Tag: China

Nonprofit ‘Building Bridges’ Between China and U.S. Heartland Has Deep Ties to Communist Party Influence Network

Minnesota Sun Staff
Farm House

A politically-connected Midwestern nonprofit focused on “building bridges” with China has extensive ties to groups and individuals who are affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) influence arm, the Daily Caller News Foundation has found.

The Missouri-based United States Heartland China Association (USHCA), a 501(c)3 bipartisan organization, characterizes its mission as “building bridges and promoting opportunities” between U.S. officials and businesses in Midwestern states and China. USHCA runs a number of U.S.-China programs, including agricultural roundtables, business seminars, student forums and political junkets to China.

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Commentary: The Pandemic Treaty That Won’t Prevent a Pandemic

RealClearWire
World Health Organization

If a “pandemic treaty” fails to account for the dismal international response to COVID-19 and isn’t focused on preventing future pandemics, is it really a “pandemic treaty”? Yet that’s the current state of the draft “pandemic treaty” being negotiated under the auspices of the World Health Organization (WHO).

The failures of the international health system’s response to COVID are well-established. The People’s Republic of China failed to inform the international community of the outbreak in a timely manner as required by the International Health Regulations – a provision established because of Beijing’s cover-up of the 2002 outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). China mischaracterized COVID-19 saying that there was no evidence of human-to-human transmission—a deadly lie that the WHO parroted unquestioningly.

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Commentary: Biden Staffer Who Mishandled China, Iran Secrets Retains High-Security Pentagon Job

RealClearWire

While Special Counsel Robert K. Hur has raised the issue of mental deterioration in explaining why he declined to prosecute 81-year-old Joe Biden for illegal retention and sharing of classified documents, the president chose another rationale to declare himself not culpable: He shifted the blame to the staffers who boxed up his records as he left the vice president’s office in 2017.

At a press conference hastily assembled after the report’s release, Biden said he assumed his aides had shipped “all” the documents to the National Archives in College Park, Md. “I wish I had paid more attention to how the documents were being moved and where,” he said. “I thought they were being moved to the Archives. I thought all of it was being moved [there].”

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China’s Real Estate Collapse Infecting Troubled American Sectors

Minnesota Sun Staff
China Real Estate

The crumbling Chinese real estate sector is starting to put properties around the world on the market at deep discounts, threatening debt-laden American commercial developers and the U.S. banks holding the loans, according to Bloomberg.

In a bid to pay off massive debts, Chinese real estate developers are having to offload a huge number of properties onto the global market, depressing prices even further for a sector that already has had borrowing cost hikes, causing a loss of $1 trillion in office property values, according to Bloomberg. The drop in property values hits American commercial real estate particularly hard due to the huge amount of debt the sector holds and the dwindling U.S. demand, with banks that hold the debt also fearing they may lose out on their investment.

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Mexico Dethrones China as America’s Main Source of Goods

Minnesota Sun Staff
Car Plant in Mexico

Mexico supplied the United States with a higher volume of goods than China in 2023, according to annual data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) published on Wednesday.

The U.S. imported about $427.2 billion worth of goods from China, whereas imports from Mexico reached around $475.6 billion, according to the data. Trade tensions between the U.S. and China persist as America continues to impose sanctions and tariffs while the two countries engage in a race to develop artificial intelligence technology.

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Commentary: Ban TikTok or Let Beijing Control Our Broadcast Networks, Too

RealClearWire
Tiktok User

In the dynamic landscape of global entertainment, the influence of Beijing over Hollywood has long been a topic of heated discussion. While the box office power of the Chinese market has waned, giving a breath of creative freedom back to our filmmakers, there looms a new and more pervasive form of influence on Hollywood and well beyond: TikTok.

Beijing may have lost theatrical market leverage, but it has more than made up for that with an overpowering social media presence that has become an epidemic, not just in Hollywood but throughout the United States. In fact, the Chairman of Congress’s Select Committee on China, Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI), accurately labels TikTok as “digital fentanyl” and has been aggressively campaigning to ban the social media app.

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TikTok is Still Sending American User Data to Chinese Parent Company: Report

Minnesota Sun Staff

TikTok continues to distribute data to its Beijing-based parent company ByteDance despite its purported efforts to protect American data, The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday.

