Red Dragon Menacing III(8)

On CCP’s All-Out Aggression Against Humanity

Table Of Content

China’s Return to Maoism

US Investors Continue to Fund the Chinese Military

The Newest Chinese Naval Base Is in… the Bahamas

China’s New Aircraft Carrier Uses Catapult Tech Stolen From US

What Have Fourth of July Shortages Got to Do With China?

Recognizing Reality: A New Study Documents the Chinese Regime’s Aggression

CCP’s Drug Warfare and Other Illegal Activities in Latin America

America’s Meth Crisis: Made in Mexico, Engineered in China

Weep for the Souls of the Falun Gong and Other Persecuted Minority Groups in China

Why Americans Should Pay Attention to the Plight of Falun Gong

China Is Infiltrating Kids’ Video Games With Propaganda and Spyware

China and Russia Collude

China Is Weaponizing Chinese Worldwide to Support the CCP

China’s Forced Organ Harvesting Demands US Response

China Is Torturing Critics in Psychiatric Hospitals

UN Report on Human Rights Abuses in Xinjiang Is a Clarion Call to Action

China’s ‘Zero-COVID’ Policy Wreaks Havoc

Pompeo Versus the CCP

On Closing China’s Secret Police Stations Overseas

Xi Jinping’s Rise Could Be the Beginning of the End for Communist China

Chinese Slavery Beyond China

New Threats Revealed at China’s Zhuhai Airshow

China’s Interference in US Politics

Terror Along China’s Belt and Road

China Weaponizes the WTO Against America

Chinese Human Rights Propaganda Must Be Continually Exposed

The China Threat Is Nonpartisan

The Sobering Truth About 5G

China’s Return to Maoism

A view shows cranes in front of the skyline of the Central Business District (CBD) in Beijing, China, on Oct. 18, 2021. (Thomas Peter/Reuters)

China’s Return to Maoism

As the economy falters, the CCP knows it must control everything in order to retain power

James Gorrie

Writer

June 16, 2022

Commentary

China ’s economy  is in a serious and prolonged downward spiral.

What better time for China to return to its Maoist roots?

After all, China was the paragon of economic growth, technological innovation, and stability under former leader Mao Zedong, right?

Nonetheless, the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) “new” economic and political policies are turning the country’s economy away from its blend of state and private capitalism into the dark, Maoist model of the past.

Even more staggering is that the CCP is doing so intentionally . Major policy changes are being institutionalized by the CCP leadership, which will further damage China’s already declining economy.

Resurrecting Mao’s National Self-Reliance Policy

The purported reason  behind reverting to Mao-era policies is to make China self-reliant. The CCP wants to decouple its economy from the West to minimize dependence on Western partnerships and insulate China against future U.S. sanctions.

It’s an attractive notion, but it doesn’t work in practice. The necessary factors for self-reliance—such as efficient markets and transparent courts—require freedom of information, private property, technological innovation, robust consumer demand, and confidence in the future. None of these are present enough in China.

On the other hand, the economy is cratering under the current system created by the CCP. So, indeed, why not revert to Maoism?

In reality, preemptively gaining control of as much of the economy as possible may be the only way for the Party to survive the coming onslaught of economic woes.

A few developments make it clear how comprehensively the CCP is failing China.

Manufacturing Implosion Continues

First, a dose of reality regarding “reported” growth rates  is in order. China’s growth projection for 2022 is 5.5 percent. The CCP’s official growth assessment for the first quarter of this year was a bit lower at 4.8 percent. Some private economists say that China’s growth for 2022 will be around 2 or 3 percent.

A nearly-empty road during a COVID lockdown in Shanghai, China, on May 5, 2022. (Source: Bloomberg)

If even those lower estimates were accurate, that would represent the greatest fall in economic growth  China has seen since the year following the Tiananmen Square mass murder of students by the CCP in 1989.

But even the lowest estimates aren’t reasonable.

On the Caixin index , which indicates manufacturing  activity, China is currently at 48 but was 46 in April. Any level below 50 on the index means negative growth or a contraction in manufacturing activity. As the manufacturing and export leader of the world, that negative level spells more difficulty for China’s economy.

Property Development Sector Collapsing

There’s more bad news in China’s property development  sector. The industry that makes up about 29 percent of GDP  continues to melt down. With fewer buyers, heavy discounts are in play. In April 2022, home prices fell  in two-thirds of China’s largest 70 cities.

The debt-driven collapse of the industry is resulting in rampant insolvency  among even the largest development firms and banks. In fact, trillions in bad debt saturate both private and public economic sectors.

A man works at a construction site of a residential skyscraper in Shanghai, China, on Nov. 29, 2016. – Chinese household debt has risen at an “alarming” pace as property values have soared, analysts say, raising the risk that a real estate downturn could send shockwaves through the world’s second-largest economy. (Johannes Eisele/AFP via Getty Images)

Given that the CCP created the distortions in the property development sector through graft, corruption, and circular lending, the idea that the Party is equipped to solve these problems is absurd.

Again, from the Party’s perspective, it’s not about economic efficiency but maintaining political control.

Attacking Big Tech

Of course, the CCP’s drive to control the private sector is also behind its oppression against the powerful big tech firms like Alibaba, Tencent, and many others. The CCP blames tech firms’ excessive abuse of monopoly power , but the real issue is power itself.

The big tech firms wield tremendous financial and social influence  in China, as in many other countries. Their technology, including social media, drives the culture, not the Party. These large societal influencers were not only competing with the CCP, but they were posing a threat to its legitimacy.

Naturally, the CCP responds to threats by destroying them. That’s what’s really behind its take on the tech moguls. Massive layoffs  have followed the takeovers.

Mixing Economic Models

A big part of the CCP’s transition to Maoism—and undoubtedly related to the tech takeovers—is its plan to blend private firms with state-owned enterprises (SOEs) extensively. That’s another formula for economic decline. It didn’t work for Mao, and it won’t work now.

Private companies are typically run much more efficiently than SOEs because they usually have to make a profit to survive. On the other hand, SOEs are run by political appointees, not businesspeople. In most cases, SOEs were successful private firms that the CCP took over for the personal gain of Party members, who then drained the wealth from the companies and refinanced them with loans from the central bank, the People’s Bank of China (PBOC).

The “blending” of both, as it were, is just a euphemism for more takeovers of private businesses by the Party.

Chinese People’s Fear of the Future

Not surprisingly, pessimism  best defines people’s outlook for the future in 2022. The CCP’s “zero-COVID” policy kills economic activity wherever it applies. The seemingly never-ending lockdowns of entire cities have resulted in dramatic falls in output, consumer income, and spending, as well as considerable jumps in consumers’ savings rates. Of course, unemployment  is rising, too.

According to the PBOC , the private savings from January to May this year rose by 7.86 trillion yuan ($1.7 trillion), which is more than 50 percent higher  than the same period last year. At the same time, household consumption fell, meaning people are buying even less in 2022 than during the intense lockdowns of 2020.

A Chinese migrant worker passes by the People’s Bank of China in Beijing on May 1, 2013. The People’s Bank released the “Financial Stability Law (Draft for Comments)” on April 6, 2022, saying that resolving financial risks is a “constant theme.” (Mark Ralston/AFP/Getty Images)

That’s an additional $1.7 trillion that was not spent in the economy in the first quarter, with a GDP of about $14.7 trillion or less. Moreover, in 2020, savings were invested in the stock market or property. In 2022, however, consumers are paying off debt, prepaying mortgages, and other defensive actions.

Finally, the extended lockdowns across China have resulted in declining orders in manufacturing and other major industries, leading to widespread layoffs.

The CCP’s Survival Trumps Economic Viability

The language coming out of Beijing has the unmistakable ring of desperation  as the CCP seeks to stabilize employment and the economy. It’s worth noting that amid economic and social chaos, Mao sought and found stability and remained in power to the end.

The resurrection of Maoism is simply the adoption of proven methods for expanding power and control over the country as it descends into economic and social instability.

James R. Gorrie is the author of “The China Crisis” (Wiley, 2013) and writes on his blog, TheBananaRepublican.com. He is based in Southern California.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/chinas-return-to-maoism_4534864.html

US Investors Continue to Fund the Chinese Military

American flags fly outside the New York Stock Exchange in the Financial District in New York, on Jan. 14, 2022. (Mary Altaffer/AP Photo)

Antonio Graceffo

June 16, 2022

Commentary

The U.S. Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) issued an online FAQ allowing Americans to continue funding China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA).

The PLA is on the verge of launching its third aircraft carrier  as part of its $9 billion  dollar carrier program. This hefty price tag represents a small fraction of money the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has received from U.S. investors.

China “exploits United States investors to finance the development and modernization of its military ” wrote then-U.S. President Donald Trump on Nov. 12, 2020, in an executive order banning investment in Chinese stocks  linked to the PLA. In the order, Trump accurately said that the key to the CCP’s military and intelligence development is the funding it receives from the U.S. private economy.

According to the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, there were 261 Chinese companies listed on U.S. exchanges with a combined value of $1.4 trillion  as of March 2022.

Nina Xiang of China Money Network confirmed Trump’s statement that China depends on the United States to fund its development. The BBC also reported Xiang saying that losing access to U.S. markets would have a “devastating impact on China’s innovation ecosystem and future development .”

The pockets of U.S. investors are deep and the CCP would have difficulty covering China’s $229 billion defense  budget if state-linked firms were kicked off of U.S. exchanges. The two major exchanges in New York, the NYSE and the NASDAQ , are four times the size of the combined Shanghai and Hong Kong exchanges.

In a continuation of Trump’s 2020 executive order, President Joe Biden issued an executive order this month adding 59 PLA-linked Chinese companies  to the U.S. blacklist . Biden’s executive order  also mandated a one-year deadline for Americans to divest themselves from the blacklisted stocks.

On June 1, just two days before the deadline, the OFAC issued an online FAQ regarding blacklisted entities, which caused a great deal of confusion.

The FAQ states: “No. E.O. 13959, as amended, does not require U.S. financial institutions to block transactions. However, transactions that would be prohibited under E.O. 13959, as amended (including an attempted sale of covered securities by a U.S. person made to effect the divestment of CMIC securities after the 365-day divestment period), must be rejected and reported to OFAC within 10 business days .”

From this statement, it is unclear if Americans must adhere to the 365-day deadline to divest themselves of blacklisted stocks.

The FAQ goes on to say, “Consistent with FAQ 863, U.S. financial institutions may continue to intermediate purchases or sales by or from non-U.S. persons to or for non-U.S. persons .” It also says that U.S. entities may continue to receive dividends from these investments.

The ambiguity of the FAQ has been understood differently by various law firms. Ropes & Gray, a global law firm, interpreted the order as meaning that U.S. investors had to divest of the  blacklisted securities by June 3, although it is unclear what the penalty would be should they fail to do so.

In contrast, Norton Rose Fulbright told its clients that the deadline is no longer in force. And this seems consistent with part of the FAQ stating, “U.S. persons are not required to divest  their holdings of CMIC securities during the relevant 365-day divestment period and may continue to hold such securities after the divestment period.”

Investment banks also had differing reactions to the executive orders. Morgan Stanley sold off a large number of shares in one of the blacklisted firms, Zhonghang Electronic Measuring , dropping from being the eight largest shareholder to no longer being in the top 10 as of March 31.

A DJI Mavic 2 Pro and DJi Mavic Mini made by the Chinese drone maker fly near each other in Miami, Fla, on Dec. 15, 2021. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Other investment banks and investors have chosen to hold their positions, waiting and seeing how the rules and enforcement play out. However, it is apparent that many investors have decided to divest themselves of the stocks as the shares of Zhonghang and many other blacklisted firms have dropped significantly in value since last June.

While it is unclear when, if ever, Americans must divest themselves of existing shares of blacklisted firms, U.S. entities are barred from purchasing new investments in the CCP’s military-industrial complex under the executive orders. And this prohibition extends to firms working in research with applications for military , intelligence, and security .

As for divestment, Derek Scissors , a Republican appointee to the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, told Nikkei on June 7 that those who are still holding the blacklisted securities are in a wait-and-see mode.

But some investors were not in a hurry to sell shares that are losing value. Perhaps the holdouts may wind up the winners. Meanwhile, the CCP continues using U.S. money to fund its military modernization. Leading global agency for open-source defense intelligence Janes estimates that the CCP’s defense budget may actually be $58 billion more than the official number, bringing the total to $287.8 billion . And for at least the immediate future, they can rely on U.S. investors to keep footing the bill.

Antonio Graceffo, Ph.D., has spent more than 20 years in Asia. He is a graduate of the Shanghai University of Sport and holds a China-MBA from Shanghai Jiaotong University. Graceffo works as an economics professor and China economic analyst, writing for various international media. Some of his books on China include “Beyond the Belt and Road: China’s Global Economic Expansion” and “A Short Course on the Chinese Economy.”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/us-investors-continue-to-fund-the-chinese-military_4532898.html

The Newest Chinese Naval Base Is in… the Bahamas

Hurricane Matthew moves through Paradise Island in Nassau, Bahamas, on Oct. 6, 2016. (Tim Aylen/AP Photo)

The Newest Chinese Naval Base Is in… the Bahamas

‘Where are the Americans?’

John Mills

June 21, 2022

Commentary

My first memory of the Bahamas was a wonderful family trip there in 1980. I remember beautiful beaches, conch shells, and remnants of the very recently departed British Empire. My parents also let us ride around on mopeds, wearing no helmets, while we were not even old enough to have drivers’ licenses in America. The British Colonial Hilton where we stayed (sounds impressive, but we were a family of modest means, and I think it was a Best Western affiliate at the time and we all crammed into one room) was the nicest hotel we had ever stayed in.

Curiously, the hotel owner is now China Construction America and has chosen to depart the Hilton System .

Even more curiously, the hotel complex is across the street from the American Embassy. Coincidence, I’m sure.

The Bahamas is not just a Disney Cruise destination, it also hosts a very important U.S. Naval facility.

In more recent times—November 2019—we took a Disney cruise to the Bahamas. It was a beautiful cruise. We especially loved the mini nation-state of Castaway Cay operated by Disney with the blessing of the Government of the Bahamas. Whatever you think of Disney’s current woke behavior, it was a memorable time in a pre-virus America—things were good, and Trump was President. Most impressive was the Skipper’s ability to stop and then back-in park a 100,000-ton cruise liner without any assistance from a tug. Global Positioning System tied to a navigation system can do wonders.

Not well known is that there is also a very important U.S. Navy facility in the Bahamas . It carries the inauspicious name of the Atlantic Undersea Test and Evaluation Center (AUTEC)  and serves several purposes. It is a place where American, British, and other strategic partners send their submarines  for research, testing, and preparation for actual combat patrols. I’m not going to go into any more detail, but it is an important facility.

There’s also this curious interest in the Bahamas by this little Chinese company called Huawei. They are essentially providing the entire telecommunications infrastructure  for the Bahamas.

That is very convenient, especially when the extensive data generated by AUTEC must travel the same network for certain parts of its journey. I’m sure our ones and zeros receive no more special attention than anyone else’s ones and zeros during the transit of the data.

Again, like the Chinese-owned hotel across from the American Embassy, I’m sure it’s all a coincidence.

The Bahamians ask, “Where are the Americans?”

Whether it be the streets of Baghdad, Bosnia, Taiwan, or any other place I’ve worked and served, I like to ask the local population what’s on their mind. On the streets of Nassau, Bahamas, the simple question on the mind of the locals is, “Where are the Americans?” The second thing on the minds of Bahamians: a dislike of the heavy-handed Chinese presence.

Twice, Bahamians pointed at the hotel I had stayed in as a child 40 years earlier and said, “They are the problem,” referring to the Chinese ownership of the hotel and the expanding Chinese footprint.

The consensus of everyone I talked to is that the Belt and Road initiatives imbued extensively with civil-military fusion at the direction of the Chinese Communist Party, had quickly established a strong perception of the Chinese as the new colonial masters. Colonial masters with a very different approach.

Many seemed to fondly remember or look back to the days of British Rule. With the departure of the British, corruption took over, and soon mated with Chinese influence operations.

The failure of the U.S. State Department to deploy an actual ambassador–a disturbing trend.

One thing I did when I returned from the 2019 trip was to review the status and background of the U.S. Ambassador to the Bahamas. Ambassadors and their staffs are the “face of the United States” to these countries and are the defining and decisive instrument of national power to assert American interests.

Unfortunately, there has not been an American Ambassador to the Bahamas since 2011, and it’s been spotty since the independence of the Bahamas in 1973. What we have in the Bahamas is a “ Chargé d’Affaires .”

A Chargé d’Affaires is nice, but it’s a big statement that the United States is bored and un-interested in the country and is unwilling to post an ambassador.

Ambassador or Chargé d’Affaires, I’ve come across several in my government work that I’ve met with while visiting or working these countries that were very un-impressive and acted woke, before being “Woke” was a thing. Several times I had to restrain myself when an ambassador would make demeaning comments about America in front of our foreign partners. There is a difference between transparency and the ability for minor self-deprecating humor to build relationships and woke pandering. Foreign nationals are not impressed by the latter.

I’ve noticed a deficit of dedicated American ambassadors in many locations—Panama, and the various South Pacific Island Republics for example. And even when we do have an ambassador, they don’t appear to be asserting American interests.

The Bahamas is essentially the closest sovereign country to America; the Chinese are aggressively occupying the Bahamas, and America needs a dedicated Ambassador there fast. And an American Ambassador that unashamedly puts American interests first and is willing to help the country actively respond to the Chinese occupation forces.

Colonel (Ret.) John Mills is a national security professional with service in five eras: Cold War, Peace Dividend, War on Terror, World in Chaos, and now—Great Power Competition. He is the former director of cybersecurity policy, strategy, and international affairs at the Department of Defense. John is a senior fellow at the Center for Security Policy. ColonelRETJohn on GETTR and TRUTH, Daily Missive on Telegram.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/the-newest-chinese-naval-base-is-inthe-bahamas_4544955.html

China’s New Aircraft Carrier Uses Catapult Tech Stolen From US

A People’s Liberation Army Navy submarine sits in dry dock in Huludao Port in Liaoning province, China. Image captured by Planet Labs PBC, 3 May 2022. (Courtesy of Planet Labs)

China’s New Aircraft Carrier Uses Catapult Tech Stolen From US

Beijing readies to drive the US from Asia, including with hypersonic missiles

Anders Corr

June 28, 2022 Updated: June 29, 2022

Commentary

China ’s newest aircraft carrier and missile defense systems include a qualitative—and stolen—technological leap that brings Beijing closer to driving the United States from Asia.

The new military capabilities offer the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) both a sword against its neighbors and a shield against U.S. strategic forces.

The combined carrier and missile defense technologies put peaceful countries in the region under increased military threat, made all the more real by Vladimir Putin’s aggression in Ukraine and his “no limits” friendship with Xi Jinping.

Over the past few years and in tandem with Russia’s parallel aggression in Europe, Beijing has accelerated its military pressure against the United States, India, Australia, Taiwan, Japan, Vietnam, and the Philippines.

China’s other closest allies—Iran and North Korea—act in a similarly aggressive manner that pulls the United States and its allies in multiple directions at once.

Smaller Asian nations like Cambodia and the Solomon Islands  offer Beijing military basing.

Others like Malaysia, Brunei, and Laos try to stay silent and out of the fray, but in their silence and sometimes more, is complicity.

China’s Stolen Military Tech

Beijing’s power in Asia is based on its growing military and economic power, matched with an aggressive pursuit of improved military technology. Yet some mainstream media, including Foreign Policy , The Associated Press, and NPR , downplay the threat or give credence to Beijing’s story that its latest military technological advancements are indigenously produced rather than stolen from the United States and Europe.

China steals up to $600 billion annually in U.S. intellectual property alone—and naval technology  is no exception. China’s IP theft allows its navy to gain on the United States so swiftly.

Bloomberg News noted that China’s new carrier technology represents  a “watershed moment” in the modernization of the PLA and burnishes Xi’s military credentials ahead of a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leadership conference where he will seek an unprecedented third term as the country’s dictator-in-chief.

The propaganda video about the launch is dedicated to the CCP’s upcoming congress. The video stated, “Offense is our mission,” according to Bloomberg.

The PLA Navy (PLAN) launched  the carrier on June 17. While a diesel engine will likely power the ship rather than more advanced nuclear propulsion, it uses the latest electromagnetic aircraft launch system (EMALS), according to Capt. James Fanell (U.S. Navy, Ret.), former director of Intelligence for the U.S. Pacific Fleet.

EMALS was initially developed  by the U.S. Navy for its aircraft carriers and was first successfully tested in 2015 on the USS Gerald R. Ford.

The U.S. Navy, the future USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78), is seen underway on its own power for the first time in Newport News, Va., on April 8, 2017. (Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Ridge Leoni/U.S. Navy via Getty Images)

While an analyst quoted uncritically by The Associated Press claimed that China’s new carrier technology is entirely China-developed, this is an obvious falsehood, according to Fanell. Consider how long it took the United States to develop the technology and that China jumped a prior technology, steam catapults, entirely.

Beijing’s Military Espionage

The PLAN is rapidly catching up with U.S. military technologies only because it can use cyber, industrial, academic, and other forms of espionage. As a result, the PLAN is keeping pace with the United States technologically and is already ahead in some ways, including its anti-ship missiles and the greater number of its navy ships.

Fanell wrote in an email, “Given the PRC’s [People’s Republic of China] past espionage activities surrounding its first aircraft carrier, there is no question that the PRC has once again stolen EMALS technology from the US Navy. Anyone who suggests otherwise is only providing cover for the PRC’s espionage programs. It would be wise for the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate leaks from [within] the USG [U.S. Government] surrounding this very sensitive program.”

