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US Housing and Development Secretary says there is an opportunity for two powers to be "great friends" and that China "is not a very belligerent society"

In a further sign of warming bilateral ties, US Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Ben Carson delivered an upbeat speech on US-China relations in Washington, D.C. on Friday.

“When you look at China you see a very, very accomplished society and not a very belligerent society,” Carson said at an annual conference hosted by the Committee of 100 (C100). “I think there’s an opportunity for China and the US to become very good friends – and the administration is looking for that.”
The comments by Carson, who was sent by the White House as a fill-in speaker for US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, appeared to be another positive policy signal by the Trump administration on China.

The HUD’s secretary’s speech followed Ross’s announcement last week of a 10-part trade agreement with China on beef, poultry and financial market access issues.

Carson, whose domestic agency has nothing to do with China, told the audience that he had spoken with Ross, who couldn’t attend, before making his speech. The C100 is an organization of prominent Chinese Americans active in Sino-US policy matters.

“I hope the US and the Middle Kingdom can learn from the mistakes and triumphs of the past,” Carson said at another point in his speech.

He also sought to allay fears of future US-China friction. “When we say America First, it does not mean America only,” Carson said, alluding to a slogan used by Trump during his presidential campaign.

Carson is a famous African American surgeon who backed Trump’s presidential bid and was later appointed to head HUD, which oversees home ownership, low-income housing and housing development.

Senator warns of ‘Thucydides Trap’
Another speaker at the C100 conference was Dan Sullivan, a Republican US senator from Alaska who serves as co-chair of the Senate’s China Working Group, a bipartisan panel that helps frame US China policy.

Sullivan said both the US and China were working to avoid the so-called “Thucydides Trap”, a strategic metaphor where a rising power challenges an established one – in a scenario that usually leads to war.

“Some say the US should contain China. I don’t think this is the right strategy,” Sullivan said, arguing that it’s better for the US to engage China.

Sullivan also offered some hints on how the GOP-controlled Congress and the Trump administration may craft future US economic policy toward China.

He noted in his speech that reciprocity from China on bilateral trade and investment issues and China’s alleged theft of US intellectual property remain sticking points between the two nations.

But the senator noted on the reciprocity issue that China currently has an opportunity to create jobs in the US through investment. “There’s a great opportunity to do that with the US-China relationship,” Sullivan noted.

Sullivan said another potential area for bilateral cooperation was energy. “(The US has) enormous reserves of clean-burning natural gas” that can be exported to an energy-hungry China, Sullivan said, adding that he and his colleagues would continue to work on such ideas in Congress.

Iowa Governor Terry Branstad, who is on deck to be the next US ambassador to China, was slated to be one of the main speakers at the C100 conference but was unable to attend due to a full schedule.
Reports say the full Senate is set to vote on Branstad’s confirmation as ambassador to China on Monday.

Doug Tsuruoka is Editor-at-Large of Asia Times

http://www.atimes.com/article/trump-cabinet-member-carson-upbeat-us-china-ties/

 
Increased shipments of the fuel to the mainland one of the main breakthroughs in a trade deal agreed after two nations’ presidents met last month in Florida

After an executive from US liquefied natural gas exporter Cheniere Energy spoke to a few hundred people at a conference in Beijing last week, the first question from the audience turned out to be an invitation to visit one of China’s biggest energy firms and a main LNG buyer, the state-owned giant known as Sinopec.

“We are very happy to always come to your office, Mr Chen Bo, and discuss the supply of US LNG to China,” Andrew Walker said in front of an amused audience, responding to the chief of Sinopec’s trading arm.

The exchange highlighted a budding relationship between US gas sellers and Chinese buyers after an agreement struck this month by the Trump administration and President Xi Jinping’s government welcomed the Asian country’s investments and purchases of American gas.

“The trade deal paves the way for Chinese support into US LNG in both existing and potential future projects,” said Kerry Anne Shanks, a Singapore-based analyst at Wood Mackenzie. That includes immediate LNG sales or signing long-term contracts to underpin financing of new plants.

Gas is poised to play a larger role in US-China trade relations as the Trump administration works to trim a trade deficit and as the world’s largest energy consumer seeks to boost the share of natural gas in its energy mix and lower prices that last year were the world’s highest.

Beijing, US reach trade deal to boost American imports to China in wake of Xi-Trump summit

While the trade deal announced May 11 does not appear to alter access for Chinese companies to US gas cargoes, it welcomes China to receive shipments and engage in long-term contracts. That may be able to ease concerns in China that involvement in the US LNG industry would be met with wariness.

“There’s never been anything formally that said there are restrictions on Chinese buyers,” Shanks said. “But there’s always been that fear.”

