Free Republic

Beijing's aggression confirms that the Chinese Communist Party is fully committed to fulfill its own great power ambition regardless of the consequences to other states. While nations worldwide were busy dealing with health care and economic crises caused by the Wuhan virus pandemic, Beijing is exploiting the attendant confusion to tighten its control over Hong Kong and the South China Sea.Beijing Tightens Its Grip on Hong Kong Since summer 2019, an extradition bill that would have eroded Hong Kong’s judicial independence ignited the city’s pro-democracy movement. The spread of the coronavirus added a new dimension to the movement in 2020....

A judge on Thursday issued a furious order targeting a Chinese billionaire and ally of Steve Bannon, a member of Donald Trump’s inner circle, ordering him to either pay $134m or face arrest for his violation of a previous court order. In a ruling, a judge from the New York County Supreme Court excoriated Guo Wengui for hiding billions of dollars’ worth of assets around the US and elsewhere including in the form of a superyacht named the Lady May. Judge Barry Ostrager faulted Mr Guo in his ruling for hiding the craft outside of US jurisdiction in the Bahamas...

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — As conspiracies about the origin of the Wuhan coronavirus (2019-nCoV) surface in recent weeks, exiled Chinese businessman Guo Wengui (郭文貴) said on Tuesday (Feb. 4) that Chinese military news network Xilu claimed the virus was engineered by the United States, which is strangely at odds with what Chinese health authorities have said. Guo called Xilu the Chinese version of the Pentagon's news network and a mouthpiece for China's People's Liberation Army. [...] However, renowned Taiwanese-American professor Ching Lin on Saturday (Feb. 1) refuted the "bioweapon" allegation, saying the aforementioned "four critical spike proteins" are actually four...