The policies are preemptively countering China's plans there, defending religious freedom, and drawing attention to swelling human rights abuses in Tibet. //
President Trump has signed into law a series of measures creating sanctions for Chinese Communist Party officials assaulting religious rights in Tibet, as well as blocking all new Chinese consulates in the United States until the ancient state is allowed an American consulate.
Even fitness trackers ruled a big risk due to potential for record-matching identifying your family
Thousands turned out in Taipei, Taiwan to support Trump and call to “Stop the Steal” and encouraging their fellow citizens to “Fight for Trump.”
As Americans peruse store aisles and websites in search of Christmas gifts this year, many may not be aware of a sinister and growing problem with the products they are buying: If it was made in China, there’s a good chance that it was produced through slave labor.
Ken Cuccinelli, acting deputy secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, joined “Washington Watch” Wednesday to discuss how China is using slave labor as part of a system that is monetizing some of the most egregious human rights violations in the modern world.
“Seven-eighths of [Chinese-made products are] made in this Xinjiang province in northwestern China and overwhelmingly with forced labor—slave labor—by entities run and managed by the Communist Party of China,” Cuccinelli said, adding:
And they, frankly, make a profit off of it. This is 1 to 3 million people. This is not small potatoes. So that’s what they’re doing to oppress the minority up there, to try to force them to adopt Han Chinese culture and abandon their own faith and abandon their own culture by force.
Chang’e-5 promises new lunar science as well as more ambitious future missions
HELSINKI — China has recovered precious lunar samples after a successful reentry and landing of the Chang’e-5 return capsule.
The roughly 300-kilogram Chang’e-5 return capsule performed a ballistic skip reentry at 12:33 p.m. Eastern Dec. 16, effectively bouncing off the atmosphere over the Arabian Sea before reentry.
The capsule containing around 2 kilograms of drilled and scooped lunar material landed in the grasslands of Siziwang Banner at 12:59 p.m. Recovery vehicles located the capsule shortly after.
“What is so disconcerting about this particular situation is that the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence really should have been spending a lot of time on this threat. That’s kind of what they exist for,” Hemingway said. “But every time in the previous years that Devin Nunes or Republicans tried to focus on China, the hearings were hijacked by Democrats, whether it was Swalwell or [Rep. Adam] Schiff, to talk about Russia and the Russia collusion hoax.”
Whether Biden seems actively pro-China, or merely weak on the communist country, his lack of position on China foreshadows a number of plausible crises.
By Madeline Osburn
Every Chinese national citizen residing in the United States on some kind of visa is a Chinese government intelligence asset — EVERY SINGLE ONE.
Back in May, former National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster penned a very provocative article in The Atlantic entitled “How China Sees the World — and How We Should See China“. It is a fascinating article I highly recommend to all, and the totality of McMasters’ views reflected in the article are beyond my ability to document here. But relative to this particular issue — the status of Chinese citizens residing in the United States — he wrote: //
This is Chinese law — “Any … citizen shall support, assist with, and collaborate with the state intelligence work in accordance with the law.” //
All Chinese Nationals in the US Are Intelligence Assets of Chinese Government -- Sleeping With Politicians Is a Tactic
By Shipwreckedcrew | Dec 09, 2020 6:15 PM ET
AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein, File
The disclosures regarding US politicians, including a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence — Eric Swalwell — as chronicled here by my colleague Bonchie, having been compromised by a Chinese “Honey Trap” only REINFORCE the FACT that the Chinese Communist Party and the People’s Liberation Army are a malevolent force in the world, and Western cultural and moral norms are irrelevant to the tactics they are willing to employ to advance the interests of the Party and the Military.
“Red Sparrow” has historically been a reference to Russian/Soviet intelligence agencies’ use of female intelligence operatives to lure western officials and diplomats into compromising sexual relationships in order to have leverage over them for blackmail purposes. Western intelligence services in the past had identified a “school” where such operatives underwent training before being deployed into foreign countries under a variety of “cover” identities.
