A little bit of China, once in awhile

[deuem]

[ArMaP]

Thanks.

[The Matrix Traveller]

Thanks Deuem and ArMaP

The other 1/2 also has the same complaint as well as my mother in-law who came with us to NZ. 

Face masks were quite commonly seen in Beijing.. Hell I would hate to be there on a bad day...   

I saw the dust over everything... not a particularly clean city...

Being from NZ I guess I am just used to a much cleaner environment, even though we also have
some environmental issues, but not serious. Something has and is being done.

We still have fracking done in NZ though and strip mining... we all protest about.

We are still anti nuclear which is good but at the same time atomic sterilising has been used
in the past, for hospital support equipment clothing and food in the past.
I suspect the practice is still being used but don't quote me.
I will find out if it is still the case when I get a moment. 

[deuem]

The country is very dusty. two reasons People flakes and sand storms come off the mountains and deserts from out west. Only when it rains do we ever get pease from the dog days you pictured. I have never seen it as bad here yet but that huge mountain out back has only been clear for a few days since I have been here. They gotta wake up and stop burning plastic, using so many smokey fireworks and stop all the diesel trucks and busses that pour out black smoke so hard you can't see them if they are in front of you.
Just those 3 would eliminate a lare portion of the problem. For the "White wall guys" that are reading this, you gotta do something about the trucks and busses. That problem can be solved with a simple tune up and the cost of about $100 USD. Pull them off the road till they get fixed. They are killing us. Every day my SUV is covered in dust and oil. WHY? It is parked and I have to wash it every day if I want to keep it clean. If I ride my motocycle I come home with a black face covered in oil. FUN! One learns not to get behind busses anymore. There you die.
Deuem

[zorgon]

Traditional Chinese Girls

[deuem]

Ok, You're gonna have to sign up for Chinese lessons from now on. The word is out.

Yes, that's the rumor now. The China government has stopped all English testing now until the 8th grade. And it might even be an optional class then. Currently is mandatory from 2nd grade on.

The rumor is that since the USA is no longer the Number one country in the world then why follow them. They are saying if you want to business here, speak Chinese. They are in the lead and showing it to the world. Just look around the local sea here. They are now acting like we used too.

Oil is purchased in RMB, not dollars like it was, so that advantage is gone for good.

So I would like to take this moment to thank all the elite who forced and transplanted all our work to China and made us a second class country while they made more money than they could count. Thank You.

I would also like to thank the US government for helping out and giving them tax breaks to do it. It is a wonderful thing you did for the Chinese at the expense of the American people.

So toss out your forks and knifes, grab a hold of some chopsticks and learn Chinese.

All those ghost cities are for the few Americans that are left over after the elite get finished with you. You too can learn how to be a farm hand and plant rice here or be a maid. Good jobs if you can get them.

One last thing, when ever the USD and the RMB get to an equal footing like 1:1, we are cooked.. They will buy the United States right from under your noses. They are already doing it now, but only the super rich. Wait till the local guy here buys your city and kicks you out.

They have a plan, we have? what, McDonald's!

Still want to buy at Walmarts? Go ahead, give them your last buck so they can spend it here.

Can you find anything in any store made in the USA. On my last trip home, I could not find anything.

Can we sell them our beef, NO.  mad cow, Smokes, no, Milk, no, Weapons, no they have the plans already. Ships, nope, Steel, maybe junk steel. Soda, nope, all made here. Fords, nope, made here. Is anything coming back in those big containers except money? Maybe they are empty of goods, while other smart countries have a law that trade must be balanced. We don't give a hoot as long as it is cheap and dances with stars is on tonight.

Ask your leaders to help? Can't do that they all change when they get in office. Protest, no they lock you up now, Complain, no they put you on no fly lists and ban all gov contracts. Do you know that a record number of Americans are now giving up their citizenship! and growing.

What is going on America. we were number one once..........

[Sinny]

I should imagine the decline of the US has been specifically engineered by the Globaist Powers.

Dr. Beter forewarned of the Collapse of the Dollar and decline in US standard.

[sky otter]

well this may slow down chinese purchasing of american ..or not
my question is what are they going to do next...2006 to now...long time ...


http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-to-announce-first-criminal-charges-against-foreign-country-for-cyberspying/2014/05/19/586c9992-df45-11e3-810f-764fe508b82d_story.html


Chinese military unit charged with cyber-espionage against U.S. firms

The Washington Post's Ellen Nakashima breaks down the significance of the Justice Department's decision to charge the Chinese military with cyber-espionage against American companies.
357Share to FacebookShare on TwitterShare on LinkedInAdd to PersonalPostShare via EmailPrint ArticleMoreBy Ellen Nakashima, William Branigin and William Wan, Updated: Monday, May 19, 1:20 PME-mail the writers
The Justice Department on Monday accused five members of the Chinese military of conducting economic cyber-espionage against American companies, marking the first time that the United States has leveled such criminal charges against a foreign country.

