what Merkel once called Germany’s “Beacon to the World” keeps flashing dimmer shades of yellow. 

The German Chamber of Commerce and Industry reports that gross domestic product growth will fall to 0.6 per cent this year, with little prospect for improvement in 2020.
Worse still: the chancellor’s chosen successor, CDU party leader Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, is failing in her job preparation. 

A poll last week showed that 70 per cent of the Germans think she is not up to the task.
Among her ideas: a “symbolic project” for Germany and France to jointly build an aircraft carrier to demonstrate the EU’s role as a “security and peace power” – without detailing its mission. 

Forced to deal with her protege’s fantasy, while refusing herself to meet Nato’s spending targets, Merkel has been cornered into saying “it’s right and good”.
In this context, launching a naval in-your-face operation off the coast of Taiwan would constitute a groundbreaking but unfamiliar act of valour.

Admirably, there are German officials who want to combat the notion that the country is an irresponsible and non-committal ally. 

More power to them. 

The place to do that is the international waters of the Taiwan Strait. 

Now, the German navy needs to get that far.

America Pushes Allies to Fight Huawei in New Arms Race With China

Whichever country dominates 5G will gain an economic, intelligence and military edge for much of this century

By David E. Sanger, Julian E. Barnes, Raymond Zhong and Marc Santora

Huawei’s offices in Warsaw. Polish officials recently came under pressure from the United States to bar Huawei from building its 5G communications network.

Jeremy Hunt, the British foreign minister, arrived in Washington last week for a whirlwind of meetings dominated by a critical question: Should Britain risk its relationship with Beijing and agree to the Trump administration’s request to ban Huawei, China’s leading telecommunications producer, from building its next-generation computer and phone networks?
Britain is not the only American ally feeling the heat.

In Poland, officials are also under pressure from the United States to bar Huawei from building its fifth generation, or 5G, network. 

Trump officials suggested that future deployments of American troops — including the prospect of a permanent base labeled “Fort Trump” — could hinge on Poland’s decision.
And a delegation of American officials showed up last spring in Germany, where most of Europe’s giant fiber-optic lines connect and Huawei wants to build the switches that make the system hum. Their message: Any economic benefit of using cheaper Chinese telecom equipment is outweighed by the security threat to the NATO alliance.
Over the past year, the United States has embarked on a stealthy global campaign to prevent Huawei and other Chinese firms from participating in the most dramatic remaking of the plumbing that controls the internet since it sputtered into being, in pieces, 35 years ago.
The administration contends that the world is engaged in a new arms race — one that involves technology, rather than conventional weaponry, but poses just as much danger to America’s national security.
In an age when the most powerful weapons, short of nuclear arms, are cyber-controlled, whichever country dominates 5G will gain an economic, intelligence and military edge for much of this century.

The transition to 5G — already beginning in prototype systems in cities from Dallas to Atlanta — is likely to be more revolutionary than evolutionary. 

What consumers will notice first is that the network is faster — data should download almost instantly, even over cellphone networks.
It is the first network built to serve the sensors, robots, autonomous vehicles and other devices that will continuously feed each other vast amounts of data, allowing factories, construction sites and even whole cities to be run with less moment-to-moment human intervention. 

It will also enable greater use of virtual reality and artificial intelligence tools.
But what is good for consumers is also good for intelligence services and cyberattackers. 

The 5G system is a physical network of switches and routers. 

But it is more reliant on layers of complex software that are far more adaptable, and constantly updating, in ways invisible to users — much as an iPhone automatically updates while charging overnight. 

That means whoever controls the networks controls the information flow — and is able to change, reroute or copy data without users’ knowledge.
In interviews with current and former senior American government officials, intelligence officers and top telecommunications executives, it is clear that the potential of 5G has created a zero-sum calculus in the Trump White House — a conviction that there must be a single winner in this arms race, and the loser must be banished. 

For months, the White House has been drafting an executive order, expected in the coming weeks, that would effectively ban United States companies from using Chinese-origin equipment in critical telecommunications networks. 

That goes far beyond the existing rules, which ban such equipment only from government networks.
Nervousness about Chinese technology has long existed in the United States, fueled by the fear that the Chinese could insert a “back door” into telecom and computing networks that would allow Chinese security services to intercept military, government and corporate communications. 

And Chinese cyberintrusions of American companies and government entities have occurred daily, including by hackers working on behalf of China’s Ministry of State Security.
But the concern has taken on more urgency as countries around the world begin deciding which equipment providers will build their 5G networks.
American officials say the old process of looking for “back doors” in equipment and software made by Chinese companies is the wrong approach, as is searching for ties between specific executives and the Chinese government. 

