Free Republic

oments before President Xi Jinping climbed down the steps of his aircraft to be greeted by Donald Trump, US marines were filmed on their hands and knees smoothing out the red carpet, Chinese officials looking down from the top of the steps. It was an uncomfortable image, ridiculed on social media for the symbolism of kowtowing to the emperor. But it set the tone for a summit which so far has been heavy on pomp and ceremony, rich in platitudes, but with very little in the way of substance. A strong diplomatic case can be made for political fawning –...

One of the oldest tricks in the espionage game is the "honey trap," wherein the target is seduced into a, shall we say, intimate relationship with the spy, who proceeds to wheedle information or other favors out of the target via pillow talk. Even American Congressmen aren't immune, and neither, it seems, are CEOs of major tech companies. The chipmaker Nvidia's CEO, Jensen Huang, is under scrutiny for his relationship with one Alice Huang (no relation) who is suspected of being a Chinese spy. And, it turns out, Secretary of State Marco Rubio sounded the alarm on this some time...

https://x.com/WallStreetApes/status/2118857294494720367

Tokyo on Saturday will mark one year since Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s remarks about the possibility of a Japanese military intervention in a Taiwan crisis triggered a diplomatic rupture with Beijing — a rift that shows few signs of closing as the two sides remain stubbornly at odds. The ongoing dispute between China and Japan began following Takaichi’s remarks in parliament on Nov. 7, 2025, that the Self-Defense Forces could be deployed under the right to collective self-defense in “worst-case” scenarios, such as a Chinese naval blockade of Taiwan, which the prime minister said could constitute a “survival-threatening situation” for...

China’s state-run Global Times wrote in the wake of the U.S. midterms that “the ‘myth’ of Western-style democracy is losing its appeal, even in the West.” The Chinese Communist paper did not explain why it decided to put its own cheap shot of “myth” in scare quotes, as the word was not quoted from any other source, and the point of the editorial was that democracy is mythical because the citizens of the U.S. and other Western nations do not actually believe their votes bring them better government. The Global Times was enthralled with public opinion polls that showed deep...

A class action lawsuit filed this week accuses the Foundation to Promote Open Society, the central cog in billionaire liberal donor George Soros's behemoth nonprofit network, of conspiring to execute a Chinese-backed scheme to obstruct data center development in Seattle. According to the complaint reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon, the alleged scheme has cost workers jobs and subjected their families to harassment. The lawsuit comes amid heightened scrutiny of the growing anti-data center movement, which has largely posed as grassroots, but has ties to deep-pocketed left-wing funders. Data center development was among the most important issues for Americans during...

The launches include Starlink of Vandenberg, including the 700th Falcon 9 overall on the 31st, plus a couple of Electrons from Mahia and a run of Chinese vehicles. Galactic Energy put the first pathfinder for a low-inclination remote-sensing constellation up on a Ceres-1S from an offshore barge, while CAS Space flew the second Kinetica-2 (the liquid RP-1/LOX tri-core version) with another batch of Qianfan satellites. ISRO’s GSLV got NVS-03 into geosynchronous transfer orbit after the previous one’s failure, and Rocket Lab’s 99th Electron carried an iQPS SAR bird. On the bigger picture side, NASA laid out the Artemis Acceleration plan...

Democrats won a massive victory on Tuesday, sweeping to power in both houses of Congress. Critics of President Donald Trump are blaming Republican losses on his failures — and that’s fair. But what really drove the “blue wave” was Trump’s success. That’s because Trump followed through on almost every promise he made to voters in 2024. He secured the border. You can argue that his Immigration and Border Enforcement (ICE) raids were overzealous. But enforcing laws is never a pleasant sight. He did it anyway. He confronted Iran. That meant higher gas prices. It also cost billions of dollars. But...

(End of the American Dream)—Archaeologists have made many surprising discoveries that simply do not fit what we are taught in our history textbooks. Vast numbers of “out-of-place artifacts” that have been found prove that ancient civilizations were far more advanced than we have been led to believe. Today, I am going to discuss some “out-of-place people” that researchers dug up in China. These “out-of-place” people create a tremendous problem for many historians and they are highly embarrassing to the Chinese government because they aren’t Asian. We are supposed to believe that China has been inhabited by the Chinese from the...

LaLiga president Javier Tebas has met with China's Ambassador to Spain, Yao Jing, to "find solutions" to the Kylian Mbappé alleged dictator comment. Comments made by the Real Madrid striker regarding a "meme" comparing him to Mao Zedong, the founder of the People's Republic of China, sparked controversy in the Asian country. EFE reported that Chinese state broadcaster CCTV suspended evening broadcasts of LaLiga matches and any games involving Mbappé. "Today I held a meeting with the Chinese Ambassador to Spain to discuss the situation arising from Kylian Mbappé's comments and to seek solutions to move past this incident," Tebas...