TikTok attempted to address concerns from lawmakers and public officials over its handling of Americans’ data by spending $1.5 billion on establishing an isolated unit to safeguard American data called Project Texas. However, managers within TikTok are telling employees to share data to ByteDance, bypassing authorized channels, according to current and previous employees as well as company records the WSJ saw.

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Local News Curation App NewsBreak Backed by Chinese Venture Capital Funds

Peter D'Abrosca
News Break

An investigation by The Tennessee Star uncovered that the major backers of NewsBreak, an application that curates local news stories, is heavily backed by venture capital funds from communist China. 

As reported in 2021, NewsBreak’s parent company is Particle Media. 

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Experts Raise Concerns over History of CIA Director Overseeing Intel Push into China

Minnesota Sun Staff
William Burns

National security experts are raising concerns over CIA Director William Burns’ previous involvement with a D.C. institution that employed numerous Chinese Communist Party members, in light of his efforts to reorient the agency toward addressing the threat from China.

Recent reports have shed light on the historic shift underway at the U.S.’ most expansive intelligence directorate to rebuild a network of human spies in China, and outpace Beijing’s adaptation to a rapidly changing technological environment. However, Burns previously headed a think tank that hired people and groups professing membership to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), a fact that experts say raises red flags about Burns’ credibility.

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China Finishes Off Year with Sluggish Growth as Economy Fails to Recover

Minnesota Sun Staff
China flag

China’s economy grew at a rate of 5.2% in 2023, failing to return to the same growth of around 6% year-over-year that was common before the COVID-19 pandemic, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The year’s growth was an improvement on the even worse growth in 2022, which totaled just 3% for that year, and economists expect similar sluggish growth in 2024 unless a big policy change occurs, according to the WSJ. A number of different indicators added to the dismal report, including real growth in urban disposable income, which grew at just 4.8% in 2023 and was the lowest year since 2002, barring 2020 and 2022.

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Second-Largest Foreign Owner of U.S. Land Is a Chinese Communist Party Member

Minnesota Sun Staff
Chen Tianqiao

The second-largest foreign landowner in the U.S. is a Chinese billionaire who it has been determined is a member of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), according to a Daily Caller News Foundation review of Chinese-language news reports.

Chen Tianqiao, the founder, chairman and CEO of global investment firm Shanda Group, owns approximately 200,000 acres of land in Oregon, according to Land Report. Chen also has extensive ties to the Chinese government, ranging from CCP membership to executive roles in CCP-affiliated organizations, according to a DCNF review of Chinese-language media reports.

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Pressure Grows in Congress to Determine If Bidens Got Defensive Intel Briefing on China Deal

Just the News

The FBI conducted FISA surveillance on one of Hunter Biden’s Chinese business partners while other federal prosecutors secured evidence that a second Chinese associate of the first family was present when foreign bribery payments were made. And a major bank reported to the U.S. Treasury Department that in 2017 a $5 million loan the Bidens got from a Chinese energy company smacked of a Beijing influence operation targeting Joe Biden before he was president.

A fast-growing body of evidence from bank transactions to court transcripts is putting pressure on Congress to resolve an important question: Did Joe Biden or any of his family members get a defensive briefing from U.S. intelligence that some of their foreign business partners had unsavory ties or were engaged in criminal behavior?

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Biden Admin Watered Down Vetting Process for Chinese Illegal Immigrants, Email Shows

Admin

The Biden administration drastically simplified the vetting process for Chinese illegal immigrants in April 2023, according to an internal U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) email obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation. The April 2023 email, which was sent by a CBP supervisor to a “master list” of about 500 Border Patrol agents, instructs CBP officials to radically reduce the number of interview questions for Chinese migrants apprehended after illegally crossing into the country from roughly 40 to just five. The “headquarters guidance” came as border agents were overwhelmed with near-record numbers of illegal crossings.

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Ballot Battles, Impeachment Inquiry, Indictments Disrupt Election Cycle

The Center Square

The Republican primary’s Iowa caucuses are scheduled for January 15, the first chance for voters to determine who they want to represent their party in November’s presidential election.

