Tag: China

Commentary: America’s Intelligence Community is Broken

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CIA Logo

In the current discourse surrounding the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC), a prevailing narrative has emerged, as highlighted in a recent Politico article, that mistakenly warns of a future Trump administration’s destruction of the IC as we know it. This perspective is biased and misguided. The real crisis in the Intelligence Community is not what Trump will do if reelected but how to resolve the total erosion of public trust in the IC due to the actions of the D.C. intelligence establishment over the past several decades.

The intelligence officials quoted by Politico, in decrying politicization, ironically contribute to it, exacerbating the broader loss of faith in our institutions. The Intelligence Community, a cornerstone of our national security, must operate insulated from politics — a necessity for its credibility and effectiveness in safeguarding national interests.

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Beijing’s Military Hacked U.S. Nuclear Firm Before Hunter Biden Aided Chinese Bid to Acquire It

Just the News

U.S. officials were acutely aware that Beijing was trying to obtain America’s premiere nuclear reactor technology, including through illicit hacking, months before Hunter Biden and his business partners sought to arrange a quiet sale of an iconic U.S. reactor company to a Chinese firm, according to court records and national security experts.

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Hunter Biden, Partners Aided Chinese Bid to Corner Nuclear Energy Market with U.S. Tech, Memos Show

Just the News
Hunter Biden

While his father was still vice president, Hunter Biden and his business partners tried unsuccessfully to help a Chinese energy firm acquire one of the United States’ premier nuclear technology companies in a secret attempt to “control” the global market, according to new evidence turned over to Congress in President Joe Biden’s impeachment inquiry.

The evidence, which includes a detailed strategy memo, shows Hunter Biden was directly involved in emails and correspondence on the project in 2016 and that the goal was to exploit the future first son’s access to power and his family reputation to make Washington and Beijing comfortable with a potentially controversial deal and then to shield the acquisition of Westinghouse by China CEFC Energy behind intermediaries.

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Virginia Police Academy Signs Graduation Documents in Chinese Despite Law Designating English as Official Language

Tom Pappert
Herndon Police Chief Maggie DeBoard and Major Wilson Lee

Police in Fairfax County are reportedly refusing a request by Herndon Police Chief Maggie DeBoard to reissue ceremonial police academy graduation documents after they were signed in Chinese. English was declared the “official language of the Commonwealth” in 1996.

The graduation certificates were signed by Major Wilson Lee of the Fairfax County Police Criminal Justice Academy, who according to NBC 4 Washington is Chinese-American. Lee has reportedly held the position for more than a year, but the outlet explained the Herndon Police Department only recently received its first batch of new graduates from the academy since Lee began his tenure.

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House Panel Unanimously Passes Bill to Ban TikTok in U.S., Final Vote as Early as Next Week

Just the News
TikTok China

A GOP-led House committee has unanimously passed a bill that attempts to ban TikTok nationwide on all electronic devices.

The bill passed the House Energy and Commerce Committee on Thursday and could get a final vote as early as next week, amid concerns about the China-based owner of the popular, short-form video platform giving user data to the Chinese Communist Party.

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Soldier Stationed at Fort Campbell Arrested, Charged with Selling National Defense Information to China

Kaitlin Housler
Korbein Schultz

Korbein Schultz, a U.S. Army soldier and intelligence analyst, was arrested at Fort Campbell on Thursday after a six-count indictment unsealed by a federal grand jury alleged he sold military documents to China, U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Tennessee Henry C. Leventis announced.

The 25-page indictment alleges that Schultz conspired with an individual – referred to as Conspirator A – from June 2022 until Thursday to “disclose documents, writings, plans, maps, notes, and photographs relating to national defense as well as information relating to national defense which Schultz had reason to believe could be used to injure the United States or used to the advantage of a foreign nation,” according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

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Chinese Investors Flee Country’s Market as Beijing Fails to Prop Up Economy

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Li Qiang

Chinese investors are racing to put funds in offshore assets as Beijing fails to successfully prop up the country’s ailing economy, according to Reuters.

