Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: In what may potentially snowball as the biggest exposure of China internationally, Beijing has been found secretly monitoring over 10,000 Indians, including President Ramnath Kovind and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, other top politicians and influencers across the national spectrum.
Among the Indian leaders being monitored by the Chinese company, Zhenhua is Union ministers Rajnath Singh, Nirmala Sitharaman, Ravi Shankar Prasad, Piyush Goyal, and Smriti Irani.
An official in China’s Embassy to New Delhi routinely denied the report.
The expose has alerted several countries, making them suspicious of clandestine Chinese moves and infiltration across the world. They are reported to be considering stricter steps against Beijing, which has already become an international untouchable after the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic earlier this year. More than 200 countries have suffered due to the pandemic and 137 of them have sought a global investigation into the role China played in it.
According to a detailed investigation carried out by The Indian Express, Zhenhua Data Information Technology Company Ltd. is the villain of the piece. The company, based at Shenzhen in Guangdong Province in southeast China, has links with the government and the ruling Communist Party of China, besides its intelligence, military, and security apparatuses.
Zhenhua, registered in April 2018 and having 20 data processing centers across the world, has been targeting individuals and institutions from diverse areas like politics, government, businesses, technology, media, and civil society.
Zhenhua’s modus operandi is to monitor the targeted individual or institution’s social media platforms and constantly update all the related information available digitally, including news, patents, and documents. The Chinese ‘espionage’ company keeps a record of all the associations between people and organizations, by collecting their intricate data.
The paper’s investigation revealed that Zhenhua operations have a massive log file of India database which the company claims to be its Overseas Key Information Database (OKIDB). This database, using advanced language, targeting, and classification tools, included hundreds of entries without any explicit markers.
The global database includes entries from the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, Australia, Canada, Germany, and the United Arab Emirates. Entries from these countries were obtained through a network of researchers from a source connected to the company.
Quoting a Vietnamese professor, Christopher Balding, the report said that the key to monitoring the process is called “hybrid warfare”, which is using non-military tools to achieve dominance or damage, subvert or influence. These tools include “information pollution, perception management, and propaganda.”
Other Indian leaders being monitored include Congress Interim President Sonia Gandhi, Chief Ministers Ashok Gehlot (Rajasthan), Mamata Banerjee (West Bengal), Uddhav Thackeray (Maharashtra), Shivraj Singh Chouhan (MP), and Naveen Patnaik (Odisha), besides Chief of Defence Staff General Bipin Singh Rawat, at least 15 former Indian Army chiefs, Navy and Air Force officers, Chief Justice of India S Bobde and Justice AM Khanwilkar, and top industrialists Ratan Tata and Gautam Adani.
The high-profile list also includes bureaucrats, judges, scientists, journalists, academicians, actors, sportspersons, religious leaders, activists, and even those accused of financial crimes, terrorism, corruption, and narcotics.
OKIDB also tracks, among others, the President’s wife Savita Kovind, Modi’s wife Jashodaben, former PM Manmohan Singh’s wife Gursharan Kaur, and their daughters Upinder, Daman, and Amrit.
Among journalists being watched by the Chinese company are N Ravi, who was last week named The Hindu Group chairman, Zee News Editor-in-Chief Sudhir Chaudhary, India Today Group Consulting Editor Rajdeep Sardesai, former Media Advisor to the Prime Minister’s Office Sanjaya Baru, and The Indian Express Chief Editor Raj Kamal Jha.
People from the sports and cultural fields are also being monitored. They include cricketer Sachin Tendulkar, film director Shyam Benegal, classical dancer Sonal Mansingh, former Akal Takht Jathedar Gurbachan Singh, several bishops and Archbishops of churches,
and self-styled god-woman Radhe Maa (Sukhwinder Kaur).
