Michele Kearney's Nuclear Wire: Shanghai

Showing posts with label Shanghai. Show all posts

Thursday, December 16, 2010

New theory: Stuxnet was actually created by … China?

Darned compelling, and darned depressing. Not only because it snatches away our vicarious pride in U.S./Israeli ingenuity, but it feeds into western jitters about Chinese omnicompetence. Why, I’ll bet it was those Shanghai teens who cooked this thing up. During recess.
The circumstantial evidence is impressive. Just one question: Why would China do it?

China has an intimate knowledge of Iran’s centrifuges since, according to one source quoted above, they’re of Chinese design.
China has better access than any other country to manufacturing plans for the Vacon frequency converter drive made by Vacon’s Suzhou facility and specifically targeted by the Stuxnet worm (along with an Iranian company’s drive). Furthermore, in March 2010, China’s Customs ministry started an audit at Vacon’s Suzhou facility and took two employees into custody thereby providing further access to Vacon’s manufacturing specifications under cover of an active investigation.
China has better access than any other country to RealTek’s digital certificates through it’s Realsil office in Suzhou and, secondarily, to JMicron’s office in Taiwan.
China has direct access to Windows source code, which would explain how a malware team could create 4 key zero day vulnerabilities for Windows when most hackers find it challenging to develop even one.

That’s four pieces of evidence. Read the whole story and you’ll see that there’s more; plus, and needless to say, when it comes to cyberwar hijinks in the past few years, the Chinese are usually a safe bet as the culprits. More at:
http://hotair.com/archives/2010/12/15/new-theory-stuxnet-was-actually-created-by-china/

Tuesday, November 16, 2010

SPX to Demonstrate Long-Term Commitment to China Market With Announcement of New $40 Million Manufacturing Campus to be Constructed Near Shanghai

SHANGHAI, Nov. 16, 2010 /PRNewswire/ -- SPX Corporation today reiterated its long-term commitment to China and the Asia-Pacific region with an official ground-breaking ceremony marking the start of construction of its new 53-acre China manufacturing campus, which is being built in the FOHO Economic Development Zone.
The planned campus represents a $40 million investment by SPX over the next three years to support the company's business expansion in China and facilitate product localization efforts serving both China and global markets. The campus is intended to provide integrated services for all aspects of SPX business activities in key growth areas: global infrastructure, process equipment and diagnostic tools. In addition to manufacturing, the planned campus will house facilities dedicated to research and development, logistics and customer service functions.
"SPX continues to see significant demand for its products and services in China and the Asia-Pacific region," said SPX Asia-Pacific President Bob Foreman during a ground-breaking ceremony at the site. "This new state-of-the-art manufacturing campus underscores our long-term commitment to growing SPX's presence in China and the broader region. It will strengthen the support we provide to our customers in China, foster greater collaboration across all of our businesses, enhance our products and services and further develop the skills of our nearly 3,000 employees in China.
"More importantly, we believe our increased emphasis on product localization and business consolidation will enable us to further elevate the quality of our services through closer collaboration with our Chinese customers," Foreman added.
Completion of the first phase of the facility is anticipated by the end of 2011. About 1,000 SPX employees are expected to work at the new campus. The planned campus will include facilities to provide employee training and development opportunities, and serve as an incubator of future leaders in the region. These facilities are also planned to accommodate the education needs of customers and suppliers.
SPX has been in China since 1994 and provides products and services to support China's growing energy infrastructure and is involved in many highly complex engineering solutions in China. SPX has been awarded more than 55 dry cooling projects in China since 2002, representing more than 40 GW of power generation capacity. The company has also contracted with Westinghouse Electric Co. to provide highly specialized squib valves to four AP 1000 nuclear plants being built in Sanmen and Haiyang. Two of the new plants are being constructed by Sanmen Nuclear Power Company Ltd. and the other two by Shandong Nuclear Power Company Ltd.
SPX also offers food and beverage systems to meet the increasing demand for high quality processing solutions for China's rapidly expanding food industry. And the company has taken strategic steps to enhance its portfolio of highly-engineered diagnostic tools and custom services for China's growing automotive industry.More at:
http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/spx-to-demonstrate-long-term-commitment-to-china-market-with-announcement-of-new-40-million-manufacturing-campus-to-be-constructed-near-shanghai-108399029.html

