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China criticized Japan over dangerous jet scramble

A group of disputed islands, Uotsuri island , Minamikojima and Kitakojima, known as Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China is seen in

BEIJING (Reuters) – China strongly criticized Japan over a scramble of military aircraft from the two countries on Monday amid a dispute over islands in the East China Sea.

Two Japanese fighter jets took “provocative actions” at a high speed near a pair of Chinese fighter jets that were carrying out patrols in the East China Sea on June 17, China’s defense ministry said in a micro blog statement on Monday, without specifying where exactly the incident took place.

The Japanese planes used fire-control radar to “light up” the Chinese aircraft, the statement added.

Japan’s senior military officer has acknowledged there was a scramble but has denied that any radar lock by the Chinese jet occurred or that the incident turned dangerous.

“The Japanese plane’s provocative actions caused an accident in the air, endangering the safety of personnel on both sides, and destroying the peace and stability in the region,” China’s Defense Ministry said, adding the Chinese aircraft “responded resolutely”.

China called on Japan to cease all provocative action, the statement added.

The statement about the incident comes after Japan’s top military commander accused China of escalating military activity in the East China Sea, saying Japanese emergency scrambles to counter Chinese jets almost doubled over the past three months.

Japan is embroiled in a dispute with China in the East China Sea over ownership of a group of islands which lie about 220 km (140 miles) northeast of Taiwan, known as the Senkakus in Tokyo and the Diaoyu islands in Beijing.

Japan is worried that China is escalating its activity in the East China Sea in response to Tokyo’s pledge to support countries in Southeast Asia, including the Philippines and Vietnam, that oppose China’s territorial claims in the South China Sea.

(Reporting By Megha Rajagopalan, additional reporting by Tim Kelly in TOKYO; Editing by Nick Macfie)

Tens of thousands protest in Hong Kong as China tensions simmer over booksellers

By Venus Wu

HONG KONG (Reuters) – Tens of thousands of Hong Kong residents marched in protest on the 19th anniversary of the financial hub’s return to Chinese rule on Friday as tensions simmer against Chinese authorities over the abductions of Hong Kong booksellers.

Some waved banners criticizing Beijing for the cross-border abductions as acts of a “totalitarian” regime, as well as calling for the release of leading dissidents, chanting for democracy and for Hong Kong leader Leung Chun-ying to step down.

Several hundred scuffled with police outside Government House, with police using pepper spray to keep them back. Organizers said 110,000 people took part in the march, while police put the figure at 19,300.

The July 1 protests are considered a barometer of public sentiment toward Beijing, with the former British colony due to hold citywide elections in September.

The city has been unnerved over the past year by the disappearances of five booksellers who specialized in works critical of Chinese leaders. One of the men, Lam Wing-kee, who was detained for eight months by Chinese agents and released last month, criticized Beijing for “violating Hong Kong’s rights” through illegal cross-border enforcement operations.

The tactics have raised fears of Communist Party rulers in Beijing eroding the so-called “one country, two systems” formula, granting Hong Kong a high degree of freedom and autonomy since its 1997 return from British to Chinese rule.

China has denied wrongdoing.

“This is a very grave threat to the safety of Hong Kong residents that an unknown force is spying on people,” said pro-democracy lawmaker Cyd Ho at the rally.

“The Hong Kong government has to follow up with the central government on what’s really happening behind the scenes.”

Hundreds of police were also deployed to guard China’s main representative “Liaison Office” in Hong Kong, after activists who advocate independence from China posted plans on social media for a “black mask” evening protest to besiege the skyscraper.

Scores of young people, some dressed in black T-shirts with the words “HK is not China”, were searched by police in the area and roads were blocked off with metal barricades to prevent trouble.

Lam, who had been due to lead the July 1 march that each year draws tens of thousands, pulled out, citing safety concerns after being followed by two unknown strangers, a lawmaker said.

