China’s US Enablers

One of the sadder realities of modern business is seeing how China has managed to co-opt and make hostages of American capitalists dazzled by the riches of the Chinese market. Ray Dalio of Bridgewater Associates is just the latest financial titan to play the “Who am I to judge how another country runs itself?” card.

For Dalio, moral relativism is great for business.

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Ex-federal scientist charged with fraud, breach of trust over alleged ties to Chinese university

Federal authorities have charged an internationally recognized agriculture expert who worked in Saskatchewan with fraud and breach of trust, alleging he secretly received money from a Chinese university while employed by the Canadian government.

Yantai Gan started working for Agriculture and Agri-Foods Canada (AAFC) in 1999, and the Royal Society of Canada recognized his crop sciences research in 2019. Mr. Gan was arrested two years ago, but the RCMP did not publicly announce the criminal case against him until last week, days before the start of his preliminary hearing in Swift Current.

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Peng Shuai retracts sexual assault claims as fears over wellbeing persist

The Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai has denied that she had accused a former senior official of having sexually assaulted her, in what is believed to be the first foreign press interview since her November essay caused a media storm.

“I wanted to make this very clear: I have never claimed, or written about anyone having sexually assaulted me,” Peng said. “With regards to Weibo, it’s about my personal privacy … There’s been a lot of misunderstanding … There [should be] no distorted interpretation.”

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China is buying up the critical green-revolution minerals sector in Canada and elsewhere. Enough already

A week ago, the shareholders of Canada’s Neo Lithium approved the sale of the TSX Venture Exchange-listed company to China’s Zijin Mining for about $960-million. The announcement received little coverage and appears to have bothered almost no one in the federal government. It should have.

While Neo Lithium is hardly a household name, and the company is relatively small, its purchase should have raised a stink not just in Ottawa but in Washington and among North America’s electric-car makers. That’s because lithium is an essential component of the batteries that power electric vehicles (EVs), a suddenly burgeoning market, and vast amounts of the global supply of the light, silvery-white metal are going to Chinese companies.

Go Incognito

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Amazon partnered with China propaganda arm

LONDON, Dec 17 (Reuters) – Amazon.com Inc was marketing a collection of President Xi Jinping’s speeches and writings on its Chinese website about two years ago, when Beijing delivered an edict, according to two people familiar with the incident. The American e-commerce giant must stop allowing any customer ratings and reviews in China.

A negative review of Xi’s book prompted the demand, one of the people said. “I think the issue was anything under five stars,” the highest rating in Amazon’s five-point system, said the other person.

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Western greed fuels China’s domination – Our oligarchs prostrate themselves for profit

There is a hypocrisy at the heart of the West’s attitude to China: although we’re constantly warned about the threat from Beijing, our political and corporate elites seem intent on making this century a Chinese one. Unlike in the Thirties, this appeasement isn’t driven by fear and ignorance; it is motivated largely by greed.

And that greed could prove fatal.

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China and a Failed WTO Accession

In 2000 the U.S. Congress passed legislation establishing Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PNTR) with China. The foundation for this successful China vote was established in 1998 when Congress adjusted terminology to rebrand “most favored nation” as “normal trade relations.” These and other shenanigans by Congress enabled China ultimately to enter the World Trade Organization (WTO) in December 2001. This fundamentally changed the economic role that China plays globally, propelling it to the second-largest economy in the world today.

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Wuhan lab leak ‘is now the most likely origin of Covid because Beijing tried to cover it up’ and it is ‘reasonable to believe virus was engineered in China’, Harvard scientist tells MPs

The Wuhan lab leak is now the most likely origin of the coronavirus pandemic because Beijing tried to cover it up, MPs were told today.

Harvard scientist Dr Alina Chan told the Science and Technology Select Committee that it is ‘reasonable’ to believe that Covid was genetically engineered in China.

She also said that the Chinese Communist Party’s cover-up of the initial outbreak in Wuhan two years ago and attempts to sabotage the World Health Organisation’s inquiry into the origins of the pandemic made the lab-leak theory likely.

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Lithuania Stands Up to China: Europe Should Too

China has blocked all imports from Lithuania and has ordered multinational companies to sever ties with the Baltic country or face being shut out of the Chinese market.

The extraordinary sanctions, which amount to a full economic boycott of Lithuania, are in retaliation for the country’s decision to allow Taiwan to open a representative office in its capital, Vilnius.

Taiwan has other offices in Europe and the United States, but they use the name of its capital city, Taipei, due to the host countries’ preference to avoid any semblance of treating Taiwan as a separate country. Beijing insists that the democratically self-ruled island is a part of the territory of the communist People’s Republic of China and has no right to the trappings of a state.

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Liberal MPs Push Back Against Tory Motion Calling for Huawei Decision

Liberal MPs pushed back against a motion calling on the public safety minister to set a date before the Christmas break for the government to announce its long-delayed decision on whether to ban Huawei from Canada’s 5G infrastructure.

The motion was introduced by Tory MP Raquel Dancho during a meeting of the Liberal-dominated Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security on Dec. 14.

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ChiCom 5th Columnist accused of trying to leak Canadian secrets to China has charges stayed

Citing unreasonable delays in a national-security case, a judge has stayed the eight-year-long criminal prosecution of a man accused by CSIS and the RCMP of trying to leak state secrets to China.

Justice Michael Dambrot of the Ontario Superior Court said he would release his reasoning in the coming days.

Pending an appeal, the decision Wednesday ends Canada’s marathon prosecution of Qing Quentin Huang, an Ontario shipbuilding engineer. In 2013, he was charged under the Security of Information Act (SOIA) after authorities alleged he was caught on tape trying “to communicate to a foreign entity information that the Government of Canada was taking measures to safeguard.”

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ChiCom 5th Columnists! Conservatives believe 13 ridings were targeted by foreign interference in 2021 election

The Conservative Party has identified 13 federal ridings where they suspect their candidates were targeted by foreign influence campaigns in the recent federal election, Global News has learned.

The party was briefed by Canada’s two main intelligence agencies about potential foreign interventions against their candidates during the election, two party sources told Global News.

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The Threat of a China-Centric New World Order

Writing in the January/February 2022 issue of Foreign Affairs, the Hoover Institution’s Elizabeth Economy explores Chinese President Xi Jinping’s efforts to shape the international order by “fundamentally transforming the global system” to reflect Beijing’s interests and values. The leader of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), she explains, seeks nothing less than to replace the U.S.-led post–World War II global order with a “China-centric order with its own norms and values.” To understand what is at stake here, let’s talk geopolitics.

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Video footage shows grim situation before Xinjiang terrorism crackdown claims ChiCom propaganda rag

Rare video footage of terrorist attacks in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region and other parts of China made public on Monday revealed the grim situation before the spread of terrorism and religious extremism was successfully contained.

During an online news conference on Xinjiang-related issues, the regional government showed video footage and accounts of witnesses and victims’ relatives of 52 typical violent and terrorist cases from the 1990s to 2014. They were only a very small number of the thousands of incidents carried out by extremists, separatists and terrorists at home and abroad.

Some of the bloody and violent footage was released for the first time.

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