China’s Qualified Domestic Institutional Investor program, which serves as an avenue for investors in the country to buy foreign securities, jumped 50% in January year-over-year, butting up against the $165.5 billion limit that Beijing has set on the fund, according to Reuters. Li Qiang, China’s premier, announced on Tuesday steps to transform the country’s development model and increase growth that has failed to pick up since the COVID-19 pandemic, with factors like deflation, poor household consumption and huge real estate debts dragging down the economy.

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Biden Admin to Investigate Chinese-Made ‘Smart Cars’ Posing Potential National Security Risks

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Gina Raimondo

The Biden administration announced Thursday it will investigate Chinese-made “smart cars,” citing national security risks and surveillance concerns.

The investigation will center around concerns that Beijing could use Chinese smart cars inside the U.S. to collect information on the driver and the area surrounding the vehicle, according to the White House. U.S. intelligence agencies have warned that China has capabilities allowing it access to a score of key infrastructure systems, which could potentially be exploited in the event of a global emergency.

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‘Serious Problems’: Global Plague of Recessions Could Infect U.S., Experts Say

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Office Meeting

The recessions currently plaguing several major countries around the world could be what drags the U.S. into an economic downturn of its own, experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Germany announced on Monday that it fell into a technical recession in the fourth quarter of 2023, after reporting its second month in a row of negative growth, following several other top nations experiencing economic difficulties. While the U.S. has managed to avoid a recession due to its size and diverse industries, foreign economic malaise may drag the U.S. economy down through changes to trade and global inflation that would lead to a loss for American businesses, experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

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

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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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Special Counsel’s Report Gives Impeachment Inquiry New Leads in Biden-Ukraine Saga

Just the News

On the heels of the long-awaited report by Justice Department special counsel Robert Hur on the possession and potential mishandling of classified documents by President Joe Biden, several of the memos cited in the report that were found in Biden’s possession are eliciting questions from Congress about why Biden retained those documents related specifically to countries where his son was conducting his foreign business dealings. The House Oversight Committee has demanded that the Department of Justice provide them access to the classified documents uncovered by the special counsel’s investigation.

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China’s Real Estate Collapse Infecting Troubled American Sectors

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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

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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: War Is Not Just a Western Notion

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Sino-Japanese War

“It is well that war is so terrible; otherwise, we should grow too fond of it.”
– Robert E. Lee

“Wars and rumors of wars,” to borrow a well-known Biblical phrase from Matthew 24, seem all too commonplace these days. Is that because more wars are going on now than in the past, or because mass media brings us word of them ‘round the clock? It’s a debatable point.

This much is eminently clear: War dates back as far as the day when Cain slew Abel. It’s doubtful that there ever was a time on Earth when nobody was at war with anybody. It’s a depressingly familiar curse.

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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

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

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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

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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

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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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Commentary: The Immediacy of the PRC Threat Requires Shift from a Focus on Land Power to Maritime Power

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One of the biggest news stories coming out of Asia for the New Year was the alleged purge of senior People’s Liberation Army (PLA) officers, most notably the former PRC Minister of Defense Li Shangfu who went missing in late August 2023 and was formally removed from his position in October. This so-called purge, which also included three senior defense industry officials, was in fact the result of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) annual announcement of the new slate of delegates for the upcoming Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), an advisory body of the PRC’s annual National People’s Congress (NPC), that is held each year, usually in early March.

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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

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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

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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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U.S. Public Pensions Invest over $68 Billion in China

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NYSE Money

American public pension funds have invested tens of billions into Chinese companies over the last three years, according to a new study.

As reported by Axios, the study from the trade advocacy group Future Union shows that a total of $68 billion has been invested in various private Chinese entities in the last three years as of June 30th. There has been at least one public pension fund with investments in China in 42 different states.

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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

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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

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Gallagher China

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

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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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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Virginia Lawmakers Urge Department of Defense to Address Chinese Seabed Mining

The Center Square

The U.S. Department of Defense is being urged by members of Congress to develop a national security plan to address China’s interest and investments in seabed mining.  

Virginia U.S. Rep. Rob Wittman, vice chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, led over two dozen legislators including fellow Rep. Jen Kiggans in sounding the alarm on China’s involvement in mining critical resources, such as nickel, cobalt, lithium, manganese and zinc from the seabed.

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Documents: Microsoft Made Deals with Chinese Propaganda Outlets

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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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