“He feels increasingly concerned about his own personal safety,” said pro-democracy lawmaker Albert Ho.

A senior Chinese official, Wang Guangya, who heads the Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office in Beijing, said the booksellers had “destroyed” the one country, two systems formula by publishing banned books in mainland China.

Chinese President Xi Jinping, however, said in a speech on Friday that “no matter what the difficulties and challenges, our confidence and determination towards one country, two systems will not waver”.

Xi added Hong Kong would continue to enjoy a high degree of autonomy and Beijing would strictly adhere to the law.

A 79-day “umbrella revolution” in late 2014 demanding Beijing allow full democracy in Hong Kong brought chaos to the streets.

(Additional reporting by Lindsy Long, Sharon Shi and Hera Poon in Hong Kong and Ben Blanchard in Beijing; Writing by James Pomfret; Editing by Nick Macfie)

China’s Xi urges caution over U.S. missile deployment

South Korean Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn meets with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing's Great Hall of the People

BEIJING (Reuters) – Chinese President Xi Jinping on Wednesday urged South Korea to pay attention to China’s concerns about the deployment of the U.S. THAAD missile defense system to the country and “cautiously” address the plan.

The United States and South Korea have begun talks on possible deployment of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system after North Korea tested its fourth nuclear bomb on Jan. 6 and conducted missile tests.

China and Russia have urged the United States to back off, saying THAAD’s deployment could also affect their security.

South Korea should “attach importance to China’s legitimate concern on security and cautiously and appropriately address the United States’ plan” to deploy THAAD in South Korea, Xi told visiting South Korean Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

North Korea’s drive to develop a nuclear weapons capability has angered China, Pyongyang’s sole major diplomatic and economic supporter. But Beijing fears THAAD and its radar have a range that would extend into China.

Xi added that China and South Korea should continue to work for the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula, work together to maintain peace and stability and solve problems through dialogue and consultation.

(Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Nick Macfie)

Savage storm pummels eastern China, killing 98

Collapsed kindergarten school after tornado

FUNING, China (Reuters) – A violent storm in eastern China that packed gale-force winds and hail killed 98 people and injured hundreds as it flattened power lines, overturned cars and ripped roofs off houses in Jiangsu province.

The storm, which included a tornado, struck mid-afternoon on Thursday near Yancheng city, a few hours’ drive north of China’s commercial capital Shanghai, the Ministry of Civil Affairs said.

Winds reached 125 kph (78 mph) and battered several townships in Funing county, the official Xinhua news agency said.

“I heard the gales and ran upstairs to shut the windows,” Funing resident Xie Litian, 62, told Xinhua.

“I had hardly reached the top of the stairs when I heard a boom and saw the entire wall with the windows on it torn away.”

When the storm subsided and Xie escaped, all the neighboring houses were gone. “It was like the end of the world,” Xie said.

The death toll stood at 98, with 800 people injured, state-run China National Radio said on its website on Friday.

Pictures online showed injured people lying amid destroyed houses, overturned cars and split tree trunks. One showed a man who had apparently tried to shield a woman from falling debris; both were dead in a pile of rubble.

The worst of the storm seemed to have hit only a limited area, however.

“It looks like the tornado only hit very specific places,” said a Reuters reporter at the site. “Even nearby villages were fine.”

A man broke down in sobs as his 35-year-old son was pulled dead from a pond in Shizhuang town on Friday.

In the nearby village of Dalou, tree trunks were snapped, with plates and household items scattered amid rubble, as survivors picked through the debris.

Chinese President Xi Jinping, visiting Uzbekistan, ordered China’s cabinet to send a team to oversee relief efforts, Xinhua reported. Premier Li Keqiang urged authorities to speed search and rescue work.

GCL System Integration Technology Co Ltd <002506.SZ>, a $5-billion solar cell module maker, said a 40,000-sq-m. (430,000-sq-foot) factory it part-owned had collapsed, and it was assessing the damage.

