Free Republic

We are pretty certain that covid-19 was released from the virology lab in Wuhan, China. What if it was intentionally released by the CCP? China has a population well over 1 billion people. And they know they are over populated. So if a few million die, even if 100 million die would the CCP really care? But who would do that? I mean only completely evil monsters could even attempt such a thing right? Aren't communists known to be exactly that; monsters? Haven't they historically purged their own ranks of millions and tens of millions of their own citizens? However,...

In one of his final acts as majority leader, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell is pressuring Democrats to keep the filibuster — the procedural tool that liberals and progressives are eager to to do away with so President-elect Joe Biden’s legislative priorities can be approved more easily over GOP opposition. McConnell has told Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer that retaining the legislative filibuster is important and should be part of their negotiations for a power-sharing agreement in the narrowly divided Senate. Schumer and McConnell met Tuesday to begin hammering out the details of organizing the chamber, which will be split...

Twitter has come under fire recently for refusing to ban the Chinese government for lying about not employing forced labor in the Xinjiang province.“‘Forced labor’ is the biggest lie of the century aimed to restrict and suppress the relevant Chinese authorities and companies and contain China’s development,” Chinese spokesperson Hua Chunying tweeted.Accompanying the tweet was a video of forced laborers smiling and saying how good everything is at the factory. Nauseating."Forced labor" is the biggest lie of the century aimed to restrict and suppress the relevant Chinese authorities and companies and contain China's development.🔗https://t.co/olKiB2NxwM pic.twitter.com/SxzzxkrOja— Hua Chunying 华春莹 (@SpokespersonCHN) January...

The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution was a decade-long period of political and social chaos caused by Mao Zedong’s bid to use the Chinese masses to reassert his control over the Communist party. Its bewildering complexity and almost unfathomable brutality was such that to this day historians struggle to make sense of everything that occurred during the period. However, Mao’s decision to launch the “revolution” in May 1966 is now widely interpreted as an attempt to destroy his enemies by unleashing the people on the party and urging them to purify its ranks. (SNIP) “Our objective is to struggle against and...

European companies are expected to hunt for assets in China, mainly in insurance, healthcare and automobile sectors, after the world’s second-largest economy and the European Union agreed to an investment deal last month, lawyers and bankers say.

A former chief of a big Chinese state lender was sentenced to death on Tuesday for bribery, corruption and bigamy, in a rare and dramatic example of Beijing’s use of capital punishment for economic crimes. Lai Xiaomin, the former chairman of Huarong Asset Management, was found guilty by a court in the coastal city of Tianjin of receiving some $277 million in bribes between 2008 and 2018. The government will confiscate his personal assets, it said. Mr. Lai was “lawless and extremely greedy,” the Secondary Intermediate People’s Court of Tianjin said Tuesday in a statement, which added that his actions...

Europe must be an autonomous global actor and it would be “a terrible sign” if the EU blocked a recently concluded investment agreement with China in order to coordinate with Washington, Portuguese Prime Minister António Costa told EurActiv’s partner Lusa in an exclusive interview.The EU and China reached last Wednesday (30 December) an agreement in principle on investment, which has been under negotiation for seven years. However, the deal could cause tension with the new US administration weeks after President-elect Joe Biden proposed a transatlantic dialogue on “the strategic challenge posed by China’s growing international assertiveness”. […] According to the...

The New York Stock Exchange said it no longer plans to delist three Chinese telecommunications giants. In a late Monday statement, the NYSE said it dropped the plans after "further consultation with relevant regulatory authorities in connection with Office of Foreign Assets Control." Hong Kong-listed shares of China Telecom, China Mobile and China Unicom rallied after news of the reversal. The announcement comes after the NYSE said on Dec. 31 that it would move to delist American depositary shares of China Telecom, China Mobile and China Unicom. The exchange had originally planned to drop those listings in order to comply...

