Zou: Zhong Shi, many see this report as a direct response to the US accusing China of cyber theft. Let’s start with what the report says about US surveillance activities around the globe.

 

Zhong: Zou Yue, this report was put together by the China Academy of Cyber Space. Its main point is that the US has carried out surveillance activities on a number of countries including its OWN allies, and that its actions have gone far beyond the need to combat terrorism. Here are some of the highlights of the report. It says on a daily basis, the US collects about 5 billion phone records globally, and that it has listened in to German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cell phone for more than a decade. It claims the US has stolen user information from hundreds of millions of people by breaking into Yahoo and Google’s overseas data centers, and that it has been monitoring cell phone apps to grab personal data. It’s worth nothing though that a lot of the information in this report are not new findings by China, but rather a summary of earlier media reports.

 

Zou: I understand that this report backs China’s earlier claims that it has been a victim of US cyber attacks. What can you tell us about that?

 

Zhong: That’s right. The report calls cyber attacks from the US illegal and of "a large scale", and says China is one of the main targets of US surveillance. It claims US surveillance has targeted the Chinese government, its leaders, enterprises, scientific research institutes and cell phone users. It has quoted former NSA contractor Edward Snowden’s revelations that the US carried out cyber attacks on Chinese Ministries of Commerce and Foreign Affairs, as well as Chinese banks and telecom companies. Even China’s most widely used online-chatting software, QQ, has been spied on by the NSA. All the reports and evidence aside, the record says that China has stuck to the path of peaceful development, and sees no justification for being targeted by America’s secret surveillance agencies under the guise of fighting terrorism.