Rick Fisher, a senior fellow at the International Assessment and Strategy Center in the Washington area, wrote in an email, “Academic exchanges with the West provided the basis for China’s electromagnetic launch (EML) development, which is why the democracies must revive the Coordinating Committee for Multilateral Export Controls (COCOM) to block such access by China.”

Type 003’s New Tech

The larger size  of China’s new carrier, known as the Type 003 or Fujian, will allow it to launch not only fighter jets, but also delivery transport and airborne early warning and control airframes.

The carrier will likely employ  two “starboard lifts to move planes to the upper deck,” according to experts cited by the South China Morning Post.

Chinese J-15 fighter jets being launched from the deck of the Liaoning aircraft carrier during military drills in the South China Sea on Jan. 2. 2017. (STR/AFP via Getty Images)

The Type 003 is China’s third carrier, but with the fourth, according to the Post experts, China will likely move to nuclear propulsion systems.

“China aims to have a true blue-water navy by 2035, with a fleet of 6 aircraft carriers,” according to the Post.

Complementary Missile Systems

To avoid getting sunk, modern naval ships require effective anti-missile technology. On June 19, China’s defense ministry claimed to have conducted another ground-based anti-ballistic missile (ABM) test .

The test used a high-speed interceptor  to hit a target missile in space, which would have created a large field of debris that threatened other objects in space, including satellites and manned space missions. The PLA has conducted ABM tests since at least 2010, including in cooperation with Russia.

China is also deploying hypersonic missiles that can destroy U.S. carriers. While the United States has researched  hypersonic missiles for approximately seven decades, China is ahead of the United States in testing and deployment of such missiles, including because of China’s more advanced wind tunnels.

Beijing claims  to be developing artificial intelligence-enabled anti-missile defenses against hypersonic warheads, according to Indian media. If true, such defenses would give its naval ships a shield to blunt next-generation U.S. and allied hypersonic deterrence against its ongoing military aggression against Taiwan , Japan, India, and in the South China Sea.

Nuclear Propulsion

The PLAN already operates submarines that use nuclear propulsion, including both attack and ballistic missile variants. Adapting those propulsion systems for its aircraft carriers should not be too difficult technologically.

China’s failure to do so for the Type 003 carrier, one of the few areas in which the United States still outcompetes China, could be due to any combination of causes: naval engineers may have wanted to decrease the number of technological challenges for the Type 003; Xi may have rushed the carrier to burnish his credentials ahead of the CCP congress, where he seeks an unprecedented third term; or PLA planners might have sped development in an attempt to project immediate military power against Taiwan, India, and in the South China Sea.

While the PLA has traditionally been a land army, its rapidly expanding “blue water” capabilities are meant to project power globally. This is consistent with the CCP’s ambitions of global hegemony, detailed in Rosh Doshi’s book, “ The Long Game: China’s Grand Strategy to Displace American Order”  (Oxford University Press, 2021).

“China’s new super carrier flattop and improving missile defenses are tools for regional and then global hegemony,” wrote Fisher.

A satellite image shows what appears to be the construction of a third Chinese aircraft carrier at the Jiangnan Shipyard in Shanghai, China, on April 17, 2019. (CSIS/ChinaPower/Maxar Technologies 2019/Handout via Reuters)

“A third and perhaps soon fourth carrier before the end of this decade will serve to overwhelm U.S. naval forces forward deployed in Asia, while improved Chinese missile defenses will blunt the effects of soon to be deployed U.S. theater missile systems,” wrote Fisher.

“China’s third carrier, within two years, will join the first two in intimidation exercises around Taiwan that prepare for a major attack expected this decade,” he predicted.

The new PLAN carrier will join other elements of the PLA in threatening neighbors, including India, against which the PLA is engaged in ongoing territorial aggression.

“India will have to closely watch China’s new aircraft carrier and missile defense systems because these mark a qualitative boost to Chinese naval reach and strike power,” Subir Bhaumik, an India-based military analyst, wrote in an email.

“India has to take [seriously] its maritime diplomacy of developing naval alliances with other Asian nations equally worried over China’s military boost and assertiveness.”

PLA Demonstrates Confidence

Fanell called the Type 003 “another important milestone in the modernization of the PLA Navy’s ‘blue water’ capabilities.”

He noted that skipping from the old ski-ramp flight deck directly to EMALS, without the intermediate step of steam catapults, “underscores the confidence PRC Central Military Commission (CMC) and PLA Navy planners have in the pursuit of Xi’s stated goal of having a ‘world class’ military by 2035.”

Sailors stand on the deck of the new type 055 guided missile destroyer Nanchang of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Navy as it participates in a naval parade to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the founding of China’s PLA Navy in the sea near Qingdao, in eastern China’s Shandong Province on April 23, 2019. (Mark Schiefelbein/AFP via Getty Images)

The PLAN thus demonstrates its “skip echelon” strategy, according to Fanell, to not only catch up to the United States Navy technologically and by skipping intermediate steps, but to rapidly exceed it in tonnage and number of navy ships.

“Just think about it, in the past 10 years the PRC has commissioned three aircraft carriers to just one for the U.S. Navy,” Fanell wrote.

“While the first two PLA Navy aircraft carriers are smaller and less capable than their U.S. Navy counterparts, the fact is there is now 160,000 tons of PLA Navy steel at sea compared to just 100,000 for the U.S. Navy.”

Fanell argued that China’s pursuit of carriers, at a time when the United States is dithering over its own carrier force, shows confidence on the part of Beijing’s military planners.

“While there is a great debate going on within the U.S. Department of Defense and on Capitol Hill regarding the future of aircraft carriers in the face of the PLA’s anti-carrier ballistic missile (ACBM) threat (like the DF-21D and DF-26), the PRC has made it abundantly clear they are not deterred from pursuing a much larger carrier force,” wrote Fanell.

“These PRC military planners are confident their aircraft carriers will fare much better in a war-at-sea against the U.S. Navy, which is relatively underprepared for blue-water naval warfare.”

He pointed out that the PLAN is reaching toward naval superiority with their mix of technologies, including ACBMs.

“U.S. Navy carriers are threatened by PLA Rocket Force’s ACBMs, while PLAN carriers will operate with relative impunity, allowing them to project naval power farther and farther from the Chinese mainland,” Fanell wrote.

“This capability will be useful in a Taiwan invasion scenario where PLAN carriers will operate and launch strikes east of Taiwan, thus complicating U.S. and Taiwan defense strategies.”

Resupply of Taiwan with military materiel, so obviously critical to the Ukraine war effort, would be difficult if China controls not only the Taiwan Strait, but the seas east of Taiwan as well.

The bottom line is that the CCP is using Western technology and money—gained through trade, espionage, and academic interaction with the United States and Europe—to rapidly expand its navy to the point of overtaking and defeating the United States in Asia and ultimately the world. American and European governments must wake up and take action before it is too late.

Anders Corr has a bachelor’s/master’s in political science from Yale University (2001) and a doctorate in government from Harvard University (2008). He is a principal at Corr Analytics Inc., publisher of the Journal of Political Risk, and has conducted extensive research in North America, Europe, and Asia. His latest books are “The Concentration of Power: Institutionalization, Hierarchy, and Hegemony” (2021) and “Great Powers, Grand Strategies: the New Game in the South China Sea” (2018).

https://www.theepochtimes.com/chinas-new-aircraft-carrier-uses-catapult-tech-stolen-from-us_4557632.html

What Have Fourth of July Shortages Got to Do With China?

The Fourth of July parade in Washington, on July 4, 2019. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)

John Mac Ghlionn

July 3, 2022 Updated: July 4, 2022

Commentary

The United States is running low  on numerous products, including dairy produce, gas, motorcycles, maple syrup, pet food, and potatoes. Now it’s time to add fireworks  to this ever-growing list. Every true-blooded American knows that a Fourth of July celebration simply isn’t possible without fireworks.

As Bloomberg recently reported , “the skies over a scattering of Western U.S. cities will stay dark for the third consecutive Fourth of July.”

Why?

Unlike the celebrations (or lack thereof) of 2020 and 2021, which were directly impacted by COVID-19, 2022’s celebrations will suffer because of a shortage of fireworks.

Fourth of July is when family and friends gather to celebrate the country’s independence. They gather around the barbeque, enjoy some good food, and finish the evening with a firework display.

In Phoenix, however, according to local authorities , “Fabulous Phoenix Fourth, Light Up the Sky at the American Family Fields and After Dark in the Park will all be canceled this year due to supply chain issues affecting access to fireworks.” Phoenix is not alone. The Arizonian cities of Tempe and Chandler won’t have  firework displays either.

Meanwhile, in College Park, Maryland, city officials recently announced  they “can’t guarantee the usual 4th of July show” due to a lack of supplies. One of those supplies happens to be fireworks.

People watch the fireworks display on the National Mall during the Fourth of July festivities in Washington on July 4, 2019. (Stephanie Keith/Getty Images)

Digging Deeper

Americans are united by their love of fireworks. In 2019, for example, Americans spent a total of $1 billion  on these minor explosives. Where do the fireworks come from? Well, like so many other products, they come from China . The United States’ number one competitor produces 90 percent  of the world’s fireworks.

To be even more specific, as Julie Heckman, executive director of the American Pyrotechnics Association, told NPR : “Ninety-nine percent of the backyard consumer fireworks come directly from China,” and “70 percent of the professional display fireworks” are manufactured in major cities like Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen.

There was a time, as the NPR piece noted, when a majority of the fireworks used by Americans were made by U.S. companies. Sadly, those days are gone, long gone. The firework shortage is a symptom of a much deeper, far more serious issue.

Walter Block, a well-respected American economist, recently noted that besides the shortage of fireworks, the United States is also running low on aluminum, avocados, bicycles, canned vegetables, chlorine, Christmas trees, computer chips, infant formula, peanut butter, and toilet paper. I could go on. No, really, I could. But you get the point.

Although the war in Ukraine is certainly playing a role in the shortages, it’s not enough to explain why the United States is in such a desperate way. As Block noted, Americans have experienced war before. They’ve also experienced “pestilence, disease, bad weather” and government regulations before.

However, not since the end of World War Two has massive shortages “disrupted the economy to anything like the degree we are presently experiencing,” he wrote. Ukraine is just one piece of a larger, perplexing puzzle.

Let’s take some products from Block’s rather extensive list. What country produces the most bicycles?

You guessed it, China .

The communist nation also produces more computer chips  (one of the items in short supply) than the United States. China is also the world’s largest producer of toilet paper. Americans consume the most amount of peanut butter in the world— approximately 7 pounds  of creamy and crunchy goodness per person each year—but China is the world’s largest producer  of peanuts. Although it’s still possible to have Fourth of July celebrations without fireworks, it’s impossible to have peanut butter without peanuts.

What’s my point? The United States used to be the king of self-sufficiency. There was a time when important products were made in America. Again, though, those days are gone. In all likelihood, they’re never coming back. That’s because, today, China is the world’s manufacturing superpower , and the United States is its number one customer.

In fact, of all the 195 countries in the world, the United States is now the top importer of goods. Even in relatively stable times, there’s a lot to be said for self-sufficiency. In times of genuine crises, however—with the ongoing war, fears of a global recession , etc.—self-sufficiency is an absolute must.

Dependency breeds desperation and dependency on an arch rival breeds existential dread. China has become the world’s supermarket, and the United States is now its top customer.

John Mac Ghlionn is a researcher and essayist. His work has been published by the New York Post, The Sydney Morning Herald, Newsweek, National Review, and The Spectator US, among others. He covers psychology and social relations, and has a keen interest in social dysfunction and media manipulation.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/what-have-fourth-of-july-shortages-got-to-do-with-china_4567975.html

Recognizing Reality: A New Study Documents the Chinese Regime’s Aggression

Security personnel keep watch outside the Wuhan Institute of Virology during the visit by the World Health Organization (WHO) team tasked with investigating the origins of COVID-19, in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China, on Feb. 3, 2021. (Thomas Peter/Reuters)

Bradley A. Thayer

July 5, 2022 Updated: July 6, 2022

Commentary

In the sweep of history, there are moments in time that capture the true nature of a regime.

The great good that the United States has accomplished in international politics was well captured by the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe in the wake of World War II or the support provided to Southeast Asian nations in the wake of the 2004 Boxing Day earthquake and tsunami.

In stark contrast to the benefits the United States has provided, the Chinese regime defines the opposite. Its human rights abuses, genocide committed against Muslims in Xinjiang, and obfuscation and dissembling about the origins of COVID -19, and subsequent pandemic , are indicators of the nature of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

While the world still does not know the full origins of COVID, many believe it almost certainly leaked from the laboratory in China ’s Wuhan city. Yet, as long as Xi Jinping and his camarilla are in power, the world will never know its origins. Chinese authorities destroyed evidence of COVID’s origin and facilitated the travel of their citizens to the rest of the world. At the same time, they locked down Wuhan and failed to share information with other governments.

Beijing intentionally lied to the World Health Organization regarding person-to-person transmission, which then repeated this misinformation to health authorities worldwide with untold consequences for global health. Accordingly, epidemiologists and global health authorities will lack a complete understanding of the pandemic and the ability to prevent future ones, as well as additional adaptations of the virus that causes COVID.

A laboratory technician working on samples from people to be tested for COVID-19 at the “Fire Eye” laboratory in Wuhan in China’s central Hubei Province on Feb. 6, 2020. (STR/AFP via Getty Images)

An insightful analysis that clearly and compellingly documents the Chinese regime’s responsibility for the pandemic is a new study: “The CCP is at War with America: A Team B Report on the Covid 19 Biological Warfare Attack.”

The group of analysts from the Center for Security Policy—termed the Team B III group, after the original 1976 Team B rightfully anticipated the Soviet Union’s intentions and continued Soviet arms racing and expansion, and the later 2010 Team B that addressed Islamic terrorism—have provided the complete account of Beijing’s responsibility for the pandemic.

As with their predecessors, Team B III provided an insightful analysis of the CCP’s belligerence toward the United States and the role COVID played in this aggression. One of the authors, Steven Hatfill, notes that the virus was perfectly adapted to infect humans, which is extremely curious if the virus were a product of nature.

Hatfill notes that since 2007, the Chinese regime has been conducting gain-of-function research to make the virus more lethal to humans. The hideous fruits of this labor are shown in COVID.

The study also notes the adverse and lasting economic consequences for the U.S. economy, including increasing debt, inflation, the supply chain crisis, and, of course, on the U.S. political system—most notably profound effects on the 2020 U.S. election and possible impact on 2022 and even 2024.

The study is significant not only because of its arguments, the attention called to COVID within the context of a biological weapons (BW) attack, and the empirical evidence presented, but also because of its realism. It assigns culpability for the pandemic to the Chinese regime.

Second, it places the CCP’s behavior during COVID in the context of its war against the United States and its allies. While the CCP has been at war with the United States since it came to power in 1949, the 2019 declaration of a People’s War against the United States is a more recent reminder of the regime’s unrelenting aggression against America.

Customers wait in line to buy water and other supplies, fearing that COVID-19 will spread and force people to stay indoors, at a Costco in Burbank, Calif., on March 6, 2020. (Robyn Beck/AFP via Getty Images)

Third, the lack of a sufficient response from the U.S. government is that the American people have been betrayed by some of their political elites, who are corrupted by their association with the CCP.

Fourth, there is willful blindness in the U.S. government toward the nature and scope of the threat from the Chinese regime and the lack of a desire within the intelligence community to tell the truth to those in power. As a result, while the American people have a clear grasp of the China threat , the country’s elites have failed in their responsibilities to protect the country from its enemy.

Reflecting on its lasting contributions, the study has provided an accurate and realistic assessment of the motivations and actions of the Chinese regime. It compels analysts to think of the present confrontation with China, not through the lens of the last Cold War with the Soviet Union. Instead, the study lets Americans understand that this current cold war is significantly more challenging to fight for two major reasons.

First, it seems that most of the American elite are sanguine about China’s rise and see it as a partner. During the Cold War, the American elite overwhelmingly was able to assess the Soviet Union for the threat it was.

Second, the book compels us to consider the nature of the CCP’s attack against the United States. This certainly includes the military, economic, ideological, and social confrontation that defined the Cold War. But China consistently employs asymmetric means like facilitating the spread of COVID, shipping precursor chemicals to Mexico to fuel the opioid crisis, dominating the market in antibiotics, or making agricultural land purchases against the United States to weaken it and hasten its defeat.

The study’s authors deserve great credit for calling attention to the nature, scope, and urgency of the threat. The CCP is indeed at war with America, and America’s response is long overdue.

Bradley A. Thayer is a founding member of the Committee on the Present Danger: China and is the co-author of “How China Sees the World: Han-Centrism and the Balance of Power in International Politics.”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/opinion-recognizing-reality-a-new-study-documents-the-chinese-regimes-aggression_4572799.html

CCP’s Drug Warfare and Other Illegal Activities in Latin America

Members of the National Aeronaval Service (SENAN) guard drug packages as they are displayed during a press conference at a base in Panama City on Oct. 30, 2021. (ROGELIO FIGUEROA/AFP via Getty Images)

Guermantes Lailari

July 11, 2022 Updated: July 12, 2022

Commentary

The Trump administration’s 2017 National Security Strategy (NSS) called out  the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) for its many nefarious and insidious activities against the United States and the Western Hemisphere, including transnational criminal organizations and Chinese fentanyl traffickers.

“Transnational criminal organizations—including gangs and cartels— perpetuate violence and corruption and threaten the stability of Central American states including Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador,” the NSS report stated.

Chinese fentanyl traffickers, along with drug cartels, feed the illicit opioid epidemic, which “kills tens of thousands of Americans each year,” according to the report.

(Note: The Biden administration has not published an NSS yet.)

This article will explore a few current examples of CCP illicit activities through Chinese criminal cartels in Latin America  and the implications of these illicit activities for the United States, Latin America, and the rest of the world.

Legal Trade: China  Versus US

The CCP has made major inroads into Latin America, literally. Of the 31 Latin American countries, 20  are part of the CCP’s Belt and Road Initiative’s $160 billion investment. In 2021, China’s Latin American trade exceeded  $400 billion compared to just $295 billion for the United States.

During the June 6–10 botched Summit of the Americas, the Biden administration offered $617 million  in aid for the 31 countries in Latin America, which averages less than $20 million a country. Meanwhile, the administration seeks to give $40 billion in military aid to Ukraine. At a May 2022 ASEAN summit meeting, the administration offered  $150 million for the 10 ASEAN countries; China offered $1.5 billion.

Latin America is rich in natural resources. It includes the Amazon region—the world’s largest forest and jungle. Many Latin American countries depend on mining as a major source of exports.

An undated picture of the gold mine Yanacocha, in Cajamarca, 621 miles northeast of Lima, Peru. The biggest gold mine in Latin America, located in the north of Peru, was crippled by protests in 2006 from locals who believe activity there has polluted the water supply. (STR/AFP/Getty Images)

The CCP is leveraging its superior economic influence in Latin America to demonstrate it is winning Latin American hearts and minds, as well as capturing their elites politically and economically.

In recent interviews , U.S. Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.) stated : “This is our hemisphere that we’re talking about. China is literally eating our lunch.” And Sen. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) said : “China has a plan. We don’t have a plan.”

Not only is the CCP “eating our lunch,” but the CCP also aids and abets Chinese criminal groups in Latin America that conduct drug warfare against the United States.

China’s Organized Criminal Group Activities

Maria Zuppello recently wrote  an article in Militant Wire documenting many illicit activities that Chinese criminal groups conduct throughout Latin America. She describes the breadth and depth of the illegal drug trade in fentanyl, marijuana, and the emerging market of “non-fentanyl synthetic opioids such as nitazenes, also known as benzimidazole opioids such as the synthetic opioid derivative Isotonitazene (ISO), which are 20 times more potent than fentanyl.”

I interviewed her about her research and its implications. The Chinese Mafia is known throughout the region generically as Red Dragon. Some of the more prominent groups (Chinese triads) are A.C, Pi Xiu, Panda, Wan Ke, and Xin. Some gangs have Spanish names, such as “Amistad” (Spanish for “friendship”). In the tri-border area of Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay, Chinese gangs Fuk Ching, Flying Dragons, and Tai Chen engage in human trafficking.

Fentanyl

Fentanyl is the leading  cause of death among U.S. adults between the ages of 18 and 45. Fentanyl has killed more Americans in this age group than COVID-19.

According to U.S. Rep. Greg Murphy (D-N.C.), the only serving member of the House of Representatives who is a surgeon), from April 2020 to April 2021, the following deaths were reported  in the 18–45 age range:

- Fentanyl deaths: 40,010

- COVID-19 deaths: 21,335

- Cancer deaths: 17,114

- Car accidents deaths: 22,442

- Suicide deaths: 21,678

Fentanyl and drugs  mixed with fentanyl (such as cocaine and methamphetamine) caused the deaths of more than 64,000 out of the over 100,000 overdose deaths in the United States. In other words, fentanyl and drugs mixed with fentanyl cause more deaths than the combined deaths caused by COVID, car accidents, and suicides of the same age group!

Had the CCP enforced its own laws on trafficking illegal narcotics against Chinese crime groups smuggling fentanyl or its precursor chemicals to Mexico, the CCP could have prevented many of these fentanyl-related deaths.

A Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) chemist checks confiscated powder containing fentanyl at the DEA Northeast Regional Laboratory in New York on Oct. 8, 2019. (AFP via Getty Images/Don Emmert)

Why do Criminal Cartels Prefer Fentanyl, ISO?

