Critique - Group Reports - Week 7

UK's first National College of Cybersecurity planned at Blechley Park 

Bletchley Park, the home of Second World War codebreakers, will once again serve as a cryptographic hub in the UK.UK's first National College of Cybersecurity.is set to locate there.

The college, designed to train teens to defend against the growing 

Cyberattacks and hacking, will open in 2018. It's envisioned as a boarding school and would offer its gifted and talented students free tuition.

 Created by a new cyber security body called Qufaro, it will serve as a specialized six-form college, teaching teenagers the basics of encryption and computer science.

   Qufaro will provide new courses "that do not exist in the UK today”. Designed by individuals working at the forefront of the cybersecurity industry, it ensures that students are prepared for higher education courses and workplace learning schemes. About 40% of the curriculums focus on cybersecurity - with extra about math, physics, computer science or economics.

  Qufaro says it is a new initiative designed to make it simpler for those with career ambitions in cybersecurity to access the UK's cyber-specific education and innovation opportunities.

   Bletchley Park was best known as the home of Britain's code-breaking team during World War II. The group helped the UK and its allies to understand scrambled messages sent by the German army. Alan Turing, an outstanding English computer scientist and mathematician, was its most notable member, helping to break the pivotal "Enigma" and "Lorenza" ciphers.

   Lord Reid, former Home Secretary and chair of the Institute for Security and Resilience Studies at UCL, thinks that UK has taken significant steps to defend against cybersecurity. 

"I believe it will be able to harness the legacy of this historic location to inspire the next generation”, he said “it is a fitting tribute to the incredible impact of all those who have worked at Bletchley Park over the years and I look forward to witnessing the impact I believe it can have on UK society".

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/2252361/bletchley-park-alan-turing-enigma-code-college/  http://www.zdnet.com/article/bletchley-park-teen-cyber-defence-school-planned-at-historic-home-of-code-breaking/

http://www.bbc.com/news/education-38065563

                                                Group:cybersecurity                                                        Sarah     26/11/2016

JW: Your story reads well, including a good lead. But it would be even better if you spelled out who is behind the new security body called Qufaro. (It was created by senior figures at Cyber Security Challenge UK, the National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park, the Institute of Information Security Professionals, BT Security, and Raytheon Co, a top Pentagon supplier -- ZDNet, one of your sources, reported). Spelling out who's behind a new initiative helps put an event in context.

Separately, who says Qufaro will provide new courses "that do not exist in the UK today?" You haven't sourced this statement properly, though you've used a quote that implies it was Qufaro. But you'd need to make the sourcing absolutely clear, not just imply it, for instance by saying, xxx Qufaro said in a news release that it would provide new courses 'that do not exist in the UK today." As a no-nonsense reporter, the next step would be to pin down an example of such a stand-out course, supposedly unlike anything else being taught in the UK now. Meantime, if you attribute such a claim to its source, you can relax if the source turns out to be wrong about this, as may be the case. But if you fail to attribute the claim, you're going way out on a limb -- as if asserting something as a fact that may or may not be true. Remember, if your mother tells you that she loves you, check it out.

MOFA’s update on Chinese suppression of Taiwan’s diplomatic efforts

TAIPEI – For the first time in 8 years Taiwanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA)  has updated a Web page reporting on Chinese suppression of Taiwan’s diplomatic efforts. Entries were posted on the website on Monday last week, covering 12 latest incident from April to this month.

One of the online logs concerns the incident at the World Chinese Economic Summit in Malacca, Malaysia, where former president of Taiwan, Ma Ying-jeou, was merely entitled "His Excellency Ma Ying-jeou”. Organizers of the event removed any references to Ma’s presidential title from his designation.

The ministry started its activity of recording Chinese suppression of Taiwan’s diplomatic efforts and began to publish it, when the president Chen Shui-bina took office in 2000. After president Ma took over the office in 2008, ministry has stopped publishing, however they have never stopped to chronicle the incidents. The reason behind this sudden inactivity of the website are “orders from above”, as one, unnamed ministry official said. What urged government to activate the Web page was  a request of  Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator, Lo Chih-cheng.