The bigger issue is the increasingly authoritarian nature of the Chinese government, the fading line between independent business and the state and new laws that will give Beijing the power to look into and take over networks that companies like Huawei have helped build and maintain.
“It’s important to remember that Chinese company relationships with the Chinese government aren’t like private sector company relationships with governments in the West,” said William R. Evanina, the director of America’s National Counterintelligence and Security Center. 

“China’s 2017 National Intelligence Law requires Chinese companies to support, provide assistance and cooperate in China’s national intelligence work, wherever they operate.”
The White House’s focus on Huawei coincides with the Trump administration’s broader crackdown on China, which has involved sweeping tariffs on Chinese goods, investment restrictions and the indictments of several Chinese nationals accused of hacking and cyberespionage. 

President Trump has accused China of “ripping off our country” and plotting to grow stronger at America’s expense.
President Trump’s views have prompted some countries to question whether America’s campaign is really about national security or if it is aimed at preventing China from gaining a competitive edge.
Administration officials see little distinction in those goals.
“President Trump has identified overcoming this economic problem as critical, not simply to right the balance economically, to make China play by the rules everybody else plays by, but to prevent an imbalance in political/military power in the future as well,” John R. Bolton, President Trump’s national security adviser, told The Washington Times on Friday. 

“The two aspects are very closely tied together in his mind.”
The administration is warning allies that the next six months are critical. 

Countries are beginning to auction off radio spectrum for new, 5G cellphone networks and decide on multibillion-dollar contracts to build the underlying switching systems. 

This past week, the Federal Communications Commission announced that it had concluded its first high-band 5G spectrum auction.
The Chinese government sees this moment as its chance to wire the world — especially European, Asian and African nations that find themselves increasingly beholden to Chinese economic power.
“This will be almost more important than electricity,” said Chris Lane, a telecom analyst in Hong Kong for Sanford C. Bernstein. 

“Everything will be connected, and the central nervous system of these smart cities will be your 5G network.”

Both the United States and China believe that whichever country dominates 5G will gain an economic, intelligence and military edge for much of this century.

A New Red Scare

American officials whisper that classified reports implicate Huawei in Chinese espionage but have produced none publicly. 

Others familiar with the secret case against the company say there is just a heightened concern about the firm’s rising technological dominance and the new Chinese laws that require Huawei to submit to requests from Beijing.

Australia last year banned Huawei and another Chinese manufacturer, ZTE, from supplying 5G equipment. 

Other nations are wrestling with whether to follow suit and risk inflaming China, which could hamper their access to the growing Chinese market and deprive them of cheaper Huawei products.
Government officials in places like Britain note that Huawei has already invested heavily in older-style networks.

And they argue that Huawei isn’t going away — it will run the networks of half the world, or more, and will have to be connected, in some way, to the networks of the United States and its allies.
Yet BT Group, the British telecom giant, has plans to rip out part of Huawei’s existing network. 

The company says that was part of its plans after acquiring a firm that used existing Huawei equipment; American officials say it came after Britain’s intelligence services warned of growing risks. 

And Vodafone Group, which is based in London, said on Friday that it would temporarily stop buying Huawei equipment for parts of its 5G network.
Nations have watched warily as China has retaliated against countries that cross it. 

In December, Canada arrested a top Huawei executive, Meng Wanzhou, at the request of the United States. 

Meng, who is Ren’s daughter, has been accused of defrauding banks to help Huawei’s business evade sanctions against Iran. 

Since her arrest, China has detained two Canadian citizens and sentenced to death a third Canadian, who had previously been given 15 years in prison for drug smuggling.
“Europe is fascinating because they have to take sides,” said Philippe Le Corre, nonresident senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. 

“They are in the middle. All these governments, they need to make decisions. Huawei is everywhere.”

A Huawei store in Warsaw. This month, the Polish government made two high-profile espionage arrests, including an employee of Huawei.

Growing Suspicions
This month, the Polish government made two high-profile espionage arrests: a former intelligence official, Piotr Durbajlo, and Wang Weijing, an employee of Huawei. 

The arrests are the strongest evidence so far that links Huawei with spying activities.
Wang has been accused of working for Chinese intelligence agencies, said a top former Polish intelligence official. 

Wang was the handler of Durbajlo, who has helped the Chinese penetrate the Polish government’s most secure communications network.
The case was a prime example of how the Chinese government plants intelligence operatives inside Huawei’s vast global network. 