Drug cartels are profit-maximizing organizations; drug potency and production costs are key factors in choosing which drugs to produce and distribute. Fentanyl is cheaper than heroin to produce, and fentanyl is 50 times more potent than heroin. Drug cartels have smuggled so much fentanyl into the United States that the price has dropped 50 percent since 2020.

The Biden administration’s policy to relax or eliminate restrictions on transit between Mexico and the United States has also benefited drug traffickers. In 2021, the Drug Enforcement Agency seized  “11,201 pounds of fentanyl—a 134 percent increase from fiscal year 2020, and a 400 percent increase since fiscal year 2018.”

ISO is a synthetic opioid derivative that is 20 times more potent than fentanyl and is the newest poison that drug cartels are smuggling into the United States. This means that ISO, the new drug, is 1,000 times more potent than heroin!

Chinese Criminal Groups

The leading money laundering entities in Latin America are Chinese-organized crime groups. Zuppello notes that these Chinese criminal groups are a greater threat to Latin America and the United States than non-Chinese organized criminal groups. Chinese gangs operate within a global framework that combines crime, politics, corruption, and economics, and allows the gangs to operate in many different countries. Other organized criminal groups do not have a global framework or have the support of a superpower.

The CCP supports licit and illicit activity in Latin America. As the region’s electoral politics move left (as seen recently in elections in Colombia and possibly in Brazil this fall), the CCP gains a stronger foothold. In effect, Latin Americans who prefer the United States over China find it difficult to oppose CCP penetration into Latin America’s political, economic, social, and illicit systems.

The following are selected reports of activities cited by Zuppello of Chinese-organized criminal groups in Latin America.

Chile

Zuppello noted, “Chilean officials arrested thirteen Chinese nationals in Santiago in September 2021 for cultivation and trafficking, confiscating over 1,600 marijuana plants. The network operated between Valparaiso and the capital. A few months earlier, authorities had uncovered over 1,500 plants and 250 kilograms of product in San Antonio, Valparaiso.”

She noted that Sergio Muñoz, head of Chile’s civil police, said, “We also found guns, cocaine hydrochloride, cocaine paste, and ecstasy and uncovered a vast array of offenses associated with this network, ranging from prostitution to money laundering.”

Brazil

Zuppello pointed out that “Brazilian police investigation revealed that the First Command of the Capital (PCC) used a Chinese accountant and Chinese smugglers to launder money through front companies that were continuously opened and shut. In 2015, Brazilian authorities uncovered that the PCC transferred over $20 million to bank accounts in the US and China.”

Mexico

Zuppello noted that “in October 2020, the US Justice Department unsealed an indictment accusing six Chinese nationals of laundering approximately $30 million for Mexican drug traffickers over 12 years. US authorities convicted Chinese national Xianbing Gan, a resident of Guadalajara, Mexico, to 14 years in prison in April 2021 for laundering more than $500,000 from Mexican cartels into Chinese banks. However, according to the judges, Gan handled a larger sum, between $25 million and $65 million over a period of two years.”

Other Illicit Activities

Zuppello reported that “cigarettes manufactured in China are the most trafficked items in almost all of Latin America.”

These criminal groups also loot natural resources, including timber (rosewood), illegal fishing, wild animals (jaguars), reptiles, sharks, sea cucumbers, totoaba, and abalone. The Chinese criminal groups smuggle these items into China.

Illegal fishing by the Chinese regime in distant oceans is plundering global fisheries resources and destroying the traditional livelihoods of many countries. The picture shows a Chinese fishing vessel operating illegally in Argentina’s exclusive economic zone on May 4, 2020. (Handout/Argentina’s Navy Press Office/AFP via Getty Images)

Conclusions

The CCP has several faces it shows to the world. The most common is that of an aggressive expansionist state that exploits the natural resources of other countries, builds infrastructure to extract those natural resources, and transports them to China. The CCP’s connection to criminal groups and illicit businesses is less known. These two faces allow the CCP to coerce global elites to comply with CCP’s strategic objectives.

Zuppello’s assessment of the Chinese organized criminal groups highlights a problem for democratic governance in Latin America:

“The left-wing political momentum in Chile, Peru, Bolivia, Argentina, Colombia, and most likely Brazil following their 2022 presidential elections, will boost anti-US sentiments and, conversely, strengthen commercial and political ties with China. As a result, some Chinese criminal elements will increase their penetration into local economies accompanying the more legitimate and legal Chinese commercial activity.”

In late June 2022, Colombia elected a left-wing government; its leader is a former member of M-19  (an international criminal cartel).

“Known Knowns, Known Unknowns, Unknown Knowns”

“Known” examples of Chinese organized criminal activity encompassed the material discussed above. Yet the known knowns of organized illegal activity entail only a portion of Chinese organized criminal activity. Disguised and hidden Chinese criminal activity comprise a significant component.

Known unknowns:

- Ongoing criminal investigations that are not publicly known.

- Cooperation with illicit organizations, such as Mexican drug cartels and terror organizations like Hezbollah and the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Unknown knowns:

- Corruption, for example, illegal deals to extract natural resources from Latin America, and political manipulations through illicit means, extortion.

- Cooperation among authoritarian governments, such as Iran, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Russia, and Cuba.

Unrestricted Warfare

Chinese organized crime is one of the CCP’s tools to achieve global dominance. In the 1999 book “Unrestricted Warfare,” the two People’s Liberation Army Air Force colonels state  that drug warfare, one of 24 types of warfare, is “obtaining sudden and huge illicit profits by spreading disaster in other countries.”

The CCP executes this drug warfare to achieve the objective of spreading disaster in the United States and other countries, such as killing over 64,000 young adults every year through fentanyl. Since 1999, the CCP has found many means to conduct illicit warfare.

We should take note of their nefarious activities and act to counter them. The Biden administration has no feasible plan or strategy to keep Latin America from the CCP’s licit and illicit designs, and no plan to curtail the murderous drug trafficking occurring on our southern “open” border. Let us hope this is a temporary problem and that a “reset” will happen soon.

Other countries worldwide should be aware of communist China’s use of illicit criminal groups to achieve its strategic objectives. These Chinese criminal groups pose more than a law enforcement challenge—they are a national security threat to any country.

Guermantes Lailari is a retired USAF Foreign Area Officer specializing in the Middle East and Europe as well as counterterrorism, irregular warfare, and missile defense. He has studied, worked, and served in the Middle East and North Africa for over 14 years and similarly in Europe for six years. He was a U.S. Air Force Attaché in the Middle East, served in Iraq and holds advanced degrees in International Relations and Strategic Intelligence. He researches authoritarian and totalitarian regimes that threaten democracies. He will be a Taiwan Fellow in Taipei during 2022.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/opinion-ccps-drug-warfare-and-other-illegal-activities-in-latin-america_4584000.html

America’s Meth Crisis: Made in Mexico, Engineered in China

Police from the Federal Public Ministry examines drums of precursor chemicals for methamphetamine seized in Queretaro, Mexico, on June 20, 2011. Mexican drug cartels are flooding U.S. cities with cheap, extraordinarily pure methamphetamine made in factory-like “super labs.” (Attorney General’s office/AP Photo)

John Mac Ghlionn

July 11, 2022

Commentary

On June 27, an abandoned truck was discovered near San Antonio, Texas. Inside, dozens of migrants were found dead. They had succumbed to the effects of extreme heat. Officers arrested three men less than 24 hours after discovering the abandoned truck.

One of the men was Homero Zamorano, the driver of the truck. According to one law enforcement officer , at the time of his arrest, Zamorano was high on meth. Sadly, Zamorano is not the only one high on meth. Across the United States, hundreds of thousands of people are using and abusing the soul-destroying drug.

Where does it come from? The answer to this question is as surprising as it is alarming.

When you picture a meth addict, what do you see? Rotting teeth, a thinning body, intense scratching, yellow teeth, paranoia, acne and sores, hallucinations, loss of appetite, and so on.

Methamphetamine, more commonly referred to as meth, is a dangerously addictive central nervous system stimulant. If asked to pick the meth consumption capital of the world, what countries spring to mind? Probably not the United States. But it should.

According to analysts at InSight Crime , an organization dedicated to shedding light on the effects of organized crime, the United States is meth country No. 1.

In recent years, according to authors at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention , “methamphetamine availability and methamphetamine-related harms have been increasing in the United States.”

They certainly have. With more than 2 million users  in the United States, the market for the drug is worth north of $40 billion . A little over a decade ago, that number was $13 billion . In the space of four years, between 2015 and 2019, deaths from meth overdoses almost tripled .

Why isn’t there more outrage? Why don’t we hear more about the meth crisis in the news?

Methamphetamine was seized by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers at the Otay Mesa Commercial Facility in San Diego County, Calif., on May 18, 2021. (Courtesy of U.S. Customs and Border Protection)

In the words of Bryce Pardo , a policy researcher at the RAND Corporation, the “United States’ methamphetamine problem has been brewing, but we dropped the ball and took our eyes off it as a lot of the money, law enforcement and healthcare pivoted to opioids.”

Although the drug can be easily made in small, “Breaking Bad”-like laboratories with easily accessible, over-the-counter  ingredients, the vast majority of the meth in circulation comes from Mexico. But the ingredients for the drug come from China .

A Crisis Years in the Making

In 2016, the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC) published a report  describing how Mexican drug organizations had “replaced domestic producers as the main manufacturers and distributors of meth in the United States.”

While the cartels were responsible for producing the vast majority (roughly 90 percent) of the meth used in the United States, the report warned that 80 percent of the chemicals used came from China. Once the precursor chemicals were shipped from China to Mexico, they were “manufactured into meth” before being “transported across the southern border of the United States, and brought into southwestern states—Texas, Arizona, and California—before being shipped across the country.”

Since this report, nothing has changed. China is still supplying Mexican cartels with the necessary ingredients, and the Mexican cartel is still supplying Americans with dangerous narcotics.

U.S. authorities discovered an underground smuggling tunnel  on the California-Mexico border in May. Running the length of six football fields, this tunnel was used to funnel meth and fentanyl into a state that finds itself utterly ravaged by drug addiction and overdoses.

Less than a month after uncovering the tunnel, AP News reported  that the Mexican army uncovered 50 meth labs in Sinaloa state, the home of the country’s most notorious cartel. They seized a thousand drums containing chemicals and more than thirty 52-gallon cookers used to produce meth. If not for the work of the Mexican soldiers, the drugs would have ended up in the United States.

In recent years, helped by Chinese criminal actors , whose presence in Mexico continues to grow, Mexican drug cartels have turned to synthetic drugs  like meth and fentanyl to boost their profits. As demand for these drugs in the United States increases, expect the unholy alliance to grow even stronger. This is a serious problem that needs to be addressed. The meth crisis is an issue that transcends politics. It is a national crisis that should unite people on both sides of the political aisle.

In a report  published last year, the National Institutes of Health warned that meth—once a drug used primarily by “middle-aged white people”—is now being used by an increasing number of black people. Moreover, meth use has become increasingly popular with people between the ages of 18 and 23.

The Biden administration has been criticized heavily for the state of the border. When one acknowledges the flow of illegal drugs  into the United States, the criticism is most definitely warranted. Nothing good comes from having such a porous border. Unless action is taken soon, more Americans will have their lives ruined by meth.

John Mac Ghlionn is a researcher and essayist. His work has been published by the New York Post, The Sydney Morning Herald, Newsweek, National Review, and The Spectator US, among others. He covers psychology and social relations, and has a keen interest in social dysfunction and media manipulation.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/americas-meth-crisis-made-in-mexico-engineered-in-china_4577067.html

Weep for the Souls of the Falun Gong and Other Persecuted Minority Groups in China

Falun Gong practitioners take part in a parade to commemorate the 23rd anniversary of the persecution of the spiritual discipline in China, in New York’s Chinatown on July 10, 2022. (Larry Dye/The Epoch Times)

Weep for the Souls of the Falun Gong and Other Persecuted Minority Groups in China

Justice delayed is justice denied

Stu Cvrk

July 19, 2022

Commentary

The Chinese Communist Party ( CCP ) has been emboldened by the world’s lack of serious response to their crimes against humanity.

Let’s face it: the CCP has been guilty of crimes against humanity virtually since its inception—especially since assuming control of China at the point of the gun in 1949. Estimates vary, but as many as 80 million people may have been tortured and killed by the CCP since the Party was founded in 1921. Minority and religious groups in China have borne the brunt of the CCP’s fury—with Tibetans, Uyghurs, Christians, Muslims, and Falun Gong  adherents having suffered relentless persecution  over the years.

By way of example, let us examine the persecution and genocide practiced by CCP thugs against Falun Gong.

Background

July 20 marks the 23 rd  anniversary of the persecution of Falun Gong by the CCP.

Falun Gong (also called Falun Dafa) is a spiritual practice that adheres to three basic tenets: truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance . Derived from Buddhist traditions, its adherents are peaceful and nonviolent by definition and practice.

Founded in 1992 by Li Hongzhi, the Falun Dafa Information Center  describes the practice as a combination of “meditation and gentle exercises (similar to yoga or tai chi) with a moral philosophy centered on the tenets of Truthfulness, Compassion, and Tolerance (or in Chinese, Zhen 真, Shan 善, Ren 忍),” which “represents a direct and authentic connection to genuine traditional Chinese culture.”

The file photo of Falun Gong practitioners doing meditation exercises in Guangzhou, China, before the persecution started in July 1999. (Courtesy of Minghui.org)

The three Falun Gong tenets are anathema to the CCP, who prize deceit, lies, intolerance, and violence against dissenters as the characteristics most sought by Chinese communists in maintaining their brutal control over Chinese citizens, especially “disfavored minorities.”

By the mid-1990s, the number of Falun Gong practitioners had blossomed to 70–100 million , according to official data. The continuing spread of Falun Gong principles to the Chinese people was considered a direct—and growing—domestic threat to the CCP in its never-ending quest for legitimacy because the CCP could not co-opt those who followed Falun Gong. They remained true to their three tenets.

As a result, the CCP’s persecution of Falun Gong adherents was initiated by then-Chinese leader Jiang Zemin on July 20, 1999, when practitioners were publicly declared to be a “threat to the government.” According to Minghui , a U.S.-based website that chronicles the CCP’s campaign against the practice, “Under Jiang’s personal direction, the CCP established the 610 Office, an extralegal security organization with the power to override the police and judicial systems and whose sole function is to carry out the persecution of Falun Dafa.”

Unable to entirely stamp out the practice, the CCP has ratcheted up the persecution during the past 23 years, from unlimited detentions to forced reeducation efforts, to more aggressive physical and psychological torture and the forced harvesting of organs from Falun Gong practitioners.

Organ Harvesting

The selling of human organs  has become a significant money maker  for the communists.

In March 2020, the China Tribunal published a “ full judgment ” resulting from its independent inquiry into the forced organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience and others in China, as well as the commission of other heinous acts on Chinese citizens.

From the judgment:

- “Thousands of innocent people have been killed to order having their bodies … cut open while still alive for their kidneys, livers, hearts, lungs, cornea and skin to be removed and turned into commodities for sale.

- “Those innocents were killed by doctors simply because they believed, for example, in truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance and lived lives of healthy exercise and meditation and because the way they lived was seen as dangerous to the interests and objectives of the totalitarian state of the People’s Republic of China.

- “Every witness who appeared before the Tribunal and who identified as a Falun Gong practitioner while in the PRC, and who had been either detained and/or arrested by law enforcement authorities in the PRC, and/or sentenced by a court in the PRC, for being a Falun Gong practitioner, stated that they had been tortured while incarcerated.

- “The Tribunal is also satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that one or more of the following acts have been committed on Falun Gong practitioners and Uyghurs in the PRC: murder; extermination; imprisonment or other severe deprivation of physical liberty in violation of fundamental rules of international law; torture; rape or any other form of sexual violence of comparable gravity; persecution on racial, national, ethnic, cultural or religious grounds that are universally recognized as impermissible under international law; and enforced disappearance.”

Sir Geoffrey Nice QC, chair of the China Tribunal into forced organ harvesting on the first day of public hearings, in London, UK, on Dec. 8, 2018. (Justin Palmer)

Gut-wrenching and horrific personal stories and evidence of torture are documented in the judgment and also in recent articles from Minghui.org found here  and here .

International Response

The international response to persecution—and genocide by most definitions—of Falun Gong has been muted but has grown in recent years. International organizations have condemned the acts, and even some governments have weighed in with an outflow of proclamations, determinations, and “strong words.”

For example, the U.S. State Department condemned the incarceration of Falun Gong practitioners just prior to the start of the 2022 Winter Olympics, as reported here . The State Department also published its annual “Country Reports on Human Rights Practices ” in March 2021 that details CCP atrocities against Falun Gong and other minority groups in China.

According to the Falun Dafa Australia Information Centre , “during the World Falun Dafa Day celebration in May [2022], Falun Dafa Associations across the U.S. received many proclamation letters from their state-, county-, and city-level officials expressing admiration for practitioners’ peaceful efforts to resist the persecution. ”

This is all well and good, but where are the teeth—the sanctions and other crippling actions—that should be directed against the CCP? No trade embargoes, no national leader-to-leader confrontations—nothing substantial that disrupts China’s robust export economy and causes the CCP real pain for its crimes against humanity.

Concluding Thoughts

Justice delayed is justice denied. The souls of the Chinese dead cry out for a strong international response to the ongoing persecution and genocide of minority and religious groups such as the Falun Gong.

How many souls might have been saved had there been a strong response from the beginning of the CCP’s persecution of Falun Gong? And how many Chinese in other minority groups such as the Tibetans and Uyghurs might have been saved by forceful and coordinated international actions?

There seems to be no end in sight because multinational corporations and others are too busy making money in communist China to pay attention to the CCP’s continuing atrocities. For shame.

Stu Cvrk retired as a captain after serving 30 years in the U.S. Navy in a variety of active and reserve capacities, with considerable operational experience in the Middle East and the Western Pacific. Through education and experience as an oceanographer and systems analyst, Cvrk is a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, where he received a classical liberal education that serves as the key foundation for his political commentary.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/weep-for-the-souls-of-the-falun-gong-and-other-persecuted-minority-groups-in-china_4606381.html

Why Americans Should Pay Attention to the Plight of Falun Gong

Falun Gong practitioners at candlelight vigil remembering victims of the 22 years of persecution in China at the Washington Monument on July 16, 2021. The characters for “Truthfulness, Compassion, Tolerance,” the principles taught by the spiritual practice, appear at the front. (Larry Dye/The Epoch Times)

Why Americans Should Pay Attention to the Plight of Falun Gong

Why does the CCP continue to persecute innocent people?

Anders Corr

July 20, 2022

Commentary

On July 20, 1999, the Chinese Communist Party banned   Falun Gong  and started subjecting its adherents “to widespread surveillance, arbitrary detention, horrific torture, and extrajudicial killing—abuses which continue today,” according to Freedom House, a nonprofit organization.

Twenty-three years later … and the persecution  continues.

Why?

According to Levi Browde, executive director of Falun Dafa Information Center, “Falun Gong is the single largest whistleblower of the CCP ’s crimes on the world’s stage, with tens of millions engaged in grassroots civil disobedience inside China  combined with media companies, human rights groups, and cultural organizations founded by Falun Gong practitioners around the world—all of which expose the tyrannical nature and nefarious history of the CCP.”

“This is key to understanding why, after 23 years, the CCP still considers the suppression of Falun Gong a top priority,” he concluded.

On July 21, Falun Gong practitioners will parade in Washington to end what, according to China’s state media, is an “eradication” campaign against the spiritual practice. As such, the persecution is a genocide as defined by the United Nations.

According to Falun Dafa Information Center, “under the law of most Western countries, Falun Gong is considered a religion or a protected creed. However, Falun Gong is not institutionalized; it does not have any formal means of initiation, a formal creed, nor devotional practices of worship, etc.”

Falun Gong also goes by the name Falun Dafa. Its practitioners parade annually in late July to commemorate their losses, celebrate their continued faith under fire, and demonstrate devotion to their three most sacred principles: truth, compassion, and forbearance.

Marches to bring public attention to the persecution against Falun Gong are occurring far beyond Washington , including London , New York , San Francisco , Melbourne , and Toronto . Many more local parades occur as well.

Falun Gong practitioners march to highlight the 23rd year of persecution in China against the spiritual discipline, in London, UK, on July 16, 2022. (Yanning Qi/The Epoch Times)

To counter the CCP’s propaganda, Falun Gong practitioners often hold banners saying, “Falun Dafa is Good” or “Stop the Persecution.” They carry out peaceful protests and meditate in front of China’s embassies and consulates around the world.

A band consisting of Falun Gong adherents takes part in a 1,200-strong parade through downtown Toronto, Canada, on July 17, 2022. The event marks the 23rd year of the Chinese Communist Party’s persecution of the spiritual practice. (Evan Ning/The Epoch Times)

Falun Gong’s principles are the polar opposite of what the CCP does on a daily basis. This explains Beijing’s antipathy toward the group and Falun Gong’s broader significance at this critical juncture in history between the international rules-based system developed after 1945, which preferences democracy and human rights, and the attempt by China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea to overturn that system in favor of a “ new type of international relations ” based on “might makes right.”

While the United States and its closest allies are finally waking up to the China threat, it has been slow going. We are also slow to acknowledge the human rights abuse against Uyghurs and Falun Gong within China.

Only in 2021 did the U.S. government, and some other governmental bodies globally, start recognizing the persecution of Uyghurs as genocide. They still have not done so for Falun Gong—yet the evidence for genocide exists in droves.