The update list starts with the incident from April, regarding Taiwanese representatives were not allowed to participate in the discussion held by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. The other incidents include WHO’s invitation to Taiwan in May, UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s decision to bar representatives of the Council of Agriculture from attending a meeting of its Committee on Fisheries in July, the September incidents of Taiwan’s exclusion from this year’s International Civil Aviation Organization’s meeting in Canada and the World Economic Forum’s change of its appellation for Taiwan from “Taiwan, China” to “Chinese Taipei”, incl.

 As we can read on the Website, the highest priority of the ministry is the “protection of national sovereignty, security and dignity”. The purpose of the chronicles is to urge overseas missions to remain vigilant against China’s diplomatic bulling and it won’t compromise ministry’s efforts to mend ties with China, states the ministry. [1]

This week's editor for Taiwan-Mainland group report was Anna Bryszkowska. The other group members are: Tatiana Gordeeva, Dasha, LI Shirui(Sherry), JIA Yunan(Leenah), DENG YE (Vanessa)  and FENG Lanyu.

[1] http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2016/11/24/2003659891/2

http://www.chinapost.com.tw/editorial/2016/11/23/484683/Anger-at.htm

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Show commentsComments (1)

JW: You've put together a good story, with a good lead. But you need to add background on the China-Taiwan split as well as the independence-minded DPP's electoral victory in January over the KMT, which lost its majority in the legislature for the first time. Also, it would be very good to report how many countries currently recognize Taiwan and to contrast this with how many countries did so when Taiwan's diplomatic weight was greatest. Digging for such information is a hallmark of good reporting. Dig, dig, dig. You'll find solid reports from think tanks and scholars who can be quoted. Check here for an official Taiwan list of countries with which Taipei says it now has diplomatic relations, for instance:

http://www.mofa.gov.tw/en/AlliesIndex.aspx?n=DF6F8F246049F8D6&sms=A76B7230ADF29736

China Pushes Alternatives for TPP as Trump Pulls the Plug

Trump topped the TPP withdrawal in his first future administration plan released Monday amid a unified call of APEC leaders to fight backlash against free trade highlighted by Trump’s presidential victory. In the meantime, China is pushing forward its rival free-trade initiatives excluding the United States.

“On trade, I am going to issue our notification of intent to withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a potential disaster for our country,” Trump said in a short video just after leaders of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation group ended their annual summit Sunday in Lima, Peru.

 "We reaffirm our commitment to keep our markets open and to fight against all forms of protectionism," the leaders said.

The summit closed with a joint statement that the organization would work toward adoption of a broader 21-nation pact favored by the Chinese government known as the Free Trade Area of the Asia Pacific.

Trump added in the video he'll do a series of bilateral deals across Asia rather than buy into one major trade pact. And instead of lowering import tariffs envisioned in the TPP, he's threatened to raise them, fueling concern about a trade war.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is a trade agreement between the United States and 11 Pacific-Rim nations, from Australia to Vietnam to Chile—notably not including China. The accord involves significant market openings, tariff cuts on thousands of products, and pledges to protect investors across the 12 countries, which cover 40 percent of the global economy.

Obama had championed TPP as a strategy for ensuring U.S. could lead the process of devising a "gold standard" set of rules for 21st century trade before he gave up seeking congressional approval after Trump’s winning election.

The TPP's possible demise could give a boost to alternative initiatives including one promoted by China in which the United States is not taking part.

Since 2012, China has been pushing forward the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership(RECP) that eliminates tariffs but is not supposed to impose labor and environmental standards as TPP would. It includes many countries such as Japan and Australia that would have been in TPP.

If RCEP succeeds, China will be in a stronger position to lead a bigger free trade area in the future. Already in Asia, some countries, like the Philippines, are aligning themselves with China.

Up to now, there have been 15 rounds of negotiations and 4 meetings of commerce trade held discussing the RECP. “The biggest problem is how to coordinate the different interests,” said Baiming, deputy director of the International Market Research Institute of Ministry of Commerce.  

