US Business

When Chen picked up his phone to vent his anger at getting a parking ticket, his message on WeChat was a drop in the ocean of daily posts on China’s biggest social network.

But soon after his tirade against “simple-minded” traffic cops in June, he found himself in the tentacles of the communist country’s omniscient surveillance apparatus.

Chen quickly deleted the post, but officers tracked him down and detained him within hours, accusing him of “insulting the police”.

He was locked up for five days for “inappropriate speech”.

His case — one of the thousands logged by a dissident and reported by local media — laid bare the pervasive monitoring that characterises life in China today.

Its leaders have long taken an authoritarian approach to social control. 

But since President Xi Jinping took power in 2012, he has reined in the relatively freewheeling social currents of the turn of the century, using a combination of technology, law and ideology to squeeze dissent and preempt threats to his rule.

Ostensibly targeting criminals and aimed at protecting order, social controls have been turned against dissidents, activists and religious minorities, as well as ordinary people — such as Chen — judged to have crossed the line.

– Eyes in the sky –

The average Chinese citizen today spends nearly every waking moment under the watchful eye of the state.

Research firm Comparitech estimates the average Chinese city has more than 370 security cameras per 1,000 people — making them the most surveilled places in the world — compared with London’s 13 or Singapore’s 18 per 1,000.

The nationwide “Skynet” urban surveillance project has ballooned, with cameras capable of recognising faces, clothing and age.

“We are being watched the whole time,” an environmental activist who declined to be named told AFP.

The Communist Party’s grip is most stark in the far-western region of Xinjiang, where facial recognition and DNA collection have been deployed on mainly Muslim minorities in the name of counter-terrorism.

The Covid-19 pandemic has turbo-charged China’s monitoring framework, with citizens now tracked on their smartphones via an app that determines where they can go based on green, yellow or red codes.

Regulations rolled out since 2012 closed loopholes that allowed people to purchase SIM cards without giving their names, and mandated government identification for tickets on virtually all forms of transport.

– Online offences –

There is no respite online, where even shopping apps require registration with a phone number tied to an identification document.

Wang, a Chinese dissident speaking to AFP under a pseudonym due to safety concerns, recalled a time before Xi when censors were not all-knowing and “telling jokes about (former Chinese president) Jiang Zemin on the internet was actually very popular”.

But the Chinese internet — behind the “Great Firewall” since the early 2000s — has become an increasingly policed space.

Wang runs a Twitter account tracking thousands of cases of people detained, fined or punished for speech acts since 2013.

Thanks to the real-name verification system as well as cooperation between police and social media platforms, people have been punished for a vast array of online offences.

Platforms such as Weibo employ thousands of content moderators and automatically block politically sensitive keywords, such as tennis star Peng Shuai’s name after she accused a senior politician of sexual assault last year.

Cyberspace authorities are proposing new rules that would force platforms to monitor comments sections on posts — one of the last avenues for people to voice their grievances online.

– Ideological policing –

Many of the surveillance technologies in use have been embraced in other countries.

“The real difference in China is the lack of independent media and civil society able to provide meaningful criticism of innovations or to point out their many flaws,” Jeremy Daum, from the Paul Tsai China Center at Yale Law School, told AFP.

Xi has reshaped Chinese society, with the Communist Party stipulating what citizens “ought to know, to feel, to think, and say, and do”, Vivienne Shue, professor emeritus of contemporary China studies at Oxford University, told AFP.

Youngsters are kept away from foreign influences, with authorities banning international books and forbidding tutoring companies from hiring overseas teachers.

Ideological policing has even extended to fashion, with television stations censoring tattoos and earrings on men.

“What disturbs me more is not the censorship itself, but how it shaped the ideology of people,” said Wang, the Twitter account owner.

“With dissenting information being eliminated, every website becomes a cult, where the government and leaders have to be worshipped.”

Asian markets were mixed Thursday as this week’s global rally ran out of juice, with concerns about a huge oil output cut’s impact on inflation tempering hopes that central banks could soon ease back on their rate hike campaigns.

The mood on trading floors has been a little lighter this week, sending equities surging and weighing on the dollar, after weak readings on US factory activity and job openings feeding speculation that the Federal Reserve’s strict tightening drive was having an effect.

But the confidence took a knock Wednesday from a better-than-expected read on private jobs hiring and a report showing the key services sector holding up more than expected.