The Chinese operate in a different manner. The “Honey Trap” device is used to place Chinese Intelligence assets in positions where they might be able to gather important information over a long period of time. Generally, it is not used for leverage or to extort the targeted individual. It is used to develop a trusting relationship that can be exploited on a continuing and ongoing basis for as long as it can be maintained. Having an “intern” in a Congressman’s office means access to computer systems and all physical spaces inside the office, both in Washington DC and back in the Congressman’s district. That is the “payoff” from the trusting relationship when it develops.
Every Chinese national citizen residing in the United States on some kind of visa is a Chinese government intelligence asset — EVERY SINGLE ONE.
Back in May, former National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster penned a very provocative article in The Atlantic entitled “How China Sees the World — and How We Should See China“. It is a fascinating article I highly recommend to all, and the totality of McMasters’ views reflected in the article are beyond my ability to document here. But relative to this particular issue — the status of Chinese citizens residing in the United States — he wrote:
In 2014 and then again in 2017, the [Chinese Communist] party declared that all Chinese companies must collaborate in gathering intelligence. “Any organization or citizen,” reads Article 7 of China’s National Intelligence Law, “shall support, assist with, and collaborate with the state intelligence work in accordance with the law, and keep the secrets of the national intelligence work known to the public.” Chinese companies work alongside universities and research arms of the People’s Liberation Army…. In addition to espionage and cybertheft by the Ministry of State Security, the party tasks some Chinese students and scholars in the U.S. and at other foreign universities and research labs with extracting technology.
This is Chinese law — “Any … citizen shall support, assist with, and collaborate with the state intelligence work in accordance with the law.”
Chinese “students,” “academics,” and others living in the United States must regularly visit Chinese consulates to be interviewed by consulate officials as part of being given permission to remain in the United States. They are expected to gather intelligence and report what they have learned during the interviews. The leverage over them is that they all have family still in China.
Last week, Secretary Pompeo made an announcement that was largely overlooked with all the election “happenings” — canceling five Chinese “cultural exchange” programs under Section 108A of the Mutual Educational and Cultural Exchange Act (MECEA) that allow U.S. government employees to travel using foreign government funds. All five programs were funded by money from the Chinese Communist Party. The programs were canceled because the State Department determined that the US government employees traveling to China as part of the program were exposed only to Chinese Communist Party and Government officials, not the Chinese people, and the only purpose of the exchanges was to promote CCP propaganda to US officials.
“Confuscious Institutes” are Chinese funded organizations on the campuses of US universities also set up as part of a “cultural exchange” for the purpose of giving US college instructors and students greater awareness of China by teaching Chinese languages, history, and culture. Chinese scholars visit the Institutes and the Institutes fund travel by US academics and students to China. But as this Politico article showed two years ago, the Institutes are really nothing more than “Trojan Horses” through which Chinese spies gained entry into the country and a role at United States research universities in order to conduct espionage.
A 2011 speech by a standing member of the Politburo in Beijing laid out the case: “The Confucius Institute is an appealing brand for expanding our culture abroad,” Li Changchun said. “It has made an important contribution toward improving our soft power. The ‘Confucius’ brand has a natural attractiveness. Using the excuse of teaching Chinese language, everything looks reasonable and logical.”
“Soft power” and “excuse of teaching” don’t seem to suggest an interest on the part of the Chinese government in helping US academics and students distinguish between Mandarin and Cantonese languages, or to distinguish artifacts of the Ming Dynasty from those of the Yuan Dynasty, or to understand what to expect when they order Szechuan Chicken rather than Hunan Chicken at Panda Express.
But let’s return to the travails of Eric Swalwell and other Democrat politicians in Northern California.
A basic primer for US government officials and businessmen — take a look in the mirror. If what stares back at you is not a version of Brad Pitt that would set afire the heart of a 22-year-old recently graduated college female who just happens to be a Chinese national in the US on a student visa, when you find yourself rolling around a hotel room naked with that same young woman, you should not chalk it up to the fact that you are a “smooth operator” with your come-on lines.