Environmental campaign group Greenpeace said the storm caused the collapse of a GCL facility used to store hazardous chemicals, located near a drinking water plant and a river.

“The release of these chemicals could pose significant risk to public health and the local ecosystem,” Greenpeace said in a statement.

China’s summer often brings severe weather. Floods in the south this week killed at least 22 people and left 20 missing.

Last June, a storm caused a Yangtze River cruise ship to capsize, killing 442 people and leaving just 12 survivors, in one of China’s worst such disasters in seven decades.

(Reporting by Reuters television in YANCHENG and John Ruwitch and Adam Jourdan in SHANGHAI; Editing by Michael Perry and Clarence Fernandez)

China brushes off doubts over support on South China Sea, says it is growing

BEIJING (Reuters) – China’s Foreign Ministry on Thursday brushed off doubts about how many countries have offered support for its position in a case brought by the Philippines over Chinese claims in the South China Sea, saying the number of nations was growing daily.

China has stepped up its rhetoric ahead of an expected ruling by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Hague on the Philippine case. China refuses to recognize the case and says all disputes should be resolved through bilateral talks.

China says more than 40 countries have offered support for its position, the most recent being Zimbabwe and Sri Lanka.

But only eight countries have come out in public support, including land-locked nations such as Niger and Afghanistan, says Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies.

On Wednesday, a senior U.S. official voiced scepticism at China’s claim that dozens of countries were backing its position, saying it was not clear even about what those countries may have agreed to.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said public reports showed at least 47 countries offering support, though the figure was not complete as some nations’ backing had not been publicly reported.

“The number of people supporting China rises by the day, so I have no way of giving you a precise figure,” she told a daily news briefing, adding that the actual number was not the most important thing.

“As long as you have an objective and impartial position, as long as you understand the main points of the history of the South China Sea and the essence of the so-called ‘arbitration case’, any unbiased country, organization or person will unhesitatingly chose China’s just position,” she said.

China claims almost all of the energy-rich South China Sea, through which more than $5 trillion of maritime trade passes each year. Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam have overlapping claims.

The Philippines is contesting China’s claim to an area shown on its maps as a nine-dash line stretching deep into the maritime heart of Southeast Asia, covering hundreds of disputed islands and reefs and encompassing a vital global trade route.

The consensus among officials and analysts is that the ruling will go largely against Beijing.

(Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)

Tornado, hail storms kill at least 51 in east China: Xinhua

BEIJING (Reuters) – A tornado and hail storms killed at least 51 people on Thursday in the eastern Chinese province of Jiangsu, state media said.

The storms brought down power lines and houses, Xinhua news agency said.

“Downpours, hail storms and a tornado battered parts of Yancheng city … causing many houses to topple,” it said.

Pictures posted by media online showed injured people lying amid overturned houses and cars, split tree trunks and broken power lines.

Severe floods in southern China killed at least 22 people and left 20 missing earlier this week.

(Reporting by Chen Aizhu; Editing by Nick Macfie)

China’s one-time ‘democracy’ village protests for fourth straight day

By James Pomfret

WUKAN, China (Reuters) – The Chinese fishing village of Wukan staged a fourth straight day of protests on Wednesday against what residents say was the unlawful arrest of the village chief, a rare show of grassroots defiance against authorities in Communist China.

Wukan, in the southern province of Guangdong, made international headlines in 2011 as a symbol of grassroots democracy after an uprising against corrupt local authorities and illegal land grabs that resulted in rare concessions being granted by provincial Communist Party leaders.

Under a blazing sun, the village of 15,000 once again united to march for the release of Lin Zuluan, the popular and democratically elected village chief who was arrested in a surprise midnight raid over the weekend.

Lin was shown on state television on Tuesday confessing to accepting bribes, but many villagers profess his innocence, saying he’d been forced into making a confession.

Sources close to the Lin family said his grandson was detained by police soon after Lin’s arrest and interrogated for 12 hours.