Monday, September 27, 2010

Medvedev to push modernization, energy goals on China visit

by Staff Writers Moscow (AFP) Sept 24, 2010 Russian President Dmitry Medvedev will travel to China on Sunday to expand economic ties with the world's largest energy consumer and try to engage Beijing in a range of business and trade projects. With a large business delegation in tow, Medvedev will travel to China at the invitation of Chinese President Hu Jintao, his second trip to the country since assuming office in 2008.
The packed agenda of his three-day trip will include visits to Beijing, Shanghai and Dalian, a port in northeast China which was under Russian control at the turn of the 20th century.
Relations between Moscow and Beijing -- once bitter foes during the Cold War -- have a turbulent history.
The two nations position themselves as counterweights to US global dominance and the Kremlin likes to call its ties with Beijing a "strategic partnership." But Moscow has been watching China's formidable economic might with a mixture of awe and uneasiness.
A key sticking point in ties is that Russian energy supplies still account for the bulk of economic cooperation, analysts say.
The Kremlin, on a mission to modernize Russia's hydrocarbon-dependent economy, wants more Chinese investments and know-how, while Beijing is in no rush to commit, they say.
"Russia has been increasing its energy and materials supply but China bought little else," said Chris Weafer, chief strategist at UralSib investment bank.
"Medvedev will undoubtedly push for Chinese support for his modernization programme and will try to get a commitment from the government to encourage its major corporations to increase investment in the Russian economy and especially outside of extractive industries."
Russia and China jointly run only three industrial parks, said Sergei Luzyanin, deputy director of the Far East Institute at the Russian Academy of Sciences.
"That's a drop in the ocean, of course. It's clear that you need hundreds of them."
"Russia, of course, is trying to entice large investment capital but it is not coming so far."
Energy is also expected to be a major focus of the talks.
"A whole set of documents (to be signed) is related to expanding cooperation in the oil and gas sphere," Medvedev's top foreign policy aide Sergei Prikhodko told reporters.
Russia is keen to diversify its energy supplies and has been in talks with China, the world's largest energy consumer, over gas deliveries.
With pricing remaining a major issue, those talks have dragged on for several years and Russia's powerful prime minister Vladimir Putin travelled to Beijing last October to try to push the talks forward.
Russia's energy czar and Putin's deputy, Igor Sechin, travelled to China earlier this month to lay the groundwork for Medvedev's trip.
During Sechin's visit, Russia and China announced plans to jointly build a 5-billion-dollar oil refinery in the port city of Tianjin and a network of at least 500 petrol stations in the country.
Last year, Moscow and Beijing agreed a 20-year deal to pump Russian oil to China in return for 25 billion dollars in loans.
After talks with top officials in Beijing, Medvedev will travel to Shanghai for Russia Day at World Expo.
Medvedev will kick off his China trip with a visit to Dalian, where he will visit a memorial to Soviet Union war dead.
Known in Russian as "Dalny" (remote), Dalian came under Moscow's control at the turn of the century and was the scene of a major clash between Russian and Japanese forces in the 1904-05 war known as the battle of Port Arthur.
Medvedev will visit the city at a time when China is entangled in a bitter territorial dispute with Japan. Some analysts have said Beijing may try to secure Russia's support in the diplomatic conflict.
Prikhodko said the Dalian trip had been in the works for a year and was intended as a "pro-Russian and not an anti-Japanese gesture."
Top billionaires including Viktor Vekselberg and Oleg Deripaska are set to follow Medvedev to China.

Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Construction of Chinese 'Nuclear City' to start

Plans are advancing for the construction of the first industrial park in China to help with the rapid development of the country's nuclear power industry, with detailed engineering and construction preparation work at the site in Haiyan, Zhejiang province, expected to start soon.

The coastal city of Haiyan, on the Yangtze Delta, has been selected to house the 'Nuclear City'. It is some 118 kilometres (70 miles) southwest of Shanghai and close to the cities of Hangzhou, Suzhou and Ningbo. It also lies midway along China’s coast, where several nuclear power plants have been constructed or are planned.