Free Republic

BYD’s cheapest electric car, the Seagull, was the top-selling car in China last month, with nearly 41,000 models sold. Starting at under $10,000, the BYD Seagull even has US automakers worried. BYD’s Seagull was China’s top-selling vehicle in August BYD has been on a roll, launching lower-priced, updated models of its best-selling models. In March, BYD launched the Seagull EV Honor Edition with a “shocking price” starting at just 69,800 yuan, or less than $10,000. Just five months later, BYD launched the 2025 Seagull with the same starting price. The Seagull is already sitting atop the sales charts in China....

Elon Musk revels in the role of “free speech absolutist.” Last week, for instance, he jumped to the defense of Pavel Durov, the head of the messaging and social media app Telegram, after he was arrested by the French police. But while Musk claims he is a defender of free speech, he frequently kowtows to the Chinese Communist Party, for whom the concept is alien. Musk is now the CCP’s favorite western capitalist. So although he is eager to tell his 196 million Twitter followers that “Britain is turning into the Soviet Union,” he has avoided antagonizing China. He has...

CEO Jim Farley is trying to learn from his greatest competitor and is now trying to copy parts of China's electric vehicle playbook. =================================================================== Ford’s CEO Jim Farley first sounded the warning back in May, after his visit to China, but it’s been quietly happening in the background for far longer; Chinese electric vehicles, or EVs, are gobbling up the Chinese domestic market. They may even be on pace to do the same globally. In a Wall Street Journal interview, Farley described the situation as an "existential threat" to Ford, highlighting the rapid pace at which Chinese automakers are advancing...

Meta and the Chinese-owned company ByteDance pay Lead Stories to fact check stories on their platforms.Facebook labeled The Federalist’s reporting related to Haitian migrants hunting geese in Springfield, Ohio as “false information” Tuesday based on a “fact check” from a Chinese-funded organization.“People who repeatedly share false information might have their posts moved lower in News Feed so other people are less likely to see them,” read a warning from Facebook slapped onto an article published last week. The story featured an audio recording of a phone call to police wherein a concerned local reported four Haitian migrants each carrying a...

'There still remains significant gaps in our national security screening regime for land purchases,' lawmakers say.. China and other foreign adversaries are still permitted to purchase U.S. land near sensitive Coast Guard facilities, ports, and Energy Department labs, exposing national security gaps that lawmakers say enable hostile regimes to conduct espionage operations on American soil. The Treasury Department's Committee of Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), the central body responsible for approving land sales to foreign entities, moved to "significantly expand" its jurisdiction in July, allowing it to review real estate transactions near 50 military and other sensitive sites....

Transcript linked below video.

China's Mid-Autumn Festival holiday typically sees families reunite and give thanks, much like Thanksgiving in America. This year, Chinese-American pastor David Lin will have much to be thankful for when the holiday is marked on Tuesday. In a surprise move, Beijing freed the 68-year-old Sunday after he spent nearly 20 years in prison in a case the U.S. government and his family have always dismissed as baseless. Lin entered China in 2006 and attempted to establish a Christian training center in Beijing. China's Communist Party disapproves of such activities and routinely roots out underground Christian churches, seeing them as a...

Your host back with you again it's good to be moving forward a mature adult in the room with you more grown up. "Puff the Magic Dragon" the little boy leaves childhood fantasy... I got the newsgathering instinct back then would write down what I heard and take it to school to tell others at the lunch table about what I heard from the other places. And here I am your host... Obsession with politics leads to other kinds of obsession frankly... I was one within 24 inches of Taylor Swift early in her career she was working the autograph...

A jury on Friday convicted a Southern California couple of running a business that helped pregnant Chinese women travel to the United States without revealing their intentions to give birth to babies who would automatically have American citizenship.

Analysis In an unprecedented joint public appearance, CIA Director William Burns and MI6 Chief Richard Moore assert the enduring strength of their intelligence agencies Last week, the heads of major Western intelligence agencies made a striking public appearance, first with a provocative op-ed and then in a high-profile interview with the Financial Times editor. Although some questions remained unanswered, their statements provided critical insights into their covert and overt operations. William Joseph Burns, Director of the CIA, and Richard Peter Moore, head of MI6/SIS, both distinguished diplomats before their current roles, asserted with conviction that their organisations are more formidable...