Iowa’s January caucuses are a regular tradition for a presidential primary season that – this time around – has been unusually enshrouded in indictments, impeachment inquiries and lawsuits heading into election year.

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Foreign Policy Problems Promise to Plague Biden Admin in 2024

Minnesota Sun Staff

The Biden administration faced several major problems on the international stage throughout 2023, some of which will bleed into the new year.

President Joe Biden and his administration have tried to manage major threats and circumvent obstacles from several foreign nations in 2023, including from those in East Asia, Eastern Europe, the Middle East and South America. Many international problems the Biden administration dealt with in 2023 have not been solved and have continued to metastasize going into 2024.

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China’s Funding of U.S. Climate Initiatives Mirrors the Russian Funding of Anti-Fracking Groups

Just the News
Windmills

A nonprofit with operations in Beijing reportedly funded a number of nonprofits in the United States fighting climate change and pushing for sustainable or “green” energy.

Tax filings obtained by Fox News showed funding from the Energy Foundation China, which is headquartered in San Francisco and has a majority of its operations in China. The group, which refers to itself in tax filings as “Energy Foundation China” contributed $3.8 million to initiatives to phase out coal use and expand the use of electric vehicles, according to Fox News.

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TikTok Data Reveals Content Favors CCP Goals, According to New Study

Minnesota Sun Staff
TikTok China

The popular video app TikTok seems to be promoting content to align with the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) goals, a Thursday study found.

Hashtag data showed that content sensitive to the CCP is far less popular on TikTok than on its rival, Instagram, accordingto the study by Network Contagion Research Institute and Rutgers University. A comparison between Instagram and TikTok showed that the number of posts about non-sensitive hashtags in the realm of politics and pop-culture was fairly similar based on how many users each platform has, but the number of posts on hashtags for topics sensitive to the CCP was substantially higher on Instagram than on TikTok.

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CCP-Tied Firm Slated to Build Massive Facility near Sensitive U.S. Military Sites

Minnesota Sun Staff

The Chinese parent of a firm slated to develop a manufacturing facility near several Midwest military bases has extensive ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), according to a Daily Caller News Foundation investigation based on research conducted by The Heritage Foundation Oversight Project and Heritage Action.

Cnano Technology USA Inc. (Cnano USA) plans to invest in a 333,000-square-foot facility in Johnson County, Kansas, that will manufacture liquid conductive paste for electric vehicle batteries and other devices, according to an August announcement from the Kansas City Area Development Council, which partnered with the state and other parties to attract the firm to Kansas. Cnano USA’s $95 million facility will be built approximately 35 miles from Fort Leavenworth, and 70 miles from the “only operational base for the B-2,” Whiteman Air Force Base.

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Biden Looks to Tariffs to Bolster Struggling Electric Vehicle Market

Minnesota Sun Staff
Tesla Charging

The Biden administration is considering increasing tariffs on some Chinese products related to his green agenda, like electric vehicles (EV), in an effort to boost poor market demand and protect domestic industries, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Officials are considering setting higher rates on the already existing tariffs originally placed under the Trump administration, covering around $300 billion in Chinese goods, with Chinese EVs already having a 25% import tax, according to the WSJ. New tariffs could help domestic EV manufacturing, which has struggled with stagnant market demand, only rising from 3% in January to 4% in September of total vehicles sold in the U.S., while the share of EVs produced out of all vehicles has risen from 3% to 6% in that same time frame.

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House Homeland Security Chair Rep. Mark Green: ‘Absolutely’ Bringing Impeachment Articles Against Mayorkas

Just the News

House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Mark Green, R-Tenn., says he is “absolutely” going to bring articles of impeachment against Homeland Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas for his response to the southern border crisis. 

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Biden Admin Unveils New Green Subsidy Guidelines That Could Allow China to Cash In

Minnesota Sun Staff

The Biden administration released proposed rules for green manufacturing tax credits on Thursday, leaving the door open for Chinese firms to capture their value.

The proposed guidance, released by the Treasury Department, clarifies the eligibility requirements for Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) subsidies meant to incentivize domestic manufacturing of products like solar panels and electric vehicle (EV) parts, according to its text. The guidelines do not include restrictions on entities linked to adversarial foreign countries, and they would allow for China-tied companies to capture the value of tax credits if they establish operations in the U.S. that meet all other eligibility requirements.