Former U.S. State Department official Miles Yu  argued in 2021 that there is more evidence of genocide against the Falun Gong than against the Uyghurs.

The reality  of China’s forced organ harvesting—and its use as a weapon of genocide—is becoming increasingly recognized, including by international tribunals, peer-reviewed journals, mainstream media, and in U.S. Congressional hearings.

Canadian human rights lawyer David Matas testifies at a U.S. Congressional hearing on organ harvesting in this undated file photo. (Lisa Fan/The Epoch Times)

According to an article in USA Today last month, “New evidence suggests that execution by organ donation is a continuing part of the systematic campaign against Uyghurs, Falun Gong, Tibetans, Christians and other people Beijing classifies as politically problematic.”

Communist China Threat

Americans should be concerned about communist China not just because of its human rights abuse, but because Beijing’s ambitions do not end at its borders. The CCP has a goal of global hegemony, as is now well-recognized in the academic literature. China’s economy and military power are growing so quickly that in 2017 it exceeded the U.S. GDP by purchasing power parity (PPP). Beijing is now building its already larger navy more rapidly than the U.S. Navy.

CCP diplomats are now so assured of their superior military and economic power that they presented lists of demands  to both the United States and Australia. If they have done it to us, they have likely done it to other allies.

A Beacon of Hope

It is in American national interests to support and ally with Falun Gong for reasons beyond our historical support for human rights. The CCP is America’s most dangerous adversary, and Falun Gong has tens of millions of adherents within the country and potentially within the regime itself.

Prior to the persecution, according to Chinese state sources at the time, Falun Gong numbered as many as 70 to 100 million or more.

After 18 years of persecution, Freedom House estimated 7 to 20 million  practitioners left in China.

But according to Browde, Falun Gong sources from a few years ago estimated 20 to 40 million people in China who actively participated in distributing Falun Gong material.

If true, Browde said, this would imply a larger number who only practice but do not engage in what amounts to a highly risky form of nonviolent civil disobedience.

Therefore, it is possible that Falun Gong numbers have not decreased, but increased since the start of the persecution. And those who remain practitioners despite the persecution are likely stronger in their convictions and more courageous in their actions.

Before the persecution, many Falun Gong reached high up in the CCP hierarchy. That may still be true, in which case these individuals could be trying to reform China’s regime from the inside.

The need for such reform is great—and Falun Gong may be our best hope.

Anders Corr has a bachelor’s/master’s in political science from Yale University (2001) and a doctorate in government from Harvard University (2008). He is a principal at Corr Analytics Inc., publisher of the Journal of Political Risk, and has conducted extensive research in North America, Europe, and Asia. His latest books are “The Concentration of Power: Institutionalization, Hierarchy, and Hegemony” (2021) and “Great Powers, Grand Strategies: the New Game in the South China Sea” (2018).

https://www.theepochtimes.com/why-americans-should-pay-attention-to-the-plight-of-falun-gong_4608149.html

China Is Infiltrating Kids’ Video Games With Propaganda and Spyware

People visit Tencent’s booth at the World 5G Exhibition in Beijing on Nov. 22, 2019. (Jason Lee/Reuters)

Jake Denton

August 15, 2022

Commentary

While many are rightfully concerned about the growing influence of video-based social media platform TikTok and the Chinese government’s ability to harvest incredible amounts of user data from it, China ’s largest social media and video game studio, Tencent , has quietly been acquiring  a commanding stake in the most popular video game companies around the world, and no one has seemed to notice.

From Riot Games’ flagship title Valorant to the popular Epic Games-produced Fortnite, Tencent and the Chinese Communist Party  are inserting propaganda and influencing a generation of children around the world while their parents aren’t looking.

Last week, Tencent announced  that it aims to acquire a greater stake in the French studio Ubisoft, which is behind popular titles such as Assassin’s Creed and Rainbow Six Siege.

In 2018, Tencent acquired 5 percent of the studio and subsequently began to exert its influence over the company. For example, in 2021, Ubisoft made visual changes to certain games so it could sell them in China . Changes included eliminating gambling symbolism and skulls from playable environments. The company was forced to roll back those changes, however, after players in North America and Europe promised never to play the game again if the changes remained.

While the China -friendly changes to some titles were reversed after fans expressed outrage, it is evident that game studios are increasingly worried about pleasing Tencent and the Chinese Communist Party. With this in mind, Tencent’s quest to become Ubisoft’s largest private shareholder should not be taken lightly.

During the coronavirus pandemic, Ubisoft released  numerous history games and online experiences for children who were forced to learn at home. As many gamers have noted , titles such as Assassin’s Creed possess a remarkable amount of educational value with their accurate modeling of historic cities and monuments. And with the deteriorating quality of our education system, it should be no surprise that kids and parents are turning to video games  to help aid in learning.

As Ubisoft continues to improve upon these history games and educational experiences, the ability of the Chinese Communist Party to influence and shape these foundational narratives presents a direct threat to kids around the world.

Concerns of weaponizing the narrative stories of video games into propaganda only scratch the surface of Tencent’s active campaign to conquer your home.

In 2020, the online community highlighted  the spyware -like anti-cheat software used in Valorant. The so-called anti-cheat software would launch upon starting your computer—regardless of whether the user opened the game or not—and would monitor all user activity, logging which programs were used. This software broke from the industry standard and was viewed as intrusion into the user’s privacy.

While Riot Games quickly denied the allegations  and changed the design of its software, many remained unconvinced. After all, this is the same company that hid a data breach of millions of accounts from its users . Even more alarming, in March of 2019, it was revealed  that over 300 million user messages sent on Tencent platforms and games were stored on a database used by the Chinese Police .

Tencent has established itself as a critical tool of the Chinese Communist Party . The video game company has used its games to spy on Americans and used its digital content to propagandize our children. It has preyed upon the lack of technological literacy of parents across the country, placing their data privacy and their kids in direct jeopardy.

Tencent’s quiet rise to global digital dominance is one of the great threats facing American children online. From TikTok to Tencent and your child’s favorite video game, China  is committed to influencing our kids and stealing our private data. It is critical that parents begin to take a more active role in curtailing what their kids are playing online.

Reprinted by permission from The Daily Signal , a publication of The Heritage Foundation .

Jake Denton is a research associate in The Heritage Foundation’s Tech Policy Center.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/china-is-infiltrating-kids-video-games-with-propaganda-and-spyware_4665879.html

China and Russia Collude

Chinese soldiers operate with their Type 96A tank during the Tank Biathlon competition at the International Army Games 2022 in Alabino, outside Moscow, Russia, on Aug. 16, 2022. Moscow announced its plans to hold joint military exercises with China, India, Mongolia, Belarus, and Tajikistan from Aug. 30 to Sept. 5, 2022. (Maxim Shemetov/Reuters)

China and Russia Collude

Upcoming military exercises to include China, Russia, and India

Anders Corr

August 19, 2022

Commentary

China  on Aug. 17 announced  plans to send troops to Russia  for military exercises . The troops will join the Russian military, along with troops from India, Mongolia, Belarus, and Tajikistan.

The “Vostok” (East) exercises, from Aug. 30 to Sept. 5, take place in the context of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine and Beijing’s threats to do the same to Taiwan.

The irresponsibility of the Ukraine invasion is clear from a Russian “warning” on Aug. 18 that a nuclear power plant  occupied by Russia could fail and blanket Europe with radioactive material.

Russia and China  do not mean well. They held aggressive naval drills in the Sea of Japan in October 2021, followed by joint patrols in the western Pacific. The two countries entered South Korea’s air defense identification zone (ADIZ) uninvited in November, forcing the U.S. ally to scramble its military jets.

In January, Iran  held naval drills with both Russia and China. The middle eastern country is in violation of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT).

Iranian, Russian, and Chinese warships during a joint military drill in the Indian Ocean on Jan. 21, 2022. (Iranian Army office/AFP via Getty Images)

These are provocative acts against the United States and its allies by the world’s most dangerous dictators. The 2022 U.S. National Defense Strategy  recognizes China and Russia as America’s two biggest security threats—in that order.

The collaboration of additional countries is unfortunate. They say one best knows a country by the friends it keeps.

In this latest military exercise, the list of participating countries should be considered a rogue’s gallery of states that do not put ethics at the forefront of their international relations; else, why would they cooperate militarily with countries that use violence against neighbors and genocide against their own citizens?

One of the biggest enigmas is India’s participation, even as China deploys its military against India’s border in the Himalayan mountains, doing violence to Indian soldiers.

Alicia Kearns , a Conservative politician in Britain, objected on Twitter to India, noting, “Whilst many nations won’t limit engagements w/China, military cooperation w/Russia now undermines int’l norms & values.”

India buys cut-rate oil from Russia, undercutting the sacrifices of other democracies to support Ukraine in its life-or-death struggle against Moscow.

Likewise, Vladimir Putin has shown substantial support for the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) fight against democratic Taiwan, including a denunciation on Aug. 16  of U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s trip to the island.

The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) responded by surrounding the island democracy in what appeared to be the testing of a naval blockade.

A map shows the locations of PLA military drills in six zones around Taiwan from Aug. 4 to Aug. 7, 2022. (Screenshot via The Epoch Times via Reuters)

Russia has said it is cooperating with China on a new “ sovereign development policy ,” while China claims to be developing a “ new type of international relations .”

The United States rightly points out that China and Russia are trying to overturn the rules-based international system established after World War II. The design of that system was led by the United States as the world’s strongest country at the time. For this reason, the main U.N. institutions are all in the United States and European democracies, including France, Italy, and Switzerland.

Yet, Beijing has deftly built its influence in the United Nations due to its Security Council veto and utilization of economic influence and bribery among its 193 member states.

U.S. State Department spokesperson Ned Price  on Aug. 17 rightly noted that the increased collaboration of Russia and China “is of concern because of the vision that the countries … [have] for the international order is … starkly at odds with the underpinnings of the international system that have been in place for eight decades following the end of the Second World War.”

The attempt to overturn the international system goes beyond military matters to include a “new international reserve currency,” according to Nikkei Asia Review. Putin touted the global currency in June, which would be “based on a basket of currencies of BRICS members Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa.”

This alternative to the dollar-based international payments system would facilitate sanctions evasion by countries like Russia and China that seek to violate other countries’ sovereignty and territorial integrity in a premeditated manner. Those countries that collaborate in this criminality are complicit.

Some politicians, at least, are raising the alarm.

Rep. Mark Green  (R-Tenn.) responded to the planned exercises on Twitter. “The Chinese Communist Party is not our friend—they’re our adversary—and they’ve made their intentions clear by siding with leaders like Vladimir Putin,” he wrote. “We cannot back down in the face of authoritarianism.”

Neither should we countenance our allies and other democracies’ collaboration—whether military or economic—with Moscow, Beijing, Tehran, or Pyongyang. Given the stakes, any country that helps these regimes should be subject to secondary sanctions. To defeat Moscow and Beijing, we need to ask more—not less—of our American allies.

Anders Corr has a bachelor’s/master’s in political science from Yale University (2001) and a doctorate in government from Harvard University (2008). He is a principal at Corr Analytics Inc., publisher of the Journal of Political Risk, and has conducted extensive research in North America, Europe, and Asia. His latest books are “The Concentration of Power: Institutionalization, Hierarchy, and Hegemony” (2021) and “Great Powers, Grand Strategies: the New Game in the South China Sea” (2018).

https://www.theepochtimes.com/china-and-russia-collude_4673815.html

China Is Weaponizing Chinese Worldwide to Support the CCP

Customers look at posters of Chinese President Xi Jinping (C), and late communist leader Mao Zedong (center L and top R), at a market in Beijing on Feb. 26, 2018. (Greg Baker/AFP via Getty Images)

Gordon G. Chang

August 23, 2022

Originally published by Gatestone Institute

Commentary

“Promoting the great unity of the Chinese people is the historic responsibility of China ’s patriotic united front work in the new era,” said  Chinese ruler Xi Jinping at the end of last month to Communist Party cadres in Beijing. “To do the job well, we must … truly unite all Chinese people in different parties, nationalities, classes, groups, and with different beliefs, and those who are living under different social systems.”

“Different social systems” is Party lingo for “other countries.”

Xi’s words sound benign, but the intent is not. In short, Xi, at the Party’s United Front  Work Conference, said he hoped to unite—in other words, mobilize—ethnic Chinese everywhere to support the CCP, to effectively make every Chinese individual a CCP agent.

“The Chinese Communist Party  just doesn’t accept that people who adopt foreign citizenship are no longer beholden to the motherland as represented by the Chinese Communist Party,” said  Charles Burton of the Ottawa-based Macdonald-Laurier Institute to “CBS Eye on the World” on Aug. 17. “There is no escape from this ethnic identification based on being descendants of the Yellow Emperor.”

Xi’s predecessors also appealed to overseas Chinese, so in one sense there was nothing new in his words last month. Yet there is nonetheless cause for great concern. Mao Zedong in fact tried to use ethnic Chinese populations outside China to overthrow their governments. Xi reveres Mao, has adopted many of Mao’s tactics, and is surely as determined as Mao in using Chinese people to do his bidding. Xi is serious in seeing all the world’s Chinese as a single unified force.

Many of those “different social systems”—especially the United States—are squeamish when it comes to singling people out because of their race. Yet American policymakers cannot ignore the fact that the Communist Party’s appeal to overseas Chinese is overtly race-based.

“We all share the same ancestors, history, and culture, we all are sons and daughters of the Chinese nation and descendants of the dragon,” said  Yang Jiechi, now China’s top diplomat, in 2013 to a group of overseas ethnic Chinese children attending a government-sponsored “roots-tracing” tour event.

The regime sponsors these tours to indoctrinate. Foreign children, in Taishan in Guangdong Province during a tour late last decade, were asked to sing the 1980s-era “Descendants of the Dragon.” The appeal to race is unmistakable, as this portion of the lyrics makes clear: “With brown eyes, black hair, and yellow skin, we are forever descendants of the dragon.”

In fact, China’s regime asks, cajoles, threatens, and intimidates dragon descendants to commit crimes for “the Motherland.” As successful American prosecutions indicate, some ethnic Chinese are especially susceptible to those appeals.

In February, however, the Justice Department ended its Trump-era “China Initiative,” which concentrated law enforcement efforts on Chinese espionage. Yet given Xi Jinping’s call on overseas Chinese to work for China, it is time to reinstitute that program and devote more resources to it.

Many have called the initiative “racist,” but any new program would be merely responding to the Communist Party’s race-based appeals.

The overwhelming majority of Americans of Chinese descent—especially those who have fled China recently—are loyal to America, but some Chinese in America flaunt their support for Chinese communism. The flying of flags of the People’s Republic of China in Chinatowns across the United States— especially San Francisco’s before the pandemic —was particularly disturbing and suggestive of disloyalty to the American republic.

Can Americans of Chinese descent be loyal to both America and China? No.

China’s Communist Party has made itself an existential threat to America and every other society. The Chinese regime, especially in recent years under General Secretary Xi, has been pushing the notion that it holds the Mandate of Heaven to rule tianxia , “All Under Heaven.” The promotion of tianxia  means, among other things, that the Party views the U.S. government as illegitimate and America as nothing more than a tributary society or colony.

To make matters worse, the Chinese state has been open about its hostility to the United States. Among other things, in May 2019 People’s Daily, the Party’s self-described “mouthpiece” and therefore most authoritative publication in China, declared a “people’s war” on America.

Let me end on a personal note, as dragon blood proudly flows in my veins. My dad, who arrived in this country in early 1945, came from a small farming village in Jiangsu Province, across the mighty Yangtze River from Shanghai. My mother’s family traces its roots to Dundee, in Scotland, but I have not identified with that half of my heritage. I grew up in New Jersey, steeped in Dad’s stories of the Yellow Emperor and of course tales of dragons.

Nonetheless, my story-telling dad never missed an opportunity to vote or tell his four children how wonderful his adopted country was. He always said “China is my birthplace but America is my home.”

We “Chinese-Americans”—I abhor the term—need to remember where we now live. We cannot remain oblivious, as we so far have had the luxury of doing.

Although we technically do not have an obligation to prove our loyalty to America, we must, as a group, understand that a hostile power is trying to weaponize us. Xi Jinping has openly called on us to become a subversive force, to help him destroy the country we now call home.

It is time, therefore, for us to begin cleaning our own ranks. This means, among other things, not tolerating displays promoting Chinese communism in our country. Moreover, it means not shouting “racism” every time law enforcement arrests someone of Chinese descent. If we do not take the lead in these tasks, others will naturally do that for us.

We may think it unfair, but we now have to make a choice.

After all, our country—the United States of America—is in peril because a foreign state—the People’s Republic of China—is attacking it and hoping to use us to take it down.

The Communist Party of China refers to us as “overseas patriotic forces.” People in our communities will want to know to which country we feel patriotic.

Gordon G. Chang is a distinguished senior fellow at the Gatestone Institute, a member of its Advisory Board, and the author of “The Coming Collapse of China.”

Website

https://www.theepochtimes.com/china-is-weaponizing-chinese-worldwide-to-support-the-ccp_4683218.html

China’s Forced Organ Harvesting Demands US Response

Chinese doctors carry fresh organs for transplant at a hospital in Henan Province on Aug. 16, 2012. (Screenshot/Sohu.com)

Organ Harvesting in China

Nina Shea

Katrina Lantos Swett

September 2

Commentary

American doctors go to great lengths to maintain the highest ethical standards as they work to save thousands of desperately ill patients waiting for an organ match, as underscored in recent reporting of innovative transplant experiments using genetically modified pig hearts. China ’s transplant sector, unconstrained by rigorous ethical rules, found a more expedient solution. China created a thriving transplant industry, the world’s second largest ,  based on a supply of organs forcibly harvested from executed prisoners—most likely prisoners of conscience.

Though China announced that it banned this hideous practice in 2015, transparency is lacking and mounting evidence indicates that it continues. Nevertheless, the American transplant sector, while adhering to medical ethics at home, openly supports China’s transplant doctors and industry.

In 2006, shocking reports first surfaced of China forcibly harvesting organs from detained Falun Gong  adherents. According to these reports, after Falun Gong, a Chinese spiritual meditation group, was targeted for “elimination” by Chinese leader Jiang Zemin in 1999, thousands of practitioners were thrown into labor camps and jails and subjected to organ screening, unexplained deaths, and disappearances. Many, the group says, were killed for their organs, which were sold to China’s transplant sector, just as it surged and became a billion-dollar industry. Credible testimony  from former detainees, relatives, patients, and surgeons supports this. It was during this period that scores of Chinese transplant surgeons published articles, openly describing procedures on prisoners who “were alive and breathing as the surgeons  cut their hearts out,” as documented in a 2022 article in the respected American Journal of Transplantation , written by Victims of Communism Foundation fellow Matthew Robertson and Israeli Dr. Jacob Lavee.

Last year 12 independent U.N. experts  stated they were “extremely alarmed” by “credible information” that forced organ harvesting  was continuing and, moreover, targeting China’s various religious minorities. Several sources report evidence that the atrocity has spread to Xinjiang’s massive network of closed detention camps, which, significantly, were built after 2015, and which both Republican and Democratic administrations recognized as the site of ongoing genocide against China’s Uyghur Muslims.

Nury Turkel, who chairs the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, documented forced blood sampling and organ screening of Uyghur detainees, including a Christian, Ovalbek Turdakun, whom one of us interviewed. As noted in a May 2022 European Parliament resolution, a Beijing hospital brazenly advertised its use of “‘halal organs’ from Uyghurs and Muslim minorities.” At the International Religious Freedom Summit , held in Washington, D.C. in June, Ethan Gutmann , the leading field researcher on China’s forced organ harvesting, estimated that 25,000 to 50,000 Uyghurs have been killed annually for their organs. Gutmann’s research implicates a former SARS hospital in Aksu, Xinjiang, which is served by an airport with a designated “fast lane” for expressing organs to hospitals throughout China.

No satisfactory explanation exists for how—despite only a million registered volunteer donors in China, compared with America’s 145 million in 2019—China’s patients can schedule appointments for transplant surgeries within days or weeks, as patients and investigators reported, instead of waiting months or years, as in the United States. In addition, Robertson, Lavee, and Australian statistician Raymond Hinde have determined  that the growth curves of China’s voluntary donation lists for three organ types formed implausible, nearly perfect quadratic equations. In a peer-reviewed medical ethics journal  article in 2019, they conclude that China’s donor database was “falsified” as a result of being “manufactured and manipulated from the central levels of the Chinese medical bureaucracy.” Also, China’s reported number of annual transplants, 5,000–6,000 , appears understated. Documenting Chinese transplant hospitals, beds and surgeons, Gutmann and Canadian human rights experts David Mattas and David Kilgour estimated  that 60,000 to 100,000 organ transplants are occurring annually in China, with 8,000 a year at just one hospital.

Though shocking, China’s lack of medical ethics is not entirely surprising considering that it perpetrates ethno-religious genocide. But, given the grave questions about organ sourcing raised in these reports and China’s lack of transparency, it is unconscionable that major American universities and hospitals support China’s transplant sector. As brandished on their websites, Harvard, Stanford, the University of Pittsburgh, and many other others provide China with fellowships, academic exchanges, conferences, and joint research projects. American institutions are documented  to have trained 344 of China’s transplant doctors.

Some in the American medical community apparently collaborate in the hope of persuading their Chinese partners to ensure organ donation is indeed voluntary. But when blocked from verifying claims of reform, these same U.S. institutions accept China’s word at face value and even praise  its progress. They are not alone in buying China’s lies. The medical ethics journal cited above observed: “The World Health Organization, the Transplantation Society, the Declaration of Istanbul Custodian Group, and the Pontifical Academy of Sciences have all provided endorsements of the reforms based on what appears to be contaminated data.”