The figures highlighted the resilience of the US economy in the face of multiple rate hikes and point to the long road ahead for the Fed in fighting decades-high inflation.

Fed officials have lined up for weeks to insist that they will not budge from lifting borrowing costs until prices are tempered — even at the cost of a recession — while some have warned traders not to expect any cuts next year.

“After an increase in expectations of an imminent Fed pivot given the softer than expected US (factory data), the strength in the services (sector) not only eases concerns of an imminent US recession, it also refutes any notion that the Fed will look to take its foot off the tighten pedal any time soon,” said National Australia Bank’s Rodrigo Catril.

The latest US data came as OPEC and other major producers led by Russia had decided to slash output by a massive two million barrels a day — the biggest reduction since the pandemic struck. 

Moscow said a possible price cap by the European Union on Russian crude would have a “detrimental effect” on the global oil sector, saying Moscow would not sell to countries that introduced it.

The news gave already elevated oil prices another leg up, with both contracts piling on more than one percent, and fuelling concerns that energy costs — a major driver of the spike in global inflation since Russia’s Ukraine invasion — will drive higher again.

“All the developments we have seen on the supply side at this point very much sets the stage for what we believe will be higher prices into the end of this year,” Damien Courvalin, at Goldman Sachs, told Bloomberg Television.

“With this cut and the winter seasonal demand, inventories will continue to fall.”

All three main indexes on Wall Street ended in the red, though they managed to claw back most of their earlier losses thanks to a late rally, though Asian markets fared a little better.

Tokyo, Singapore, Seoul, Taipei and Jakarta all rose again, but Hong Kong retreated after blasting almost six percent higher Wednesday. Sydney, Wellington and Manila were also slightly lower.

But commentators remained on guard over the outlook, with eyes now on the release of US non-farm payroll jobs on Friday, warning that an above-forecast reading could spark another major selloff.

On currency markets the dollar, which bounced Wednesday after suffering a sell-off for most of the week, was slightly down again in Asian business. 

Even sterling managed to resume its gains despite news that Fitch had lowered the outlook for British debt from stable to negative after the government of new Prime Minister Liz Truss announced a mini-budget packed with debt-fueled tax cuts.

The pound plunged more than two percent earlier as Truss failed to reassure investors with a speech at her Conservative party conference where she insisted she would stick to her fiscal plan.

– Key figures around 0230 GMT –

Tokyo – Nikkei 225: UP 0.9 percent at 27,370.37 (break)

Hong Kong – Hang Seng Index: DOWN 0.6 percent at 17,983.43

Shanghai – Composite: Closed for a holiday

Pound/dollar: UP at $1.1353 from $1.1326 on Wednesday

Euro/dollar: UP at $0.9910 from $0.9889

Euro/pound: DOWN at 87.27 pence from 87.29 pence

Dollar/yen: UP at 144.65 yen from 144.59 yen

West Texas Intermediate: UP 0.2 percent at $87.92 per barrel

Brent North Sea crude: UP 0.2 percent at $93.55 per barrel

New York – Dow: DOWN 0.1 percent at 30,273.87 (close)

London – FTSE 100: DOWN 0.5 percent at 7,051.60 (close) 

A jury on Wednesday found Uber’s former security chief guilty of federal crimes for covering up a massive hack that compromised personal information of users and drivers, according to US media reports.

Joseph Sullivan was found guilty of obstructing the work of the Federal Trade Commission and of failing to let authorities know about a crime when he hid a 2016 hack instead of reporting it, according to news outlets.

Sullivan could be sentenced to prison time.

Sullivan sought to pay off the hackers by funneling money through a “bug bounty” program that rewards developers for revealing security vulnerabilities without doing any harm, according to the criminal complaint.

Uber paid the hackers $100,000 in bitcoin cryptocurrency in December 2016, and Sullivan wanted them to sign non-disclosure agreements promising to keep mum about the affair, prosecutors said.

Sullivan was Uber chief security officer from April 2015 to November 2017.

The criminal complaint maintains that Sullivan deceived Uber’s new chief executive Dara Khosrowshahi, appointed in mid-2017 to replace Travis Kalanick, about the breach.

“Silicon Valley is not the Wild West,” US Attorney David Anderson for the Northern District of California said in a statement when the charges were filed.

“We will not tolerate corporate cover-ups. We will not tolerate illegal hush money payments.”

Two members of the Uber information security team who “led the response” that included not alerting users about the data breach were let go from the San Francisco-based company, according to Khosrowshahi.

