What Do We Need China For?

Why, that sounds nefarious to me:

Zhenhua declined an interview request, saying it was not convenient to disclose trade secrets. The company’s website became inaccessible after The Globe and Mail visited its office, which is located in a government-backed business incubator building across the street from an investigative centre for the local Public Security Bureau — all of it a short drive from headquarters for some of China’s most important technology and civil-military companies, including Tencent and China Electronics Corp.

But The Globe and a consortium of international journalists have accessed an early copy of the company’s Overseas Key Information Database, which shows the type of information Zhenhua is collecting for use in China, including records of small-town mayors in western Canada, where Chinese diplomats have sought to curry favour. The company, led by a former IBM data centre management expert, has also described its work online in job postings, LinkedIn records, blog articles and software patents. One employee described work “mining the business needs of military customers for overseas data.” Zhenhua’s website listed a series of partners that include important military contractors. In total, it claims to have collected information on more than 2.4 million people, 650,000 organizations from over two billion articles of social media.

Together, the documents show a Chinese firm with a keen interest in advanced forms of warfare, the structure of the U.S. intelligence apparatus and the use of social media to achieve military victories. The company has secured a software patent for a “social media account simulation system,” a title that connotes a tool for managing networks of fake social media usernames in a way that emulates human characteristics, making them more effective at spreading messages. Zhenhua’s name translates to “China Revival,” a reference to a mantra of the national rise sought by president Xi Jinping, who has proclaimed the “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.”

“It seems to be collecting information about people who are around things that China would be interested in. The question is if this is a database of potential targets that could be used by the intelligence services of China to get what they want,” said Stephanie Carvin, a former national security analyst who viewed the database on behalf of The Globe and Mail. She is now an associate professor of international relations at Carleton University.