Lanxiang is known for training beauticians, chefs — and hackers. Now it’s back in the headlines.
The founder of a military-linked Chinese vocational school at the center of an international cyber-spying scandal a few years ago is back in the headlines. This time, Rong Lanxiang, a 50-year-old from central China’s Henan province, is embroiled in a series of embarrassing personal revelations that will almost certainly end with him being expelled from the National People’s Congress (NPC), China’s legislature. Rong, a farmer turned entrepreneur, is well known in China for establishing the Lanxiang Vocational School in Jinan, the capital of coastal Shandong province. The school, which used to partner with the Chinese People’s Liberation Army and still leases buildings from the military, shot to international notoriety in February 2010 after the New York Times cited it as one of two Chinese schools linked to spying and hack attacks on Google and other U.S. corporations. Back when the story broke, Lanxiang denied those allegations. An instructor from the school’s computer department was quoted by the Times saying Lanxiang students had low-level educations, and weren’t sophisticated enough to pull off high-level network incursions. (The Times was also careful to note that linking the attacks to computers at Lanxiang didn’t necessarily mean that’s where the attacks originated.)
What Lanxiang (and another school in Shanghai) had allegedly been up to was a campaign “aimed at stealing trade secrets and computer codes and capturing e-mail of Chinese human rights activists,” the Times wrote. Many in China scoffed; the dissonance between the cloak-and-dagger intrigue described in the international press and the school’s rudimentary course offerings struck many as amusing. While Lanxiang does offer computer classes, it is better known as a training ground for beauticians, chefs, and bulldozer operators. The school has also been the butt of online jokes because of its hyper-enthusiastic television commercials featuring rousing music, aerial shots, and vigorous sloganeering by star spokesperson Tang Guoqiang, an actor known for portraying late Communist Party Chairman Mao Zedong.
Now, Lanxiang is back in the headlines, and not for cyber-spying. Rong, the school’s founder, is under fire for alleged domestic abuse, tax evasion, use of fake IDs, and flouting the country’s strict family planning rules. His wife has also accused him of sending thugs from his school to attack his father-in-law.