The WHO’s organ transplant task force, for example, was proposed  in 2017 by Dr. Huang Jiefu, who directed  China’s transplant donor registry, long served on the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Committee  and, though far from independent, was appointed to the task force itself. Under the chairmanship of Harvard’s Dr. Francis Delmonico, who toured China’s hospitals as Huang’s guest and praised Huang as a “ courageous leader ” in congressional testimony, the task force was mandated to flag crises in the transplant field. Yet, Gutmann, Robertson, and Mattas each say that it dismissed  out of hand their devastating research.

To date, no U.S. administration has taken seriously the charges of China’s ongoing organ harvesting. In 2018, the State Department tried to close the book on the issue, declaring  point blank that China’s government “officially ended the long-standing practice of involuntarily harvesting the organs of executed prisoners for use in transplants in January 2015.” It, too, failed to undertake independent verification. The Biden administration should reexamine all forced organ harvesting evidence and make its own determination. Congress should pass the Stop Forced Organ Harvesting Act  to ensure this happens.

Former Chinese military surgeon Dr. Enver Tohti, testifying before the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission, recently commented  on Western indifference to this issue. Forced organ harvesting seemed just “too bad to be true,” he said. But the evidence is too compelling to persist in that naïve belief. Until compliance with international ethical norms is verified, the American transplant sector should halt all collaboration with China’s.

From RealClearWire

Nina Shea is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute where she directs the Center for Religious Freedom. For twelve years, she served as a commissioner on the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. An international human-rights lawyer for over thirty years, Ms. Shea undertakes scholarship and recommends policies for the advancement of individual religious freedom and other human rights in U.S. foreign policy. She advocates extensively in defense of those persecuted for their religious beliefs and identities and on behalf of diplomatic measures to end religious repression and violence abroad, whether from state actors or extremist groups.

Katrina Lantos Swett, J.D., is the former chair and now committee member of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF). In 2008, she established the Lantos Foundation for Human Rights and Justice and serves as its President and CEO. She teaches human rights and American foreign policy at Tufts University.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/chinas-forced-organ-harvesting-demands-us-response_4706892.html

China Is Torturing Critics in Psychiatric Hospitals

A man who was just escorted to the Kunming Mental Hospital lies on chairs, in Kunming, Yunnan Province, southwest China, on Dec. 1, 2007. (China Photos/Getty Images)

Gordon G. Chang

September 2, 2022

Originally published by Gatestone Institute

Commentary

China ’s regime is torturing and killing critics, petitioners, activists, dissidents, and religious adherents in psychiatric hospitals, thereby bypassing its horribly misdescribed criminal justice system. The “barbaric practice,” as a Madrid-based NGO termed it last month, is still widespread.

Safeguard Defenders, in “ Drugged and Detained: China’s Psychiatric Prisons ,” details how police and government agents are sending Chinese citizens “for medically unnecessary involuntary hospitalizations” in the police-run ankang  system, which was established in the 1980s.

The new report updates work by leading researcher Robin Munro, the author of “ Dangerous Minds: Political Psychiatry in China Today and Its Origins in the Mao Era ” and the groundbreaking 2000 article “ Judicial Psychiatry in China and Its Political Abuses .”

In the ankang —“peace and health”—system, detainees are strapped onto beds, pumped full of drugs, receive electric-shock therapy, and are left to lie in their own excrement.

“Some languish for years,” Safeguard Defenders notes. Those who survive often can barely function after release. Those released are often recommitted to such facilities without justifiable reason. One woman had been committed 20 times. Researchers Chi Yin and Jerome Cohen, writing on the Diplomat site, report  that some Chinese are confined for their lifetimes.

The Soviets perfected techniques for breaking people in psychiatric facilities, and Mao Zedong’s regime adopted them about a decade after taking power. As Munro reported in 2002, the “earliest known examples of political-style psychiatric diagnosis in China” date back to the early 1960s.

After intense criticism from the international community, China in 2012 and 2013 both enacted the Mental Health Law and amended its Criminal Procedure Law to require medical assessments for compulsory psychiatric treatment and judicial review of police-initiated commitments to psychiatric institutions.

The Safeguard Defenders report examined 99 cases from 2015 to 2021 and called these examples “just the tip of the iceberg.” The witness reports were first recorded by a Chinese organization.

Because the Chinese regime often ignores the procedures mandated by its Criminal Procedure Law, why does it feel necessary to commit dissidents and other individuals to psychiatric facilities? After all, it already has the means to silence opponents and deter them.

Safeguard Defenders points out that the use of psychiatric facilities stigmatizes opponents of the regime. “They are,” its reports states, “discredited and isolated from others with this false label of ‘mental illness.’”

The system also appears to be grounded in the Chinese Communist Party’s optimistic totalitarian notion that medical treatment can make people obedient.

Sean Lin, communications director of the Falun Dafa  Association in Washington, D.C., tells Gatestone that the Chinese regime from the first days of the prosecution of the Falun Gong  religious group was focused on “scientific transformation” of individuals. Adherents of the faith were framed as mentally ill and subject to improvement.

Chinese medical personnel administered drugs that damaged the central nervous system of adherents of that faith, intentionally overdosed them, applied extreme-strength electroacupuncture, and brutally force-fed them. These treatments were in addition to physical torture , Lin, also a microbiologist and former lab director of the viral disease branch of the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, reports.

Falun Gong adherents, according to Lin, suffered emaciation, visceral failure, organ decay, cerebral thrombosis, heart pain, paralysis, insanity, amnesia, blindness, and death.

The ankang  facilities engaged in these acts, but Lin also reports that the 610 Office, a now-dissolved unit established to persecute the Falun Gong, and other regime agencies sometimes forced healthy Falun Gong adherents into China’s regular psychiatric facilities.

“Legal reforms did not work,” Safeguard Defenders correctly reports.

The NGO demands that China, among other things, take “immediate steps to put a stop to the political abuse of psychiatry.” Amen to that.

The organization also urges China to “urgently review its responsibilities under international law as regards the treatment of psychiatric patients and endeavor to revise current legislation and improve the medical sector’s understanding of such legislation to prevent this kind of abuse from happening ever again.”

The “medical sector’s understanding”? Safeguard Defenders gets an “A” for its reporting and an “F” for this recommendation.

The NGO, with these words, seems to believe that horrific psychiatric abuses continue because Chinese doctors do not comprehend prohibitions contained in Chinese law.

That view is breathtakingly naïve. The abuse of psychiatry has continued for seven decades in the People’s Republic of China. The Chinese Communist Party has changed the organizational structures and the methods of how it destroys people in psychiatric institutions, but the destruction of life continues.

Safeguard Defenders—and the international community—must finally acknowledge that the Party is inherently murderous. The only way to end the abuse of psychiatry in China as well as the Party’s other horrific crimes is to end its rule of China.

Gordon G. Chang is a distinguished senior fellow at the Gatestone Institute, a member of its Advisory Board, and the author of “The Coming Collapse of China.”

Website

https://www.theepochtimes.com/china-is-torturing-critics-in-psychiatric-hospitals_4707439.html

UN Report on Human Rights Abuses in Xinjiang Is a Clarion Call to Action

Outgoing U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet gives a final press conference at the United Nations offices in Geneva on Aug. 25, 2022. (Fabrice Coffrini/AFP via Getty Images)

Viewpoints

Callista L. Gingrich

September 12, 2022

Commentary

On Aug. 31, the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) released a highly anticipated report on the ongoing human rights  violations and abuses targeting Muslim Uyghurs  and other ethnic and religious minorities in Xinjiang , China .

Released within the final minutes of Michelle Bachelet’s term as U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, the  report  concludes, that, in Xinjiang, “serious human rights violations have been committed.”

Although the OHCHR regrettably stopped short of determining that the Chinese Communist Party ’s targeting of millions is genocide , and even permitted the Party to water down some of the language , the report is a consequential step forward toward advancing freedom in Xinjiang.

According to the report, the Chinese Communist Party’s “arbitrary and discriminatory detention” placed in the context of its “restrictions and deprivation more generally of fundamental rights” could amount to “international crimes, in particular crimes against humanity.”

Further, the report determined that the allegations of detainees being subjected to torture, adverse conditions, forced medical treatments, and sexual and gender-based violence are credible.

These findings are not novel, as journalists, researchers, activists, survivors, and governments have bravely and systematically uncovered evidence leading to similar and even more dire conclusions.

However, what makes this report significant is that it was released.

Consider the Chinese Communist Party’s diligent and determined efforts to increase its influence at the United Nations.

For example, recall that in the summer of 2019, in response to more than 20 countries  issuing a joint statement of concern over the Party’s targeting of Uyghurs, U.N. ambassadors from nearly 40 countries  signed a letter defending the Party’s actions in Xinjiang and its human rights “achievements.”

Additionally, in November 2021, a whistleblower was fired after revealing that the OHCHR  was sharing the names of dissidents—including Uyghurs—with the Communist Chinese regime.

Despite the Chinese Communist Party’s best efforts to maneuver, intimidate, and propagandize in hopes that the international community would ignore its ongoing atrocities, the evidence and facts have become so overwhelmingly clear that the U.N.’s leading body on human rights was forced to take a position.

Even though the report is not perfect, as Adrian Zenz , senior fellow in China studies at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, said, “[I]t will provide a strong and authoritative basis going forward for holding Beijing accountable.”

Ultimately, the release of the U.N. report on Xinjiang makes it impossible to ignore or excuse the ongoing abuses perpetrated by the Party in Xinjiang.

As American Foreign Policy Council Fellow Michael Sobolik,  said, “The UN has finally published its long-anticipated report, but white papers and multilateral investigations will not stop a genocide. Governments around the world need to step up and hold the Chinese Communist Party accountable, and the United States must lead that effort.”

Over the past two years, the U.S. Congress has passed two significant bipartisan laws, the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act (2020) and the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (2021).

These two laws give the United States the necessary tools for eliminating goods produced by forced labor  in Xinjiang from America’s supply chains and for holding Chinese officials accountable.

But, as columnist Josh Rogin recently reported in The Washington Post , the Biden administration hasn’t enforced the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act, leading to frustration in Congress. Under this law, the president is to identify and impose sanctions on Chinese officials engaged in the targeting of Uyghurs and their families.

Additionally, Rogin reported that the implementation of the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act—which requires that importers prove that goods coming from Xinjiang are not made with forced labor—has been “spotty.” He pointed out that in the Washington metropolitan area, for example, grocery shoppers can purchase red dates from Xinjiang that are produced by a state-run paramilitary organization and are prohibited under the law.

The United States must enforce the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act and the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act and encourage our allies and partners to adopt similar legislation.

It is overwhelmingly clear that the horrific plight of the Uyghurs and other ethnic and religious minorities in Xinjiang cannot be ignored.

The report released by the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights on Aug. 31 should be regarded as a clarion call to action for countries around the world to hold the Chinese Communist Party accountable for its egregious human rights violations and abuses.

From Gingrich360.com

Callista Louise Gingrich is a businesswoman, author, documentary film producer, and diplomat who served as the U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See from 2017 to 2021.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/un-report-on-human-rights-abuses-in-xinjiang-is-a-clarion-call-to-action_4725190.html

China’s ‘Zero-COVID’ Policy Wreaks Havoc

A man rides a bicycle on a street seen through a fence of a compound in lockdown during a COVID-19 lockdown in the Jing’an district, in Shanghai, China, on May 19, 2022. (Hector Retamal/AFP via Getty Images)

Thinking About China

China’s ‘Zero-COVID’ Policy Wreaks Havoc

Draconian pandemic measures help drive China’s economy into the ditch

Stu Cvrk

September 22, 2022

Commentary

Chinese citizens have been writhing under the so-called “ zero-COVID ” policy of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) since it was first implemented in Hubei Province in January 2020. The CCP’s medical authorities opted for a policy of containment and elimination instead of mitigation and treatment.

The results have been disastrous, but Chinese authorities show no signs of reversing the strict measures despite the lessons learned about the virus and the deleterious impact of lockdowns and quarantines around the world over the past 30 months.

Let us examine the topic.

What Is ‘Zero-COVID’?

These COVID measures were first implemented and evolved in China  after the initial SARS-CoV-2 breakout in Wuhan in late 2019. The Chinese authorities responded with typically draconian communist tactics: virtually all of Hubei was locked down, people’s movements were curtailed entirely, travel to and from the city was banned, a strict testing regimen was evolved, etc.

From this response—and the statistics conveniently provided by Chinese medical authorities—was borne the mitigation myth of “two weeks to flatten the curve,” which was the response then implemented by many other countries based on the “Chinese success” in slowing new cases of the virus to levels manageable by the public health system.

No one knows exactly how many Chinese have died from COVID to this day (or from the lockdowns themselves). Yet the world took its cue from the CCP, which had ulterior motives in propagating the “success” of its public health response to the virus.

The Wuhan response was a mixture of elimination and mitigation strategies. Over the next two-plus years, the “zero-COVID” policy has evolved into primarily an elimination strategy that included these measures:

- Lockdowns (partial or full lockdowns as arbitrarily determined by the authorities—from apartment buildings to whole cities—that are intended to virtually eliminate human contacts).

- Routine PCR testing (oral and anal).

- Quarantines (the isolation of infected people for 14 days, either in their homes or in special facilities).

- Contact tracing (resulting in 14-day isolations for the close contacts of infected people, with “close contacts” arbitrarily defined by the medical authorities).

- Community-wide screening (extending the testing well outside the locations of infected people to include neighborhoods, sub-districts, districts, and whole cities).

- Mandatory vaccines for all Chinese (87 percent of China’s 1.4 billion people have been vaccinated as of June 4 ).

People queue up for COVID-19 nucleic acid tests at Beijing Lize Financial Business District in Beijing, China, on April 26, 2022. (VCG/VCG via Getty Images)

For the average Chinese citizen, this means dealing with these realities daily: lockdowns initiated anywhere at any time without advance notice; being confined to one’s living quarters (including being physically locked in by the authorities); being sent to a quarantine facility if tested positive for COVID; limited or no access to hospitals or medical facilities for routine medical procedures and urgent care; reduced availability to food supplies and disrupted food supply chains (reliance on government-provided food plus some mass-ordered for delivery if able/fortunate); and “escape” from home quarantine authorized only for mandatory daily COVID tests or preapproved excursions (rare).

The few remaining freedoms and liberties allowed by the CCP are thus sacrificed on the altar of what the CCP arbitrarily presents as the “common good of the Chinese people,” in this case, the propaganda that these measures will eliminate the spread of the virus and save lives.

The Real Purpose of ‘Zero-COVID’

The primary purpose of China’s “zero-COVID” policy is a CCP psychological warfare campaign that targets domestic and foreign audiences. For Chinese citizens, the policy reinforces CCP control of daily lives and the hopelessness of dissent when targeted lockdowns can be used to withhold access to food and basic services.

Controlling dissent is particularly important for CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping and his political faction in the run-up to the 20 th  National Congress now planned for Oct. 16 in Beijing , during which it is expected that he will be awarded an unprecedented third five-year term as leader.

For foreign audiences, the policy’s purpose and the continuing lockdowns are to perpetuate the pandemic narrative and sow fear that reinforces authoritarian “zero-COVID”-like measures in other countries around the world. The result is a shutdown—or at least a continuing slowdown—of the world economy to the benefit of the export-oriented Chinese economy, as well as psychologically preparing the masses for authoritarian controls under future planned CCP world leadership.

For both audiences, the state-run Chinese media’s trumpeting of the “zero-COVID” policy drowns out studies that show the deleterious effects of long-term lockdowns and the efficacy of repurposed drugs like hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin in reducing the risk of dying from COVID if administered early (see here , here , and here ). And the ubiquitous face masks (an overt psychological and social control mechanism ) are ineffective in stopping the spread of the virus and can cause “health deterioration,” as reported here .

Propagandizing about “zero-COVID” also masks Chinese economic problems that are becoming increasingly apparent to China watchers.

The Effects

As of Sept. 5, Breitbart reported  that 74 Chinese cities, 14 of which are provincial capitals, “are now under full or partial lockdown , including … Wuhan [the city of origin].” This includes Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan Province and the largest city to lock down since Shanghai’s full lockdown ended on May 31 . And there is no end in sight.

An empty road is seen in Chengdu, in China’s Sichuan Province, as the provincial capital city is under COVID-19 lockdown on Sept. 2, 2022. (CFOTO/Future Publishing via Getty Images)

The effects of these lockdowns range from the spread of general unease about the CCP’s ability to manage the virus, to local protests of lockdowns, to boycotts, to disruption of supply chains, and to a contraction of the Chinese economy. As a sampling of the increasing economic problems that the Chinese media ignore with rosy stories of progress, planned numbers met, production increases, etc., here are some of the reports from foreign observers that tell the tale of a teetering economy with serious problems:

The extreme arbitrariness of the “zero-COVID” policy is shown by the July 27 lockdown of nearly 1 million  people in Wuhan due to four asymptomatic COVID cases, as well as a Fox Business report  of people fleeing an Ikea store in Shanghai that was being locked up because it was determined that one customer might have come in contact with a 6-year-old boy who tested positive for COVID (they didn’t want to be trapped in a COVID quarantine).

As a result of these and many other incidents, individual Chinese citizens are increasingly outraged with the lockdowns and speaking out. A Breitbart report  quoted a man in Chengdu: “Personally, I’m extremely fed up with and not supportive of these policies. But there’s nothing I can do.”

Perhaps Chengdu residents will become involved in local protests over food shortages  such as those that took place during the Shanghai lockdown in April.

More recently, in Chongqing, large protests in the Lianfang and Tuwan subdistricts of the municipality forced authorities to lift strict lockdown measures  on Aug. 28.

People who are locked down can’t contribute to China’s GDP or earn a living and feed their families. No wonder the protests are increasing across China.

A report in The Guardian  in April estimated that “the equivalent of 40% of China’s gross domestic product is estimated to be under some form of lockdown.” That included two months-worth of lockdowns in Shanghai, China’s financial capital, which had to have depressed the country’s GDP despite the CCP’s statistics.

A report from mid-August  predicted that China will not meet its growth predictions and will be forced to devaluate the yuan in order to stimulate the Chinese economy. From the report: “Retail sales are currently running 0.5% behind calendar year estimates, while industrial production is running 0.7% behind and fixed asset investment is 0.3% behind.”

According to the August World Economics SMI report , “business activity in China is still in contraction.” “Zero-COVID” lockdowns of dozens of major production centers will do that over time!

The contraction largely caused by the lockdowns has exacerbated China’s debt problem. Locked-down workers can’t earn money to pay their rents and mortgages. The Hill  reported that “a massive mortgage revolt is underway, and as banks fail, protests grow. Today, 50 million empty or unfinished units bought on ‘spec’ in hundreds of urban areas may never be completed or paid for, equivalent to one-third of all housing units in the United States.” And according to a Radio Free Asia report  on Sept. 7, the Chinese mortgage revolt had spread to “119 cities and a total of 340 projects, and 2022 property owners.”

To top it off, Taiwan’s Central News Agency provided this gloomy report  on Sept. 7: “China’s economic downturn, along with the Covid epidemic and other factors, have drained local government revenues. Mainland Chinese media reported that many local governments have been resorting to fines indiscriminately to generate revenue.”

Concluding Thoughts

The CCP persists in its “zero-COVID” policies to the detriment of its citizens. That is because COVID is more of a political pandemic than a health crisis. While most of the world has transitioned to mitigation and treatment regimens, Beijing remains committed to its unscientific attempts to contain and eliminate the virus. This is because “zero-COVID” is all about political control for the CCP at home and the perpetuation of economic lockdowns and associated societal turmoil abroad to camouflage China’s economic problems—just as it has always been.

Stu Cvrk retired as a captain after serving 30 years in the U.S. Navy in a variety of active and reserve capacities, with considerable operational experience in the Middle East and the Western Pacific. Through education and experience as an oceanographer and systems analyst, Cvrk is a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, where he received a classical liberal education that serves as the key foundation for his political commentary.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/chinas-zero-covid-policy-wreaks-havoc_4733335.html

Pompeo Versus the CCP

Former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo speaks during the Conservative Political Action Conference at The Rosen Shingle Creek in Orlando, Fla., on Feb. 25, 2022. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Thinking About China

Pompeo Versus the CCP

The former secretary of state is a hero for speaking truth to power

Anders Corr

October 7, 2022

Commentary

Mike Pompeo is taking on the Chinese Communist Party ( CCP ), not for the first time, but in some of his most direct approaches. On Sept. 14  and Sept. 26 , the former secretary of state released videos calling on the Chinese people to free themselves of the regime in Beijing.

At the root of his message is that the CCP knowingly lies about representing the Chinese people and that the Party is committed to the “foreign, anti-Chinese ideology” of Marxism.

Pompeo made the point that the CCP also lies about the United States being a racist country when the “exact opposite” is true. Chinese Americans “contribute immeasurably to our way of life and to America’s experiment in self-government,” he said.

Meanwhile, the genocidal CCP perpetuates some of the world’s worst “systemic racism in Xinjiang, Tibet, Inner Mongolia, and elsewhere.”

Pompeo said the “most anti-Chinese force in history is the CCP … founded on a bankrupt Marxist ideology that’s killed tens of millions of Chinese people, [and] launched a Cultural Revolution that destroyed thousands of years of Chinese culture.”

