China's Global Empire Outreach

"Stability in cyberspace cannot be achieved if countries engage in irresponsible behaviour that undermines the national security and economic prosperity of other countries."
"These actions by Chinese actors to target intellectual property and sensitive business information present a very real threat to the economic competitiveness of companies in the United States and around the globe."
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo
Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein with FBI Director Christopher Wray, speaks during a news conference at the Department of Justice in Washington, Thursday. The Justice Department is charging two Chinese citizens with carrying out an extensive hacking campaign to steal data from U.S. companies. (Manuel Balce Ceneta/Associated Press)

Two Chinese citizens have been charged in the United States when intelligence revealed their extensive role in a data-theft hacking campaign that has taken place over a number of years. U.S. prosecutors allege that Zhu Hua and Zhang Shilong, acting for China's state intelligence agency, pilfered information from a dozen countries they targeted, breaching computers where enterprises involved in banking and telecommunications, to mining and health care, were unaware when vital data was being breached, according to papers filed in U.S. District Court.

Allies of the United States have called China out for its malign acts of industrial espionage. It has always been widely recognized that China has been involved in such internationally illegal acts to benefit its own areas of enterprise to shortcut the time it takes for advances that other countries have made without having to take time and focus themselves to attain like advances in its rush to acquire international status in various types of enterprises as Beijing remains intent on becoming the globe's dominating economic and technological powerbase.

"China's goal, simply put, is to replace the U.S. as the world's leading superpower, and they're using illegal methods to get there."
"The list of victim companies reads like a who's who of the global economy."
FBI director Christopher Wray, United States

"To the best of our knowledge, we do not have reports ... of specific losses, but we are aware of intrusions."
"So the incidents took place, the hacking and compromise took place. Whether there was actually a theft committed or the withdrawal of information or data, that is not information within our domain."
Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale, Canada

Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale, shown during an event in Toronto last Friday, says Ottawa isn't aware of any data that was stolen from Canadians. (Frank Gunn/Canadian Press)

On the part of Canada, an admission that its public security is not quite as secure as it would like Canadians and Canadian corporations to believe. And nor does Minister Goodale link these revelations with the detention by China of Canadian citizens; rather as payback for Canadian justice authorities detaining for extradition the chief financial officer of Huawei Technologies, a worldwide technology empire gathering data on behalf of the Chinese state; no link?

"They are two quite separate incidents. As I've mentioned, the information that we're dealing with today in terms of cyber security was first detected going back to 2016", he elaborated. Only to 2016? Doubt it. "Spearphishing", tricking computer users at business and government offices to open malware-infested emails to allow access to login and password details has been around a long, long time, and similarly, Chinese cyber-espionage has, as well...connect...the...dots.

The two men are linked to a group known as Advanced Persistent Threat 10, out of China. In their pursuit of data they broke into computers serving governments and businesses in at least a dozen countries. Working for Huaying Haital Science and Technology Development Co. in Tianjin, they are accused of linking with the Chinese Ministry of State Security's Tianjin State Security Bureau, providing Chinese intelligence with purloined sensitive business and government data.

"This is outright cheating and theft, and it gives China an unfair advantage at the expense of law-abiding businesses and countries that follow the international rules in return for the privilege of participating in the global economic system", stated U.S. deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein. The APT10 Group gained unauthorized access to computers of an unnamed service provider with offices in New York state, then compromised data of the provider and clients in Canada, the U.S., Britain, Brazil, Finland, France, Germany, India, Japan, Sweden, Switzerland, and the U.A.E.