The other recent development in Russian missile defenses is the first deployment of the S-500 missile system, which was delivered to the 1st Special Purpose Air and Missile Defense Army (tasked with the defense of the Moscow area) in 2021.41 The S-500 is Russia’s latest mobile air and missile defense system, and is designed to target IRBMs, early warning aircraft, and satellites in low-Earth orbit.42 In February of 2024, the Russian Ministry of Defense announced that it had successfully tested the weapon against a hypersonic target representative of an ICBM reentry vehicle.43 The system was previously tested at a range...

It’s Ms. Sun goes to Washington. The alleged Chinese spy who infiltrated the New York governor’s office was able to get into the White House — while under federal investigation, The Post has learned. Linda Sun’s tour of the Executive Mansion came just two months before the FBI raided her gaudy $3.5 million Long Island home as they wrapped up their case into her alleged work for Beijing. The May visit was facilitated by Sun’s former boss Queens Rep. Grace Meng (D-NY), the congresswoman’s office confirmed Friday. Sun — a former high-ranking aide for Gov. Kathy Hochul and former Gov....

Democrat vice-presidential nominee Tim Walz’s political journey is rooted in his involvement with a progressive training camp inspired by the radical vision of Paul Wellstone, a professor-turned-politician with close ties to the Democratic Socialists of America and strong influences from Marxist figures and extreme far-left ideologies. Before entering politics, Tim Walz was known as a high school teacher and football coach in Mankato, Minnesota — an outsider who embraced a humble, folksy image. However, his true political foundation began in January 2005 when he attended Camp Wellstone, a training ground for grassroots progressives founded and named in honor of the...

China will "gradually raise" its retirement age for the first time since the 1950s, as the country confronts an ageing population and a dwindling pension budget. The top legislative body on Friday approved proposals to raise the statutory retirement age from 50 to 55 for women in blue-collar jobs, and from 55 to 58 for females in white-collar jobs. Men will see an increase from 60 to 63. China's current retirement ages are among the lowest in the world. According to the plan passed on Friday, the change will set in from 1 January 2025, with the respective retirement ages...

WASHINGTON – A Chinese company installed intelligence gathering equipment on cranes used at seaports across the US that could allow Beijing to spy on Americans and cripple key infrastructure, according to a new congressional report. The Republican majorities on the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party and House Homeland Security Committee found that the Shanghai-based, state-owned ZPMC engineering company had pressured American port authorities to allow remote access to its cranes, “with a particular focus on those located on the West Coast.” “If granted, this access could potentially be extended to other [People’s Republican of China] government entities,...

The White House Office of Management and Budget has said that the Biden administration is opposed to the bill introduced by Rep. Dan Newhouse, R-Wash., to clamp down on the sale of U.S. farmland to China and other “adversaries.” The bill passed the House this week. A companion bill has been introduced in the Senate. The Biden administration is opposed to the bill introduced by Rep. Dan Newhouse, R-Wash., to clamp down on the sale of U.S. farmland to China and other “adversaries.”

House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R., Ky.) said Thursday the FBI is withholding the information he requested about Minnesota governor Tim Walz’s trips to China and whether he interacted with Chinese Communist Party affiliates.... Now, Comer is expanding his investigation to include Walz’s ties to a Minnesota-based research facility that partnered with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the Chinese lab at the center of the leak-leak theory of Covid-19 origins. A Washington Examiner investigation earlier this month revealed that during his congressional tenure, Walz secured millions of funding for the Hormel Institute....

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. House this week approved a sweeping package of bills to counter China’s influence, shoring up a largely bipartisan push to ensure America comes out ahead in the competition between the world’s superpowers. The efforts would ban Chinese-made drones, limit China-linked biotech companies from access to the U.S. market, strengthen sanctions and deepen ties with Asian countries. The campaign to target Beijing this week shows how curbing China’s power has emerged as a rare issue of political consensus.... One contentious measure seeks to revive a Trump-era program to root out Beijing’s spying in American universities and...

China-Africa relations have deepened over the past two decades, characterised by increased economic cooperation, investment and infrastructure development. China is now Africa’s largest trading partner, with partnerships focused on building roads, railways and energy projects. As the ninth Forum on China–Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) kicks off this week in Beijing, a new, green theme is shaping their relationship: the global renewable energy race. We asked Lauren Johnston, a development economist with expertise in China-Africa relations, to provide some insights into this development as it positions both regions as key players in the global shift towards green energy. How is the race...