The grandson was released soon after Lin’s confession went public, they said.

Despite repeated warnings by authorities to the villagers not to stir up trouble, more than a thousand again marched in a loud procession, waving red China flags and chanting for justice.

“The villagers of Wukan don’t believe Lin Zuluan took bribes,” read a hand-written white banner held up by a group of several children at the vanguard of the procession.

They also held up banners making a broader appeal to national leaders in Beijing to “save Wukan”.

“We want the central government to come and investigate,” said Wei Yonghan, an elderly villager joining the march.

“We won’t give up. We’ll keep marching every day till they listen to us.”

Wukan’s defiance in 2011 took place during the administration of former president Hu Jintao. It remains unclear whether security forces will take a stronger line under President Xi Jinping who has cracked down on rights activists across China since taking office.

Over the past few days, however, authorities seem to have tightened their grip. Some reporters were warned by authorities in nearby Shanwei of “inciting, planning and directing the protests,” according to reports carried in Chinese state media.

Foreign media outlets including Reuters were urged to leave the village immediately.

A villager who was taken into detention by police and interrogated said authorities were aggressively going after potential ringleaders of the protests to quash any escalation of unrest.

“They questioned me for hours and wanted to know everything, who was organizing things,” the villager, who declined to be identified, said. “They told me to open my Wechat (messaging app) … and spent hours looking through my messages.”

While there didn’t appear to be a mass deployment of riot police for the protests on Wednesday, at least three drones could be seen hovering in the sky tracking the demonstration.

Villagers also occasionally chased off individuals in the crowds they believed to be plain-clothes officers.

The village is about a four-hour drive east of Chinese-ruled Hong Kong, where months of pro-democracy protests brought chaos to the streets in late 2014.

(Editing by Nick Macfie)

Chinese economic cyber-espionage plummets in U.S.: experts

By Joseph Menn and Jim Finkle

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – The Chinese government appears to be abiding by its September pledge to stop supporting the hacking of American trade secrets to help companies there compete, private U.S. security executives and government advisors said on Monday.

FireEye Inc, the U.S. network security company best known for fighting sophisticated Chinese hacking, said in a report released late Monday that breaches attributed to China-based groups had plunged by 90 percent in the past two years. The most dramatic drop came during last summer’s run-up to the bilateral agreement, it added.

FireEye’s Mandiant unit in 2013 famously blamed a specific unit of China’s Peoples Liberation Army for a major campaign of economic espionage.

Kevin Mandia, the Mandiant founder who took over last week as FireEye chief executive, said in an interview that several factors seemed to be behind the shift. He cited embarrassment from Mandiant’s 2013 report and the following year’s indictment of five PLA officers from the same unit Mandiant uncovered.

Prosecutors said the victims included U.S. Steel, Alcoa Inc and Westinghouse Electric. Mandia also cited the threat just before the agreement that the United States could impose sanctions on Chinese officials and companies.

“They all contributed to a positive result,” Mandia said.

A senior Obama administration official said the government was not yet ready to proclaim that China was fully complying with the agreement but said the new report would factor into its monitoring. “We are still doing an assessment,” said the official, speaking on condition he not be named.

The official added that a just-concluded second round of talks with China on the finer points of the agreement had gone well. He noted that China had sent senior leaders even after the U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security pulled out because of the Orlando shootings.

China’s Foreign Ministry, the only government department to regularly answer questions from foreign reporters on the hacking issue, said China aimed to maintain dialogue on preventing and combating cyber-spying.

“We’ve expressed our principled position on many occasions,” ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told a daily news briefing on Tuesday. “We oppose and crack down on commercial cyber-espionage activities in all forms.”

FireEye said that Chinese intrusions into some U.S. firms have continued, with at least two hacked in 2016. But while the hackers installed “back doors” to enable future spying, FireEye said it had seen no evidence that data was stolen.