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Impeachment Inquiry Zeroes in on Origin of Hunter Biden’s China Deals While Joe Biden Was VP

Just the News

Congress has assembled a growing body of evidence that Hunter Biden’s dealings with a Chinese energy company that landed the family millions of dollars in 2017 actually began in 2015 and may have involved a meeting with his father before he left office as vice president, according to documents reviewed by Just the News.

The new evidence includes statements made to the FBI by a longtime Biden family friend who was involved in the deal with CEFC China Energy executives like its Chairman Ye Jianming, contemporaneous emails from Hunter Biden and testimony recently released from two IRS whistleblowers.

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China’s Latest Economic Data Spells Even More Trouble for the Struggling Economy

Minnesota Sun Staff
Chinese Stock Market

New data from China shows the country’s economy is still failing to recover from the loss of growth it has seen since the COVID-19 pandemic, according to The Wall Street Journal.

While China’s economy did grow in November in a number of key areas, it was lower than economists’ expectations and was bolstered by a comparison from last year, when the country still maintained strict COVID-19 restrictions, according to the WSJ. Retail sales, which supports the key growth factor of domestic consumption, only rose by 10.1% year-over-year compared to the 12.9% growth that was expected, and fixed-asset investment rose 2.9% from January to November, as opposed to expectations of 3%.

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Chinese Drug Dealers Use Risqué Ads to Sell Narcotics, Fentanyl Ingredients on U.S. Social Media

Minnesota Sun Staff

Accounts claiming to represent Chinese drug manufacturers are using provocative images of women to advertise narcotics and fentanyl precursors on U.S. social media, according to a Daily Caller News Foundation review of hundreds of English and Chinese-language social media posts.

The DCNF identified several dozen LinkedIn accounts claiming to be saleswomen representing China-based manufacturers primarily located near Beijing or Wuhan. The accounts often featured images of women and teenage girls in advertisements for a wide variety of controlled substances including 4-piperidone, which is used to manufacture fentanyl.

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House CCP Committee Proposes Dramatic Shift in U.S. Trade Relationship with China

Minnesota Sun Staff

The House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party released a report Tuesday proposing the U.S. revoke China’s permanent normal trade status.

The new report supports three overarching policy objectives: resetting the terms of U.S.-China economic engagement, stemming the flow of U.S. capital and technology to China’s military and building U.S. economic might with allies. Toward that end, the report outlines approximately 150 policy recommendations including new tariffs, disclosure requirements for American companies with ties to China, and strengthening U.S. research security.

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Commentary: Birthright Citizenship Puts America in Jeopardy

Minnesota Sun Staff

Today’s challenge, game show Jeopardy-style: “They have a particular status in common: Anwar al-Awlaki, Yaser Esam Hamdi, the twin daughters of El Chapo, Chinese children born to US surrogates, and children born in the US to illegal immigrants.”

After seeing the first two names, a contestant would probably be preparing to hit the button to answer something like “What is Islamic terrorism?” – until they finished reading the entire list. The last item would clinch it, and then the fastest button-pusher would confidently offer the politically-correct answer: “What is birthright citizenship?”

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Documents: Microsoft Made Deals with Chinese Propaganda Outlets

Minnesota Sun Staff

Recently-revealed documents indicate that the American software company Microsoft actively worked with Chinese government-run media outlets to spread Chinese propaganda.

According to the Washington Free Beacon, Microsoft – the second-largest corporation in the United States – entered into partnerships with several outlets run by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), including China Daily and People’s Daily, with the latter being the official newspaper of the CCP’s Central Committee, while the former is published by the CCP’s Central Propaganda Department. In 2020, the U.S. State Department declared that the parent company of People’s Daily was “substantially owned or effectively controlled” by the CCP.

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Joe and Hunter Biden’s Commingling of Finances Shows No ‘Absolute Wall’ of Separation

Just the News

With the release of the latest Hunter Biden bank records, there is increasing evidence—both direct and circumstantial— that first son commingled his finances with President Joe Biden during his time in and out of the White House.