The Uber chief said he had learned that outsiders broke into a cloud-based server used by the company for data and downloaded a significant amount of information.

Stolen files included names, email addresses and mobile phone numbers for millions of riders, and the names and driver license information of some 600,000 drivers, according to Uber.

Co-founder and ousted chief Kalanick was advised of the breach shortly after it was discovered, but it was not made public until Khosrowshahi learned of the incident, according to an AFP source.

Uber did not respond to a request for comment on the verdict.

Casey Ellis, founder and CTO at Bugcrowd, a San Francisco-based leader in crowd-sourced cybersecurity, said, “It’s a significant precedent that has already sent shockwaves through the CISO (chief information security officer) community.”

“It highlights the personal liability involved in being a CISO in a dynamic policy, legal, and attacker environment.”

Recent test flights suggest the era of electric airplanes is coming closer, but aviation experts caution that achieving commercial use hinges on regulatory approval which has an unknowable timeframe.

Eviation Aircraft successfully completed a test flight in Washington state last week, showcasing a plane the company plans to begin delivering to airlines in 2027.

That came on the heels of an Icelandair flight in August which carried Iceland’s president and prime minister among its passengers.

Besides the benefit in eliminating carbon dioxide emissions, electric airplane travel potentially means less noise than conventional plane transport, as well as eliminating the need for jet fuel, a major expense for commercial airlines.

Gregory Davis, chief executive of Eviation, called last week’s test flight the start of “the next era of aviation,” and said it offered a glimpse of what “affordable, clean and sustainable aviation looks and sounds like.”

But industry experts speak of a hazy timeframe before that future becomes reality, in part because of murkiness over how quickly US air safety authorities will move to greenlight new technology from a seven-year old company with no operating history.

Eviation is “stepping into some unknown areas as far as how you certify and support electric aircraft,” said Glenn McDonald, a principal at AeroDynamic Advisory, a consultancy.

While the 2027 timeframe for the Eviation plane “could be realistic,” McDonald noted that the Federal Aviation Administration has taken a more painstaking approach to certifications since the Boeing 737 MAX crashes in 2018 and 2019.

The two-seat Velis Electro, certified by the European Union Aviation Safety Agency in 2020, is the only electric plane currently cleared for service.

Michel Merluzeau, director of aerospace and defense analysis at AIR consultancy, said the end of the decade was probably a more realistic timeframe than 2027 for the US market.

“It’s fundamentally early days,” said Merluzeau, adding that the FAA will only approve the vehicle after exhaustive testing.

– Much testing ahead –

The September 27 test flight of Eviation’s “Alice” aircraft was an eight-minute voyage that reached an altitude of 3,500 feet (1,065 meters) on a sunny morning.

The company plans to produce a cargo plane, a six-seat “executive” version and a “commuter” model carrying up to nine passengers on flights of up to 250 nautical miles.

Davis characterized the test plane as “prototype aircraft built by hand.” The commercial version is expected to be the same size and weight, but with more advanced battery technology.

“We fully expect to have our choice” of battery, Davis told AFP in an interview.

Among those closely watching the process is Global Crossing Airlines Group, a Miami flight company that has signed a letter of intent for 50 aircraft it plans to fly in Florida, the Bahamas and the Caribbean.

Alice’s appeal stems from the savings in jet fuel costs, said Ryan Goepel, chief financial officer at Global Crossing, which has said it expects to begin receiving planes in 2027.

“We see this as a product that has a lot of demand and really low operating costs,” Goepel said, adding that the test flight represented a “huge milestone.”

Davis said the next step will be to analyze flight data, and the company expects to begin FAA testing in 2025, with commercial production also beginning that year.

The agency declined to comment directly on Eviation, but a spokesman said, “speaking generally, the FAA can certify these new aircraft through its existing regulatory framework.” 

“Some certifications could require the FAA to issue special conditions or additional airworthiness criteria, depending on the type of project,” the official said in an email.

Setting specific conditions is a typical response from the FAA when addressing new technologies but that process can “take a while,” said Waruna Seneviratne of the National Institute for Aviation Research at Wichita State University.

Testing will be extensive before the FAA allows the jet on the market for the flying public, Seneviratne predicted.

“The goal is to find that one incident, one bad part that’s going to take an airplane down,” he said.

Merluzeau said the fact Alice is a new plane rather than an established model reconfigured with an electric engine amounts to “an incredibly complex assignment” for the FAA.