“The process may be harder in negotiating the RECP than TPP to some extent because of the bigger economical discrepancy among the countries. The smallest economy in TPP is Thailand, which is a moderately developed country, while in RECP, Cambodia and Laos are more underdeveloped,” said Baiming.

Sources:

https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/10/05/statement-president-trans-pacific-partnership

https://www.rt.com/business/367778-trump-break-tpp-first-day/

http://finance.sina.com.cn/roll/2016-11-25/doc-ifxyawxa2670922.shtml

http://money.cnn.com/2016/11/23/news/economy/tpp-trump-america-china-russia/index.html

http://www.npr.org/2016/11/22/503052646/trumps-rejection-of-tpp-paves-way-for-china-to-strike-asian-trade-deals

http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/L/LT_APEC_SUMMIT?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/A/AS_ASIA_TRUMP_TRADE_PACT?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

Rotating editor: Zang Wenting (Wendy)

JW: Nice job. You've neatly woven together important strands of the trade story, appropriately highlighting how China stands to gain from Trump's plan to withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiated under Obama. One thing that I didn't understand in your piece, though, was the interplay between what you called a Chinese-favored pact known as the Free Trade Area of the Asia Pacific, on the one hand, and the China-backed Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RECP), on the other. How do these fit together? Also, it's generally a good idea to name the countries involved in one scheme or another such as TPP or RCEP -- and to highlight the ones that may bolt from TPP to RCEP.

Common sense reached between China and Philippine on South China Sea

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has called on China to prohibit its fishermen from venturing inside Panatag Shoal just like action taken by the Philippines, which is reportedly to ease tensions over disputed waters controlled by China, and this decision was criticized by Filipino fishermen on Wednesday.

Duterte raised his sanctuary proposal which was earlier proposed to declare the vast lagoon inside Panatag Shoal a marine sanctuary, effectively banning fishing activities in his meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Peru early this week.

Duterte said even if there had been no territorial dispute, it was “common sense” for nations “not to destroy the source of the life” in the sea.

Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Geng Shuang on Oct.22 had no comment on Duterte’s declaration but said China has made "proper arrangements regarding Filipino fishermen fishing in waters near Huangyan Island".

Panatag Shoal, which is also called Huangyan Island in China, is a traditional fishing ground for Filipino fishermen. Tensions around the Shoal, one of China's islands in the South China Sea, rose on April 2012, when a Philippine military vessel confronted Chinese fishermen who were fishing in the island's lagoon and were later evacuated with the help of Chinese maritime law enforcement vessels. After taking control of the shoal in 2012, China banned Filipino fishermen from operating there.

The ban was eased last month after Duterte visited Beijing to mend ties, causing China to suddenly lift its four-year blockade of Huangyan Island and allow Filipino boats to access the area without harassment for the first time in years.

During the leaders’ meeting, Chinese President Xi also said that the fishermen will continue to have free access to their traditional fishing grounds apart from offering them training such as fish culture to sustain the fishermen’s livelihood and families.

Chen Qinghong, a researcher of Southeast Asian studies at the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, said the ban to be issued is in line with the two countries' efforts to improve relations and resolve South China Sea disputes through dialogue and consultation, and it helps improve the environment of the island.

Rotating Editor: Liang Guanqun (Mandy)

Sources:

http://news.mb.com.ph/2016/11/23/filipino-fishermen-decry-dutertes-disputed-shoal-ban/

http://news.mb.com.ph/2016/11/21/president-duterte-to-declare-panatag-shoal-a-marine-sanctuary-area/

http://news.mb.com.ph/2016/11/24/duterte-to-china-ban-fishing-too-inside-panatag-shoal/

http://news.mb.com.ph/2016/11/20/president-duterte-meets-chinese-russian-leaders/

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2016-11/23/content_27463842.htm

http://edition.cnn.com/2016/11/21/asia/duterte-meets-putin-xi-jinping/