Free Republic

Selling off resources, purging top officials, and defaulting on debt. It seems that the Chinese economy is falling, and there may be no one to bail them out. In a wave of recent reports, we see the contraction of the national economy, especially intense in the north. There have been blackouts and power failures across the area, and while the problems began in factories they have now spread to homes, a trend that is forecast to spread as time passes. The most alarming case is that of the real estate colossus Evergrande, whose debt is so large that default is...

An Auburn woman has been charged with setting fire to a historic Montgomery church last week. Xiaoqin Yan, 27, is charged with second-degree arson, according to court records made public Tuesday. Yan was arrested Oct. 4 and remains held in the Montgomery County Detention Center on $30,000 bond. According to charging documents against Yan, she used an “open flame to ignite an ignitable liquid,” causing $25,000 in damage to First Baptist Church on Perry Street. According to court records, Yan is a citizen of China who is in the U.S. on a student visa. Her visa has now been revoked....

China has confirmed the loss of its Shiyan-10 satellite, despite an otherwise successful liftoff on Monday (Sept. 27). The Shiyan-10 satellite launched to space on a Long March 3B rocket, which lifted off from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in southwest China around 4:20 a.m. EDT (0820 GMT; 4 p.m. local time) on Monday (Sept. 27). The spacecraft was China's second orbital launch of the day, following the Jilin-1 Gaofen 02D satellite, which was carried by a Kuaizhou-1A rocket that lifted off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China at 2:19 a.m. EDT (0619 GMT; 2:19 p.m. local...

A new book claims the US’s top military officer secretly told the Chinese military he would warn if Trump ordered an attack. His reasons don’t matter – he must be relieved of command ...if he did indeed negotiate with a foreign military rival without authorization, he violated the longstanding American political tradition that the military is subordinate to elected civilian leaders.

A spokesman for the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Army Gen. Mark Milley on Wednesday confirmed some allegations contained in a new book that the chairman, allegedly fearing then-President Donald Trump would order a nuclear strike, had a meeting with other uniformed leaders and two phone calls with his Chinese counterpart.

BEIJING—General Mark Milley was heard last night riding through the streets of Beijing, desperately warning the Chinese with the clarion call, "The Americans are coming! The Americans are coming!!" "Hey look, those Chinese generals are my buddies, they deserve fair warning—I've known them for ten years now, and they are always so nice to me. They were super supportive about that whole Afghanistan withdrawal thing—those friendships are more important than some job," explained General Milley, America's highest-ranking military officer. "I mean—they aren't close friends, we don't get together for poker or anything. But we do sometimes exchange funny memes and...

Most people in the West believe that China, the Chinese people, and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) are all the same. Nothing could be further from the truth. It’s time the world wakes up to the fact that the CCP is not China, nor does it represent the Chinese people.The first politician to point out this fact was former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. In a speech at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum in California in July 2020, Pompeo said: “The Chinese people are completely distinct from the Chinese Communist Party. The biggest lie that they tell...

President Biden spoke with Chinese President Xi Jinping Thursday, where they discussed competing national interests — but didn’t get around to discussing the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, according to a readout from the White House. The US administration said the leaders of the world’s two preeminent global powers “had a broad, strategic discussion in which they discussed areas where our interests converge, and areas where our interests, values, and perspectives diverge. “They agreed to engage on both sets of issues openly and straightforwardly,” the White House statement went on. The readout later added that Biden “underscored the United States’ enduring interest...

The Chinese Communists don’t like having their oppressive regime called out for human rights abuses and they let U.S. climate envoy John Kerry know that in no uncertain terms. ... The reason their solar panels are being sanctioned is that the Communists are engaging in unfair trading practices by deliberately selling the products at a loss to undercut the viability of the U.S. solar panel industry. The Chinese were also using slave labor to produce the panels. It’s harder to sell those solar panels because the Chinese are cheating and got caught. Should we lift the restrictions because of human...

The Black Futures Lab, a venture of Black Lives Matter founder Alicia Garza, is sponsored by the Chinese Progressive Association (CPA), an organization that works with China’s communist government to push its agenda in the United States, according to an investigation by the Heritage Foundation’s Mike Gonzalez. Gonzalez discovered that the Black Futures Lab donation page explicitly states they are “a fiscally sponsored project of the Chinese Progressive Association,” explaining where donations to Black Futures Lab are funneled.