US supplies accounted for almost seven per cent of China’s LNG imports in March, customs data show. But these cargoes were supplied to end-users through intermediaries or spot deals as China currently has no long-term contracts to directly buy American gas.

Longer supply contracts, which can run more than 20 years, traditionally help underpin the financing of export projects by providing lenders with confidence the developments will have stable customers. They also strengthen the relationship between the buyer and the plant operator or gas producer, opening the door to investing directly in the export plants.
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China National Petroleum Corp chairman Wang Yilin said earlier this month that the country’s biggest oil and gas company wants to import more US supplies and will consider participating in projects. Sinopec’s trading unit, Unipec, is considering the US, among other producers, for possible long-term LNG contracts for supply starting in about 2022, Chen said on Wednesday at a gas exhibition in China.

China International United Petroleum & Chemicals, as Unipec is officially known, may use the cargoes for both domestic demand as well as for its trading book. The company resold about 20 per cent of its 10 million tonnes of annual supply last year to Europe, the Middle East and Mexico, Chen said.

China could offer America a trade deal it cannot refuse – on natural gas

ENN Energy Holdings, one of the country’s biggest gas distributors and a budding LNG importer, is considering US supplies if it offers acceptable price and flexibility, vice-president Ma Shenyuan said at the same event in Beijing.

“US gas will be the cheapest of all because they have abundant supply” and the Trump-Xi trade agreement was encouraging LNG shipments between the two countries, Zhu Xingshan, a senior director in the planning department of CNPC, said in Beijing last week. “Thus we should increase imports of US LNG.”

Most of China’s long-term LNG supply contracts price shipments as a ratio to oil, with one Qatari deal struck in 2008 pricing it at as much as 16.3 per cent the cost of crude, according to data compiled by Bloomberg New Energy Finance. US LNG exports are priced off benchmark Henry Hub gas in Louisiana.

But with oil prices currently depressed, US LNG imports have no cost advantage, said Ye Yishu, president of China National Offshore Oil Corp’s gas and power trading arm. American gas may present a buying opportunity if crude rises above US$70 a barrel, he said at the summit.

Options for China to secure US LNG may include buying spare volumes from Cheniere’s Sabine Pass export terminal in Louisiana, which is currently the only US exporter outside Alaska, financing an expansion of that project, or buying into one of a handful of new developments that have permission to export but still need financing, according to Wood Mackenzie’s Shanks.

China taps into cool future for global energy

China oil explorers are not the only ones lured by cheap plentiful reserves and the possibility of greater sales from North America. Qatar Petroleum International has teamed up with Exxon Mobil Corp to build a US$10 billion natural gas export plant in Texas, which won approval by federal energy regulators in December.

“We get asked a lot ‘Is there an unwritten rule that Chinese buyers can’t buy from the US?’ and this clearly laid out the words ‘We welcome Chinese purchases,”’ Cheniere’s Walker said of the recent trade deal. “We very much look forward to continuing our conversations with our various potential customers.”
 
Part of the sting involved Xu demonstrating the stolen software, which speeds computer performance by distributing works across multiple servers, on a sample network. The former employee acknowledged that others would know the software had been taken from IBM, but said he could create extra computer script to help mask his origins.
Title is very misleading and trying to cast the affair as China espionage.
It is clear Xu is taking the software for himself and nothing to do with China other than it is committed in IBM China.
He got caught trying to sell the software to company in USA.
I suggest using title from Reuters.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-ibm-crime-china-idUSKBN0TR2X820151208
Ex-IBM employee from China arrested in U.S. for code theft
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Title is very misleading and trying to cast the affair as China espionage.
It is clear Xu is taking the software for himself and nothing to do with China other than it is committed in IBM China.
He got caught trying to sell the software to company in USA.
I suggest using title from Reuters.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-ibm-crime-china-idUSKBN0TR2X820151208
Ex-IBM employee from China arrested in U.S. for code theft
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@Shotgunner51 , @ahojunk , could you please correct the doctored title?
 
Title is very misleading and trying to cast the affair as China espionage.
It is clear Xu is taking the software for himself and nothing to do with China other than it is committed in IBM China.
He got caught trying to sell the software to company in USA.
I suggest using title from Reuters.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-ibm-crime-china-idUSKBN0TR2X820151208
Ex-IBM employee from China arrested in U.S. for code theft
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He is allegedly spying for China, read the second paragraph of OP's article

Xu Jiaqiang stole the secrets during his stint at IBM from 2010 to 2014 "to benefit the National Health and Family Planning Commission of the People’s Republic of China," according to the U.S. Justice Department.