Hunter Biden’s lawyer—Abbe Lowell—on Monday pushed back on new House Oversight Committee evidence showing Hunter Biden sent direct payments to his father from a business account. Yet, Lowell’s explanation for the payments does not address questions about the origin of the funds or about the possible flow of foreign funds between son and father.

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Investors Pull Out Record Funds from China as Economy Falters

Minnesota Sun Staff
China Money

International investors have pulled billions out of China as the country’s economy continues to stumble and relations with the U.S. fail to ease, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Since August, international investors trading in China’s top exchanges in Shanghai and Shenzhen have pulled out more than $24 billion through a trading link in Hong Kong, according to the WSJ, the largest net outflow of foreign funds since the link was created in 2014. The MSCI China Index, which serves as a tool for investors to gauge expected returns in the country, has fallen 10% this year as China’s economy reports lackluster growth amid a real estate crisis and relations with the U.S. fail to significantly improve.

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China is Running an Operation to Get Americans Hooked on Illegal Drugs, Former DEA Boss Warns

Just the News
Fentanyl

Police operations from California to Maine have busted Chinese nationals operating illegal marijuana growing sites. U.S. officials have clear evidence China is providing Mexican drug cartels the precursor chemicals to make the fentanyl flowing into America. The Drug Enforcement Administration has substantial evidence dating back a decade of Beijing’s role in flooding U.S. cities with a wide range of addictive and harmful drugs.

Experts say there is growing evidence that communist China has launched concerted operations to hook Americans on drugs as part of a larger effort to supplant the United States as the world’s No. 1 superpower. Adding to the problem, the insecure border of the Biden era has only accelerated operations that have killed tens of thousands of Americans from fentanyl poisoning alone. The National Center for Health Statistics reported that drug overdose death rates involving fentanyl increased by 279% from 5.7 per 100,000 in 2016 to 21.6 in 2021.

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Commentary: It’s Time to Unite Behind Trump If We Want to Win in 2024

Minnesota Sun Staff
Donald Trump Podium

The 2024 Presidential election is rapidly approaching. In many ways it can’t come soon enough. Americans have now spent nearly three painful years waking up every day astonished to learn that the Biden administration has outdone its previous act of insanity.

The shocking revelation, for example, that the Biden Administration is covertly flying illegals into the interior of the U.S. is quickly forgotten when new revelations emerge that the same Administration is sabotaging Texas’ efforts to secure the border—ordering federal agents to cut through the wire barriers erected by the state of Texas.

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Biden Admin Preparing to Finalize Barrage of Methane Regulations

Minnesota Sun Staff

The Biden administration is gearing up to finalize a host of emissions rules and regulations in the coming months, E&E News reported Wednesday.

The rules and regulations are all focused on methane, a greenhouse gas that is more potent, but dissipates more quickly, than carbon dioxide, and align with the administration’s commitment to attacking climate change with a “whole-of-government” response. The Biden administration is aiming to finalize the slew of methane regulations in the coming months ahead of the 2024 election, which would make the rules more difficult for a potential Republican administration to scrap should President Joe Biden lose, according to E&E News.

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Impeachment Inquiry Sharpens Focus on Millions in Loans to Biden Family

Just the News

There are red flags aplenty: Loan repayments between Joe Biden and his brother; millions in promissory notes between Hunter Biden and a Democrat-donating Hollywood lawyer; and debt deals from Ukraine to China. 

As the House impeachment inquiry heats up, investigators are increasingly focused on a trail of red ink that has become a recurring theme in evidence chronicling the first family’s finances.

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Report: China Is Closing the Submarine Gap with the U.S.

Minnesota Sun Staff
USS Nevada, Ohio-class submarine

China is rapidly closing the gap in critical submarine capabilities that challenge decades of unmitigated U.S. dominance in the deep sea and could have critical implications in a Taiwan scenario, The Wall Street Journal reported.

In 2023, China put to sea a nuclear-powered attack submarine equipped for the first time with a noise-reducing pump-jet propulsion system, marking a major advance in submarine technology to match the way the U.S. equips its own submarines. The quieting systems will allow them to evade detection by American submarines and patrol aircraft, while construction on an “underwater great wall” of complex sensors will allow China to identify incoming enemy assets, Chinese military and academic texts say.

