BEIJING/HONG KONG, Jan 17 (Reuters) – China’s population fell last year for the first time in six decades, a historic turn that is expected to mark the start of a long period of decline in its citizen numbers with profound implications for its economy and the world.
The country’s National Bureau of Statistics reported a drop of roughly 850,000 people for a population of 1.41175 billion in 2022, marking the first decline since 1961, the last year of China’s Great Famine.
Rocky Mountain Institute partnered with China to implement ‘economy-wide transformation’ away from oil and gas
The green energy group behind a study cited in Consumer Product Safety commissioner Richard Trumka Jr.’s call to ban gas stoves has partnered with the Chinese government to implement an “economy-wide transformation” away from oil and gas.
Colorado-based nonprofit Rocky Mountain Institute, which published the December study that attributes 13 percent of U.S. childhood asthma cases to gas-stove use, is hardly staffed by an objective group of scientists.
The United States recently banned TikTok from all federal government devices over growing security concerns. That is a good start.
TikTok, FBI Director Christopher Wray warned at the beginning of December, is controlled by the Chinese government, which is a national security concern.
TikTok, a video-sharing app owned by Chinese company ByteDance, has, according to TikTok’s own estimates, 1 billion users worldwide. In 2021, TikTok had approximately 87 million users in the US, according to Statista. Disturbingly, a recent study found that 10% of US adults get their news from the Chinese app, up from 3% in 2020.
As the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) Davos 2023 conference is set to begin on Monday and elitist attendees fly a thousand private jets to Switzerland to lecture on the climate crisis, one country seems particularly enthusiastic for the event to begin. Chinese Communist Party (CCP) state propaganda outlet Global Times praised the “Davos Spirit” in a tweet, claiming, “China’s ideals and achievements also made the Davos Spirit more dazzling.”
HONG KONG, Jan 13 (Reuters) – Living under China’s stringent COVID-19 restrictions for the past three years had caused Zhang Qi enough stress and uncertainty to consider not having babies in the country.
When China abruptly dismantled its “zero COVID” regime last month to let the virus spread freely, the balance tilted to a definite “No”, the Shanghai-based e-commerce executive said.
Stories about mothers and babies not being able to see doctors as medical facilities were overwhelmed by COVID infections were the final straw for Zhang.
China Has 10 Years Left, Says Geopolitical Analyst Peter Zaihan
A longer more wide ranging interview that also includes discussion of China
Beijing says the outposts aren’t doing police work, but Chinese state media reports say they “collect intelligence” and solve crimes far outside their jurisdiction.
The nondescript, six-story office building on a busy street in New York’s Chinatown lists several mundane businesses on its lobby directory, including an engineering company, an acupuncturist and an accounting firm.
A more remarkable enterprise, on the third floor, is unlisted: a Chinese outpost suspected of conducting police operations without jurisdiction or diplomatic approval — one of more than 100 such outfits around the world that are unnerving diplomats and intelligence agents.
The FBI raided a Chinese police station in Manhattan last year, seizing documents from the facility in a criminal investigation into China’s overseas presence in the U.S., the New York Times reported today.
The paper revealed that the search took place last year, at a Chinatown facility scrutinized for its alleged role as a branch of the security bureau of the city of Fuzhou, citing people knowledgeable of the probe. The FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Brooklyn — which the Times reported was involved in the raid — declined to comment for the Times story.
Attack from space would trigger collective defence, say US and Japan, amid China fears
The US and Japan have said that an attack in space would trigger their security treaty, as senior officials from both countries warned that China represents the “greatest strategic challenge” to regional security.
“We agree that [China] is the greatest shared strategic challenge that we, our allies and partners face,” the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said on Thursday after meeting his Japanese counterpart, Yoshimasa Hayashi, in Washington.
US and Japanese defence chiefs agreed that attacks “to, from and within” space could invoke article five of their security treaty, which states that an attack on one of the allies is an attack on both.
B.C. group under RCMP scrutiny for Beijing ties has charitable status in Canada
RICHMOND, B.C.—Across the street from a strip mall lined with restaurants and hair salons, the shield of the Wenzhou Friendship Society hangs above a gated entry.
What has gone on behind those doors is part of a Canadian national security investigation into the aggressive foreign interference tactics of the Chinese government.
When the year 1938 is mentioned, the first thing that comes to mind is the Munich Conference, which has become the prime example of appeasement. Adolf Hitler claimed he was protecting ethnic Germans in Czechoslovak’s Sudetenland border area just as Vladimir Putin claims he is protecting ethnic Russians in Ukraine’s Donetsk region. Both aggressors seized these disputed lands when the Great Powers refused to defend the smaller states. Hitler then moved to take the rest of Czechoslovak in 1939 without a fight, and then later in the year invaded Poland. Unlike the Czechs, the Ukrainians have fought the invasion. Their valiant actions and Russian military failures changed the strategic landscape. The United States and NATO have sent arms of increasing sophistication to the Ukrainians to keep up their defense and deter any expansion of the war into Poland or other countries. History is taking a different, hopefully, better course.
China has upped the stakes in the competition to get to the moon. “It is a fact: We’re in a space race,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said to Politico in an interview this month. He was talking about China, and he was clear about how he sees the threat: “We better watch out that they don’t get to a place on the moon under the guise of scientific research. And it is not beyond the realm of possibility that they say, ‘Keep out, we’re here, this is our territory.'”
TikTok, the extremely popular video-sharing app, is in the midst of another round of negotiations with the U.S. federal government over data security.
The Biden administration should terminate the seemingly endless discussions and either require TikTok to stop operations in the U.S. or force its Chinese owner to sell the app lock, stock and barrel to American parties. No other solution is acceptable from national security and First Amendment points of view.
Beijing’s navy would be left in a ‘shambles’ with Washington losing over 3,000 troops, according to a think tank simulation
A hypothetical Chinese invasion of Taiwan in 2026 would fail but the United States would lose two aircraft carriers defending it, according to the latest simulation.
China’s navy would be left in a “shambles” while Taiwan and Japan would also suffer major losses, according to a war game played out by a leading think tank in Washington.
The Center for Strategic and International Studies [CSIS] conducted one of the most complex war games yet, called “The First Battle of the Next War”.
As we settle into the New Year, many of us are watching with trepidation the signs that COVID-19 may be surging again. Hospitalizations have been rising since early November. It is common to once again see folks fully masked up in an elevator, movie theater or a Broadway show. We don’t know if we can get this virus under control, and we must be able to foresee and prevent the emergence of another. This is why it is critical to uncover the origins of COVID-19. And that is where US intelligence agencies have failed and even deceived us.
… Cooper and other experts (including U.S. national security officials interviewed by ProPublica) say Canadian political leaders have ignored or minimized the extent of the threat from China. Cooper has received criticism from pro-Beijing figures in the Chinese-Canadian community and is fighting two defamation lawsuits from subjects of his coverage. But his reporting has drawn praise from national security officials, dissidents of Chinese origin and academics in Canada, the United States and elsewhere. It helped spur a governmental inquiry known as the Cullen Commission, which recently concluded that organized crime had laundered billions of dollars in the province of British Columbia. And the latest revelations of Chinese interference are having a potentially dramatic impact on the political debate in Canada.