Apple spent $90,000 lobbying against past version of the bill.. A bipartisan group of senators on Friday introduced a bill that would stop U.S. companies from relying on Chinese slave labor. Introduced by Sens. Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) and Jeff Merkley (D., Ore.), the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act would require companies to ensure forced labor is not used in their supply chains. It would also direct federal departments to produce a strategy for cutting Chinese forced labor out of the U.S. supply chain. Up to one million members of the Uyghur ethnic minority have been placed in "re-education camps"...

Chinese Female Athletes Go Viral After Being Accused Of ‘Looking Like Men’. The Chinese Athletics Association released a statement addressing the rumors, declaring that the two athletes are female.https://twitter.com/american_ka/status/1420644548636708866

My friend suggested an imaginative use of letters of marque and reprisal, as authorized by the Constitution. These were the basis of privateering, perhaps the ultimate in privatization. The government would authorize the captain of a civilian vessel to seize enemy shipping, and sell it for his own profit. The letters ensured that if he was captured, he would be treated as a POW rather than as a pirate. A factor in ending the War of 1812 was that, while the US Navy was far too small to have an impact, American privateers (far outnumbering the Royal Navy) were inflicting...

When a Chinese ferry joined the People’s Liberation Army Navy for an amphibious landing exercise in July 2020, observers noticed something different.It’s not unusual for Chinese merchant vessels to participate in the PLA’s operations and Bang Chui Dao, a 15,560-ton roll-on roll-off ferry, has been used before to support military transportation exercises. But where such ships might have been limited to accessing port terminals before, the ferry’s stern ramp had been converted to enable it to launch and recover a 26-ton ZTD-05, an amphibious armored vehicle used by the Chinese military, according to a brief published by The Jamestown Foundation...

A year ago Tang Juan was among those charged by the US Department of Justice in connection with an alleged scheme to lie about their status as members of China’s military while in the US conducting research. (Department of Justice)In documents filed in federal court in Sacramento, prosecutors asked a judge to dismiss a charge of visa fraud against Juan Tang but gave no reason why. The trial was set to begin on Monday. A message seeking comment from the U.S. Attorney’s office in Sacramento was not returned.

In a statement Monday citing a July 13 report, the Coast Guard said it had sent a verbal challenge to Chinese warship spotted at Marie Louise Bank. The Chinese vessel eventually moved away from the area, the statement said. The foreign vessel sent a radio message identifying itself as “Chinese Navy Warship 189” and asked the Philippine ship tailing it to keep distance, the Coast Guard said. The two nations’ vessels have been locked in a standoff in the South China Sea for months, after hundreds of Chinese ships swarmed disputed territory earlier this year

This year’s Beijing Military Expo opened on June 5th, but it wasn’t the tanks, missiles, and other potentially lethal military equipment that drew reporters’ attention, it was a rather strange arowana fish swimming in a large water tank installed on site. At first glance, it was just a fish that seemed to swim and behave normally. It would swim around normally, and raise its head for a while whenever it reached a wall, then just wing its tail again and swim in another direction. At first glance, its appearance and movements were those of an actual fish, and it was...

Top Biden allies including former Treasury secretary Jacob Lew and National Security Council official Kurt Campbell have done work for a nonprofit funded by companies like Facebook and Disney that is known for working closely with Chinese officials and Communist Party front groups. Campbell, whom President Joe Biden tapped to run Asia policy at the National Security Council, was a director at the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations through May 2020. Lew, who served as Treasury secretary during the Obama-Biden administration, took over in January as chairman of the National Committee, which bills itself as an educational nonprofit that seeks...

(CNN)The US government has spent the past week assessing a report of a leak at a Chinese nuclear power plant, after a French company that part owns and helps operate it warned of an "imminent radiological threat," according to US officials and documents reviewed by CNN. The warning included an accusation that the Chinese safety authority was raising the acceptable limits for radiation detection outside the Taishan Nuclear Power Plant in Guangdong province in order to avoid having to shut it down... **SNIP** Despite the alarming notification from Framatome, the French company, the Biden administration believes the facility is not...

A Virginia mother who grew up under Chairman Mao Zedong’s communist regime in China slammed Critical Race Theory at the Loudoun County School Board Meeting this week, calling it “the American version of the Chinese Cultural Revolution.” “I am very alarmed by what’s going on in our schools,” Xi Van Fleet said at the school board meeting. “You are now teaching and training our children to be social justice warriors, and to loathe our country, and our history.” “Growing up in Mao’s China, all of this seems very familiar,” the mother continued. “The communist regime used the same critical theory...