It’s been little over a week since the beginning of the spat between Google and China over censorship and hacking attacks. But that was more than enough time for the fracas to escalate into international political tensions and name-calling.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton joined in today. In a wide-ranging speech in Washington, Mrs Clinton said the internet had been a “source of tremendous progress” in China but that any country which restricted free access to information risked “walling themselves off from the progress of the next century” [BBC News]. In taking a foreign policy stand on information freedom, she also singled out other countries that she says harass bloggers or promote censorship and called on other companies to follow Google’s lead in taking a stand against restrictive governments.
“A new information curtain is descending across much of the world,” she said, calling growing Internet curbs the modern equivalent of the Berlin Wall [Reuters].
Are the world’s most popular search engine and the world’s most populous country headed for a breakup? That’s the word reverberating around the Internet today after Google said it would no longer put up with the Chinese government’s demands to censor the Internet and the rampant hacking attempts against it, which could result in the company ending its Chinese operations.
The announcement came as a stunning reversal for Google, which had capitulated to the government’s wishes to gain access to China’s fast-growing population of Internet users. Since arriving in 2006 under an arrangement with the government that purged its Chinese search results of banned topics, Google has come under fire for abetting a system that increasingly restricts what can be read online [The New York Times].
Last week, while the world gearing up to ring in a new year, China was quietly reeling from a new pollution scare. A pipeline operated by the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC)—the country’s number one oil producer—ruptured and spilled 40,000 gallons of diesel in the northern part of the country.
The spill occurred in the Wei River, a tributary of the Yellow River–which is the source of fresh water for millions of Chinese. Over the weekend, workers threw 17 floating dams across the Wei to block the toxic diesel and save the Yellow River. But scientists discovered diesel traces in a reservoir behind a dam in Sanmenxia, a city about 100 kilometers (62 miles) downstream from the point where the Wei meets the Yellow River, an official in the Henan provincial environmental protection bureau said on Monday [Wall Street Journal].
China’s Harmony train can now boast of being the fastest long distance passenger train on the planet. The Harmony express raced 1,100 km in less than three hours on Saturday, travelling from Guangzhou, capital of southern Guangdong province, to the central city of Wuhan. The journey previously took at least 11 hours [Financial Times]. That’s almost like traveling from New York City to Indianapolis by train in three hours. Even if you encountered a two and a half hour delay, which happened to one unlucky load of Harmony riders this week, you’d still make great time.
Wind turbines, energy-efficient light bulbs, and hybrid cars and three of the most iconic products in the lineup of green technologies that can help us build a cleaner world. But in an ironic twist, these technologies all rely on elements called rare earths, which are primarily extracted from environmentally destructive mines in China.
The environmental damage can be seen in the red-brown scars of barren clay that run down narrow valleys and the dead lands below, where emerald rice fields once grew. Miners scrape off the topsoil and shovel golden-flecked clay into dirt pits, using acids to extract the rare earths. The acids ultimately wash into streams and rivers, destroying rice paddies and fish farms and tainting water supplies [The New York Times].
China has dished out justice in the tainted milk case, and severe justice at that. The country has executed two men, Zhang Yujun and Geng Jinping, convicted in January of crimes connected to last summer’s powered milk and infant formula contamination incident, which killed six children and sickened about 300,000 people in total.
Zhang, a farmer, produced some 770 tonnes of the powder from July 2007 to August 2008 which was laced with an industrial chemical, melamine, used in the manufacture of plastics and fertiliser [The Telegraph]. Geng was convicted of selling the powder to dairy brokers. The Supreme Court reviewed the cases before the executions, now done with lethal injection, took place. Nineteen other people were convicted of crimes; three got life sentences.
The Chinese government has banned the controversial use of electroconvulsive therapy, or shock therapy, to treat the controversial diagnosis of “Internet addiction.” With an estimated 300 million Internet users, China has been grappling with how to keep avid Web surfers from spending their whole lives online, and various clinics have sprung up, offering parents the chance to “cure” their children of the uncontrollable urge to blog or play online games [Telegraph]. But a recent scandal involving a psychiatric hospital in Shandong province that was using a “brain-waking” treatment of electric shocks has rallied public opinion against such clinics.
