Maritime Access to China Province Restricted Against Taiwan Website – Resources

Beijing said some offshore users of an official Chinese website containing economic and population data on Taiwan and Fujian province had their access blocked and “urgent measures” were taken to deal with the cyber attack.

More than half a dozen users aware of the matter said some users outside the mainland were unable to access the Fujian Bureau of Statistics website.

One researcher in Singapore said he first encountered the restrictions in March, while others said they only learned about them recently.

After Reuters published a report on the matter, China’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement: “As we understand from the competent authorities of Fujian, the official data website of Fujian Province has recently suffered a serious cyber attack.

The ministry added that official services in the southeastern province of Fujian had taken urgent measures to deal with the attack and that if “ordinary users” were denied access to the website, they could “appeal” to have restrictions lifted.

The restrictions come after blocking foreign users’ access to some Chinese financial and academic databases, and after Beijing blocked some consulting firms over national security concerns.

Fujian’s official website, which has a $790 billion economy comparable to that of Switzerland, regularly released data on topics such as economic growth, energy consumption and real estate sales, according to users and a review of the site.

The data is a key source of detailed information for some foreign research firms, economists and financial institutions that monitor the world’s second-largest economy, according to users who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.

Such restrictions could come at a time when China is trying to support an economy slowly recovering from severe pandemic activity, and foreign investors may already be struggling with tighter restrictions and geopolitical tensions.

“If the Fujian case is a well-considered decision, it could be a model that can be followed by other local or central government agencies,” said Jin Sun, who teaches Chinese and East Asian affairs at King’s College London.

The restriction of access to Fujian’s government website was a rare move, users said, while China has made fewer government websites accessible to foreign users in recent years amid heightened tensions with the United States.

The Fujian Provincial Bureau of Statistics is “investigating the situation,” an official said when asked for comment, but declined to comment.

The State Council Information Bureau, which handles media inquiries on behalf of the Chinese government, and the National Bureau of Statistics did not respond to faxed requests for comment.

Reduce risk

Some companies are trying to reduce their risks following Beijing’s crackdown on information security, including Shanghai-based consulting firm Capvision this month, especially as a major overhaul of anti-espionage laws takes effect July 1.

With the increased focus on information security, the latest data points to a slowdown in economic growth, while the number of unemployed youth has reached a record.

Wind Information Co, one of China’s biggest financial data providers, has blocked some offshore users from accessing some business and economic data since late last year, Reuters reported this month.

China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), an important academic database, also restricted access to foreign subscribers from April 1.

However, according to users, other official websites of provincial statistics offices are generally accessible to foreign users. Fujian’s website can be accessed on the mainland, a Reuters survey found.

Data from Chinese provinces will help analysts and economists track regional trends such as labor force migration patterns, land and real estate sales, and industrial growth.

For example, Fujian’s website contains detailed data on the distribution of advanced and basic industries in the province, as well as census results for each city.

But amid tensions in the Taiwan Strait, its importance outweighed that of other provinces as some foreign investors watched closely for signs of military maneuvers, two Hong Kong hedge fund investors said.

Taiwan’s China Policy Council declined to comment.

There is a clear trend of foreign access to domestic data being restricted by the ruling Chinese Communist Party for national security reasons, Sun added.

“In the context of geopolitical tensions with the West and the party’s growing concern for national security, any engagement with the West will become a politicized affair,” he said. (Reporting by Joe Cash in the Hong Kong newsroom and Beijing; Editing by Sumeet Chatterjee and Clarence Fernandez)