Attention to the videos increased when the CCP responded with a letter to Pompeo’s current think tank, the Hudson Institute, falsely claiming that the Party was “chosen by the Chinese people” and stands for their interests. It said, “Any attempts to cut off the blood ties between the [CCP] and the Chinese people are doomed to fail.”

As usual, the tone-deaf Party is its own worst enemy, feeding the fire that threatens to consume.

Pompeo published the letter in a tweet , replying, “The CCP wants me to stop speaking the truth. Ain’t gonna happen.”

The Hudson Institute president, John Walters , said of the letter, “No one at Hudson is intimidated by this.”

The Washington Times  and Townhall  published articles sympathetic to Pompeo.

By continuing with their simultaneously tragic and farcical responses to the world’s demand for freedom from the CCP, China ’s diplomats dig deeper into their hole of disregard for increasing global demands for change. Public opinion in the West is undergoing a sharp shift  in opinion against China because it looks more and more like a threat to the very idea of democracy.

The CCP’s claims of “blood ties” to the Chinese people go further, coming off as defining the “Chinese people” in terms of a racial hierarchy, in which the Han ethnic group has always led the CCP and China’s state apparatus after the revolution of 1949.

Other “Chinese people,” including Tibetans and Uyghurs, for example, merit positions far lower in the regime hierarchy, to the point of relegation to concentration camps ostensibly set up for their “reeducation” into being more Chinese (read: Mandarin speakers and CCP enthusiasts) and less non-Chinese (read: Tibetan and Uyghur speakers, and having religion).

A gate of what is officially known as a vocational skills education center is photographed in Dabancheng, Xinjiang Uyghur region, China, on Sept. 4, 2018. (Thomas Peter/Reuters)

Overseas Chinese , according to Chinese leader Xi Jinping, should demonstrate allegiance to the Party just as do Chinese in China. It should go without saying that the CCP is racist and wrong in making this claim. Nobody, much less those overseas targeted for their race, owes allegiance to an unelected political party that is more of a mafia or terror organization  than a source of legitimate government.

Pompeo previously took decisive steps against the CCP, including designating the oppression of Uyghurs a genocide in 2021, which it is by the U.N. definition. In 2020, he closed down  China’s consulate in Houston , which was allegedly a hub for technology theft.

As a result, China sanctioned  Pompeo last year, a badge of honor that could, in other ways, have consequences for his career. A CCP sanction can make it risky for businesses operating in China (many if not most of America’s largest manufacturers) to hire sanctioned individuals or those engaged with them, for example, as a consultant or board member. That might include the loss of major campaign donations from their leadership, including top shareholders.

This is one way the CCP attempts to influence U.S. politics—through the influence of business that, in turn, has influence on elected officials.

A point that Pompeo has been too diplomatic to say is that the Chinese people have made a huge mistake in allowing the CCP to take over.

The world is making the same mistake now. We empowered the CCP with $4.7 trillion  of international trade (China’s imports plus exports) that garnered the country a trade surplus of $520 billion in 2020, the latest year of data from the World Bank.

The CCP uses that surplus internationally to purchase companies, land, and political influence.

Pompeo is one of America’s toughest opponents of the CCP, and the CCP is America’s top national security threat, according to the U.S. government and NATO.

So Pompeo is one of those heroes he speaks of and deserves America’s support in the years to come.

Anders Corr has a bachelor’s/master’s in political science from Yale University (2001) and a doctorate in government from Harvard University (2008). He is a principal at Corr Analytics Inc., publisher of the Journal of Political Risk, and has conducted extensive research in North America, Europe, and Asia. His latest books are “The Concentration of Power: Institutionalization, Hierarchy, and Hegemony” (2021) and “Great Powers, Grand Strategies: the New Game in the South China Sea” (2018).

https://www.theepochtimes.com/pompeo-versus-the-ccp_4781736.html

On Closing China’s Secret Police Stations Overseas

Overseas Chinese police “Service Stations,” or “110 Overseas,” are found in dozens of countries across five continents. (Courtesy of Safeguarddefenders)

Thinking About China

On Closing China’s Secret Police Stations Overseas

The time is now

Peter Dahlin

October 26, 2022

Commentary

Few people could have missed the revelation from Safeguard Defenders that local Chinese police  are running overseas police “service stations.” Over the past month, local media have been investigating the illegal centers, and more and more remarkable information is being revealed weekly.

The latest such revelation is the existence of additional stations in Canada, Australia, and the Netherlands. Media outlets in the Netherlands have been able to pinpoint the police outposts “persuading” Chinese residents to return to China to face criminal charges. The illegal police stations circumvent normal legal channels and essentially carry out police work on foreign soil.

Prior to this, Safeguard Defenders had investigated the actions of the “service stations” in Spain and Serbia . However, finding people willing to speak is nearly impossible.

Despite that, China’s Foreign Ministry, in a response to Spanish media, has acknowledged engaging  in these actions, blaming extraditions (the normal, lawful way to seek someone’s return), as “cumbersome” and saying that European countries sometimes deny its requests.

With growing attention to illegal Chinese police activity, governments are starting to respond. A committee in the Canadian Parliament is set to hold hearings on the matter, and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police are launching an investigation. In Spain, the Ministry of the Interior has launched an investigation. In Ireland, the government is requesting information from China (and, reportedly, the sign outside the Chinese police station in Dublin has “disappeared”).

In addition, it was reported on Oct. 26  that the Dutch Foreign Ministry is investigating the centers in order to determine appropriate action. The Foreign Ministry said it wasn’t informed about the centers via diplomatic channels, which makes them illegal. Further, the UK has announced the establishment of a “foreign agent’s registry,” to make such operations illegal if not properly registered with the British government.

A mainland Chinese media (fjsen.com) article about the Fuzhou Police Overseas Service Station in New York, dated April 30, 2022. (Screenshot via The Epoch Times)

More governments are likely to launch investigations or demand answers from the Chinese regime in the weeks to come. It’s apparent that the stations exist across the globe, with evidence of new centers revealed almost weekly since the original report  came out in September.

Yet, for all the different actions being taken, there’s a marked lack of coordination, with different countries taking different actions, which risks undermining these counteractions.

The West, as usual, is acting like a herd of cats, rather than in a coordinated, planned matter. And a coordinated response is needed.

Our report showed that the various Chinese police jurisdictions that have set up overseas stations operate in different ways and that the program is still in its early stages. Although the campaign started with 10 “pilot provinces,” more provinces are set to join the policing effort.

Once the regime analyzes how such stations operate and which tactics work best, we’re likely to see more structured operations on a grander scale; that is, unless Beijing is met with a strong response and abandons plans to expand its long-arm policing.

A timely response now, before additional plans are made in Beijing, can change the regime’s future policy.

The America ChangLe Association in New York on Oct. 6, 2022. An overseas Chinese police outpost in New York, called the Fuzhou Police Overseas Service Station, is located inside the association building. (Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times)

It has become clear that the police “service stations” aren’t registered in the countries in which they operate. Every country has a regulatory framework for such foundations. The serious violations that these stations represent justify a harsh response: their forced closure or a lighter penalty, dependent on the voluntary dismantling of these operations.

More countries need to move forward with “foreign agent registries.” The existence of these registries would have caused the illegal Chinese stations to be shut down right away. They’re manned by Chinese residents in the target countries, operating as foreign agents for the Chinese regime. With increased disinformation by foreign agents, coupled with this type of transnational repression, the need for such registries has never been stronger.

In addition, security police need to work systematically on these issues. Hotlines need to be established for victims to report such transgressions with their identities well-protected. And finally, information needs to be made available in those countries on an annual basis to map how China engages in such behavior and how its tactics change.

These actions—which are actually the minimum needed—must be accomplished in a well-orchestrated, coordinated manner by the United States, Canada, the UK, EU, Australia, and other allies facing the same threat. It’s in such a coordinated move that the real strength behind these countermeasures lies.

Peter Dahlin is the founder of the NGO Safeguard Defenders and the co-founder of the Beijing-based Chinese NGO China Action (2007–2016). He is the author of “Trial By Media,” and contributor to “The People’s Republic of the Disappeared.” He lived in Beijing from 2007, until detained and placed in a secret jail in 2016, subsequently deported and banned. Prior to living in China, he worked for the Swedish government with gender equality issues, and now lives in Madrid, Spain.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/on-closing-chinas-secret-police-stations-overseas_4820847.html

Xi Jinping’s Rise Could Be the Beginning of the End for Communist China

Chinese leader Xi Jinping attends the meeting between members of the standing committee of the Political Bureau of the 20th CCP Central Committee and Chinese and foreign journalists at The Great Hall of People in Beijing on Oct. 23, 2022. (Lintao Zhang/Getty Images)

Thinking About China

Christian Whiton

The Daily Caller News Foundation

October 28, 2022

Commentary

It was supposed to be a crowning moment for Chinese Communist Party  boss Xi Jinping. The once-every-five-years national congress of party poohbahs would formally extend his tenure beyond two five-years terms—a coronation set in motion at the last congress in 2017 when party leaders ditched the custom of identifying an eventual successor. Xi would claim stature in China ’s history not seen since murderous tyrant Mao Zedong ruled and China would continue its ascent to paramount world power, surmounting the United States.

But only one of those things has happened. Xi has in fact extended his tenure  beyond the 10-year custom established after the dark days of Mao. With no successor identified and the party seemingly drained of rivals, he could be dictator for life. However, the greatness for China that Xi anticipated throughout the congress was called further into doubt. In the following week, some $6 trillion in Chinese stock market value has evaporated .

Many investors had expected Xi to announce a pivot from China’s zero-COVID policy, which has turned Chinese cities large and small into internment camps at times. Even a handful of positive test results can lead party officials to order millions to stay home. Xi not only declined to signal a shift; he went out of his way to declare the policy a success and a model. Going into winter when COVID prevalence often increases, this probably means China will hold onto its disastrous policy at least until late spring. Some analysts believe it may remain policy for years.

Brutal lockdowns, travel restrictions, and exotic COVID tests  aren’t the only things holding back China’s economy and rise to greatness. There are even bigger clouds on the horizon.

Xi made it clear that ideology and party power are now more important than China’s economic growth. This won’t come as news to anyone who watched what happened in Hong Kong during the past three years. There, Beijing broke its promise to Britain to allow the former colony to keep its separate legal system and freedoms for at least 50 years. Press liberty and the right to protest peacefully went out the window with a new national security law  that means whatever the communist authorities want it to mean. They closed the most prominent pro-democracy newspaper and have its publisher, Jimmy Lai, in jail on phony charges. Capital and financial talent have quietly fled what was once the financial capital of Asia, but Xi doesn’t care.

China also faces a real estate crisis that could make the one America faced in 2008 pale by comparison. The sector, which accounts for one-quarter of Chinese gross domestic product, is heavily indebted and developers are having trouble servicing debt and paying other bills. Protests have erupted as Chinese families have stopped  making mortgage payments on homes they may never be able to inhabit. The crisis has not yet tanked the financial sector, but it is adding stress.

Another fundamental problem is that the model for growth China has used for the past two decades is spent. That model depended on importing U.S. jobs and manufacturing capabilities thanks to gullible trade policies and stealing U.S. intellectual property. Donald Trump’s fundamental shift on trade, which included tariffs and technology export controls, began to change this dynamic. China’s cost advantage also declined, causing low-cost manufacturing to flee to places like Vietnam.

How quickly has the trajectory changed for what was once an economic juggernaut that grew about 10 percent each year. China’s official growth rate  is now 3.9 percent, and that is probably phony as well.

So much for China achieving greatness and dethroning America. Under current circumstances, it actually faces decline.

Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org .

Christian Whiton was a State Department senior advisor during the George W. Bush and Donald Trump administrations. He is a senior fellow at the Center for the National Interest.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/xi-jinpings-rise-could-be-the-beginning-of-the-end-for-communist-china_4827548.html

Chinese Slavery Beyond China

Sailors stand guard at the Cambodian Ream Naval Base in Sihanoukville, Cambodia, on July 26, 2019. (Samrang Pring/Reuters)

Thinking About China

Anders Corr

November 4, 2022

Commentary

Do mysterious people send you messages on social media that simply say, “ Hi ”? I never answer.

Likely as not, they are scammers in Southeast Asia under the management of Chinese cybergangs. That little “Hi” is one of their strategies according to reporting this year from VOD , a Cambodian news outlet that deserves a Pulitzer. It creates curiosity in the scam victim, or “mark”, that gets the conversation going.

As many as 100,000 foreigners work for cybercriminals in Cambodia , according to its Interior Ministry secretary of state Sok Phal . Yet, the Cambodian government does little to close the scam factories in which they are often imprisoned.

In a report this week, the Los Angeles Times  claims “the Cambodian government has given Chinese crime syndicates free rein to bring in tens of thousands of foreign men and women who — according to human rights organizations and their own accounts — are held captive to work in crowded cyber scam mills.”

Chinese, Vietnamese, Malaysian, Taiwanese, Indonesian, Burmese, and Thai nationals are among those confined in the scammer compounds that sometimes grow as large as self-enclosed towns  holding thousands each. Guards take passports from victims and stand guard at doors. Workers fall into debt peonage and can only buy freedom for as much as $30,000 each.

A casino at NagaWorld hotel and entertainment complex in Sihanoukville, Cambodia, on Aug. 4, 2018. Chinese money accounted for about 30 percent of Cambodia’s total foreign investment in 2017. (Paula Bronstein/Getty Images)

Some of the compounds are hotel or casino groups, including in Cambodia’s capital city of Phnom Penh. The scams include gambling, romance, and pornography. Scammers who don’t cooperate are beaten, electrocuted, sold, or worse.

Workers sell for thousands of dollars each on messaging apps that include their photos. One had a man  bloodied with missing fingers. A gang allegedly sent another to an underground blood bank that drew his blood  so many times that, to find a vein and keep it flowing, they had to cut into his thigh.

After news reports, the emergence of videos, and diplomatic pressure to free particular captives, Cambodian officials finally conducted raids in September. Thousands of slaves were freed, but for the most part, the Chinese and Cambodian regimes are looking the other way. A few raids demonstrate the rule of law, but the scammers are bussed to less visible parts of Southeast Asia, including Myanmar and Laos.

The Times alleges a cozy relationship between officials and Chinese syndicates that focuses attention on Cambodia’s endemic corruption and relationship with China.

Chinese police and China’s embassy in Cambodia denied  help to an enslaved Chinese man named Lin (VOD changed his real name to protect him) in a hotel complex controlled by gangs with links to legitimate Chinese companies and Cambodian officials.

Lin was captured, his phone taken, and he was forced to work in a romance scam that targeted women ages 25 to 40 in places like Malaysia, Singapore, the United States, and Europe in an attempt to get tens of thousands of dollars from each.

The detainee only got his phone returned as a reward for seeming to participate in the scam to win his captors’ trust. Then he did internet research and made inquiries of officials and nonprofit rescue groups from the bathroom of the factory.

Gangs detain their unwilling scammers within large business compounds that masquerade as hotel groups and technology centers.

Chinese, Cambodian, and Vietnamese rescue teams help free detainees, including one renamed “Zhang” by VOD. “Zhang said he eventually got in touch with a Chinese entrepreneur-run rescue team, texting them daily until early November, when Cambodian military police came into the Sihanoukville ‘Crown’ compound and brought Zhang out,” according to VOD.

Sihanoukville is a seedy casino town on Cambodia’s coast.

This photograph shows a general view of a casino in Sihanoukville late on Sept. 23, 2022. (Tang Chhin Sothy/AFP via Getty Images)

In another operation to “arrest” Chinese and Thai slaves, Cambodian police  kept their processes, raids, and interrogations secret from Thai police, who initiated the action and wanted more direct involvement. Thai police issued 71 warrants for Thais, of which only 21 resulted in repatriation. Cambodian officials did not release the Chinese scammers that Thai police tried to arrest.

Similar Chinese gangs are linked to Philippine offshore gaming operators (POGOs), in which local reporting  reveals the enslavement of Chinese, Malaysians, and Burmese, for example, to chat up the marked victims into online gambling. Cyberslaves in the Philippines are bought and sold just as in Cambodia.

Chinese gangs are extending modern slavery from the Beijing-supported versions of Uyghurs in Xinjiang, well beyond China’s borders to Southeast Asia. This is our own future, if we allow the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to continue towards its goal of global domination. The export of Chinese gangs to the periphery of China is one of many ways that Beijing extends its malign influence.

Anders Corr has a bachelor’s/master’s in political science from Yale University (2001) and a doctorate in government from Harvard University (2008). He is a principal at Corr Analytics Inc., publisher of the Journal of Political Risk, and has conducted extensive research in North America, Europe, and Asia. His latest books are “The Concentration of Power: Institutionalization, Hierarchy, and Hegemony” (2021) and “Great Powers, Grand Strategies: the New Game in the South China Sea” (2018).

https://www.theepochtimes.com/chinese-slavery-beyond-china_4841155.html

New Threats Revealed at China’s Zhuhai Airshow

Chinese J-20 stealth fighters of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) perform at the Airshow China 2022 in Zhuhai, in southern China’s Guangdong Province, on Nov. 8, 2022. (CNS/AFP via Getty Images)

Thinking About China

Rick Fisher

November 16, 2022

Commentary

Though canceled in 2020 due to COVID-19, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) dictatorship stages its Zhuhai air/ground/naval weapons show every two years, primarily to show to the United States, Japan, and Taiwan the accelerating military investments it will use to defeat Taiwan, and then subdue the United States and all other democracies on its way to global hegemony.

During its 14 th  Zhuhai Airshow on Nov. 8–13, China  formally displayed for the first time its fifth-generation fighter, revealed new air and sea-launched ballistic missiles to target the U.S. Navy, displayed scores of new unmanned combat systems and its progress with unmanned-manned integration, and revealed progress in securing hegemony over the moon.

Chengdu J-20

Though its political “first flight” was famously staged on Jan. 11, 2011, to embarrass visiting then-U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, the People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) Chengdu Aircraft Corporation’s (CAC) J-20 fifth-generation stealth air superiority fighter was formally displayed for the first time at the Zhuhai Airshow.

A Chinese J-20 stealth fighter of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) performs at the Airshow China 2022 in Zhuhai, in southern China’s Guangdong Province, on Nov. 8, 2022. (CNS/AFP via Getty Images)

Its flight line exposure allowed viewing of production numbers, allowing PLA aircraft expert Andreas Rupprecht to estimate for Defense News that J-20 production may now exceed 200. This fighter has greater maneuverability, range, and stealth protection than the fourth-generation fighters of Japan, Taiwan, and the United States.

In a speech on July 16, 2009, on justifying the production termination of the Lockheed-Martin F-22A, the most capable U.S. fifth-generation fighter, at 187, Gates said that China “is projected to have no fifth-generation aircraft by 2020.”

On the Zhuhai flight line, it was possible to see for the first time that the J-20’s airframe stealth paneling and coatings had a precision and finish that approached that of U.S. stealth fighters, likely aided by China’s late 2000s cyber espionage against Lockheed.

At a Nov. 8 press availability, former J-20 chief designer Dr. Yang Wei, who likely is now leading China’s sixth-generation fighter program, told Chinese reporters that there would be a second and a third version of the J-20.

In 2016, Yang coauthored a paper that proposed a bomber or strike version of the J-20. In the early 2000s, the U.S. Air Force briefly considered a larger FB-22 bomber version of the F-22A, but the George W. Bush administration rejected it.

For the first time at Zhuhai, the Aero Engine Corporation of China (AECC) displayed a model of a WS-10A fighter engine with a two-dimensional thrust vectoring system (TVC) as is used by the F-22A to confer “supermaneuverability,” which would be ideally suited for the closely mounted engines of the J-20.

New Anti-Ship Ballistic Missiles

The Zhuhai Airshow also revealed new air-launched and ship-launched ballistic missiles that could threaten Taiwan and U.S. Navy ships.

On Nov. 3, a Xian Aircraft Corporation (XAC) H-6K bomber arrived at Zhuhai with two large missiles on wing pylons. Though so far unidentified, they strongly resemble new second-generation short-range ballistic missiles that could have been made by the China Aerospace and Science Corporation (CASC) or the China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation (CASIC).

Taiwanese Air Force F-16 fighter jet flies alongside a Chinese People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) H-6K bomber in the western Pacific, one of the Chinese military aircraft that reportedly flew over Bashi Channel and Miyako Strait near Japan’s Okinawa island chain on the morning of May 11, 2018. (Taiwan ROC Air Force)

An H-6K may be able to carry up to four missiles. With an estimated air-launched range of over 300 miles and capable of low hypersonic speeds, they would pose a greater threat  than the CASIC 250-mile range and supersonic speed anti-ship YJ-12 cruise missile currently in use.

The threat to U.S. and allied ships also increased at Zhuhai with the revelation of two new anti-ship ballistic missiles (ASBMs): the CASC YJ-21, a two-stage missile seen in 2021 being launched from a Type 055 cruiser; and the first display of the CASIC CM-103, which resembles early versions of the U.S. Raytheon SM-6 surface-to-air-missile (SAM).

A missile is launched from an unspecified location in China on Aug. 4, 2022. The Chinese military fired missiles into waters near Taiwan as part of its planned exercises on Aug. 4. (CCTV via AP)

The respective ranges for these missiles were not revealed, but a future U.S. Army ballistic version of the SM-6 may have a range of 1,200 miles.

The PLA navy has over 2,300 vertical launch system (VLS) “tubes” on its cruisers, destroyers, and frigates that could further increase the saturation of U.S. Navy ships with land, air, and now sea-launched ASBMs.