Many years ago, I had the occasion to discuss this very subject with an attractive US intelligence agency representative who happened to be a close acquaintance of an AUSA I knew. At the time, I did not work in a location that had a significant military installation or city with high-level banking or business headquarters of companies like defense contractors, so I never had much exposure to “intelligence” matters. This intelligence agency representative was in the process of transferring away from such an area and told the story of a federal agent who had been “befriended” on a flight to Hong Kong by an Asian female flight attendant. They got together while he was in Hong Kong on business, and a relationship developed. He was not doing “intelligence” work at the time — he was doing counter-terrorism work. He was in his early 50s, divorced, with adult children. Basically, his life was his own. He ends up helping her — not in an illegal way — get a job offer from a US-based airline, and they settle into a relationship with each flying to spend time with the other. He was continually cautioned by supervisors because she was a foreign national, and certain disclosures were required of him. Sure enough, after their relationship ended she quit her US job and returned to living in Hong Kong, It turned out she was tentatively identified later as a Chinese national who had positioned herself to be close to him to see if there was anything she might learn.
The female intelligence agency representative said the US was the only intelligence community in the world that she was aware of where “sex” as a tactic was against “policy.” She shrugged when I asked how well the “policy” is adhered to in her experience — not her specifically but with regard to her knowledge. But she said, “If I was of a mindset to use sex as a tactic, and it was accepted policy, I would never run out of productive work, and I could feed valuable information almost non-stop into intelligence databases.”
That’s why a “hot” Chinese national female wanted to be Eric Swalwell’s squeeze on the side.
The Chinese use sex as a tactic to gain intelligence. It is not frowned upon. The paramount consideration is assistance to the Party and the State — by whatever means necessary.
The United States and other western nations superimpose “Judeo Christian” values and morality on foreign cultures — the Chinese in this case — which are neither Judeo nor Christian. Morality reflected in ethics or monogamy is irrelevant to the concepts of statecraft and espionage to the CCP and Chinese military.
MI5 made this clear to UK businessmen and government officials back in 2010!!!
In a 14-page document distributed last year to hundreds of British banks, businesses, and financial institutions, titled “The Threat from Chinese Espionage,” the famed British security service described a wide-ranging Chinese effort to blackmail Western businesspeople over sexual relationships. The document, as the London Times reported in January, explicitly warns that Chinese intelligence services are trying to cultivate “long-term relationships” and have been known to “exploit vulnerabilities such as sexual relationships … to pressurise individuals to co-operate with them.”
The US has put out the poison bait for itself by being so indiscriminate in how it allows Chinese national citizens to come into the country and then remain. Our “openness” to cultural exchanges, and the vehemence with which any hint of “racism” is denounced when any government policy is premised on where a foreign national comes from, are sowing the seeds for our own destruction.
Read H.R. McMaster’s article linked above.
The party’s leaders believe they have a narrow window of strategic opportunity to strengthen their rule and revise the international order in their favor—before China’s economy sours, before the population grows old, before other countries realize that the party is pursuing national rejuvenation at their expense, and before unanticipated events such as the coronavirus pandemic expose the vulnerabilities the party created in the race to surpass the United States and realize the China dream. The party has no intention of playing by the rules associated with international law, trade, or commerce. China’s overall strategy relies on co-option and coercion at home and abroad, as well as on concealing the nature of China’s true intentions. What makes this strategy potent and dangerous is the integrated nature of the party’s efforts across government, industry, academia, and the military.
The Hualong One is not only important in Beijing’s attempts to become less dependent on the West for energy security and critical technology, it is also very significant for President Xi Jinping’s environmental goal of making China carbon neutral by 2060
Yesterday, the House passed — unanimously — a new law imposing United States accounting standards on all foreign companies that are listed on US stock exchanges.
The Senate has already passed the bill — also unanimously — and Pres. Trump is expected to sign it into law without delay.
The bill, the “Holding Foreign Companies Accountable Act,” requires that any foreign companies traded on US stock exchanges must prepare financial disclosures and audits in compliance with US accounting standards. The consequence of a failure to comply is that the company will be delisted by the exchanges. Compliance is to be enforced by the SEC in the same manner that it enforces accounting and audit standards on US companies.
It is no secret that the legislation is aimed squarely at Chinese companies that have listed themselves on US stock exchanges in order to access US capital markets. One provision in the new statute requires Chinese companies specifically to identify any Directors who are members of the Chinese Communist Party.
Most foreign companies traded on US exchanges already comply with US accounting standards, as most have operations inside the United States.
