China Communications Intelligence | Daily

China Communications Intelligence today:

1. US-China trade is booming

2. Commerce adds Elizabeth Economy as a US-China advisor to Secretary Raimondo

3. US and China head into first talks in months

4. Biden to nominate Caroline Kennedy as US ambassador to Australia

5. China criticized NBC Universal for showing an "incomplete map" during the opening ceremony

For all the 'decoupling' rhetoric, US-China trade is booming: Fortune reports, For all the talk of deepening tensions between the United States and China, there is one area where relations appear to be business-as-usual: trade. Official Chinese data show that bilateral trade between the two countries surged in 2021, with China's exports to and imports from the United States reaching $46.9 billion and $14.3 billion in June, respectively.

Commerce boosts its China firepower by hiring Xi Jinping scholar Elizabeth Economy as an advisor to Secretary Raimondo: WSJ reports that the US Department of Commerce plans to hire Elizabeth Economy, a Hoover Institution and Council on Foreign Relations expert adviser to Secretary Gina Raimondo.

Economy is not a fan of China.

Here latest book: The Third Revolution: Xi Jinping and the New Chinese State.

Think Navarro with better blue blood credentials.

The US-China relationship management business has plenty of scholars involved, but for me, not enough practitioners.

I don't see this appointment as a positive for global commerce and international business.

As always, when it comes to US-China, it will be interesting to watch.

The US and China head into first talks in months: Wendy Sherman, US deputy secretary of state, landed in China this weekend, as Beijing imposed sanctions on seven Americans, in a tit-for-tat blow that illustrated the dismal state of US-China relations.

Sherman will tell China in upcoming talks that while Washington welcomes competition, there needs to be a level playing field and guardrails to ensure ties do not veer into conflict.

Ahead of the talks, Foreign Minister Wang Yi criticized Washington for thinking it is 'superior' and says it needs to learn how to treat others equally.

Talks of any kind are positive, but down expect rainbows and unicorns as an outcome.

Biden to nominate Caroline Kennedy as U.S. ambassador to Australia: Showing the importance of allies and the Indo-Pacific, President Joe Biden plans to nominate Caroline Kennedy, daughter of the late President John F. Kennedy, as US ambassador to Australia. Kennedy previously served as US ambassador to Japan under Democratic former President Barack Obama.

China criticized NBC Universal for showing an "incomplete map" of the country in its broadcast of the opening ceremony of the Tokyo Olympics after a map displayed during the arrival of Chinese athletes included neither Taiwan nor the South China Sea.

One should assume NBC will not have an 'incomplete map' for the Beijing Winter Games broadcast.

Also, the Beijing Winter Games will be like no other Olympics we have seen.

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The Microsoft Exchange hack: It's a China pile on

Three things corporate communicators need to know:

1. No way Beijing was expecting this multilateral response

When dealing with foreign governments, Beijing's standard operating procedure is to divide and conquer. Beijing prefers to deal with nations one on one and separate the bigs from the smalls.

Today a wave of multilateralism landed at Zhongnanhai, the principal center of government in the People's Republic of China.

The United States, the United Kingdom, and their allies formally attributed the Microsoft Exchange hack to actors affiliated with the Chinese government and accused Beijing's leadership of a broad array of "malicious cyber activities," Bloomberg reports.

The group of nations said that the Chinese government has been the mastermind behind a series of malicious ransomware, data theft, and cyber-espionage attacks against public and private entities, including the sprawling Microsoft Exchange hack earlier this year.

The group of nations attributing the attack to China includes Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Japan, and NATO.

2. NATO calls out Chinese cyber attacks for the first time

NATO's response to the Microsoft Exchange hack marks the first public and formal condemnation by the North American-European alliance on China's cyber activities.

Senator Mitt Romney (R-UT) posted on Twitter: "This isn't just about stolen property—cyberattacks sponsored by the Chinese Communist Party pose a massive threat to our national security and that of our allies. @USNATO is right to accuse China of these attacks. The world must wake up to the threat China poses to global order."

Not only does NATO involvement bring into focus the potential use of Article 5 - said article provides that if a NATO Ally is the victim of an armed attack, each and every other member of the Alliance will consider this act of violence as an armed attack against all members and will take the actions it deems necessary to assist the Ally attacked - but as Senator Romney stated, China's actions and involvement in this hack pose a grave threat to the global order.

This is all to say that these actors affiliated with the Chinese government and supported by Beijing's leadership are not professional. These activities are unseemly for a responsible government, noting that these actions could be seen as an armed attack against all NATO members.

3. The hack was just too big to ignore

The hack targeted Microsoft Exchange servers and is believed to have impacted at least 30,000 organizations globally.

This hack marked a bridge too far in Chinese cyber activity and one which alarmed so many in the West that the only response was a globally united, multilateral, and multi-institutional.

"We believe that cyber-operators working under the control of Chinese intelligence learned about the Microsoft vulnerability in early January, and we're racing to exploit the vulnerability before [it] was widely identified in the public domain," a security source told the BBC.

The BBC reported that if this had been all, it would have been just another espionage operation. But in late February, something significant changed.

The targeted attack became globally massive when other China-based groups began to exploit the vulnerability.

What is seen as pesky spying but acceptable actions by governments, the hack had turned from targeted, state-endorsed espionage to a "massive smash-and-grab raid."

Western security sources believe Chinese agents had obtained advanced knowledge that Microsoft intended to patch or close the vulnerability. Still, the Chinese government decided to use this knowledge and steal and hack as much as possible.

The recklessness of the decision to spread the vulnerability helped drive the decision to call out the Chinese publicly, officials say.

What does this mean:

The United States is formally accusing the Chinese government of leading malicious cyber operations and hiring mercenaries. The claim accuses China of sponsoring espionage and supporting and possibly endorsing the work of cyber criminals executing these attacks.

Governments worldwide are hopeful that this "name and shame" action will push China to act as a responsible global actor, and coordinated international effort will suppress future cyber activities that move beyond espionage norms.

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