Unmanned Weapons Proliferation

For over 20 years, since 2001, China has invested massively in the most conceivable unmanned weapon systems and displayed at Zhuhai that a second phase of joining manned and unmanned weapons operations is well underway.

China’s main PLA ground force weapons maker, China North Industries Group Corporation (NORINCO), displayed this melding of unmanned and manned military operations in a poster display of its “New Generation Brigade Combat Team,” in which seven out of ten battalions employed unmanned combat and/or surveillance systems in cooperation with manned weapons.

People watch a robotic dog at the Apsara Conference, a cloud computing and artificial intelligence (AI) conference, in Hangzhou, in China’s eastern Zhejiang Province, on Nov. 3, 2022. (STR/AFP via Getty Images)

Gaining some attention was a possible NORINCO four-leg “dog” robot armed with a QBB-97 light machine gun that can fire 650 rounds a minute—from a prone position.

As the United States and some of its allies are also working to develop new unmanned combat aerial vehicles (UCAVs) similar in size and performance to fighter aircraft, to accompany manned fighters, bombers, and support aircraft, China displayed at Zhuhai that similar efforts are underway.

A new version of the CASC FH-97A unmanned escort/strike fighter showed an evolution from the first version revealed at the 2021 Zhuhai show, stressing new sensors that could enable unmanned and potentially artificial intelligence-enabled, air-to-air combat capabilities.

The FH-97A, or the new fighter-size CAC CS-5000T flying wing UCAV, could also perform suppression of enemy air defense (SEAD) missions to assist manned strike aircraft missions or perform strike missions as well.

CAC also revealed its Wing Loong-3 (WL-3), a very large 13,600-pound, turboprop-powered UCAV with a 40-hour endurance to enforce a blockade or attack targets. This is almost three times the endurance of the U.S. General Atomics MQ-9 Reaper that the WL-3 resembles.

In addition, the Zhuhai show displayed scores of small vertical take-off UCAVs that could be used to surveil or bomb troops—much as Ukrainian and Russian forces are employing against each other—and many new wheeled and tracked unmanned ground vehicles equipped for combat and transport missions.

Moon Mission Clarity

China also used the Zhuhai show to reveal new details about its ambitions to send its people to the moon.

A visitor looks at the model of the Lunar landing return capsule during Explore CASCI (China Aerospace Science and Cultural Innovation) ART Exhibition in Wuhan, China, on Oct. 2, 2022. (Getty Images）

Timed with the show, a Nov. 8 article in the CCP’s China Youth Daily quoted Zhao Xinguo, head of the Aerospace Department of the First Academy of China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC), saying for the first time that China’s first manned space launch vehicle for lunar missions, now called the Long March-5G, could make its first flight by 2027.

This means that both the astronaut-carrying and manned moon lander versions of the 27 tons of cargo to the moon-capable Long March-5G could be tested in time potentially to enable the first Chinese manned mission to the moon by 2029.

This means that former President Barack Obama’s 2010 decision to cancel George W. Bush’s constellation moon program has likely aided China’s arrival on the moon within two to three years of the U.S.-planned 2026 or 2027 return to the moon.

In addition, Chinese sources also explained that a new version of the 50 tons to the moon Long March-9 would prioritize a reusable first stage, discarding previous versions that were not reusable.

As such, the United States will gain little “head start” in building a strategic position on the moon to help deter China’s militarization of the moon, meaning conflict on the moon becomes more likely.

Rick Fisher is a senior fellow at the International Assessment and Strategy Center.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/new-threats-revealed-at-chinas-zhuhai-airshow_4867274.html

China’s Interference in US Politics

U.S. President Joe Biden meets with Chinese leader Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the G20 leaders’ summit in Bali, Indonesia, on Nov. 14, 2022. (Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)

Thinking About China

Anders Corr

November 28, 2022

Commentary

America’s most powerful China  supporters include our top politicians, businesses, and academic institutions. Their interests are reflected by political groups, committees, centers, and think tanks supported by big money donations, investors, tuition, and media with financial links to the regime in Beijing.

Their relative silence about the dangers of an expansionist and totalitarian state that engages in genocide safeguards over $650 billion  in annual U.S.-China trade, and the $2.3 trillion  worth of U.S. institutional investment there.

America’s China elites seek the continuance of free trade with the country, and to that end, a minimization of conflict that requires backing down from American values. The principle of prioritizing China profits over the defense of democracies, the international rule of law, freedom, and human rights is also apparent in Europe, Africa, Latin America, and the rest of Asia. Countries and businesses thirst for short-term revenues and compromise their values as necessary.

Xi Jinping, China’s dictator, understands the dynamic, as did those who preceded him. Even though as a communist Xi tries to destroy capitalist free markets and what he sees as the capitalist imperialism of the United States and Europe, he will cooperate with individual business and political leaders in the short term if they, wittingly or not, serve the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) long-term goals. These include the replacement of U.S. “hegemony” with that of Beijing.

American elites help when they look the other way as Beijing captures territory and markets in Asia and forces technology transfers to China’s corporations, including through cybertheft and industrial espionage. These elites prove they are a “friend of China” by not supporting the independence of Taiwan, or mentioning the CCP’s human rights abuse, up to and including genocide. Extraordinary profits are reserved for companies that lobby for China in Washington.

A notable and criminal silence on the CCP ensues, which spreads from the president of the United States, who pulls his punches against Beijing, throughout the entire Congress and down to local levels. Politicians who complain about China’s abuses are portrayed as awkward rubes, thus threatening their campaign funding, political party support, and future political career.

U.S. Vice President Joe Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping toast during a State Luncheon for China hosted by US Secretary of State John Kerry at the Department of State in Washington on Sept. 25, 2015. (Paul J. Richards/AFP via Getty Images)

President Joe Biden is the best example. He climbed the political hierarchy, including through his “expertise” in foreign policy, by ticking all the right boxes. While Biden denied  that China would “eat our lunch” on the campaign trail as late as 2019, he reversed himself in 2021. But his 2021 focus was on beating China in domestic infrastructure and green technologies, neither of which Beijing sees as key battlefields for its goal of global hegemony.

Beijing wants the United States to spend taxpayer dollars on rail, roads, and electric vehicles that could help China if we buy from Chinese companies, or if trillions of dollars in government spending increases U.S. inflation, interest rates, and the risk of recession. It did all of that, which must have made Xi cheer, along with his allies in Moscow, Tehran, and Pyongyang.

The CCP uses influence  operations, election interference , and political warfare, to channel the United States into self-destructive economic and military backwaters. To this end, the CCP has a massive bureaucracy, called the United Front Work Department (UFWD), that controls organizations and individuals globally, and within China, to engage with any individual or group not a member of the CCP. That includes attempts to influence U.S. leadership. Even those not formally part of the UFWD can be used, as all Chinese nationals and companies are required to report intelligence back to Beijing whenever asked.

The CCP, including through the UFWD, has funded  political candidates and paid  millions in advertising to the world’s top newspapers. It threatens prominent dissenters globally, and pays or cooperates  with internet trolls, criminals, terrorists, and thugs. It organizes fake protests with paid protesters, and bribes heads of state with millions of dollars, both directly and indirectly through family and friendship networks.

“China is engaged in a highly sophisticated malign foreign influence campaign, and its methods include bribery, blackmail, and covert deals,” according to FBI director Christopher Wray in a 2020 speech . “Chinese diplomats also use both open, naked economic pressure and seemingly independent middlemen to push China’s preferences on American officials.”

The Joe Biden Case

Chinese operatives do their best to hide, but the evidence sometimes leaks through. It links the president and his family members to billions of dollars  worth of business with Chinese companies, including its biggest military contractor, a facial recognition company, and a defunct oil company caught in bribery scandals.

As vice president in 2013, Joe took his son Hunter on Air Force Two to China, helping boost his profile for Chinese business deals. Twelve days after the trip, a company called BHR Partners  was reportedly registered. BHR is controlled and mostly funded by large Chinese companies. Hunter became one of the company’s nine directors. BHR did approximately $2.5 billion worth of business by 2019. That year, Hunter owned 10 percent of the company.

Hunter Biden walks to Marine One on the Ellipse outside the White House in Washington on May 22, 2021. (Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images)

One of Hunter’s business associates claims  that Joe participated with Hunter and James Biden, Joe’s younger brother, in one of the China-linked businesses called SinoHawk. The associate, Anthony Bobulinski, has text messages that he says show plans for 10 percent of that venture to be held by Hunter for Joe “the big guy” Biden.

In one of the deals, involving China’s oil company CEFC, Hunter admitted that its chairman sent a 2.8 carat diamond  to Hunter’s hotel room. The 2017 gift was a “thank you” for a single dinner conversation. Hunter, a lawyer, agreed during that conversation to represent a CEFC affiliate, Patrick Ho, who the FBI ultimately investigated for bribery of heads of state in Africa.

Hunter negotiated almost $5 million  in retainers and consulting fees. CEFC agreed to pay Hunter $100,000 a month, and to pay James $65,000 a month. Hunter reportedly requested  keys to a shared office with CEFC in Washington for Joe, James, and a Chinese executive.

It is hard to imagine that Hunter and James would have these highly lucrative opportunities without Joe’s support and political prominence.

The FBI arrested Ho at JFK airport a few months after Hunter agreed to represent him. Ho’s first call seeking help was to James, who referred him to Hunter. In 2019, Ho was convicted  of paying bribes amounting to millions of dollars to African leaders.

There has been next to no accountability of the Biden family’s questionable China relations. Republicans, who won control of the House of Representatives in November, plan  a major investigation.

The Trump, Bush, and Clinton families have also had links to China business. The failure of Congress to thoroughly investigate these cross-party sources of malign foreign influence is an indicator of the power of Beijing’s enduring influence in Washington.

The Eric Swalwell Case

Congress should dig as deep as they can because China’s influence affects not only the top rungs of presidential politics but all the way down to the local level.

The most prominent example is Congressman Eric Swalwell  (D-Calif.), allegedly identified as a rising star by China’s civilian intelligence agency, the Ministry of State Security (MSS), when he was just a city council member in a small Bay Area town. He and other U.S. politicians were caught in a money-honey trap that a suspected Chinese spy, Christine Fang, conducted from 2011 to 2015.  Axios broke the story.

Christine Fang with then-Dublin City Councilmember Eric Swalwell at an October 2012 student event. (Screenshot/Social media)

Fang first approached Swalwell when he was Dublin City council member in 2012. At the time, Fang was a student at a nearby university. She was also president of its Chinese Student Association and headed its chapter of the Asian Pacific Islander American Public Affairs (APAPA)  group, which promotes Asian-American and Islander political involvement. She used the latter title in most of her politicking.

Of course, all U.S. citizens regardless of race should be encouraged to vote and get involved in politics. American democracy is strong because of its diversity, including the involvement of its Asian and Pacific Islander communities. But APAPA allowed a non-U.S. citizen of an adversary nation into a leadership position. If its website is any indication, it is biased towards communist China just as are many mainstream politicians.

China is mentioned on over 60 of its website pages. Only two mention Taiwan. None of its pages mention Uyghurs or the genocide against them. None mention the sensitive topics of Tibet or the Falun Gong. The bias is clear and the civil society conduit for China’s intelligence services to use identity politics for its malign purposes should be addressed by Congress.

Chinese consulates around the world often have a decisive influence on who leads Chinese student associations abroad, so Fang’s leadership position in her two student organizations may not have been entirely coincidental. Her real reason for being in the United States, according to U.S. officials quoted by Axios, was to influence U.S. politicians on China-related issues, and to gather sensitive political intelligence, including highly personal data about politicians that is otherwise unavailable to the public.

Fang’s method for breaking into political circles was to invite politicians and business people to speak at her student events and there mingle with Chinese consulate officials. She exuded a sense of wealth, driving a white Mercedes and traveling to regional and national conferences, rallies, and at least one event held by the Chinese embassy in Washington.

She volunteered at political offices, and used her links to politicians to place possibly unwitting subagents with them as interns or staff, according to Axios. She helped with fundraising events and introduced donors to candidates.

Fang’s strategy paralleled Chinese and Russian operations before and after. A successful MSS operation in the 2000s placed a staff member in House Speaker Dianne Feinstein ’s office. Another in the Bay Area sent local politicians to China on all-expenses-paid junkets. Russia uses a similar strategy, for example, Maria Butina ’s attempted infiltration of conservative groups, including the National Rifle Association, to influence the 2016 elections.

Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) listens as Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) speaks during a news conference on the introduction of their Protection from Abusive Passengers Act at the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington on April 6, 2022. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

Fang reportedly volunteered her election fundraising for the politicians she sought to influence over the long term, hoping their careers would later take off. On at least two occasions, with Midwestern politicians, she allegedly engaged in romance, including “a sexual encounter with an Ohio mayor in a car that was under electronic FBI surveillance … the mayor asked why Fang was interested in him, [and] Fang told him she wanted to improve her English,” according to a U.S. official quoted by Axios.

Swalwell was ultimately Fang’s most successful mark. Elected to the House of Representatives in 2012, by 2015 he was appointed to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

Fang acted as a fundraising “bundler” for Swalwell’s 2014 re-election. She introduced donors to him and placed an intern in his Washington office. While Swalwell refuses to answer questions from the media about whether he had a sexual relationship with Fang, she was close enough to him to become Facebook friends with his father and brother.

In 2015, the FBI warned Swalwell about Fang, and he cut ties. She abruptly left the country, but there are reportedly many more like her.

Bottom Line: Remove Political Access for Adversaries

The bottom line requirement to defeat China’s political influence in the United States should be tougher laws against foreign influence from adversary nations. That means no more Chinese state media ads in our newspapers. No more of Beijing’s troll armies allowed on our social media. No more campaign donations, bundlers, or political family business with adversary-linked individuals and companies. Businesses and universities that rely on China-linked revenues should admit their conflict of interest and recuse themselves from lobbying for soft-on-China policies.

Loopholes  in existing laws, around the world, must be closed. China finds it too easy, especially because of its economic heft, to influence global politics in a manner that will eventually lead to its own hegemony.

Anders Corr has a bachelor’s/master’s in political science from Yale University (2001) and a doctorate in government from Harvard University (2008). He is a principal at Corr Analytics Inc., publisher of the Journal of Political Risk, and has conducted extensive research in North America, Europe, and Asia. His latest books are “The Concentration of Power: Institutionalization, Hierarchy, and Hegemony” (2021) and “Great Powers, Grand Strategies: the New Game in the South China Sea” (2018).

https://www.theepochtimes.com/chinas-interference-in-us-politics_4889463.html

Terror Along China’s Belt and Road

Security guards walk past a billboard for the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation at the forum’s venue in Beijing on May 13, 2017. (Wang Zhao/AFP via Getty Images)

Thinking About China

Terror Along China’s Belt and Road

Along with the BRI’s financial problems, it also faces terrorism

Milton Ezrati

December 6, 2022

Commentary

Chinese leader Xi Jinping must feel like he is playing a game of whack-a-mole. After years of easy political, economic, and diplomatic gains, he has more recently had to deal with a series of problems, one popping up after another.

His draconian COVID-19 policies have set back the economy and now have given rise to public discontent.

For over a year, China  has had to cope with cascading financial strains set loose by the failure of the real estate giant Evergrande, a serious matter to which Beijing has only recently and belatedly responded.

It has become increasingly clear in recent months that the once-vaunted Belt and Road  Initiative ( BRI , also known as “One Belt, One Road”) faces financial problems that raise questions about its viability. And if that were not enough, rates of terrorism along the BRI have also begun to increase costs and add to worries about viability.

Earlier columns in this space have investigated many of these matters. Several pieces have criticized Beijing for its tepid and sluggish response to the financial dangers imposed by the failure of Evergrande and other property developers. Other columns have chronicled the ill effects on the economy arising from the COVID lockdowns and quarantines. A recent discussion dwelt on the financial difficulties within the BRI and how Beijing has had to swallow its pride and seek help from Western powers to manage the defaults among BRI client nations. Now, it is time to look at the weight of terrorism on this initiative, once proudly touted by Beijing as world-altering .

The BRI’s greatest terror problems have arisen in Pakistan. That country is, of course, particularly plagued by terrorism, but it is also one of the BRI’s biggest participants. The most recent incident concerns a bomb detonated at the gates of Karachi University’s Chinese Language and Culture Institute, which houses the region’s Confucius Institute. The bomb killed the terrorist as well as a Pakistani driver. It also killed three Chinese teachers and severely injured a fourth teacher. Reports indicate that Beijing has evacuated the entire Chinese faculty. A terrorist group, the Baloch Liberation Army, from Pakistan’s troubled northwest region, claimed responsibility.

This is only the most prominent event. Chinese nationals have been widely targeted for some time. In 2021, the Taliban tried to assassinate China’s ambassador to Pakistan with a bomb that devastated a hotel. The ambassador only barely escaped death. In the northern part of the country, terrorists attacked a bus carrying Chinese nationals to the site where the BRI was constructing a dam. Nine Chinese and four Pakistanis died.

In Karachi, a crowd attacked a dental clinic run by Chinese nationals, killing one employee and wounding the elderly dentist on site. The Baloch Liberation Army has attacked the Chinese Consulate in Karachi as well as the stock exchange because, the terrorists claimed, it is controlled by Chinese interests.

According to reporters on the ground, much public unrest seethes around the BRI-built port in Gwadar because it does not help the impoverished locals and is underused, serving on average only three ships a week. Threats all but closed the port  earlier this month.

Laborers walk through Gwadar port in Pakistan on Oct. 4, 2017. (Amelie Herenstein/AFP/Getty Images)

However significant Pakistan is, terrorism has occurred elsewhere as well. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where Chinese interests completely dominate mining, the Chinese community has frequently complained of armed attacks and kidnappings. Nigerian terrorists kidnapped four Chinese mine workers  in June. In October, according to the Chinese Consulate in Lagos, locals attacked several Chinese businesses, killing one Chinese national.

According to the Washington-based Oxus Society for Central Asian Affairs, China was the focus of 160 incidents of terrorism or civil unrest between 2018 and mid-2021. In one sense, none of this is surprising. China has, after all, become the largest lender to the developing world and has some 440,000 nationals working abroad, 93,500 in Africa alone.

So far, Beijing, though acknowledging the terrorist threat, has refused to back away from its BRI. At least it makes that claim on the terrorism front. It has already paused growth in the program for financial reasons. Qian Feng, a senior fellow at Tsinghua University’s National Strategy Institute, commented on the terrorism, insisting that China “can’t wait for an end to terrorist activities before starting new projects,” The Wall Street Journal reported. This kind of commitment received support in a recent visit to Beijing by Pakistan’s new prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif.

Still, there can be no mistake that the terror has raised the cost of the BRI for both China and participating countries. Several Chinese business interest interests have already cited terrorism as a reason not to participate. So far, Beijing has resisted using its own military for security. However, there is ample evidence that it has employed independent security contractors to protect its “silk road,” what one author described as a “ private army .”

China has already put pressure on host countries to step up security, something these impoverished nations can ill afford. Pakistan, for example, reports detailing 30,000 troops for this purpose—no small expense.

China, in challenging Western influence, seems to have brought the same animus as the United States and the ex-colonial European powers face. Despite this unlooked-for development, none of this will stop the BRI. Beijing has already invested too much diplomatic capital and the project to allow that. But with terrorism on top of serious defaults and renegotiations, the pace of advance will slow appreciably. The BRI will not be the world changer that Beijing claimed for it and that the West feared.

Milton Ezrati is a contributing editor at The National Interest, an affiliate of the Center for the Study of Human Capital at the University at Buffalo (SUNY), and chief economist for Vested, a New York-based communications firm. Before joining Vested, he served as chief market strategist and economist for Lord, Abbett & Co. He also writes frequently for City Journal and blogs regularly for Forbes. His latest book is “Thirty Tomorrows: The Next Three Decades of Globalization, Demographics, and How We Will Live.”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/terror-along-chinas-belt-and-road_4905796.html

China Weaponizes the WTO Against America

A billboard promotes China’s membership to the World Trade Organization (WTO) along a street in Beijing on July 17, 2001. (Goh Chai Hin/AFP/Getty Images)

Thinking About China

Anders Corr

December 14, 2022

Commentary

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China just beat the United States at the World Trade Organization ( WTO ) on steel tariffs  and is trying to do it a second time on computer chip export controls .

On Dec. 12, China’s Ministry of Commerce filed a new WTO complaint against the controls. Beijing claims they are trade protectionism, when it should be obvious that they contribute to developing U.S. defenses against the Chinese regime’s military aggression.

And the supposed division between economic protection and military defense is now too muddled to act upon, given the developing cold war with China. As former President Donald Trump’s economic team recognized as early as 2018, economic security is national security .

The U.S. government thus rightly argues that computer chips are a national security issue, which exempts them from WTO jurisdiction. They need not prove their military relevance to do so, but that adds heft to the argument.

The next revolution in military technology is using supercomputers for militarized artificial intelligence (AI) and weapons modeling, for example, hypersonic missiles and nuclear explosions. The latest super-fast miniaturized chips—ideal for everything from AI to tiny drones—are produced by cutting-edge American, Japanese, and Dutch technologies. If the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) acquires them, the tech could destroy the existing American-led international security system.

National security arguments also apply to Trump’s 2018 tariffs  that protect what’s left of American steel and aluminum production. They have protected $22 billion  of new steel investment since their introduction, which, together with aluminum and rare earth elements (REE), should be used to help fund and build a next-generation U.S. Army, Navy, and Air Force.