Both hacked companies had government contracts, said FireEye analyst Laura Galante, noting that it was plausible that the intrusions were stepping stones toward gathering information on government or military people or projects, which remain fair game under the September accord.

FireEye and other security companies said that as the Chinese government-backed hackers dropped wholesale theft of U.S. intellectual property, they increased spying on political and military targets in other countries and regions, including Russia, the Middle East, Japan and South Korea.

Another security firm, CrowdStrike, has observed more Chinese state-supported hackers spying outside of the United States over the past year, company Vice President Adam Meyers said in an interview.

Targets include Russian and Ukrainian military targets, Indian political groups and the Mongolian mining industry, Meyers said.

FireEye and CrowdStrike said they were confident that the attacks are being carried out either directly by the Chinese government or on its behalf by hired contractors.

Since late last year there has been a flurry of new espionage activity against Russian government agencies and technology firms, as well as other targets in India, Japan and South Korea, said Kurt Baumgartner, a researcher with Russian security software maker Kaspersky Lab.

He said those groups use tools and infrastructure that depend on Chinese-language characters.

One of those groups, known as Mirage or APT 15, appears to have ended a spree of attacks on the U.S. energy sector and is now focusing on government and diplomatic targets in Russia and former Soviet republics, Baumgartner said.

(Reporting by Joseph Menn in San Francisco and Jim Finkle in Boston; Additional reporting by; Megha Rajagopalan in Beijing; Editing by Jonathan Weber and Richard Chang)

Proposals to curb online speech viewed as threat to open internet

Anonymous members protesting censorship of Internet usage

By Yasmeen Abutaleb and Alastair Sharp

SAN FRANCISCO/ TORONTO (Reuters) – At least a dozen countries are considering or have enacted laws restricting online speech, a trend that is alarming policymakers and others who see the internet as a valuable medium for debate and expression.

Such curbs are called out as a threat to the open internet in a report on internet governance set to be released today at an Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development meeting in Cancun, Mexico.

The report, reviewed by Reuters, warns of dangers for the global internet, including intrusive surveillance, rising cybercrime and fragmentation as governments exert control of online content.

It was prepared by the London-based Chatham House think tank and the Centre for International Governance Innovation, founded by former BlackBerry Ltd co-chief Jim Balsillie.

China and Iran long have restricted online speech. Now limitations are under discussion in countries that have had a more open approach to speech, including Brazil, Malaysia, Pakistan, Bolivia, Kenya and Nigeria.

Advocates said some of the proposals would criminalize conversations online that otherwise would be protected under the countries’ constitutions. Some use broad language to outlaw online postings that “disturb the public order” or “convey false statements” – formulations that could enable crackdowns on political speech, critics said.

“Free expression is one of the foundational elements of the internet,” said Michael Chertoff, former U.S. secretary of Homeland Security and a co-author of the internet governance report. “It shouldn’t be protecting the political interests of the ruling party or something of that sort.”

Turkey and Thailand also have cracked down on online speech, and a number of developing world countries have unplugged social media sites altogether during elections and other sensitive moments. In the U.S. as well, some have called for restrictions on Internet communications.

Speech limitations create business and ethical conflicts for companies like Facebook Inc, Twitter Inc and Alphabet Inc’s Google, platforms for debate and political organizing.

“This is the next evolution of political suppression,” said Richard Forno, assistant director of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County Center for Cybersecurity. “Technology facilitates freedom of expression, and politicians don’t like that.”

“FIGHTING DELINQUENCY”

Tanzania and Ethiopia have passed laws restricting online speech. In others, including Pakistan, Brazil, Bolivia and Kenya, proposals are under discussion or under legislative consideration, according to a review of laws by Reuters and reports by Internet activist groups.

In Bolivia, President Evo Morales earlier this year said that the country needs to “regulate the social networks.” A bill has been drafted and is ready for introduction in the legislature, said Leonardo Loza, head of one of Bolivia’s coca growers unions, a supporter of the proposal.

