China Watch Blog

China Watch Blog has learnt that China’s currency, the Renminbi, or the yuan, surged 148 basis points to hit a record high of 6.3009 against the US dollar on Friday, the last trading day of 2011.

Friday’s revaluation in the yuan’s central parity rate sealed the Chinese currency’s appreciation against the greenback at 4.86 percent this year, according to the China Foreign Exchange Trading System.

Calculated in terms of the central parity rate, the yuan has strengthened about 24 percent against the US dollar since China replaced its decade-long link between the yuan and the US dollar and switched to a basket of unspecified currencies, the China Daily reported.

The yuan remained strong in 2011 even though a weakening for 12 consecutive trading days in November had once triggered concerns that the Chinese currency might head toward a devaluation cycle.

China Watch Blog has learnt that the Qihoo 360 Technology, an anti-virus company that claimed to offer free Internet security services to more than 300 million netizens, issued a red alert on Dec 22.

It says that the databases of many websites were hacked recently, causing the leakage of more than 50 million Internet users’ registered accounts and codes.

Chinese Software Develop Net (CSDN), one of China’s biggest online communities for IT programmers, admitted being hacked on Dec 21, leaving about 6 million users’ information leaked.

The Tianya.cn, one of China’s most popular online forums, was also reported to have been hacked, causing exposure of information related to as many as 40 million users.

Ning Caishen, a renowned screenwriter, complained on Sunday on his micro blog that his Tianya account had been hacked. Many other micro blog writers expressed similar concerns on the same day.