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FULL TITLE: Pompeo has 'very successful morning' with Kim Jong Un, as talks for second major summit with Trump continue Just hours after President Trump touted his efforts to denuclearize North Korea at a boisterous rally Saturday night, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told reporters he had a "very productive" meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Pyongyang on Sunday. Although there were no immediate indications the secretary of state had arranged for a second major summit between Trump and Kim, both leaders have publicly voiced support for another meeting. The jovial feeling during Pompeo's fourth trip to...

The Pentagon intends to invest in domestic manufacturing to reduce its over-reliance on Chinese and other foreign-made parts in American weapons, top defense officials said Thursday. The U.S. reliance on China is one of many areas discussed in a 146-page report about the health of the defense industrial base that President Trump is scheduled to release on Friday during an event at the White House. Other areas include “accelerating workforce development efforts to grow domestic science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and critical trade skills.” ***** The report says China is the only producer of various chemicals needed in missiles and bombs,...

Orville Schell, the director of the Centre on US-China Relations at the Asia Society in New York, also noted that China’s forceful campaign had stoked suspicions about visiting academics. “It is China’s United Front Work Department which views overseas Chinese as sons of the yellow emperors, ethnic Chinese somehow belong to China. Overseas Chinese are caught in the crossfire.” Schell said he was working with a group of about 20 prominent China specialists in the US on a broad-ranging research project about China’s influence operations. “The effect on American think tanks so far has been limited, but as Chinese philanthropy...

The two are Mgr John Baptist Yang Xiaoting, bishop of Yan'an, and Mgr Joseph Guo Jincai, bishop of Chengde. The latter is one of the seven excommunicated bishops who reconciled with the Pope following the Sino-Vatican agreement, which Beijing leaked a few days ago.Vatican City (AsiaNews) – Two bishops from the People's Republic of China will take part in the Synod on Youth, which begins on 3 October. Speaking at a press conference today, the general secretary of the Synod, Card Lorenzo Baldisseri, said that the two “were invited by the Pope, as a result of the [Sino-Vatican] agreement, and...

With China still running a record trade surplus with the US, it seems premature — to say the least — to say that Trump has won his long-overdue trade war with China. But it is not too early to conclude that, despite their threat of retaliatory tariffs, China’s Communist authorities know that they have lost. The increased tariffs to date, combined with the threat of more, have already clipped the wings of China’s economic rise. Its stock market is down 21 percent year over year, industrial output is slowing and its currency is weakening. Looking beyond the bluff and bluster...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Vice President Mike Pence on Thursday plans to accuse China of trying to undermine President Donald Trump as the administration deploys tough new rhetoric over Chinese trade, economic, and foreign policies. Please see link, for full article.

HUIZHOU, China — They were exactly what China’s best universities were supposed to produce: young men and women steeped in the ideology of the Chinese Communist Party. They read Marx, Lenin and Mao and formed student groups to discuss the progress of socialism. They investigated the treatment of the campus proletariat, including janitors, cooks and construction workers. They volunteered to help struggling rural families and dutifully recited the slogans of President Xi Jinping. Then, after graduation, they attempted to put the party’s stated ideals into action, converging from across China last month on Huizhou, a city in the south, to...

A U.S. warship sailed Sunday near two contested Chinese man-made islands in the South China Sea, the location where Beijing has built up military fortifications despite a pledge not to do so, a U.S. defense official told Fox News.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Thursday hailed the "dawn of a new day" with North Korea as the U.S. pushes diplomacy to denuclearize the regime. Chairing a meeting of the United Nations Security Council in New York, Pompeo sounded a hopeful note on the diplomatic negotiations between Washington and Pyongyang. But he also called for strict enforcement of all U.N. Security Council sanctions on Pyongyang until denuclearization is achieved. "Past diplomatic attempts to halt North Korea's nuclear and ballistic missile development were unsuccessful," Pompeo said. "But now we're at the dawn of a new day." Pompeo credited U.S....

With the launch of its second aircraft carrier, China has enhanced its position in the front ranks of military powers and prompted questions as to the ultimate purpose of its navy. The Chinese navy, formally known as the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN), is expanding and will be doing so for years — decades — to come. Some of this is the natural consequence of being the navy of a country in economic ascendancy. Some of this is bureaucratic politics; the PLA is represented on the Communist Party Central Committee, and the PLA answers to the Chinese Communist Party, not...

