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PLA officer calls for new agency to
control Internet
DOMESTIC CONTENT: An article in the latest edition of
¡¥Chinese Cadres Tribune¡¦ magazine calls the Internet ¡¥a new battlefield without
gunpower¡¦
REUTERS AND AFP, BEIJING
Tuesday, Feb 23, 2010, Page 1
A Chinese major general has called for a new national body to enforce Internet
controls, while China faced fresh claims yesterday about the source of hacking
attacks that hit search giant Google.
People¡¦s Liberation Army Major General Huang Yongyin said China needed to keep
pace with the efforts of other big powers to fight online infiltration and
attacks.
¡§For national security, the Internet has already become a new battlefield
without gunpowder,¡¨ Huang wrote in this month¡¦s issue of Chinese Cadres Tribune,
a magazine published by the Chinese Communist Party¡¦s influential Central Party
School.
Google threatened to pull out of China last month over complaints of censorship
and sophisticated hacking from within China.
Huang¡¦s comments appeared after Western media reports said a vocational school
whose graduates include military recruits was one source of the hacker attack on
Google. The reports said the author of spyware used in the assault had
government ties.
US government analysts believe the program¡¦s creator is a Chinese security
consultant in his 30s who posted parts of the code on a hacker forum and
described it as something he was ¡§working on,¡¨ the Financial Times reported
yesterday.
He works as a freelancer and did not launch the attack, but Chinese officials
had ¡§special access¡¨ to his programming, the paper said, quoting a single,
unnamed government researcher.
¡§If he wants to do the research he¡¦s good at, he has to toe the line now and
again,¡¨ the researcher was quoted as saying.
Huang¡¦s comments underscore the influential currents within the Chinese
government that see the Internet as a key security concern.
¡§Lawless elements and hostile forces at home and abroad have increasingly turned
to the Internet to engage in crime, disruption, infiltration, reactionary
propaganda and other sabotage activities,¡¨ wrote Huang, who appears to play no
direct role in China¡¦s online policy.
The magazine was dated Feb. 6, but was delivered to subscribers yesterday.
The government needs to surmount the fragmented control of the Internet to
confront these problems, preferably with a national administrative system, Huang
said.
His concerns are matched by worries overseas about attacks from within China.
The Financial Times report quoted unidentified sources backing an earlier claim
in the New York Times (NYT) that analysts had traced the online attacks to two
Chinese colleges, Jiaotong University in Shanghai and the Lanxiang Vocational
School.
The two schools have denied the reports. However, since the NYT report the
Lanxiang school in Shandong Province has reported a spike in enrolment
inquiries.
¡§We have been receiving phone calls from all over the country asking about our
computer science program, which is one of the most popular programs in our
school,¡¨ an unnamed recruitment teacher told the state-run Global Times.
A woman in the school¡¦s enrolment office, when asked by reporters whether the
number of inquiries had spiked in recent days since the report, said ¡§yes,¡¨ but
declined further comment.
In other Internet news, Chinese President Hu Jintao (JÀAÀÜ) has set up a
microblogging account that has drawn thousands of followers as of yesterday.
The account was set up on a microblogging platform operated by the People¡¦s
Daily.
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