A lengthy, costly certification process would be a challenge for the young firm.

“How do you survive long enough as a company when you know the certification is going to take a long time?” Merluzeau said. “How will they be able to do that when they are burning through cash?”

Eviation is currently backed by the Clermont Group, a Singapore private investment group chaired by Richard Chandler, whose wealth is estimated by Forbes at $2.6 billion.

An Eviation spokeswoman said the company “will be pursuing additional funding on the path to certification and production.”

A trio of scientists from the United States and Denmark won the Nobel Chemistry Prize on Wednesday for laying the foundation for a more functional form of chemistry where molecules are linked together.

Americans Carolyn Bertozzi and Barry Sharpless, together with Denmark’s Morten Meldal, were honoured “for the development of click chemistry and bioorthogonal chemistry”, the jury said.

Bertozzi is the only woman among the seven Nobel laureates honoured so far this year, with women vastly under-represented in the history of the prizes, especially in the science disciplines.

The chemist is only the eighth woman to win a Nobel Chemistry Prize, out of 189 recipients.

As an undergraduate at Harvard she played keyboards in a band called Bored of Education, with future Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello. But, speaking to AFP, Bertozzi conceded she didn’t have the musical talent of her former bandmate.

“So I think I chose the right path. Especially today,” she said.

Benjamin Schumann, a chemist at London’s Imperial College and former student in Bertozzi’s lab, said she was still known as “the rock star of sciences”.

The award marks the second Nobel for 81-year-old Sharpless, who won in chemistry in 2001. 

Only four other individuals have achieved the feat of winning two Nobel Prizes, including Polish-born Frenchwoman Marie Curie, who won the chemistry prize in 1911 after first winning the physics prize in 1903.

“Prizes aren’t what I’m doing science for. For better or for worse, I have to do it. It’s kind of a compulsion,” Sharpless told a news conference.

– Like Lego –

Click chemistry “is an elegant and efficient chemical reaction that is now in widespread use,” the jury said in a statement.

“Among many other uses, it is utilised in the development of pharmaceuticals,for mapping DNA and creating materials that are more fit for purpose,” it added.

Sharpless, a professor at Scripps Research in California, “started the ball rolling” and “coined the concept of click chemistry” around 2000, the jury said.

Afterwards, Sharpless and Meldal, a professor at the University of Copenhagen, independently of each other, presented “what is now the crown jewel of click chemistry: the copper catalysed azide-alkyne cycloaddition”.

The process allows chemists to “snap” molecules together “with the help of some copper ions”, which among other things allow for the production of new materials.

It is possible to click in substances that conduct electricity, capture sunlight, are antibacterial, protect from ultraviolet radiation or have other desirable properties, it said.

“The discovery that we did was more or less by serendipity” Meldal told AFP, calling his win a “big surprise”.

Speaking to reporters, the Danish professor said the application of click chemistry could be likened to Lego — the iconic plastic blocks that also hail from Denmark.

“You can make a house or bike or car or whatever functionality you want. By combining differently these building blocks… in chemistry, we do the same thing,” Meldal explained.

– ‘A new level’ –

Bertozzi, 55, a professor at Stanford University in the United States, was highlighted for then taking “click chemistry to a new level”.

“She developed click reactions that work inside living organisms. Her bioorthogonal reactions take place without disrupting the normal chemistry of the cell,” the jury said.

Her research is now being used to investigate how these reactions can be used to diagnose and treat cancer.

“I’m absolutely stunned, I’m sitting here and I can hardly breathe,” Bertozzi told reporters via telephone, minutes after the announcement.

Silvia Diez-Gonzalez, a chemist who works on click chemistry at Imperial College, London, welcomed the win.

“Thank goodness” that the days of women not being allowed in chemistry labs are over, she told AFP, though “there is a lot of bias still out there”.

“I want to believe that it’s just a matter of time that as women and non-white people get more opportunities to achieve their potential, then eventually the recognition they get will be spread more widely.”

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which awards the Nobels in the science disciplines, has refused to introduce quotas despite the dearth of women laureates.

Goran Hansson, then-secretary general of the academy, told AFP last year after all of the science nods went to men, that it wanted every laureate to be accepted “because they made the most important discovery, and not because of gender or ethnicity”. 

The lack of women laureates “reflects the unfair conditions in society, particularly in years past but still existing”, he acknowledged.

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