China wiped out  U.S. dominance of metals production in the 2010s through dumping, subsidies, and flooding of global markets. The Chinese regime and Russia continue to seek opportunities to stab us and our allies in the back, as proven by Beijing’s economic sanctions against Australia, the Philippines, Lithuania, and Taiwan, and Russia’s attempts to leverage Europe’s reliance on its liquified natural gas.

The United States and Europe, entranced by free trade fundamentalism, were slow to perceive the threat, react, and adjust long-term economic strategies. Then, Trump broke the spell with his China tariffs. Europe is still kicking and screaming over them rather than creating a united front against Beijing’s genocidal totalitarianism.

To beat the CCP, democracies must have an independent, if not dominant technological and industrial ecosystem, including the full manufacturing spectrum from heavy industry and metals to AI-optimized chip design and biotechnologies. The minimum is a reliable supply chain resilient to emergencies, like wars and pandemics, across all industries that feed democratic economies.

US Hardball at the WTO

Thankfully, and due to Trump’s refusal to appoint judges to the WTO Appellate “Body” (read: Supreme Court), that court is currently defunct. The United States can now stymie China’s WTO cases by appealing them to a court that cannot take action.

The Biden administration is also not pulling out of the WTO, which would hand even more of its power to Beijing. Neither is President Joe Biden appointing a new WTO judge who would revive it from limbo. Good for him.

This strategy must be maintained despite complaints from Beijing, Brussels, free trade fundamentalists, and economists who tend to ignore national security arguments. They apparently can’t see the economic threat of the CCP abusing international institutions to proceed toward its ultimately illiberal goal of global hegemony.

Once countries like China and Russia cease to be national security threats, most optimistically by democratizing, we can safely return to the elegant economies and peacetime luxuries of unmitigated free trade. Meanwhile, our hardball must get harder.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin pose for photos on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) leaders’ summit in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, on Sept. 15, 2022. (Alexandr Demyanchuk/Sputnik/AFP via Getty Images)

Eject China From WTO

We should kick China out of the WTO and other international organizations to reform the international system away from autocratic influence, and to better protect the economic and national security of democracies. This may seem a bridge too far, but the CCP’s rapidly growing power makes it imperative.

China was admitted to the WTO and other international institutions on the explicit assumption that it would play fair and progress its political system toward democracy, improved human rights, and away from territorial aggression. Instead, Beijing stole our technology, took our money, invaded neighboring territories, appointed Xi Jinping dictator-for-life, innovated a technological gulag for its own citizens, and continued genocide against the Tibetans, Falun Gong adherents, and most recently, the Uyghurs. The CCP has failed on all counts.

As Sen. Tom Cotton  (R-Ark.) wrote on Dec. 8: “We should return to the pre-WTO status quo that recognized China as a non-market, communist country, to which I would add now committing genocide against its own people. If we do this, we can begin to fix the historic mistake that our leaders made 20 years ago, when they welcomed China into the WTO with open arms and open wallets—and unleashed that dragon upon the world.”

Most political leaders are taking too long to realize this and respond with the toughest of economic actions against communist China. Delay could be fatal. Let’s pick up the pace.

Anders Corr has a bachelor’s/master’s in political science from Yale University (2001) and a doctorate in government from Harvard University (2008). He is a principal at Corr Analytics Inc., publisher of the Journal of Political Risk, and has conducted extensive research in North America, Europe, and Asia. His latest books are “The Concentration of Power: Institutionalization, Hierarchy, and Hegemony” (2021) and “Great Powers, Grand Strategies: the New Game in the South China Sea” (2018).

https://www.theepochtimes.com/china-weaponizes-the-wto-against-america_4922416.html

Chinese Human Rights Propaganda Must Be Continually Exposed

Protesters recreate human rights abuses taking place in Chinese prisons. (Jarrod Hall/The Epoch Times)

Thinking About China

Stu Cvrk

December 15, 2022

Commentary

State-run Chinese media propaganda that brags about China’s “respect for human rights ” is endless—and annoying.

The absurdity of their continuing patently false claims makes one wonder whether the editors at the likes of China Daily can keep a straight face when they publish such drivel: “China’s ideas, measures, and practices in respecting and protecting human rights can offer inspiration for the rest of the world.”

Are long-suffering Chinese ethnic and religious minorities “inspired” by decades of relentless Chinese Communist Party ( CCP ) persecution?

A few reminders are in order, as countering communist Chinese propaganda with the facts is a critical element in the ongoing psychological warfare perpetrated by the CCP against the rest of the world.

Background

What are basic human rights? Here’s a short list from Human Rights World  that is especially pertinent to communist China and consistent with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights  that the United Nations General Assembly drafted in 1948:

- The right to life and liberty.

- Freedom from slavery, torture, and inhumane treatment.

- Freedom of opinion and expression.

- The right to privacy (protections from excessive surveillance).

- The right to freedom of thought, religion, opinion, and expression.

The Chinese regime’s record on ensuring these basic human rights is criminal. There is no other way to say it—and that record has been atrocious from the beginning of the CCP’s control of China in 1949.

In the early 1950s, the CCP forcibly expropriated the property of tens of millions as they transitioned the country into a socialist system.

In the mid-1950s, CCP leader Mao Zedong launched the Anti-Rightist campaign , which resulted in the purging and forced reeducation of approximately 550,000 minor officials, intellectuals, academics, and others.

In the late-1950s, Mao instituted the Great Leap Forward  (1958–61) aimed at “rapid industrialization and collectivization” of the Chinese economy. The resulting disruptions resulted in the Great Chinese Famine  and an estimated death toll of between 18 million and 55 million people.

In the late-1960s, the last of Mao’s criminal initiatives perpetrated against the Chinese people was the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution  (1966–71). The paranoid Mao aimed the repression against internal enemies, which involved purging China and the CCP of capitalists, traditionalists (dynastic adherents, Buddhists, Confucians, etc.), and other so-called enemies of the state. The abuses included public humiliation, arbitrary imprisonment, torture, sustained harassment, seizure of property, and the displacement of 17 million young Chinese from urban to rural areas through the Down to the Countryside Movement .

A poster in late 1966 in Beijing features how to deal with so-called enemies of the people during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. (Jean Vincent/AFP/Getty Images)

In parallel to the above human rights abuses, the CCP implemented a policy to reeducate all ethnic minority groups in China as stereotypical Han Chinese, with their native languages and cultures brutally suppressed by the CCP.

The Tibetans were among the first minority groups to suffer from that campaign. Their travails are summarized by The Tibet  Post: “According to the Central Tibetan Administration, ‘Tibetans were not only shot, but also were beaten to death, crucified, burned alive, drowned, mutilated, starved, strangled, hanged, boiled alive, buried alive, drawn and quartered, and beheaded.’”

The horrific actions by the CCP resulted in the deaths of an estimated 1.2 million Tibetans since 1950, the looting and destruction of 6,000 monasteries and temples, and historical structures in Tibet, and the colonization of Tibet by more than 8 million Chinese to ensure Han Chinese domination of Tibetan culture.

The cultural genocide  in Tibet was extended to other minority groups in China, including Mongolian Buddhists , Uyghur Muslims, and Falun Gong  adherents. One million of the 11 million Uyghurs  in Xinjiang have been detained in so-called reeducation camps under the current CCP leader, Xi Jinping. In January 2021, the U.S. State Department designated the CCP’s persecution and abuse of Uyghurs as genocide .

Condemnation of the above continuing human rights abuses—and many other persecutions, unlawful detentions, and torturings—have been roundly condemned by governments and international organizations that monitor human rights abuses worldwide. A tiny sampling includes the following:

The nonprofit Human Rights Foundation published a 2021 report titled “ 100 Years of Suppression, ” which assessed the CCP’s suppression tactics in the Xinjiang region, Tibet, and Hong Kong.

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom  condemned the Chinese regime’s persecution of Tibetan Buddhist monks in 2008.

The World Organisation Against Torture  condemned China’s “failure to sign the optional protocols to the Convention Against Torture and to prevent arbitrary detention, torture, and the killing of prisoners.”

Thirty-nine countries condemned abuses of Uyghurs  in 2020; the number grew to 50  in 2022.

In July 2021, the U.S. Department of Commerce added 14 Chinese firms to the Entity List for being complicit in Beijing’s “campaign of repression, mass detention, and high technology surveillance against Uyghurs, ethnic Kazakhs, and other members of Muslim minority groups in Xinjiang,” according to a State Department report .

Human Rights Watch  (HRW) continues to condemn Chinese oppression in its annual reports.

Chinese Reactions

Chinese sensitivity to the above condemnations of Chinese human rights abuses cannot be understated, as the international reports strike at the heart of the CCP’s decades-long attempts to establish the legitimacy of the Chinese communist regime. After all, such blatant human rights abuses are not the actions of legitimate governments.

Falun Gong  practitioners raise awareness about organ harvesting and other human rights crimes in China, with residents and tourists in Santa Monica, Calif., on July 17. (Xu Touhui/The Epoch Times)

Chinese diplomats and state-run media have reflexively tried to deny, deflect, shift blame, and even redefine basic human rights “with Chinese characteristics.” Examples are provided here , here , here , and here . That last linked item is titled “China ensures protection of human rights.” Talk about a bald-faced lie in the face of the above reports of human rights abuses in China, not to mention the historically documented atrocities committed during the Mao Zedong era!

The China Daily article cited at the beginning of this essay is just the latest attempt to claim that communist China is a “beacon” for human rights development. Two items presented in that article are absurd. The first cites a joint report from the China Foundation for Human Rights Development and the New China Research under Xinhua News Agency (!) that claims that “China’s outlook on human rights has been continuously enriched and improved in practice, with its own perspectives and ideological connotations, based on the actual conditions of the country.”

This is typical communist gobbledygook without any specifics—certainly nothing that specifically addresses the basic human rights listed above. This circular argument from a communist-controlled entity implies that human rights are improving in China when Uyghurs, Tibetans, and other persecuted minorities know differently from first-hand experience.

The second item cites the U.N.’s Human Development Index, which “showed China had risen from a score of 0.499 in 1990 to 0.761 in 2019, lifting the nation into the tier of countries with high human development.”

That’s a typical communist sleight-of-hand maneuver, as the HDI has nothing to do with human rights. The U.N. defines  the HDI as a measure of three factors: “a long and healthy life, being knowledgeable, and having a decent standard of living. … It does not reflect on inequalities, poverty, human security, empowerment, etc.” Or on any measures that quantify and assess the basic human rights in the U.N.’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Concluding Thoughts

While China watchers are well aware of Chinese communist tricks, lies, and propaganda on wide-ranging subjects, including basic human rights and CCP-instigated cultural genocides, it is important to play “whack-a-mole” in countering all propaganda statements from state-run Chinese media whenever they are made.

The CCP is engaged in open psychological warfare against the world and must be countered at every turn to hearten the oppressed minorities and to inform the ordinary people of the truth about human rights abuses in China.

Stu Cvrk retired as a captain after serving 30 years in the U.S. Navy in a variety of active and reserve capacities, with considerable operational experience in the Middle East and the Western Pacific. Through education and experience as an oceanographer and systems analyst, Cvrk is a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, where he received a classical liberal education that serves as the key foundation for his political commentary.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/chinese-human-rights-propaganda-must-be-continually-exposed_4908432.html

The China Threat Is Nonpartisan

The Capitol building in Washington on June 16, 2021. (Samuel Corum/Getty Images)

Thinking About China

Bradley A. Thayer

December 16, 2022

Commentary

The movement by state governors and legislators from South Dakota to New York to ban the TikTok app from state phones, and the bipartisan effort to do the same by Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Reps. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) and Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.), as well as the National Development Strategy and Coordination Act bill introduced by Rubio and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), shows that the China  threat and the U.S. response should be a nonpartisan issue.

The bill would work to reverse decades of offshoring U.S. manufacturing. The solutions to the vulnerabilities in supply chains—from the industrial base to personal protective equipment and pharmaceuticals—that the COVID-19 pandemic revealed are advanced in this Act. The national project to restore U.S. manufacturing leadership is urgently needed.

What is positive about this development is far beyond the bill’s merits. It is bipartisanship of the Rubio-Khanna’s proposed legislation and growing moment to ban TikTok. That is a significant step forward in considering the China threat.

Communist China’s rise has hurt the overwhelming number of Americans, be they Democrats, Republicans, or Independents, not only because of intellectual property theft and lost manufacturing and its impact on union households and other workers throughout the land. Beijing’s rise has given it the military capability to present a threat to the United States and its allies.

The Chinese regime’s growing diplomatic influence—as witnessed most recently by Xi Jinping’s meetings in Saudi Arabia with Mohammed bin Salman and other Arab leaders—is placing considerable strain on the traditional allies and partners of the United States. But it also challenges its vision for international politics. For Americans who seek to sustain the liberal international order or even for those who seek major changes in that order, communist China’s rise is bad news.

For Americans who want to sustain the current U.S. position in the world, including many in Democratic and Republican leadership, the Chinese regime is an explicit threat to it as Beijing labors to replace it with the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) vision of global politics, which is antithetical to freedom and Western conceptions of human rights.

For progressive Democrats, the CCP’s vision is also disastrous. Chinese performance in the Global South is defined by the exploitation of people and the environment. The CCP’s treatment of its ethnic, religious, women, and sexual minorities is atrocious. Thus, were the United States to lose its dominant position, it would lose the ability to advance progressivism in global politics, including the ability to influence allies, international organizations, and even foes to adopt its principles and to be judged by them.

Progressivism will acknowledge that Beijing has made no changes to its treatment of its minorities or women or cultural attitudes and racism toward darker-complexioned people. That is particularly salient at a time of the U.S.-African leader summit when a key item on the agenda was to check Chinese influence in Africa by demonstrating that the United States is a better partner in relationships with African states.

Fundamentally, what is especially worrying is the CCP’s radically different ideology. This includes the deeply rooted racialized worldview of racism and Han supremacy that informs China’s domestic and foreign policies, as well as how the regime treats the non-Han. This is particularly the case for the minority groups in the country that directly or indirectly challenge Han supremacy, notably the Kazakh, Kyrgyz, and Uyghur minorities in Xinjiang. In essence, Han supremacy and even race-based and eugenicist beliefs heavily influence how the Chinese see the world.

Chinese policemen push Uyghur women who are protesting in Urumqi, Xinjiang, China, on July 7, 2009. (Guang Niu/Getty Images)

In fact, if China supplants the United States, the rest of the world will have to adapt to the CCP’s ideology and the norms and principles it advances. This means that those who support the present international liberal order, developed largely by Great Britain and the United States after World War II, are likely to find it more difficult to advance and defend fundamental Western liberal conceptions of free trade, individual liberty, and human rights. Equally, progressives will face far greater difficulty advancing their norms and principles.

American cultural, economic, and political elites, be they supporters of liberalism or progressivism, have yet to consider fully what will be lost if, indeed, communist China were to become the world’s dominant state and just how different the world would be.

Accordingly, Americans of all political stripes should unite behind a nonpartisan identification as the CCP is the existential threat to American society, economy, scientific and technological leadership, and global position. The result should be bipartisan support for strengthening American industry and the security of critical supply chains, ending Wall Street’s investment in Chinese entities, particularly those associated with the Chinese military and the Muslim genocide in Xinjiang. Americans should unite behind partners, like India, that face a direct territorial threat from Beijing, including recent significant clashes along their disputed Himalayan border.

Equally, Americans should support Taiwan as a robust democracy that demonstrates daily an alternative political system for the Chinese people suffering under the rule of the CCP. As U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s August visit to Taipei demonstrated, both parties stand with Taiwan against the threat from Beijing. The routinization of visits from the new House leadership would be valuable, ideally in conjunction with Senate leadership as well.

While Americans possess considerable differences over which they disagree, while there are many reasons to be partisan in Washington, the China threat is not one of them. The bipartisan identification of the risks of the TikTok app and the cooperation between Rubio, Gallagher, Krishnamoorthi, and Khanna, respectively, are benchmarks for continued progress in addressing U.S. vulnerabilities in the multifaceted Sino-American confrontation. A nonpartisan threat deserves a similar response.

Bradley A. Thayer is co-author of “Understanding the China Threat” and director of China Policy at the Center for Security Policy.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/the-china-threat-is-nonpartisan_4923904.html

The Sobering Truth About 5G

Richard Yu (Yu Chengdong), head of Huawei’s consumer business, speaks during the presentation of a Kirin 990 5G chip set at the international electronics and innovation fair IFA in Berlin on Sept. 6, 2019. (Tobias Schwarz/AFP via Getty Images)

Thinking About China

John Mac Ghlionn

December 19, 2022

Commentary

The United States and China  are at war. This war, however, is a little different from previous wars. It’s a tech war : drones, artificial intelligence, cyber operations, the list goes on.

A major factor driving the war is 5G ; this has been the case for at least four years . As I write this, both countries are actively embracing the new technology, which, as the piece demonstrates, will dramatically change the world of tomorrow—not necessarily for the better.

For the uninitiated, 5G  is the latest iteration of cellular technology, designed to increase the speed, capacity, and responsiveness of wireless networks. According to analysts at Boston Consulting Group  (BCG), over the next decade, 5G could create as many as 1 million new jobs and contribute roughly half a billion dollars to U.S. GDP. Last year, the global 5G market reached $2.25 billion ; five years from now, it’s expected to be worth $14.57 billion.

Another group of analysts at Kearney, a global consultant managing firm, believes 5G will play a crucial role  in the United States’ future. They insist that embracing the technology will help the country realize three particular national objectives. First, 5G will transition the U.S. economy into the Fourth Industrial Revolution, which will, according to the good people at Davos , transform the way we live and work. Second, the Kearney analysts predict that 5G will likely “promote a stronger, more innovative, and more competitive business landscape.” This embrace of 5G could help create more “sustainable and high-paying jobs.” Finally, by providing increased access to the online world, the technology will greatly benefit local communities and those residing in underserved areas. Hooray, some will say, let the 5G party commence. Not so fast.

There are growing concerns in the United States  and beyond  that 5G networks could interfere with airplanes’ altimeters. These instruments are critical in measuring height during takeoff and landing operations.

Which begs the question: Why are the people who question the safety of fifth-generation networks so often met with ridicule and scorn , even when we have no reason to believe  that 5G is safe?

A Dreamliner 787-10 arriving from Los Angeles pulls up to a gate at Newark Liberty International Airport in Newark, N.J., on Jan. 7, 2019. (Seth Wenig/AP Photo)

One needn’t be a crazed conspiracy theorist  to question the safety of this brand-new, largely untested technology.

5G networks produce radio-frequency electromagnetic fields (EMFs), which are used to transmit information. In 2018, more than 240 highly-respected scientists signed the International EMF Scientist Appeal , warning that a number of “recent scientific publications have shown that EMF affects living organisms at levels well below most international and national guidelines.”

Such effects “include increased cancer risk, cellular stress, increase in harmful free radicals, genetic damages, structural and functional changes of the reproductive system, learning and memory deficits, neurological disorders, and negative impacts on general well-being in humans.” EMFs are not just damaging to the human race, they are also harmful to “both plant and animal life,” they added.

Moreover, as the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) previously warned, exposure to radiofrequency radiation (RFR) is “possibly carcinogenic to humans.”  5G and RFR are inextricably linked . The National Toxicology Program (NTP), an inter-agency program run by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, found a clear link between exposure to RFR and increased cancer risk .

Besides the health risks associated with the technology, 5G networks are extremely hackable. As IEEE Spectrum first reported , a hacker at a conference held in the Netherlands last July told those in attendance that he and his team had managed to breach 5G networks. The hackers had full control of the network as well as access to sensitive data.

Now, as the United States invests more money  in this new technology, one wonders what a 5G cyberattack would look like.

A member of the hacking group Red Hacker Alliance uses his computer at their office in Dongguan, China’s southern Guangdong Province, on Aug. 4, 2020. As the number of online devices surges and super-fast 5G connections roll out, record numbers of companies are offering up to seven-figure rewards to ethical hackers who can successfully attack their cybersecurity systems. (Nicolas Asfouri/AFP via Getty Images)

In short, pretty bad. You see, 5G is set to power the Internet of Things  (IoT), including automated vehicles and smart cities. The IoT describes physical objects with sensors and software capable of “speaking with each other” (transferring data). This allows smart devices—including phones, cars, TVs, heart rate monitors, and even garage doors—to communicate.

Unfortunately, the IoT, like 5G, comes with a host of security risks , making these “talking” devices easy prey for millions of hackers worldwide. In 2017, CNN published a disturbing piece  discussing St. Jude Medical’s implantable cardiac devices. According to the report, these devices possessed “vulnerabilities that could allow a hacker to access a device.” Once in, hackers “could deplete the battery or administer incorrect pacing or shocks.”

5G will also  lay the foundation for autonomous driving. That’s bad news for us, the innocent civilians. But it’s great news for hackers. Automated vehicles can also be hacked— relatively easily , I might add. The same goes for so-called smart cities , which will also be powered by 5G . Experts believe smart city technologies will eventually touch every corner  of the United States.

It’s important to remember that of all the countries in the world, China, the United States’ No. 1 enemy, is home to the largest number of hackers . As tensions between the United States and China continue to escalate, security experts expect Chinese hackers to target the United States more regularly and with even greater ferocity. The hackers won’t just target branches of government; they’ll likely target towns and cities across the country. We already live in a hacker’s paradise . As we rely more on 5G, expect the bad actors to prosper and security breaches to become even more severe.

John Mac Ghlionn is a researcher and essayist. He covers psychology and social relations, and has a keen interest in social dysfunction and media manipulation. His work has been published by the New York Post, The Sydney Morning Herald, Newsweek, National Review, and The Spectator US, among others.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/the-sobering-truth-about-5g_4918025.html