But Chinese owned companies operate under Chinese laws that prevent corporate records and audit papers from leaving China. In most respects, this leaves investors who purchase shares in the companies largely in the dark as to whether the company’s publicly reported financial condition is a true reflection of its actual financial condition. //
According to a government report, there are 217 Chinese companies listed on NASDAQ, the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), and NYSE American, with a total market capitalization of $2.2 trillion. Some are also traded on foreign exchanges, and may simply allow themselves to be delisted in the United States while remaining on those foreign exchanges.
But the US stock exchange markets have one significant difference from most foreign exchanges — companies are allowed to become publicly traded before they show net profitability, unlike in many foreign stock exchange markets. This allows start-up companies — often companies with cutting-edge technology advances — to go into the equities markets to raise money from investors for development and advancement based on projected future earnings.
Taking this action will likely result in greater Chinese government financing of developing companies in China — with the risk of failure to rest on the Chinese government rather than investors in United States equities markets. The Chinese had adamantly worked to prevent the passage of this legislation, and there is much uncertainty about how China might react — especially in response to a Biden Administration (maybe).
CNN has a breaking story out of China where documents have been acquired which reveal that the Chinese communist government authorities have not been honest in their reporting of the crisis within their country. The documents show that the Chi-Com leaders were intentionally downplaying the crisis and deceptively underreporting the figures they were dealing with on the Mainland. //
As this is their own BREAKING report you understand the grave delivery and urgency in the presentation, but what is also unmistakable is the tone of surprise, as if this is somehow a new revelation to things. The idea that the communist leadership was not being completely transparent with numerous aspects of the outbreak has been long seen, but CNN has been part of the cabal of news agencies which have taken a more defensive posture in its approach to how that government had been responding.
Americans could once rest comfortably in the assumption that they possessed overwhelming technological dominance. But China’s government is working hard to prove them wrong.
by Michael G. McLaughlin William J. Holstein
In the technology battles between the United States and China, the sensational hacks of American information technology systems revealed by the Department of Justice and the controversies over Huawei’s 5G wireless communications technology and TikTok’s video app dominate the headlines.
But the Chinese government of President Xi Jinping appears to be quietly setting the stage for a more pervasive, ongoing penetration of America’s networks, creating a national security problem that chief executive officers can no longer ignore or minimize. As part of its Digital Silk Road strategy, China is actively pursuing several vectors to achieve outright dominance of the world’s computer systems, including America’s.
The most concerning vector for companies operating in China appears to be a series of new Chinese laws that began taking effect in 2015 covering national security, national intelligence, and cybersecurity. Collectively, they have set the legal groundwork for the Chinese Communist Party to access all network activity that occurs in China or in communications that cross its borders. The culmination of this legal maneuvering appears to be the updated Multi-Level Protection System (MLPS 2.0), which came into effect in December 2019 and is gradually being rolled out.
The Beijing-based outlet paid several newspaper companies a total of $1,154,666 for printing costs, including $110,000 to the Los Angeles Times, $92,000 to The Houston Chronicle and $76,000 to The Boston Globe.
Overall, China Daily spent more than $4.4 million on printing, distribution, advertising and administration expenses over the past six months, according to the FARA filing.”
On a bright fall morning at Stanford, Tom Mullaney is telling me what’s wrong with QWERTY keyboards. Mullaney is not a technologist, nor is he one of those Dvorak keyboard enthusiasts. He’s a historian of modern China and we’re perusing his exhibit of Chinese typewriters and keyboards, the curation of which has led Mullaney to the conclusion that China is rising ahead technologically while the West falls behind, clinging to its QWERTY keyboard.
Now this was and still is an unusual view because Chinese—with its 75,000 individual characters rather than an alphabet—had historically been the language considered incompatible with modern technology. //
But, Mullaney argues, the invention of the computer could turn China’s enormous catalog of characters into an advantage. //
Typing English on a QWERTY computer keyboard, he says, “is about the most basic rudimentary way you can use a keyboard.” You press the “a” key and “a” appears on your screen. “It doesn't make use of a computer’s processing power and memory and the cheapening thereof.” Type “a” on a QWERTY keyboard hooked up to a Chinese computer, on the other hand, and the computer is off anticipating the next characters. Typing in Chinese requires mediation from a layer of software that is obvious to the user.