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Commentary: Flirtation with Evil Will Not End Well for the Progressive Left

Minnesota Sun Staff

Has the TikTok Left just jumped the shark?

Well, yes. Imagine seizing on Osama bin Laden’s 2002 “Letter to the American People” as a revelation to justify your wounded adolescent narcissism and historical ignorance? This past week, a bunch of videos from the Chinese owned data-hoovering and propaganda-peddling app took the meme-world by storm by showering some love on the defunct Islamic terrorist and kicking America in the process.  Quoth one fragile female as she brushed her teeth: “Trying to go back to life as normal after reading Osama bin Laden’s ‘Letter to America’ and realizing everything we learned about the Middle East, 9/11, and ‘terrorism’ was a lie.” Another client of this new experiment in juvenile mind control bleated that the mastermind of the 9/11 terrorist attacks taught her that America was a “plague on the entire world.”

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Experts Warn China’s Foray into the Middle East Could Isolate Taiwan from U.S. Forces

Minnesota Sun Staff

China is expanding its military presence in the Middle East, which could obstruct American forces in the region from mobilizing if Beijing decides to invade Taiwan, leaving the island with reduced defenses, according to foreign policy experts.

President Joe Biden was briefed Tuesday by his advisors on a Chinese plan to build a new military facility in Oman bordering the Arabian Sea, which would advance Beijing’s goal of increasing its Middle East and overseas presence, according to Bloomberg. By establishing military strong points in the Middle East, China can hinder and disrupt American forces in the region from mobilizing effectively and redirecting toward Taiwan if Beijing invades, which could leave the island with lesser defense capabilities, according to foreign policy experts.

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China’s Low Standards, Tariffs, Forced Labor Threaten U.S. Food Security, Agribusiness Experts Say

Just the News

American grocery shelves are rapidly filling up with cheap canned food imported from China, displacing American producers’ goods and raising concerns about food safety and food security, U.S. trade associations and experts are saying.

According to the Can Manufacturers Institute (CMI), a trade association supporting manufacturers of cans for both food and non-food items and their suppliers, American producers are at a disadvantage because they have to pay U.S. steel tariffs, which do not extend to finished Chinese-produced canned foods.

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Biden Admin Unveils New Chip Controls Focused on China

Minnesota Sun Staff

President Joe Biden’s administration finalized semiconductor sanctions on Tuesday to prevent China from accessing the advanced technology.

The new export controls close loopholes in current limitations and decrease the export of equipment necessary to make advanced semiconductor chips, according to the rules announced by the Department of Commerce. The restrictions will expand upon the administration’s ambition to block China’s military from using artificial intelligence (AI) in harmful ways, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said, according to Axios.

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China Ramps Up Crackdown on American Tech

Minnesota Sun Staff

Over the past few months, China has escalated its efforts to exert control over American technology companies by implementing new requirements, bans and restrictions.

The Chinese government is clamping down on American technology companies by throttling their already limited access to the country’s massive economy, according to new requirements, The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday. The country has also challenged American technology dominance by developing rivals to the latest smartphones and artificial intelligence (AI), as well as announcing export limits to key metals in July.

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Second GOP Presidential Debate Turns Into a Rhetorical Brawl as Candidates Jockey for Position in Trump-Dominated Race

M.D. Kittle

In a second GOP presidential debate that often seemed more like a disorderly reality TV show, the Babylon Bee’s satirical news headline may have best captured the mood of viewers: ‘Mute Button’ Wins GOP Debate.

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‘Losing Our Freedom of Speech’: Parent Speaks Out Against Middle School’s Explicit Reading List

Minnesota Sun Staff

Cooper Middle School in McClean, Virginia, gave students an age- inappropriate reading list for their 7th grade English class this year, a concerned parent told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Students in the English class were assigned a wide variety of books on topics that spanned from illegal immigration to Black Lives Matter (BLM), according to a copy of the list. Although the reading list clarifies that students will not have to read every single book, one teacher at the middle school said students would have to choose books to read from the provided options unless a parent offered an alternate, school-approved book, an orientation video welcoming students to the class showed.