Industries targeted by the alleged cyberspying ranged from nuclear to steel to solar energy, officials said. The hacking by a military unit in Shanghai, they said, was conducted for no other reason than to give a competitive advantage to Chinese companies, including state-owned enterprises.

In a statement he read at a news conference, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said: "The range of trade secrets and other sensitive business information stolen in this case is significant and demands an aggressive response. .?.?. Success in the international marketplace should be based solely on a company's ability to innovate and compete, not on a sponsor government's ability to spy and steal business secrets."

[Read: Here are the five members of Chinese military charged with cyber-espionage.]

Holder said the Obama administration "will not tolerate actions by any nation that seeks to illegally sabotage American companies and undermine the integrity of fair competition in the operation of the free market."

In response, China's Foreign Ministry charged Monday that the U.S. government "fabricated facts" in the indictment, which it said "seriously violates basic norms of international relations and damages Sino-U.S. cooperation and mutual trust." It said China lodged a "protest" with the United States, urging it to "correct the error immediately and withdraw its so-called prosecution."

Foreign Ministry Spokesman Qin Gang denied in a statement that Chinese government, military and "associated personnel" have ever engaged in "the theft of trade secrets through cyber means." Qin called the U.S. accusations "purely fictitious, extremely absurd."

Contrary to U.S. claims, "China is the victim of U.S. theft and cyber-surveillance," Qin said.

In retaliation, the statement said, "China has decided to suspend the activities of Sino-U.S. Cyber Working Group." It left open the prospect of "further reaction" in the case.

The indictment against members of the People's Liberation Army follows vows by senior administration officials to hold other nations to account for computer theft of intellectual property from American industry.

China is widely seen as the nation that has been most aggressive in waging cyber-espionage against the United States.

Holder said a federal grand jury in Pittsburgh returned an indictment against five members of a Chinese military unit in a Shanghai building, accusing them of conspiring together and with others to hack into the computers of six US. entities. Named in the case as defendants were Wang Dong, Sun Kailiang, Wen Xinyu, Huang Zhenyu and Gu Chunhui, all officers of Unit 61398 of the 3rd Department of the People's Liberation Army. Wang is also known as UglyGorilla, his hacker handle. Gu used the alias KandyGoo and Sun was also known as Jack Sun, prosecutors said.

Victimized by the cyberspying were Westinghouse Electric Co., Alcoa, Allegheny Technologies Inc., United States Steel, the United Steel Workers Union and SolarWorld, officials said. Alcoa is the largest aluminum company in the United States, and U.S. Steel is the nation's largest steel company.

The indictment alleges that in some cases the hackers stole trade secrets that would have been particularly beneficial to Chinese companies. For example, it alleges that an Oregon producer of solar panel technology, SolarWorld, was rapidly losing market share to Chinese competitors who were systematically pricing exports well below production costs. At the same time, defendant Wen stole thousands of files containing cost and pricing information from the company, the indictment says.

It also alleges that while Westinghouse Electric, a Pennsylvania nuclear power plant manufacturer, was negotiating with a Chinese company over the construction of four power plants in China, defendant Sun stole confidential design specifications for pipes, pipe supports and pipe routing for those plants — information that would enable any competitor looking to build a similar plant to save on research and development costs.

Each of the defendants was charged with 31 counts for alleged offenses between 2006 and 2014. If convicted, they would face decades in prison. However, they are at large in China, U.S. officials acknowledged, and there is virtually no chance that the Chinese government would turn them over to U.S. authorities.

The five were indicted on May 1, and the indictment was unsealed Sunday and docketed Monday morning, officials said.

In addition to Holder, officials participating in a news conference to announce the charges included John Carlin, assistant attorney general for national security; David Hickton, the U.S. attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania, based in Pittsburgh; and Robert Anderson, executive associate director of the FBI.

The charges are being brought in western Pennsylvania, where several companies that were allegedly victimized are located.

"This case should serve as a wakeup call" on the seriousness of the ongoing cyber threat, Holder said.

Carlin said that in the past, Chinese government officials have challenged the United States to produce charges that could stand up in a court of law.

"Well, today we are," he said.

"To be clear, this conduct is criminal," Carlin said.

"This 21st century burglary has to stop," Hickton said. "Hacking, spying and cyberthreats for commercial advantage can and will be prosecuted criminally even when the defendants are state actors."

