China’s President Xi Jinping warned Joe Biden ‘those who play with fire will get burned’ during a two-hour call Thursday morning amid rising tensions over Taiwan, according to Chinese state media.
The fifth call between the world leaders since President Biden took office comes amid simmering tensions and a potential impending visit to Taiwan from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Biden released an image on Twitter of him in the Oval Office on the phone with Xi.
China this weekend, according to reports, privately delivered a message to US national security officials reinforcing an earlier Chinese Foreign Ministry statement: if US Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi goes ahead with her planned August visit to Taiwan, it would be met with a “resolute and strong measures.”
China’s Foreign Ministry Spokesman Zhao Lijian stated on July 19 that the visit “would seriously undermine Chinese sovereignty and territorial integrity.”
In the book Red Handed, we meet a remarkable young man named Nathan Law, the Chinese-born, Hong Kong-raised leader of a pro-democracy effort called the “Umbrella Movement,” which protested Beijing’s crackdowns on freedom in Hong Kong. His efforts were brutally crushed by the Chinese government and Nathan Law went to prison for eight months. TIME Magazine named him one of “the 100 Most Influential People of 2020.”
Once freed from Chinese prison, he decided to attend graduate school at Yale University, an institution whose history of educating Chinese students goes back to 1850, when the first Chinese student to graduate from an American university took his degree from there.
FBI investigators say they have seen a “dramatic escalation” of Chinese espionage and claim Huawei technology ‘threat to national security’
China wanted to build a 70ft pagoda on a hill close to the Capitol in Washington DC but was stopped amid fears the “perfect spot” could be used to spy on the US government, according to leaked FBI documents.
Beijing had also reportedly been attempting to snoop on US military and government facilities using the cover of Huawei installations, according to CNN, which first published the story.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is giving money to the Chinese regime amid the regime’s bid to tempt foreign scientists into the country.
Bill Gates’s foundation issued a $100,000 grant in June to the Foreign Talent Research Center (FTRC) of China’s Ministry of Science and Technology, according to the Gates Foundation’s website, the National Pulse first reported.
The funding is to help the Chinese regime organize a forum hosted by Zhongguancun—China’s state-sponsored silicon valley—on “pandemic preparedness and response.” The forum has featured top leaders of the regime as speakers including, in its 2021 event, regime leader Xi Jinping.
Chinese mega-projects, both at home and abroad, are not only a vehicle for corruption. They are a deadly public hazard.
Over the past few weeks, several regions in southern, eastern, and central China have experienced torrential rains and large-scale flooding. Affected regions include Hubei province, where Wuhan (the epicenter of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic) is located. So far, more than 140 people have died and over 200,000 people have been displaced from towns, where the floods have damaged houses and other infrastructure. Overall, an estimated 37 million people have been affected by these floods. Economic losses arising from this are estimated to be around $3 billion and might rise further if the situation continues deteriorating.
Chinese censors are removing videos, posts and hashtags related to protests over mortgage payments from Chinese social networking sites such as Douyin and Weibo, according to Reuters.
Videos taken by protestors and their sympathizers in the Chinese regional capitals of Wuhan, Nanchang, and Zhengzhou, have been taken down by Douyin, a Chinese TikTok-like app, citing a failure to “pass scrutiny,” according to Reuters. Protestors are upset about being forced to pay mortgages and other loans on houses that won’t be completed on schedule, according to The Wall Street Journal, as construction delays have hindered the completion of housing.
WASHINGTON, July 21 (Reuters) – The Biden administration is investigating Chinese telecoms equipment maker Huawei over concerns that U.S. cell towers fitted with its gear could capture sensitive information from military bases and missile silos that the company could then transmit to China, two people familiar with the matter said.
Authorities are concerned Huawei (HWT.UL) could obtain sensitive data on military drills and the readiness status of bases and personnel via the equipment, one of the people said, requesting anonymity because the investigation is confidential and involves national security.
“My sources,” read the incoming email on January 24, 2020, “received reliable information according to which the situation related to corona virus infection is very serious and it’s hundreds the people who drop in the streets like flies both in Wuhan and in other 12 provinces.”
British security services issued an alert earlier this year stating that a UK-based lawyer had been engaged in “political interference activities” for the Chinese state. MI5’s public naming of Christine Lee, and a recent unprecedented news conference with the FBI, mark a shift in the approach being taken against the security threat posed by China.
It is not normally good news when an MP is summoned to the office of parliament’s director of security. It is worse when officers from MI5 are waiting. That was Labour MP Barry Gardiner’s fate on the morning of 13 January.
“This is not the first time that the NASA administrator has lashed out at China in disregard of facts,” said Zhao Lijian, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson, at his July 4 regular press briefing. “Some U.S. officials have spoken irresponsibly to misrepresent the normal and legitimate space endeavors of China. China firmly rejects such remarks.”
Zhao, known for rabid anti-Americanism, was reacting to attention-grabbing comments of NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “We must be very concerned that China is landing on the moon and saying: ‘It’s ours now and you stay out,'” Nelson told German newspaper Bild in an interview published July 2.
Nelson has every right to be concerned. America may have to go to war with China if it even wants to land on the moon. The Chinese have made it clear that, if they get there first, they will shoot down visitors.
Chinese scientists, with military links, infiltrate American virology research institutions and feed the research results to the Chinese military to benefit China’s development of biological weapons, said retired U.S. Army Reserve colonel Lawrence Sellin, Ph.D.
In China, there is no difference between military and civilian research, and in 2016 the Chinese regime even mandated the fusion of both types of research even if they are carried out by different institutions, Sellin said in a recent interview on EpochTV’s “Crossroads” program.
MI5 and the FBI have issued a warning that would be devastating to ignore, writes Ian Williams
China’s first homegrown narrow-body passenger jet recently completed its debut test flight, a triumph of local innovation, according to China’s communist leaders. It is better described as a stolen plane, developed by plundering secrets from western aerospace companies on a breathtaking scale.
Chinese cyberspies from a group nicknamed “Turbine Panda” because of their targeting of aero-engine secrets have been indicted in absentia by the US justice department, while a top Chinese agent named Xu Yanjun was jailed last year after an FBI sting operation lured him to Belgium, ostensibly to meet a mole at the American company GE Aviation. According to Ken McCallum, the head of MI5, Xu’s “prolific” network has also been active in Britain. “MI5 worked with those being targeted in the UK.
A standoff over Taiwan threatens far more collateral damage than the conflict in Ukraine
Days after the Ukraine conflict erupted, Apple, BMW, McDonald’s and other Western giants lined up to announce they were quitting Russia in protest.
“This moment calls for unity, it calls for courage,” declared Tim Cook, Apple’s chief executive.
That it only caused a relatively small financial hit must also have helped. The decision reportedly cost the iPhone maker less than 1pc of its global sales, while some foreign businesses, including France’s Renault, chose to sell off their Russian operations for a symbolic one rouble. Oil giant Shell, which made almost $300bn (£254bn) in sales last year, said its losses would not top $5bn.
Chinese researchers recently developed artificial intelligence technology that can gauge Chinese officials’ loyalty to the ruling Communist Party. The technology could be a tool for Beijing’s anti-corruption campaign to monitor further and purge “corrupt” Party members, indicating the regime’s growing fear of losing its legitimacy and power.
More than 4.7 million officials at all levels were investigated, subjected to various forms of disciplinary punishment, or prosecuted in the past 10 years, according to data released by China’s top watchdog, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI), on June 20.