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CCP Officials Set Up Talent Recruitment Program at U.S. Firm Behind Taxpayer-Backed EV Battery Plants

Minnesota Sun Staff

A provincial Chinese Communist Party (CCP) secretary set up a talent recruitment “work station” at the Silicon Valley headquarters of a Chinese-owned company that is planning to build two taxpayer-backed battery plants in Michigan, according to Chinese language reports reviewed by the Daily Caller News Foundation.

In 2017, a CCP delegation from Hefei, Anhui province visited the Fremont, Calif., headquarters of Gotion Inc., according to Chinese-language news website Sohu.com. During the visit, the Anhui party secretary leading the delegation “presided over the establishment of an Overseas Talent Work Station” in Gotion’s U.S. headquarters, another report published on the website of the firm’s Chinese parent company states.

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Top Air Force Leader Warns China Is Prepping for War ‘Specifically’ with U.S.

Minnesota Sun Staff

Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall gave a stark warning that China is preparing for a war that the United States has “no modern experience with” during a speech at Air and Space Forces Association’s 2023 Air, Space and Cyber Conference on Monday, according to an Air Force press release.

Kendall said that the catalyst for a war with China would likely be Taiwan and evoked Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as an example of an international war with no easy solution, according to the press release. Kendall warned in a memo penned last week that, as quickly as China’s military has advanced, the United States is “not optimized for great power competition.”

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China’s Latest Data Dump Shows Economy Is Still Struggling to Regain Momentum

Minnesota Sun Staff

New state economic data released Thursday shows that China is facing headwinds in its effort to revive its struggling economy, according to The Wall Street Journal.

China struggled in August with low manufacturing activity, exports and consumer spending, adding more negative factors to the Chinese economy, which is already facing a fumbling real estate market, according to the WSJ. The new data from China follows disappointing economic growth for the country in the second quarter of 2023, with the Chinese economy only growing 0.8% for the quarter as opposed to 2.2% in the first, totaling 6.3% for the year.

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Biden’s Mining Strategy Is Undermining His Agenda and Helping China, Experts Say

Minnesota Sun Staff

President Joe Biden’s climate agenda is handicapping America’s ability to source key raw materials to build green technologies that the agenda simultaneously requires, a reality that experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation makes America more dependent on China in the long-term.

The Biden administration has blocked several domestic opportunities to mine raw materials for which China is the global leader in extraction, refining or both, according to a 2022 report on electric vehicles (EVs) by the International Energy Agency (IEA). Many of the minerals and materials that Biden’s agenda is restricting domestically are essential components for green technologies that his climate agenda depends upon at the same time, such as electric vehicles and solar panels, according to a different report by the IEA.

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Consumer Goods Giant 3M Fined More than $6.5 Million for Wooing Chinese Government Officials with Overseas Trips

Just the News

The consumer goods company 3M agreed to pay more than $6.5 million to resolve charges that it violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act after its China-based subsidiary took Chinese government officials on overseas trips in an attempt to convince them to purchase 3M products, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) said.

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China Secretly Revived Its Elite Scientist Poaching Program to Gain Supremacy in Tech War

Minnesota Sun Staff

China quietly revived a program in 2020 that aimed to recruit foreign-trained scientists to help the country’s efforts in bolstering its semiconductor manufacturing industry, according to Reuters.

The program, originally named the Thousand Talents Plan, stopped work in 2018 after the U.S. launched investigations into the scientists that were a part of the program, and it was later revived under the name Qiming and overseen by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, according to Reuters. The U.S. and China are currently in a tech war, with both countries trying to gain an advantage in the strategic semiconductor industry, which is essential for technological research.

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Wall Street Firms That Sold Out to China Are Now Struggling

Minnesota Sun Staff

Major Wall Street firms that decided to expand their asset management operations into China are struggling to capitalize on the market, according to The Wall Street Journal.

BlackRock, a top U.S. investment company, is one of many American firms that are struggling to compete in the Chinese market, ranking only 145th out of almost 200 Chinese mutual funds, with other firms like Fidelity International and Neuberger Berman ranking even lower, according to the WSJ. Factors contributing to the firm’s woes are a lack of willingness from local companies to utilize American investment banks, a struggling Chinese economy and restrictions from both the U.S. and China.

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