In response to a question, Hickton said, "This cyber hacking leads directly to the loss of jobs here in the United States."

In 2012, the Justice Department's National Security Division began training hundreds of prosecutors to combat and prosecute cyber-espionage that poses a threat to national security. Later that year, Carlin, then principal deputy assistant attorney general, told Defense News that "you'll see a case brought."

Even if a prosecution never materializes, the indictment will send a powerful message that such acts will not be tolerated, officials said.

Estimates of the economic costs to the United States of commercial cyber-espionage range from $24 billion to $120 billion annually. China is by far the country that engages in the most such activity against the United States, according to a U.S. national intelligence estimate.

Senior U.S. officials have repeatedly warned China that its continued pilfering of intellectual property to benefit its industries will harm the two countries' bilateral relationship.

In February 2013, the U.S. security firm Mandiant reported that it had linked a specific unit of the People's Liberation Army to cyber-intrusions of more than 140 U.S. and foreign companies and entities.

The United States and China agreed last year to begin holding regular, high-level talks on cybersecurity and commercial espionage. But whenever U.S. officials raise the issue of economic spying, the Chinese are not receptive, administration officials said. Though Washington takes pains to distinguish between foreign intelligence gathering and spying to help a country's own industries gain an economic advantage, officials say that is a distinction without a difference to the Chinese.

The leaks from former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden beginning last June have only complicated the talks. Beijing has pointed to disclosures by Snowden of vast NSA surveillance activities — including spying on Chinese companies — to assert that the United States is the greater aggressor in the area.

The U.S. charges are likely to be seen in China as a major action, said Jin Canrong, vice director of international studies at Beijing's Renmin University. "In the past, the U.S. talked about it but never took any real actions. If the U.S. freezes some Chinese military assets as a result of this, China will respond with counteractions accordingly."

How negatively it affects U.S.-China relations depends on what further actions the White House takes beyond the criminal charges, Jin said. But in China, he noted, there is a feeling of hypocrisy whenever the United States brings up such charges, especially in light of the recent NSA leaks. "The U.S. has been doing the same thing," he said.

"This case has been under preparation for a year," said Bonnie S. Glaser, a senior Asia expert at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies who meets frequently with military-related and state-sponsored academics in China. The United States is now resorting to such charges because nothing else has worked diplomatically, she said. President Obama has raised the issue repeatedly with Chinese President Xi Jinping in meetings.

"The Chinese have ignored U.S. requests to stop stealing U.S. companies' intellectual property. The U.S. believes it is necessary to impose consequences for China's actions," she said.

"Since Snowden's revelations, the Chinese have ridiculed U.S. charges that it is stealing [intellectual property]. I expect they will call this U.S. action hypocritical and dismiss it out of hand," she added.

"The difference between stealing intelligence and company secrets is lost on the Chinese," she said. "Both are considered fair game and an essential means to accelerate China's reemergence as a great power."

At the same time, China has used recent disclosures on NSA surveillance for maximum diplomatic effect to push back against U.S. accusations of cyberattacks. Among the most damaging revelations was a report in March that the NSA infiltrated Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei Technologies to see whether it was spying for Beijing and to turn its equipment against other countries, such as Iran.

In recent years, U.S. officials have made the distinction between cyberspying for national security and cyber-intrusions into private companies for economic theft, which the United States says it does not do but which it accuses China of doing all the time. The Huawei case, while not a theft for economic advantage, showed the U.S. government infiltrating a private Chinese company.

In response, China seized the opportunity for role reversal, demanding an explanation from the United States

"China has lodged complaints to the United States about this many times. We urge the U.S. side to make a clear explanation and stop this kind of acts," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said in March.

Since last year's NSA revelations, China has also shown increasing concerns about its own cybersecurity.

Demonstrating how seriously its leaders take the threat, Xi personally took charge of a new government body earlier this year overseeing China's cybersecurity and vowed to turn China into a "cyber-power," according to state-run media.

In the most recent example of such growing worries, a high-ranking Chinese Internet official said Sunday that China must intensify its security efforts, warning that "hostile forces abroad" are using cyberspace as a major channel to "infiltrate China."

Douglas Paal, a former National Security Council official now at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said he expects that many Chinese will view the prosecution "as one of Washington's ways to get back at China for recent pushes against Japan, the Philippines, and Vietnam."

Paal added: "It will take some time to get people to accept that this is about commercial theft, and not something else. .?.?. The Chinese are still enjoying their luck at having the Snowden revelations to distract public attention from the U.S. argument against commercial espionage. That is not likely to change soon."