China’s Ministry of Health has now posted a notice on its Web site stating that there is no evidence that electric shock therapy is an effective treatment for Internet addiction. A hospital spokeswoman last week said “sensationalized” media reports had already led it to cease the shock treatment. The shocks were meant to cause subjects to associate a negative result with Internet use, according to the hospital [ComputerWorld]. People who were subjected to the treatment report that they were forced to apologize for and repudiate their Internet-using ways while receiving the shocks, which were also used as punishment for uncooperative behavior. In what might be an indication of the clinic’s effectiveness, its practices came to light when former patients went online to complain [The Wall Street Journal].
In a rare victory for freedom of information in China, the government has abruptly reversed course on its mandate that Internet filtering software be installed on every computer sold in China after July 1.
Yesterday, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology announced that mandatory installation of the software, called Green Dam Youth Escort, would be delayed indefinitely. The software caused a torrent of protests from both Chinese computer users and global computer makers…. China has said the software is designed to filter out pornography and violence to protect minors, but many experts say it can also block any other content that the authorities deem subversive [The New York Times].
While some experts suggested that the Chinese government might be delaying the program’s roll-out simply to give computer makers more time to test the software and comply with the policy, others believe that the government was forced to bow to the pressure from outraged citizens. “This shows that social pressure can’t be ignored,” said Zhou Ze, a Beijing lawyer who challenged the legality of the plan. “They tried to control public opinion to back the plan by creating a fuss about pornography, but that failed, and they will have learnt to be more careful next time” [Reuters]. Analyst Edward Yu of Beijing says that while protests from foreign computer companies probably influenced the government’s decision, “we think public opinion played an even more important role” [AP].
China’s recent economic boom has come at the cost of polluted landscapes and newly endangered species, and now a new study explains how another species has been left teetering on the brink of extinction. The endangered Chinese sturgeon live in the East China and Yellow seas and return to China’s Yangtze River to spawn. Construction of dams on the river is thought to have contributed to a decline in the species, and an artificial propagation effort has not resulted in recovery of the fish [AP]. But the new study shows that a chemical called triphenyltin (TPT), which is commonly used in paint, may be the true culprit behind the sturgeon’s decline.
The tin-containing organic compound TPT is extensively used in paints to prevent the fouling of ship hulls and fishing nets. It is also used in fungicide to treat crops in China. A derivative of TPT is also used to eliminate snails in paddy fields [Reuters]. In the study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers found that river water polluted with the chemical is producing sturgeon with misshapen skeletons and deformed eyes.
China’s plan to build dams along the Mekong River poses the greatest threat to the river’s future, according to a United Nations report released yesterday. China is constructing a series of eight dams on the upper half of the Mekong as it passes through high gorges of Yunnan Province, including the recently completed Xiowan Dam, which — at 958 feet (292 meters) high — is the world’s tallest. Its storage capacity is equal to all the Southeast Asia reservoirs combined [AP], according to the report.
The Mekong, which is known as the Lancang in China, is an important source of water, food, and jobs for residents in the river basin, and runs through China, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. It provides a habitat for rare species of bird and marine life. If the dams move ahead, said the report, the consequences will include “changes in river flow volume and timing, water quality deterioration and loss of biodiversity” [AP]. But Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu defended the proposed plans, saying China would give equal attention to hydropower development on transnational rivers and ecological protection [Xinhua].
Cyber spies have hacked into computers containing information about the U.S. Defense Department’s most expensive weapons program ever: the $300 billion Joint Strike Fighter, a fighter jet also known as F35 Lightning II. The intruders were able to copy and siphon off several terabytes of data related to design and electronics systems, officials say, potentially making it easier to defend against the craft. The latest intrusions provide new evidence that a battle is heating up between the U.S. and potential adversaries over the data networks that tie the world together [The Wall Street Journal].
U.S. officials reportedly traced the hackers back to China, but experts note that it’s extremely difficult to determine the real origin of an online attack, as paths can be disguised and identities masked. Meanwhile, the Chinese Embassy said in a statement that China “opposes and forbids all forms of cyber crimes.” It called the Pentagon’s report “a product of the Cold War mentality” and said the allegations of cyber espionage are “intentionally fabricated to fan up China threat sensations” [The Wall Street Journal].