Those operatives have access to overseas communications networks and conduct espionage that the affected companies are not aware of, the official said.
Wang’s lawyer, Bartlomiej Jankowski, says his client has been caught up in a geopolitical tug of war between the United States and China.
American and British officials had already grown concerned about Huawei’s abilities after cybersecurity experts, combing through the company’s source code to look for back doors, determined that Huawei could remotely access and control networks from the company’s Shenzhen headquarters.
On careful examination, the code that Huawei had installed in its network-control software did not appear to be malicious. 

Nor was it hidden. 

It appeared to be part of a system to update remote networks and diagnose trouble. 

But it could also route traffic around corporate data centers — where firms monitor and control their networks — and its mere existence is now cited as evidence that hackers and Chinese intelligence use Huawei equipment to penetrate millions of networks.
Chinese telecommunications companies have also hijacked parts of the internet, rerouting basic traffic from the United States and Canada to China.
One academic paper, co-written by Chris C. Demchak, a Naval War College professor, outlined how traffic from Canada meant for South Korea was redirected to China for six months. 

That 2016 attack has been repeated and provides opportunity for espionage.
Last year, AT&T and Verizon stopped selling Huawei phones in their stores after Huawei begin equipping the devices with its own sets of computer chips — rather than relying on American or European manufacturers. 

The National Security Agency quietly raised alarms that with Huawei supplying its own parts, the Chinese company would control every major element of its networks. 

The N.S.A. feared it would no longer be able to rely on American and European providers to warn of any evidence of malware, spying or other covert action.

An assembly line at Huawei’s cellphone plant in Dongguan, China. The company has already surpassed Apple as the world’s second biggest cellphone provider.

The Rise of Huawei
In three decades, Huawei has transformed itself from a small reseller of low-end phone equipment into a global giant with a dominant position in one of the crucial technologies of the new century.
Last year, Huawei edged out Apple as the second-biggest provider of cellphones around the world. Richard Yu, who heads the company’s consumer business, said in Beijing several days ago that “even without the U.S. market we will be No. 1 in the world,” by the end of this year or sometime in 2020.
The company was founded in 1987 by Ren, a former People’s Liberation Army engineer who has become one of China’s most successful entrepreneurs.
The company started through imitation and theft of American technology. 

Cisco Systems sued Huawei in 2003, saying it had illegally copied the American company’s source code. 

The two companies settled out of court.
Huawei opened research centers (including one in California) and built alliances with leading universities around the world. 

Last year, it generated $100 billion in revenue, twice as much as Cisco and significantly more than IBM. 

Its ability to deliver well-made equipment at a lower cost than Western firms drove once-dominant players like Motorola and Lucent out of the telecom-equipment industry.
While American officials refuse to discuss it, the government snooping was a two-way street. 

As early as 2010, the N.S.A. secretly broke into Huawei’s headquarters, in an operation code-named “Shotgiant,” a discovery revealed by Edward J. Snowden, the former N.S.A. contractor now living in exile in Moscow.
Documents show that the N.S.A. was looking to prove that Huawei was controlled by the People’s Liberation Army — and that Ren never really left the powerful army unit. 

But the Snowden documents also show that the N.S.A. had another goal: to better understand Huawei’s technology and look for potential back doors. 

This way, when the company sold equipment to American adversaries, the N.S.A. would be able to target those nations’ computer and telephone networks to conduct surveillance and, if necessary, offensive cyberoperations.

President Trump met with Andrzej Duda, his Polish counterpart, last year. Mr. Duda has suggested that the United States build a $2 billion base and training area, which Mr. Duda only half-jokingly called “Fort Trump.”

A Global Campaign
After an uproar in 2013 about Huawei’s growing dominance in Britain, the country’s powerful Intelligence and Security Committee, a parliamentary body, argued for banning Huawei, partly because of Chinese cyberattacks aimed at the British government. 

It was overruled, but Britain created a system to require that Huawei make its hardware and source code available to GCHQ, the country’s famous code-breaking agency.
In July, Britain’s National Cyber Security Center for the first time said publicly that questions about Huawei’s current practices and the complexity and dynamism of the new 5G networks meant it would be difficult to find vulnerabilities.
At roughly the same time, the N.S.A., at a series of classified meetings with telecommunications executives, had to decide whether to let Huawei bid for parts of the American 5G networks. 

AT&T and Verizon argued there was value in letting Huawei set up a “test bed” in the United States since it would have to reveal the source code for its networking software. 