“It is aimed at educating and disciplining people, particularly young Bolivians, and fighting delinquency on social networks,” Loza said. “Freedom of expression can’t be lying to the people or insulting citizens and politicians.”

A bill in Pakistan would allow the government to block internet content to protect the “integrity, security or defense” of the state. The legislation, which has passed a vote in Pakistan’s lower house of parliament, is supposed to target terrorism, but critics said the language is broad.

It comes after Pakistan blocked YouTube in 2012 when a video it deemed inflammatory sparked protests across the country and much of the Muslim world.

Earlier this year, YouTube, which is owned by Google, agreed to launch a local version of its site in the country. But now, the internet report said, the Pakistan Telecommunications Authority can ask the company to remove any material it finds offensive.

COMPANIES IN THE CROSSFIRE

U.S. internet companies have faced mounting pressure in recent years to restrict content. Companies’ terms of service lay out what users can and cannot post, and they said they apply a single standard globally. They aim to comply with local laws, but often confront demands to remove even legal content.

The new laws threaten to raise a whole new set of compliance and enforcement issues.

“There’s a technical question, which is, could you comply if you wanted to, and then the bigger meta question is why would you want to cooperate with this politicized drive to suppress freedom of expression,” said Andrew McLaughlin, Google’s former director of global policy and now leading content organization at Medium.

Facebook, Twitter and Google declined to comment for this story.

(Reporting By Yasmeen Abutaleb and Alastair Sharp; Additional reporting by Daniel Ramos in La Paz, Bolivia; Editing by Jonathan Weber and Lisa Girion)

U.S. navy chief hopes carriers deter East Asia destabilization

By David Brunnstrom and Matt Spetalnick

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Navy chief said on Monday he hoped the deployment of two aircraft carriers on a training mission in East Asia would deter any attempts to destabilize the region, where military tensions have risen amid China’s growing assertiveness.

The U.S. carriers John C. Stennis and Ronald Reagan began joint operations in seas east of the Philippines at the weekend in a show of strength ahead of an international court ruling expected soon on China’s expansive territorial claims in the contested South China Sea.

Admiral John Richardson, the chief of U.S. Naval Operations, told a Washington think tank it was not often the United States had two carrier strike groups in the same waters and it was a sign of U.S. commitment to regional security.

He referred to a similar deployment of a second U.S. carrier in the Mediterranean Sea last week, at a time when U.S. officials are raising alarm over Russia’s maritime expansion.

“Both here and in the Mediterranean, it’s a signal to everyone in the region that we’re committed, we’re going to be there for our allies, to reassure them and for anyone who wants to destabilize that region,” he told the Center for a New American Security.

“And we hope that there’s a deterrent message there as well.”

Richardson said China’s large-scale land reclamation in the South China Sea and militarization of artificial islands extended its potential ability to deny access to a region with precision missiles and radar, something that “demands a response.”

“Our response would be to inject a lot of friction into that system. Every step of that way, we would look to make that much more difficult,” Richardson said.

The U.S. Pacific Command said the Stennis and the Ronald Reagan started their dual operations on Saturday, including air defense drills, sea surveillance, defensive air combat training and long-range strikes.

A PACOM statement quoted Rear Admiral John D. Alexander, commander of the Ronald Reagan carrier group, as saying it was an opportunity to practice techniques needed “to prevail in modern naval operations.”

“The U.S. Navy has flown, sailed and operated throughout the Western Pacific in accordance with international law for decades, and will continue to do so,” he said, referring to a series of freedom-of-navigation operations carried out by U.S. naval ships in the region in recent month to challenge China’s claims.

PACOM said the United States last conducted a dual carrier operation in the Western Pacific in 2014. Two carriers operated in the South China Sea and East China Sea in 2012.

(Reporting by David Brunnstrom and Matt Spetalnick; Editing by Andrew Hay)

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