In other words, to type a Chinese character is essentially to punch in a set of instructions—a code if you will, to retrieve a specific character. Mullaney calls Chinese typists “code conscious.” Dozens of ways to input Chinese now exist, but the Western world mostly remains stuck typing letter-by-letter on a computer keyboard, without taking full advantage of software-augmented shortcuts.
As we covered in stories last week about Hunter Biden’s business dealings in China, invesigators have been unable to find any records of Michael Lin before he showed up at Yale in the early ’90s and became friends with James Bulger (son of MA Senate President William Bulger), Chris Heinz, Devon Archer, and Hunter Biden. And, in our own investigations, we haven’t found pre-Yale records either. //
connections in the Chinese government; meetings like the ones Lin set up, and conferences between the Chinese legislative body and US leaders don’t just happen because some random person wants them to. Considering the fact that shortly after Biden and Lin visited China in 2010 more than 30 CIA assets in the country were rounded up and killed, their identities made known to Beijing after a CIA communications system that was also linked to US government computers was compromised, questions about Lin’s access and activities with the Bidens need to be asked and answered.
AVIC’s J-31 (or FC-31 for international sales) started development in 2009, two years after China’s hack of Lockheed. Production began in 2015, and the first flight was in 2019. China did in nine years what took the United States 19. China estimates that the J-31 will be combat-ready by 2022. //
The fact that this purchase was allowed to occur is mind-blowing. How did AVIC, an entity on the watch list and known to have stolen tech from the F-35 to put into their J/FC-31, obtain authorization by the US government to buy a company that created tech for the F-35 to make it more invisible to radar?
BHR is a “Russian Nesting Doll” scheme – that is, a venture capital firm, inside a venture capital firm, inside a venture capital firm, and so on, in an effort to shield potential investors and regulatory bodies from their ability to examine the dealings of the VC firm. Bohai Industrial Investments (BII) is currently tied for the largest share of control for BHR with Ample Harvest, both controlling 30%.
On the heels of what looks like blatant partisan censorship of legitimate news sites on the part of huge social media companies, the debate over free speech online has never been more contentious for Americans. Those fears are even more understandable following a report from The Epoch Times that reads like an anatomy of censorship. It details how the Chinese state pays online “trolls” to manipulate public opinion about a news report unfavorable to government following food contamination and an outbreak of a novel illness.
And the tactics look uncomfortably familiar.
The article, using internal documents from Chinese “censorship authorities,” purports to show how paid online “trolls” responded to an outbreak of African Swine Fever in a food product by writing “social media posts praising the authorities” and removing posts that were critical.
The president of the European Council does not usually make news when addressing the UN General Assembly. In fact, the current occupant of the post, Charles Michel might be used to giving UN addresses that attract minimal attention. He is, after all, a former prime minister of Belgium.
However, today was different. Michel told the world that the European Union has made its choice in the emerging strategic contest between the United States and China:
Since I became President of the European Council, I have often been asked a question that is both simple and brutal: “In the new rivalry between the United States and China, which side is the European Union on?” My answer is the following…
We are deeply connected with the United States. We share ideals, values and a mutual affection that have been strengthened through the trials of history. They remain embodied today in a vital transatlantic alliance. This does not prevent us from occasionally having divergent approaches or interests.
We do not share the values on which the political and economic system in China is based. And we will not stop promoting respect for universal human rights. Including those of minorities such as the Uighurs. Or in Hong Kong, where international commitments guaranteeing the rule of law and democracy are being questioned.
Michel’s remarks might sound like a statement of the obvious, but the speech is noteworthy for two reasons. First, it’s actually not that obvious. It dispenses with a rhetorical trick used by top European politicians in the early years of the Trump administration. It was commonplace to hear certain leaders, such as Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron, refer, in a single breath, to the United States, China, and Russia as global challenges to be surmounted. //
That said, it’s also worth considering that China’s coronavirus-era misconduct has become an enormous factor in European diplomacy, too. U.S. popularity in Europe ebbs and flows with each administration — Republican presidents aren’t really admired on the continent. But the Chinese Communist Party has done much to help the Trump administration convince its European counterparts to take a stand on everything from 5G to Xinjiang and Hong Kong.
On Sept. 23, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo delivered a speech warning of the Chinese Communist Party’s influence operations targeting state and local officials.
By Chuck DeVore