Allowing Huawei to bid would also drive the price of building the networks down, they argued.
The director of the N.S.A. at the time, Adm. Michael S. Rogers, never approved the move and Huawei was blocked.
In July 2018, with these decisions swirling, Britain, the United States and other members of the “Five Eyes” intelligence-sharing alliance met for their annual meeting in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where Chinese telecommunications companies, Huawei and 5G networks were at the top of the agenda. They decided on joint action to try to block the company from building new networks in the West.
American officials are trying to make clear with allies around the world that the war with China is not just about trade but a battle to protect the national security of the world’s leading democracies and key NATO members.
On Tuesday, the heads of American intelligence agencies will appear before the Senate to deliver their annual threat assessment, and they are expected to cite 5G investments by Chinese telecom companies, including Huawei, as a threat.
In Poland, the message has quietly been delivered that countries that use Chinese telecommunications networks would be unsafe for American troops.
That has gotten Poland’s attention, given that its president, Andrzej Duda, visited the White House in September and presented a plan to build a $2 billion base and training area, which Mr. Duda only half-jokingly called “Fort Trump.”
Col. Grzegorz Malecki, now retired, who was the head of the Foreign Intelligence Agency in Poland, said it was understandable that the United States would want to avoid potentially compromising its troops.
“And control over the 5G network is such a potentially dangerous tool,” said Mr. Malecki, now board president of the Institute of Security and Strategy. 

“From Poland’s perspective, securing this troop presence outweighs all other concerns.”

Germany’s China Problem

Berlin is walking a thin line between its strongest ally and its biggest trading partner.
By Anna Sauerbrey

Xi Jinping and President Frank-Walter Steinmeier of Germany with a military honor guard in Beijing last month. German leaders have recently become more worried about the risks of having China as a business partner.

BERLIN — As the trade impasse between the United States and China grinds on, the rest of the world is reduced to being anxious bystanders — and nowhere are leaders more anxious than here in Germany.
Over the last decade, Germany, the largest economy in Europe but still a middle power by global standards, has steadily adapted itself to the realities of Chinese economic dominance.

We have welcomed Chinese investment, and encouraged our companies to play by Beijing’s rules to get access to its markets. 

At the same time, Germany has remained a stalwart member of the Western political and security alliance.
The geopolitical tumult of the last six months has led to a strategic awakening among Germany’s leaders of the risks involved in trying to play both sides. 

Whether Germany has the capacity to rise to those challenges may be the biggest question facing the country over the next several years.
Until now, trade has defined Germany’s foreign policy on China, its single most important trading partner. 

It has sought close relations with China, setting up regular bilateral government consultations.
Like many in the West, Germans believed that growth would push China in a more economically and politically liberal direction. 

But over the last few years, these hopes have been shattered by the increasingly nationalist, expansionist and statist politics of Xi Jinping.
According to analysts like Mikko Huotari, the deputy director of the Berlin-based Mercator Institute for China Studies, Chancellor Angela Merkel has long held a skeptical view of China’s political development. 

But it was not until about two years ago that the rest of the government came around to her way of thinking, and pushed the rest of the government to sign onto a new, multifaceted China strategy.
This new approach begins with the premise that China is not just expanding its economy, but seeking to impose a global agenda that not only promotes its interests but also chips away at the rules-based, multinational order established after World War II. 

In response, Germany needs to be more active, perhaps even combative, in defending its interests.
But it was not until the last several months that the government began to change its public stance, becoming bolder in its talk of a “new great power struggle.” 

In a speech in November, Foreign Minister Heiko Maas argued that Europe had “the most of all to lose” from growing America-China tensions and America-Russia tensions.
In a recent, unusually outspoken paper, the Federation of German Industries, one of the country’s most powerful business associations, declared that there was “system competition” between China and Germany — in other words, that trade between the two countries had become a zero-sum battle. 

While German industry should continue to “take advantage of the opportunities offered by economic exchange with China,” the federation said, the “challenges posed by China cannot be ignored.”
And in December, Germany’s political leaders agreed to lower the threshold at which foreign investment in security-related industries — including energy suppliers, railways and digital infrastructure — prompts government intervention, a step clearly aimed at China. 

This policy was already in place in practice; last year, the German state bank KfW bought a 20 percent share of 50Hertz, a power distributing company, to block a bid by the State Grid Corporation of China. 

The Ministries of Finance and Economy cited security as the reason for the unusual move.
But is all this enough? 

Policymakers and diplomats refrain from speaking of a paradigm shift in Germany’s China politics. “We have carefully adjusted our policy,” said Niels Annen, the minister of state at the Foreign Office. Indeed, unlike Germany’s foreign policy on Russia, the country’s relations with China are under less vigorous and ideological public scrutiny. 

