At this point you just have to assume that any Chinese made electronic device has the ability to spy on you and that includes the Chinese made smartphone in your pocket:
South Korea’s military has been forced to remove more than 1,300 surveillance cameras from its bases after learning that they could be used to transmit signals to China, Yonhap news agency reported.
The cameras, which were supplied by a South Korean company, “were found to be designed to be able to transmit recorded footage externally by connecting to a specific Chinese server”, the outlet reported an unnamed military official as saying.Korean intelligence agencies discovered the cameras’ Chinese origins in July during an examination of military equipment, Yonhap said.
While some of the cameras were near the border with North Korea, they weren’t monitoring it and were instead focused on training bases and fences, the official said.
According to the article Red Sea shipping is down by over 50% due to the Houthi attacks. With the Houthis not attacking Chinese ships it is easy to see who else other than the Iranians are helping them:
One is the falling cost of power-projection. The Houthis aren’t a traditional military juggernaut; they don’t even fully control Yemen. Yet they have employed drones and missiles to control access to vital seas. The Houthis have had help in doing so: Iran has provided weapons and the know-how needed to manufacture them.
But the Red Sea crisis still shows how seemingly minor actors can use relatively cheap capabilities to extend their destructive reach. The second feature is strategic synergy among U.S. foes. The Houthis became more fearsome thanks to mentorship by Iran and Hezbollah. Since October 2023, they have allowed most of China’s shipping to pass without harm. The Houthis have also received encouragement — and, it seems, direct support — from a Russia that is eager to exact vengeance on Washington.
The Malaysian prime minister says his country is not going to give in to Chinese demands to stop drilling for oil in the South China Sea:
Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said Thursday that Malaysia will not bow to demands by China to stop its oil and gas exploration in the South China Sea as the activities are within the country’s waters. Anwar said Malaysia would continue to explain its stance following China’s accusations in a protest note in February to the Malaysian Embassy in Beijing that Kuala Lumpur had infringed on its territory.
Malaysia’s Foreign Ministry said Wednesday it was investigating the leak of the diplomatic protest note that was published by a Filipino media outlet on Aug. 29. “We have never intended in any way to be intentionally provocative, unnecessarily hostile. China is a great friend, but of course we have to operate in our waters and secure economic advantage, including drilling for oil in our territory,” Anwar said in a televised news conference from Russia, where he is on an official visit.
The Philippine Daily Inquirer published the diplomatic note in which Beijing reportedly demanded that Malaysia immediately halt all activities in an oil-rich maritime area off Sarawak state on Borneo island. The report said China had accused Malaysia of encroaching on areas covered by its 10-dash line, Beijing’s controversial map showing its claims to sovereignty in the South China Sea. The diplomatic note also expressed Beijing’s displeasure over Malaysia’s oil and gas exploration activities near the Luconia Shoals, which is near to Sarawak, it said.
The fear is with these territorial incursions is that one day a lower level commander may take action against one of these provocations which leads to a larger conflict:
Recent incursions by China into Japan’s territorial waters and airspace showcase a deliberate effort by Beijing to normalize its increasingly assertive actions against its regional neighbors, according to two defense experts. A Chinese survey vessel on Saturday briefly entered territorial waters off Kagoshima prefecture on Kyushu, the southernmost of Japan’s four main islands. Five days earlier, on Aug. 26, a Chinese Y-9 surveillance aircraft breached Japanese airspace over a small island off Kyushu, an unprecedented action by a Chinese military aircraft.
The incidents add to an already tense relationship between China and Japan, whose claims in the Senkaku Islands are repeatedly tested by the Chinese coast guard. China’s coast guard is even more aggressive against the Philippine coast guard, bumping hulls and employing water cannons and other measures in territorial disputes in the Philippine exclusive economic zone of the South China Sea.
The two incursions of Japanese territory were “provocative and risked flaming tensions in the region,” according to Brian Hart, a fellow with the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ China Power Project. “The greater long-term implication is that Beijing is employing its military forces in increasingly provocative ways, which heightens the risks of misperceptions, miscalculations, and dangerous accidents,” Hart told Stars and Stripes by email Wednesday.
China’s proposed measures to ease marriage registration while making divorces harder to get have provoked a wave of public backlash, a reflection of the challenges facing the world’s No. 2 economy in arresting a sharp drop in births.
South Korean police questioned three Chinese students who used a drone to record panoramic views of the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt at Busan in June, a Busan Metropolitan Police officer said Thursday. The three were suspected of illegally recording video of the carrier and South Korean Naval Operations Command on June 23 and June 25, the police officer told Stars and Stripes by phone. The students, who police described as being in their 30s or 40s, were questioned and released but remain under investigation, the officer said.
We all know that its a major sticking point in U.S.-China relations, but how did China get so involved in the fentanyl supply chain? @ZongyuanZoeLiu has the definitive essay on this in @ForeignPolicy:https://t.co/7rFxyix0Yy
