Home And Away, China Putting Tight New Squeeze On Tibet

2025-05-05 03:12:39

(MENAFN- Asia Times) China is tightening control over Tibet and flexing its strategic roof of the world advantage by cyber-spying on the Dalai Lama's supporters“worldwide from Lhasa to London,” opening Tibet's international airport to Singapore and Nepal, and building the world's biggest hydroelectric dam on a glacier-fed river.

China prizes resource-rich Tibet's lofty Himalayan heights, which allow the People's Liberation Army to“look down” on India, China's regional rival, and provide a formidable buffer between Beijing and New Delhi.

The United Kingdom's GCHQ intelligence agency, meanwhile, is warning Tibetan and foreign activists, researchers and supporters of the self-exiled 14th Dalai Lama that they are in danger of infection from“malicious actors” who created international surveillance malware identified as MOONSHINE and BADBAZAAR.

The British government's National Cyber Security Center (NCSC), which is part of the GCHQ, said the Chinese also created snooping apps deceptively resembling WhatsApp and Skype, which allow text, audio and video.

Other surveillance tools are packed into a standalone app such as Tibet One, which operates in the Tibetan language, the same source said.

Chinese hackers made the Tibet One messaging app shareable on Telegram channels and Reddit forums where Tibetans and their supporters exchange information, the NCSC said.

“We are seeing a rise in digital threats designed to silence, monitor and intimidate communities across borders,” NCSC director of operations Paul Chichester said in a statement.

Targets can be anyone“considered by the Chinese state to pose a threat to its stability,” the NSCS said.

The NSCS said it shared the warning with the US National Security Agency and Federal Bureau of Investigation, plus cybersecurity officials in Australia, Canada, Germany and New Zealand.

“The malicious software – dubbed MOONSHINE and BADBAZAAR – hides malicious functions inside otherwise legitimate apps in a technique known as 'trojanising',” the NSCS said.

“Once installed, the apps have been observed variously accessing functions including microphones, cameras, messages, photos, and location data, including real-time tracking, without the user being aware,” it said.

China's government-owned digital forensics company Meiya Pico, meanwhile, is penetrating deeper into Tibetan society.

“Digital forensics technology, training, and services as provided by Meiya Pico can play a role at both ends of a repression pipeline, facilitating the long shadow of transnational repression beyond the Belt and Road corridor – helping Beijing track, intimidate, and silence Tibetan dissent worldwide, from Lhasa to London,” reported Turquoise Roof, an online Tibetan research site.

“When Chinese police in Tibet seize a phone from someone suspected of sharing information with Dharamsala, [they] exfiltrate and analyze that phone's contents,” Turquoise Group said in an April 16 report titled,“A Long Shadow: The Expansion and Export of China's Digital Repression Model in Tibet.”

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