IBM would not sell software that can be used in Governmental Level in China due to sanction, which make what he is doing is a form of espionage, just because he decided to cash in from it as well does not make it not a espionage operation sponsored by China.

Ungrateful assholes or not, the very idea of granting non citizens security clearance is ridiculous

Most don't, depending on how or what kind of access you have.

The incident happen overseas (in China) not in the US, that mean it may have either low security status to begin with or the person in question using backdoor access to access something above his paygrade.

However, judging by the fact that the program was sold by IBM to all over the world, that would mean the source code should not be in any form off security level.

In the US, there exist 5+2 Security Clearance.

Level 7 - Special Privileged - Only selective few can access (ie President of the United States)
Level 6 - FYEO (For Your Eyes Only)/Compartmentalized - high level clearance for specific people. (Yankee White)
Level 5 - Top Secret/SCI - Holder must have NSA vetting (SSBI)
Level 4 - Secret - Holder must be vetted by Federal Agency (other than NSA/SSBI class rating)
Level 3 - Confidential - Local Governmental Vetting (Can be obtained by Non-US Citizens)
Level 2 - Public Trusted Position - Access to Sensitive Information without Clearance (like a janitor working in a secure premises)
Level 1 - Unclassified - Open for Everyone.

For a Non-Citizen, the most they can get is Level 3, for a Citizen born outside the US, the most they can get is Level 5.
 
Good movie materials. Let's make some movies. :) Zhang's identity? ;)
 
You can't make yourself seems very justice, on both sending spies and catching spies
US: "China send spies to US, they are bad"
"China catched our spies, they are bad"
-----we are always justice
 
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Good movie materials. Let's make some movies. :) Zhang's identity? ;)

It's different....

Jason Bourne is actually an CIA officer (he served in Foreign Service Corp) and a member of Medusa.

Those people killed in China are not CIA Agent, they are the CIA agent's asset. CIA Agent would have been untouchable in China as they would have diplomatic immunity and spend most of the time inside US Embassy.

Those guys got arrested and executed is source that leak information to the CIA agent. Which is fair game for Chinese government.

You can't make yourself seems very justice, on both sending spies and catching spies
US: "China send spies to US, they are bad"
"China catched our spies, they are bad"
-----we are always justice

Would it be different in China?

China : "US send spies on China, they are bad"
China " "US caught our spies, they are bad"

It's not about justice, it's about the side you have choosen. Or you are telling me when US caught Chinese spies, Chinese expression in general is "Good one, you got us good this time, we will do better??"
 
He is allegedly spying for China, read the second paragraph of OP's article
IBM would not sell software that can be used in Governmental Level in China due to sanction, which make what he is doing is a form of espionage, just because he decided to cash in from it as well does not make it not a espionage operation sponsored by China.
However, judging by the fact that the program was sold by IBM to all over the world, that would mean the source code should not be in any form off security level.
Xu Jiaqiang stole the secrets during his stint at IBM from 2010 to 2014 "to benefit the National Health and Family Planning Commission of the People’s Republic of China," according to the U.S. Justice Department.
Exactly, it is to benefit his customers and himself. Otherwise it would be reported as " stole the secrets for the National Health and Family Planning Commission of the PRC".
That is he is NOT doing it on instructions from the PRC agencies.
In a press release describing the criminal charges, the Justice Department also stated that Xu tried to sell secret IBM source code to undercover FBI agents posing as tech investors. (The agency does not explain if Xu's scheme to sell to tech investors was to benefit China or to line his own pockets).
Like I said earlier, OP is trying to cast a bad light on China. On first para its already stated that this is commercial software that is sold to customers around the world.
Better if you read the same less biased article from Reuters.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-ibm-crime-china-idUSKCN18F2LZ
Part of the sting involved Xu demonstrating the stolen software, which speeds computer performance by distributing works across multiple servers, on a sample network. The former employee acknowledged that others would know the software had been taken from IBM, but said he could create extra computer script to help mask his origins.
Clearly this code is commonly available and is easily recognized by IT professionals.

Not sure the code is prohibited for sale in China as it is being accessed in IBM China. Why would IBM China have the code in question if it is not for sale. Clustered file system is not used by mom and pop stores.
He is in China and naturally most of his customers will be Chinese companies or Government agencies.
According to Reuters it is simply reported as theft of proprietary software.

I am not familiar with software sanction. I would think that Clustered File System code is secret and proprietary to IBM but is not strategic as it is commonly used for database management. If IBM cannot sell it to Chinese Government Agencies, why have the code developed and used in China.
Might as well close IBM China.