Russia is a passionately divisive topic; most Germans could care less about China. 

And diplomats probably like it that way.
When it comes to China, Germany has to walk a very thin line in a rapidly changing international environment. 

The trans-Atlantic relationship has been rattled since Donald Trump took office; Germany suddenly finds itself agreeing with China more on certain issues, like climate change, than with the United States, its longtime ally.
As a consequence, German diplomats have to play a tricky game: Partnering with an ideological adversary against its close ally on some issues, while sticking with that suddenly difficult ally against its most important trading partner on others. 

And in both cases, it has to stand by its commitment to the rules-based international order when neither of those partners holds the same level of commitment, at least at the moment.
How much longer Germany can continue to walk this line while staying committed to the old trans-Atlantic relationship remains to be seen. 

Mr. Huotari of the Mercator Institute expects Germany to be put on the spot sooner or later. 

“China may be content as long as Germany doesn’t take sides with the United States,” he said. 

“But the United States is expecting us to clearly position ourselves. We are in the middle of the game already — and the pressure is going to increase.”
Germany’s best option seems to be finding safety in numbers by uniting its European allies, not least because part of China’s geopolitical strategy is to divide Europe. 

Six years ago, it established the 16+1 framework, an initiative to engage 16 Central and Eastern European countries, 11 of which are members of the European Union, in closer relations to influence European policies in its favor.
Lately, however, several of those countries have become disenchanted. 

In some, China is having trouble keeping up with its investment promises. 

Others, like Poland, face increasing pressure from Washington to loosen ties with Beijing. 

This could be Germany’s opening, but it has to play it exactly right — and uniting Western, Central and Eastern Europe is no easy task. 

It is the eternal quandary of German foreign policy: Germany can’t go it alone, but Europe is too divided and too slow to step up. 

Evil Company

Huawei terror: New Zealand bars Chinese firm on national security fears

BBC News

New Zealand has become the latest country to block a proposal to use telecoms equipment made by China's Huawei because of national security concerns.
Spark New Zealand wanted to use Huawei equipment in its 5G mobile network.
However, a NZ government security agency said the deal would bring significant risks to national security.
The move is part of a growing push against the involvement of Chinese technology firms on security grounds.
5G networks are being built in several countries and will form the next significant wave of mobile infrastructure.
Huawei, the world's biggest producer of telecoms equipment, has faced resistance from foreign governments over the risk that its technology could be used for espionage.
Telecoms firm Spark New Zealand planned to use equipment from the Chinese firm in its 5G network.
The head of NZ's Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) told Spark the proposal "would , if implemented, raise significant national security risks", the company said.
Intelligence services minister Andrew Little said Spark could work with the agency to reduce that risk.
"As the GCSB has noted, this is an ongoing process. We will actively address any concerns and work together to find a way forward," Huawei said.

What other countries have concerns?
The move follows a decision by Australia to block Huawei and Chinese firm ZTE from providing 5G technology for the country's wireless networks on national security grounds.
The US and UK have raised concerns with Huawei, and the firm has been scrutinised in Germany, Japan and Korea.
Last week the Wall Street Journal reported that the US government has been trying to persuade wireless providers to avoid using equipment from Huawei.
In the UK, a security committee report in July warned that it had "only limited assurance" that Huawei's telecoms gear posed no threat to national security.
Only one country is standing by Huawei: Papua New Guinea said this week it would go ahead with an agreement for Huawei to build its internet infrastructure.
The Pacific nation has seen a surge in investment from China over the past decade.

What are the fears?
Experts say foreign governments are increasingly worried about the risk of espionage by China, given the close ties between companies and the state.
Tom Uren, visiting fellow in the International Cyber Policy Centre at Australia's Strategic Policy Institute, said the Chinese government had "clearly demonstrated intent over many years to steal information".
"The Chinese state has engaged in a lot of cyber and other espionage and intellectual property theft," he said.
Links between firms and the government have fueled concerns that China may attempt to "leverage state-linked companies to be able to enable their espionage operations", Mr Uren said.
Those concerns were exacerbated by new laws introduced last year that required Chinese organisations assist in national intelligence efforts.
The laws enable the Chinese state to compel people and companies to assist it, Mr Uren said.
The combination of new rules and a history of espionage have increased the perceived danger of using companies like Huawei and ZTE in critical national infrastructure.
"It's hard to argue that they don't represent an elevated risk," Mr Uren added.