China is cracking down on weather stations it says are spying for foreign countries, the latest measure in a broad counter-espionage campaign under leader Xi Jinping amid intensifying geopolitical tensions. <\/p>\n
The country\u2019s civilian spy agency, the Ministry of State Security, said Tuesday it had discovered hundreds of what it said were illegal meteorological stations with foreign links that were sending real-time weather data abroad \u2013 breaking data rules and posing national security risks. <\/p>\n
The facilities were found across more than 20 provinces, and some of them were \u201cdirectly funded by foreign governments,\u201d the ministry said in a statement on social media. <\/p>\n
Some stations were set up around sensitive sites such as military bases and defense companies to locate altitude and GPS data, the spy agency said. Others were placed in major grain-producing regions to analyze crop growth and grain yield, according to the ministry. <\/p>\n
It noted that some of the devices were small, easy to install and hard to detect, and could automatically collect data and transmit over a network in real-time. <\/p>\n
Some stations transmitted real-time information to official meteorological agencies overseas at high frequency and at multiple points for a long period of time, the statement said, adding they served foreign countries\u2019 \u201chomeland security\u201d and meteorological monitoring. <\/p>\n
The ministry did not say which foreign countries were involved. <\/p>\n
The authorities made the discovery after investigating more than 10 overseas meteorological equipment agents and inspecting more than 3,000 foreign-linked meteorological stations nationwide. <\/p>\n
The involved foreign parties did not obtain administrative licences for their activities, the spy agency said, and had not submitted the data to Chinese meteorological authorities or transmitted the data overseas with approval. The ministry said the activities violated both China\u2019s data security law enacted in 2021 and a separate set of regulations on how foreign organizations can collect, use and share Chinese weather readings. <\/p>\n
\u201cMeteorological data\u2026 is an integral part of data security and resource security. It\u2019s closely linked to military, food, and ecological security, climate change, and public interests,\u201d the Ministry of State Security said. \u201cThe illegal collection and cross-border transmission of meteorological data endangers China\u2019s sovereignty, security, and development interests.\u201d <\/p>\n
The collection of meteorological data by foreign parties <\/strong>has previously sparked controversy with Chinese authorities. <\/p>\n In 2012, Beijing demanded foreign governments stop releasing data on China\u2019s air quality, after the US Embassy\u2019s documentation of Beijing\u2019s choking smog drew widespread public attention inside China. The Embassy recorded hourly air quality data with an air sensor on its rooftop and posted it on Twitter, raising public awareness that pressured Chinese officials to acknowledge the scale of the problem and start taking measures to clean up the air. <\/p>\n The latest crackdown on foreign-linked weather stations comes eight months after the United States shot down a Chinese surveillance balloon that had meandered across the continental US and hovered over\u00a0sensitive military sites. China maintained it was a \u201ccivilian airship used for research, mainly meteorological, purposes\u201d that had veered off its planned course \u2013 and accused the US of overreacting. <\/p>\n Since then, Beijing and Washington have accused each other of spying in a string of highly public allegations. The two countries have long spied on each other but the deterioration in ties has supercharged this rivalry. <\/p>\n China\u2019s Ministry of State Security has in recent months taken on a much more high profile role in publicizing m\ufeffultiple cases of alleged espionage by the US, claiming it has caught several spies working for the CIA and taking the rare step of giving some details. <\/p>\n The usually highly secretive agency, which oversees intelligence and counterintelligence both within China and overseas, does not even have a website. <\/strong> <\/p>\n But in August, it\u00a0took the unprecedented step of launching\u00a0a public account on WeChat, China\u2019s hugely popular social messaging app that boasts more than 1 billion users. In the weeks since, the ministry has used the platform to repeatedly urge the public to stay vigilant and report suspicious activity to authorities. <\/p>\n The apparent propaganda blitz comes just weeks after CIA Director William Burns said his agency had \u201cmade progress\u201d in rebuilding its spy network in China after suffering major setbacks a decade ago. <\/p>\n\n China is cracking down on weather stations it says are spying for foreign countries, the latest measure in a broad counter-espionage campaign under leader Xi Jinping amid intensifying geopolitical tensions. The country\u2019s civilian spy agency, the Ministry of State Security, said Tuesday it had discovered hundreds of what it said were illegal meteorological stations with <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":11066,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-11065","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11065","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11065"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11065\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11066"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11065"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11065"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11065"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}