Oracle offers, free and open source, their Oracle Cluster File System since 2002.
http://www.oracle.com/us/technologies/linux/025995.htm
OCFS2 (Oracle Cluster File System 2) is a free, open source, general-purpose, extent-based clustered file system which Oracle developed and contributed to the Linux community, and accepted into Linux kernel 2.6.16.
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Exactly, it is to benefit his customers and himself. Otherwise it would be reported as " stole the secrets for the National Health and Family Planning Commission of the PRC".
That is he is NOT doing it on instructions from the PRC agencies.

Like I said earlier, OP is trying to cast a bad light on China. On first para its already stated that this is commercial software that is sold to customers around the world.
Better if you read the same less biased article from Reuters.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-ibm-crime-china-idUSKCN18F2LZ

Clearly this code is commonly available and is easily recognized by IT professionals.

Not sure the code is prohibited for sale in China as it is being accessed in IBM China. Why would IBM China have the code in question if it is not for sale. Clustered file system is not used by mom and pop stores.
He is in China and naturally most of his customers will be Chinese companies or Government agencies.
According to Reuters it is simply reported as theft of proprietary software.

I am not familiar with software sanction. I would think that Clustered File System code is secret and proprietary to IBM but is not strategic as it is commonly used for database management. If IBM cannot sell it to Chinese Government Agencies, why have the code developed and used in China.
Might as well close IBM China.

Oracle offers, free and open source, their Oracle Cluster File System since 2002.
http://www.oracle.com/us/technologies/linux/025995.htm
OCFS2 (Oracle Cluster File System 2) is a free, open source, general-purpose, extent-based clustered file system which Oracle developed and contributed to the Linux community, and accepted into Linux kernel 2.6.16.
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Well, I am not in a position to judge a case, I don't think we have all the necessary information of what he did and how he did it, or who they did it from.

Fact is, the DOJ is alleged that he steal these information which in turn will benefits the government of China, doing so would have been the same as "Spying for China" whether or not it is his duty or on the instruction of the government of China or he got pay to do it. It does not matter in the definition. The term is classed when a person stolen information that might otherwise benefit another country that does not have access on this information.

For example, if a person stolen critical information in Apple inc and sell them to Samsung, that person is spying for Samsung whether or not he got paid by Samsung or if he had a job with Samsung and as a Samsung Employee. Just because it may have been a third party, it does not take the organisation benefit from the information out of the equation

So, by definition, what DOJ is accusing of what Xu was doing is in fact an act of espionage, which benefit China. Whether or not DOJ can proof the case is another issue.

As for how or other nitty gritty on the case, well, he might have access to the program in the US, he was working for IBM China at that time does not mean he does not have access to IBM mainframe or IBM asset in the US. It didn't say exactly how he got to these info.

The why and the how would be determined in Federal Court, but what the DOJ is accusing Xu is that he spied for China. Whether or not he works for Chinese Ministry or not.
 
Well, I am not in a position to judge a case, I don't think we have all the necessary information of what he did and how he did it, or who they did it from.
Agreed. That's why I have issue with the misleading title meant to disparage China.
"Ex-IBM Employee Guilty of Stealing Secrets For China".
It is for himself and benefit all his customers including this company in the USA.
For example, if a person stolen critical information in Apple inc and sell them to Samsung, that person is spying for Samsung whether or not he got paid by Samsung or if he had a job with Samsung and as a Samsung Employee. Just because it may have been a third party, it does not take the organisation benefit from the information out of the equation
Your hate for China knows no bounds. Such a long winded irrelevant example to pin the blame on China.
I know you are knowledgeable, but this is going too far in a subject I think is not your forte.
So, by definition, what DOJ is accusing of what Xu was doing is in fact an act of espionage, which benefit China. Whether or not DOJ can proof the case is another issue.
He already pleaded guilty to theft.
As for how or other nitty gritty on the case, well, he might have access to the program in the US, he was working for IBM China at that time does not mean he does not have access to IBM mainframe or IBM asset in the US. It didn't say exactly how he got to these info.
Then they would say it is hacking US servers, and a big hoo ha.
The why and the how would be determined in Federal Court, but what the DOJ is accusing Xu is that he spied for China. Whether or not he works for Chinese Ministry or not.
Doing it for his benefit is not spying for China, period.
The source code is available to him, except he used it outside of IBM biz for his personal gain.
I repeat here again, Clustered File System is common to database management software.
It is not strategic code.
Oracle offers, free and open source, their Oracle Cluster File System since 2002.
http://www.oracle.com/us/technologies/linux/025995.htm
OCFS2 (Oracle Cluster File System 2) is a free, open source, general-purpose, extent-based clustered file system which Oracle developed and contributed to the Linux community, and accepted into Linux kernel 2.6.16.
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