Recently, I visited a university in the UK and struck up a conversation with a woman whose story has stayed with me. She has a PhD; her thesis was on Chinese interference in Britain, and she is now studying for a law degree. When I asked why someone with her qualifications would go back to the start in a different field, she told me that academia had canceled her because of her work on China. She is not famous, which left me wondering why anyone would bother to cancel her at all. If a researcher with no public profile can...

China's AI stock rally has collapsed, wiping out about $480 billion as the STAR50 index of AI and chip companies fell 40% from its July high. US AI stocks have taken a far smaller hit so far. The Nasdaq is about 6% below the record it set three weeks ago. This week's Big Tech earnings will test whether that gap holds. How China's AI Bubble Burst Analysts have pointed to stretched prices, tax bills, and the risk of US bans on Chinese data-center equipment. The damage is wide. AI stocks account for 42% of China's market value and 57% of...

SEOUL, South Korea — The U.S. military, citing unspecified “risks to our personnel,” on Monday banned electric vehicles manufactured by Chinese automaker BYD from Kadena, a key U.S. air base on Okinawa. “These vehicles present an unacceptable and unmitigable risk to our personnel and our mission,” spokesperson Lieutenant Colonel Alli Stormer said, per Reuters. She did not say what specific concern had prompted the move against vehicles produced by BYD, the largest global supplier of EVs, but the firm had, in June, been put on a Pentagon black list of 188 Chinese companies. Japanese media speculated that the presence of...

China, Russia, Iran and North Korea, known collectively as CRINK, are seeking to undermine U.S. leadership by weakening the rules-based international order. Human rights violations and trafficking at the Alabuga complex in the Russian town of Yelabuga illustrate the increasingly complex ties among the CRINK regimes. Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 created a demand for drones that Moscow could not initially meet. Its answer was an arrangement to manufacture the Iranian-designed Shahed on Russian soil. This report contends that the burgeoning labor force that powers the Alabuga drone factory has become a site of gross human rights...

PHILADELPHIA, PA — NBA officials believe they've finally found a way to get LeBron James to stand at attention during the national anthem and show some respect by giving him a Chinese flag to look at. James, in his first game for the 76ers, was seen practicing his golf swing during the national anthem at this year's season opener at Madison Square Garden. The NBA received hundreds of complaints as a result, forcing league officials to figure out the best way to get the veteran player to sit still like an adult. Then it hit them: China. A Chinese flag,...

Anonymous sources have exposed sensitive details of the Trump administration’s reported plans to establish a clandestine espionage program targeting China to legacy media, potentially revealing American intelligence strategies to foreign adversaries. The Pentagon is reportedly developing a deep-cover intelligence operation that would embed American operatives within private-sector businesses to gather intelligence on China and other foreign adversaries, according to The Washington Post. Six individuals familiar with the initiative disclosed details about its leadership, capabilities and internal planning despite the program’s sensitive nature and the Pentagon’s denial of its existence. The Pentagon did not immediately respond for comment. The alleged new...

Government websites in Europe and elsewhere went offline on Wednesday after the disclosure of critical vulnerabilities in a widely used programming language sent website operators scrambling to protect their systems. Developers of the PHP programming language said Tuesday they had identified two critical vulnerabilities and urged users to update their sites as soon as a fix was released. They said around 1345 GMT on Wednesday that a new version fixing the vulnerabilities was live. But with reports that hackers were exploiting the flaws to break into websites, government agencies in the Netherlands and Finland were among those that took sites...

Fairfax County Commonwealth’s Attorney Steve Descano’s policy of leniency toward immigrants has caused his prosecutors to regularly decline to pursue cases involving drunken driving, felony drug possession, shoplifting and grand larceny against migrants, according to a new congressional audit. Investigators for the House Judiciary Committee said they found more than 100 previously unreported cases in which Mr. Descano’s office failed to prosecute or under-prosecuted cases against migrants. That included a Chinese migrant “serial fraudster” who had more than 50 charges dropped. The audit, released Tuesday, tied those cases to Mr. Descano’s stated desire to protect immigrants from having to face...

Former President George W. Bush’s brother, Neil Bush, has revealed he voted for Democratic candidate James Talarico for U.S. Senate in Texas, calling President Donald Trump's bid to overturn the 2020 election "an affront to our democratic institutions.""I voted early today, and I voted for James Talarico for the United States Senate," the Texan businessman wrote in a post on Facebook on Tuesday in a snub to Republican candidate Ken Paxton.

China’s ambassador suggested his country could easily overpower the Philippines, a key U.S. treaty ally, reflecting an increasingly aggressive Chinese push to flex authority over the hotly disputed waters of the South China Sea. The Philippines summoned Chinese Ambassador Jing Quan on Monday to protest his remarks, amid mounting military tensions throughout the Indo-Pacific, according to local Filipino news agency TV5 News. The confrontation unfolds as the U.S. military diverts warships to the Middle East and burns through critical missile stockpiles fighting Iran, according to USNI News and the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). China “may easily win”...