News flashback:

On May 17, 2010 CCTV news reported that Chinese government shuts down a famous Internet forum – “Moonlight Forum”, because this website carried sensitive military information in China such as locations of airfield, navy bases and barracks of Hong Kong PLA battalion that posed as a threat to China’s state national security.

In the news translated by ESWN:

The Moonlight Forum is a community website frequented by military aficionados.  They have sections such as "China’s nuclear test sites," "Chinese military airfields," "military camps around Beijing," "the catalog of Chinese military equipment" and so on.  Compared to other military websites, the Moonlight Forum links directly to a certain overseas geographical mapping search engine.  Thus, users can go through the client software and freely browse the high-resolution satellite photo maps all over the world.  Users can also annotate the geographical locations of various military locations on maps.

» » » » Continue reading ‘China regulates Online Map Services to address national security breach, will Google Earth comply?’

“Dear dad and mom, I am going to school. Hope it is not parting forever, I want to go home alive. Dear teacher and principal, I am coming to school. You cannot let bad people touch me, I want to go home alive. Dear uncle and auntie, I am at school. If you have grievances please go petition to higher authorities, I want to go home alive!” Blogger Zheng Yuanjie (郑渊洁) wrote in his blog after the April 30 Taixing, Jiangsu kindergarten killing incident. After this incident and the following public outrage, China actually took measures supposedly beefed up school security, but…

On May 12, another kindergarten killing incident happened in Nanzheng county, Shaanxi province. May 12, 8 am in the morning, 48-year-old man named Wu Huanming holding a kitchen knife burst into a private kindergarten killing 7 children and 2 adults. 11 students were injured and 2 of which are in critical condition. The 7 deceased children are 5 boys and 2 girls, and the 2 adults are kindergarten teacher Wu Hongying and her mother. After the attack, suspect returned home and committed suicide.

» » » » Continue reading ‘Yet another kindergarten killing in China, now guarding children with submachine guns’

China’s recent series of attacks on schoolchildren and even children in kindergarten stirred up public outrage.   In response, schools all over the country took actions to improve security on campus.

Yesterday, April 29, a man burst into a kindergarten in Taixing, Jiangsu province and stabbed 25 children and three adults.

And it was just one day ago, on April 28, a teacher carrying a knife broke into a primary school in Guangdong province in southern China and stabbed 15 students and a teacher.

17 days ago, on April 12, A mental patient stabbed many primary school children outside (400 meters out) of a primary school in Guangxi province.  2 children were killed and 5 injured.

One month ago, on March 23, in Nanping, Fujian Province a man appeared to be mentally ill brandished a knife at the entrance of Luantong Nanping experimental elementary and continuously stabled and cut 13 elementary students. 9 children were killed.

» » » » Continue reading ‘China beefing up school security with police steel forks following recent attacks on schoolchildren’

I picked these two articles because they showed two completely different views on the Google China situation in China. First one is a blog post written by KESO (洪波) a well-known IT blogger in China.  (I have translated one of is blog posts back when Kai-fu Lee resigned from Google China.) The latter one is an article from one of the Chinese media site: People’s daily, written by a netizen named Jiang Bojing (姜伯静).  Compare them for yourself…

Google to withdraw from China

By well-known IT blogger: KESO

Google officially announced that they will no longer review and censor search results on google.cn and they will have discussions with the Chinese government in the next few weeks. How can Google.cn operate legally under the premise of not providing filtered searches? If they cannot achieve these, Google will consider closing Google.cn, even all of its China offices.

To Google, this is a difficult decision. To me, this is a painful choice. Most of my life online depend on Google. I use Google to search, Gmail to send emails, Google Reader to read many of my subscribed contents, Google Docs for managing all my office documents and Picasa for processing photos and even marking their geo-locations… All of these, there is no third party application can replace Google. Not to mention that there are large numbers of Chinese enterprises, such as Alibaba, need to rely on Google’s search and advertising for their global business.

» » » » Continue reading ‘More Chinese opinions on Google leaving China (Keso vs. People’s Daily)’

Just 2 days ago CC sent me a link to a Chinese blog post about how he noticed his personal emails from Gmail account was accessed and screened by GFW. I was skeptical and thought it could just be a hoax or hype or just a theory. And today, the news broke out. Google officially announced that they will no longer provide censored searches for Google.cn because they faced cyber attacks originated from China which targeted Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists! This could mean end of the road for Google in China.

As part of this investigation but independent of the attack on Google, we have discovered that the accounts of dozens of U.S.-, China- and Europe-based Gmail users who are advocates of human rights in China appear to have been routinely accessed by third parties. These accounts have not been accessed through any security breach at Google, but most likely via phishing scams or malware placed on the users’ computers.

My jaw dropped as I read the statement from Google. This is exactly what the blog I read 2 days ago tries to prove.

» » » » Continue reading ‘Gmail security breach, want some proof?’