The preference for sons in traditional Chinese families has led to a vast gender disparity in China: A study has found that there are currently 32 million more boys than girls under the age of 20. While Chinese officials have acknowledged that the country’s “one-child” policy has led to a gender imbalance, the new study offers the first hard data on the extent of the disparity. The study included nearly five million people under the age of 20 and covered every county in China. It found that overall ratios of boys were high everywhere, but were most striking among the younger age group of 1-4 years, and in rural areas, where it peaked at 126 boys for every 100 girls [The Wall Street Journal blog].
With the greatest imbalance occurring with very young children, the researchers say that China will be grappling with the problem for 20 years. The imbalance is expected to steadily worsen among people of childbearing age over the next two decades and could trigger a slew of social problems…. “If you’ve got highly sexed young men, there is a concern that they will all get together and, with high levels of testosterone, there may be a real risk, that they will go out and commit crimes” [AP], says study coauthor Therese Hesketh.
Spies have hacked into the U.S. electrical grid and left behind software programs that could allow outside agents to seize control of the grid and disrupt the flow of electricity across the nation, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.
The spies came from China, Russia and other countries, [national security] officials said, and were believed to be on a mission to navigate the U.S. electrical system and its controls. The intruders haven’t sought to damage the power grid or other key infrastructure, but officials warned they could try during a crisis or war. “The Chinese have attempted to map our infrastructure, such as the electrical grid,” said a senior intelligence official. “So have the Russians” [The Wall Street Journal]. While officials say they traced the intrusions back to China, Russia, and other countries, experts say it’s nearly impossible to prove that the hacks were government-sponsored. The Chinese and Russian governments have denied any wrongdoing.
A Chinese lunar probe ended its mission with a controlled crash on the surface of the moon on Sunday, Chinese news sources report. The crash of the Chang’e probe, named after a moon goddess, was intended to give the Chinese space agency data and experience as it prepares for soft lunar landings in the next decade.
China launched the probe in late October 2007 to have it survey the entire surface of the moon. Slung into space by a Long March 3A rocket, the satellite surveyed the moon’s surface using stereo radar and other tools [AP]. In November 2007 the probe transmitted China’s first full, 3-D map of the lunar surface. Despite the worldwide economic crisis China’s ambitious space program shows no sign of slowing down: Plans include a Chinese space station and a manned mission to the moon.
The devastating earthquake that killed 80,000 people in China’s Sichuan Province last May may have been triggered by a recently built hydropower dam that lies only three miles from the quake’s epicenter, some researchers are arguing. The several hundred million tons of water piled behind the Zipingpu Dam put just the wrong stresses on the adjacent Beichuan fault, [says] geophysical hazards researcher Christian Klose [Science, subscription required].
The 7.9 magnitude earthquake left more than five million people homeless. It remains a raw and emotional topic for most Chinese, and the government has been quick to quash any suggestion that Zipingpu may have been responsible for the catastrophe. Researchers have been denied access to seismological and geological data to examine the earthquake further [Telegraph]. The few researchers who have investigated the subject are now urging restraint in government plans to build more dams, but they say their advice is unlikely to be heeded.
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It’s been little over a week since the beginning of the spat between Google and China over censorship and hacking attacks. But that was more than enough time for the fracas to escalate into international political tensions and name-calling.
Are the world’s most popular search engine and the world’s most populous country headed for a breakup? That’s the word reverberating around the Internet today after Google said it would no longer put up with the Chinese government’s demands to censor the Internet and the rampant hacking attempts against it, which could result in the company ending its Chinese operations.
Last week, while the world gearing up to ring in a new year, 
Wind turbines, energy-efficient light bulbs, and hybrid cars and three of the most iconic products in the lineup of 
China
The Chinese government has banned the controversial use of electroconvulsive therapy, or shock therapy, to treat the controversial diagnosis of “Internet addiction.” With an estimated 300 million Internet users, 
In a rare victory for freedom of information in 
China’s recent economic boom has come at the cost of 
China’s plan to build dams along the Mekong River poses the greatest threat to the river’s future, according to a United Nations report released yesterday. China is constructing a series of eight dams on the upper half of the Mekong as it passes through high gorges of Yunnan Province, including the recently completed Xiowan Dam, which — at 958 feet (292 meters) high — is the world’s tallest. Its storage capacity is equal to all the Southeast Asia reservoirs combined [
Cyber spies have 
The preference for sons in traditional Chinese families has led to a vast 
A 
The devastating 