President Trump accused China of attempting to interfere in the November midterm elections during a Wednesday speech at the United Nations Security Council. "Regrettably, we found that China has been attempting to interfere in our upcoming 2018 election coming up in November. Against my administration," Trump said. "They do not want me or us to win because I am the first president ever to challenge China on trade. And we are winning on trade. We are winning at every level. We don't want them to meddle or interfere in our upcoming election," he added.

President Trump accused China on Wednesday of attempting to meddle in the November midterm elections and claimed it does not want Republicans to win because of his actions on trade. "Regrettably, we found that China has been attempting to interfere in our upcoming 2018 election," Trump said during a United Nations Security Council meeting in New York. "They do not want me or us to win because I am the first president ever to challenge China on trade." The president remarks amplify his administration's concern China has joined Russia and other nations in attempting to interfere in U.S. elections. Director...

China on Monday denied a United States Navy permission request for a port visit next month to Hong Kong, The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The decision to deny the port visit comes as tensions between the U.S. and China escalate on both economic and military fronts. The ship, the Wasp Expeditionary Strike Group, is currently in the East China Sea, according to the Journal. The ship has been at sea since August and can hold as many as 1,600 Marines and sailors on board, the newspaper reported. China also canceled an upcoming meeting between top naval officers from...

After the big bang of the Singapore summit in June, with its showy but vague North Korean commitment to denuclearization, many analysts doubted that the deal had any real substance. But we're beginning to see the first signs of what a serious accord would look like. This week's North-South summit meeting in Pyongyang produced accord on some basic essentials of a real denuclearization process. North Korea agreed to accept internal inspectors to monitor destruction of one of its test sites, a first step toward the broader inspection process that will be essential for any verifiable pact. North Korea also agreed...

Liberal Democratic Party President Shinzo Abe acknowledges applause from the LDP lawmakers shortly after his name was called as the winner of the ruling party presidential elections at its headquarters in Tokyo on Sept. 20. (AP Photo) Prime Minister Shinzo Abe won a ruling party leadership vote on Thursday, putting him on track to become Japan's longest-serving prime minister and to try to cement his legacy, including by revision of the country's pacifist, post-war Constitution. If Abe, who quit abruptly after a troubled 2006-07 term, stays in office through November 2019, he will have exceeded the 2,886 days marked by...

FULL TITLE: China's Chilling 'Social Credit System' Is Straight Out of Dystopian Sci-Fi, And It's Already Switched On Like Black Mirror. Totally like Black Mirror. It's been in the pipeline for years: a sprawling, technological mass surveillance network the likes of which the world has never seen. And it's already been switched on. China's "Social Credit System" – which is expected to be fully operational by 2020 – doesn't just monitor the nation's almost 1.4 billion citizens. It's also designed to control and coerce them, in a gigantic social engineering experiment that some have called the "gamification of trust". That's...

As the latest salvos were fired in the growing trade war between the United States and China, concerns continue to mount in the business community about how just how long the conflict might endure. Alibaba group founder and China’s richest man Jack Ma recently spoke to an investor summit in Hangzhou, China regarding his thoughts on the direction the trade war may take. In his speech, Ma said the trade war was “going to be a mess,” and that regarding its potential duration it could last for “maybe 20 years.” Ma went on to compare the current trade dispute...

North Korea's Chairman Kim Jong Un wants to meet with President Trump again, says South Korean President Moon Jae-in, who has just returned from Pyongyang. Moon also spoke directly to the North Korean public, describing a peaceful future to an audience of some 150,000 people. "We had lived together for five thousand years but apart for just 70 years," Moon said in his speech on Thursday, in which he repeatedly addressed the crowd as "Citizens of Pyongyang, fellow Koreans." Moon continued, "Here, at this place today, I propose we move forward toward the big picture of peace in which the...

The latest escalation in the trade war did not have the dire consequences many predicted for the stock market. Stocks rose Tuesday after the Trump administration announced new tariffs on $200 billion of Chinese goods and China promised to retaliate with tariffs on an additional $60 billion of U.S. goods.The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 184 points, or 0.74 percent. The S&P 500 rose by half a percentage point. The Nasdaq Composite advanced eight-tenths of a percentage point.The rise in U.S. stocks was all the more notable because the new tariffs are scheduled to go into effect September 24, sooner...

Jim Cramer says that the latest round of tariffs on China-made goods sends the message that the “game is over.” Cramer, who is the most popular personality on CNBC, defended the latest round of tariffs the Trump administration announced Monday night. “I think the president is saying, ‘Hey, listen guys, you are not going to make as much money in China as you used to. That game is over because we have to win the trade war,'” Cramer said Tuesday. Cramer also said that Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross was correct that the China tariffs would not hurt U.S. consumers. “Wilbur...