Chinese streaming giant Tencent has stopped live broadcasts of games by the NBA’s Philadelphia 76ers in apparent protest at their new president Daryl Morey, who sparked a row by voicing support for Hong Kong protesters last year. Tencent has been offering text updates only for Sixers games as well as those involving the Houston Rockets, Morey’s former employer. It also refused to screen Rockets games last season. Milwaukee Bucks set NBA record for three-pointers in 47-point win at Miami Read more State broadcaster CCTV, which holds China’s exclusive TV rights for the NBA, has not aired any games since the...

Under no scenario would a unified European Union aligned with China be in the interest of America. Indeed, a united EU might not be a friend but a foe.Joseph Borrell, a former Spanish socialist and current High Representative of the European Union, recently argued the EU needs to be strategically independent. “It is foreseen that in 20 years, we [the EU] will not represent more than 11 percent of world GNP, far behind China, which will represent double it, below 14 percent for the United States and at par with India,” Borrell wrote, adding the next two decades would be...

For millennia, China has taught its citizens to embrace individual sacrifice for the greater good. Writer Huang Hung explains how this mindset allows the country to preserve safety during a crisis. (Video at link)

China is suffering mass power cuts in the south, prompting cities to dim street lights, suspend factory production and tell office blocks to turn off heating unless the temperature falls below 3C. The electricity crisis appears to have been prompted by a shortage of coal after Beijing banned imports from Australia. China imposed trade bans against Australia after Canberra demanded an inquiry into the origins of coronavirus and criticised Beijing’s treatment of the people of Hong Kong.

“Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) quashed two election integrity bills in July last year after receiving thousands in donations from Dominion lobbyists.” (National File, Dec. 15, 2020) Not only has China Mitch gotten filthy rich by protecting his wife’s Chinese ship-building interests for many years (net worth jump from $3 million to $36 million) – it seems his recent re-election has a back story as well. Last July, much of the election fraud now paralysing my home nation could have been avoided, had ‘China Mitch’ not blocked two bills providing $775 million to “bolster election security” that would have...

Xi Jinping's chief military diplomat has played down hopes that President-elect Joe Biden could normalize relations with Beijing, describing the current U.S.-China rivalry as "long-term." Rear Admiral Guan Youfei, who manages foreign affairs for the People's Liberation Army, said the United States was to blame for the escalating military tensions in the Taiwan Strait. The 63-year-old director of the Office for International Military Cooperation—established during Xi's military reforms in 2016 and put under the Central Military Commission which he chairs—made the remarks at the seventh annual Cross-Strait Think Tank Academic Forum in Beijing on Sunday.

China intends to “deepen” its partnership with Russia as a bulwark against the United States over the next year, according to a top diplomat in Beijing.

The Trump administration has ended five cultural-exchange programs with China that it says were being used for the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) propaganda and had no benefit to the United States. The terminations follow new visa restrictions announced by Washington limiting stays in the U.S. by members of the CCP and signal further erosion in relations with Beijing. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the exchange programs he ended were fully paid for and operated by the Chinese regime “as soft power propaganda tools.” They provided “carefully curated access to Chinese Communist Party officials, not to the Chinese people,...

Beijing has successfully powered up its “artificial sun” nuclear fusion reactor for the first time, China’s People’s Daily reported on Friday. It’s designed to be a clean energy source, similar to the real Sun. Made to replicate the natural reactions that occur in the sun using hydrogen and deuterium gases as fuels, the HL-2M Tokamak reactor is China's largest and most advanced nuclear fusion experimental research device. It is located in southwestern Sichuan province and was completed late last year. The reactor is often called an "artificial sun" due to the enormous heat and power it produces. Men work inside...

Nike and Coca-Cola are among the major companies and business groups lobbying Congress to weaken a bill that would ban imported goods made with forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region, according to congressional staff members and other people familiar with the matter, as well as lobbying records that show vast spending... The bill, which would prohibit broad categories of certain goods made by persecuted Muslim minorities in an effort to crack down on human rights abuses, has gained bipartisan support, passing the House in September by a margin of 406 to 3. Congressional aides say it has the backing to...

President Trump will enact a series of hardline policies during his final 10 weeks to cement his legacy on China, senior administration officials with direct knowledge of the plans tells Axios. Why it matters: He'll try to make it politically untenable for the Biden administration to change course as China acts aggressively from India to Hong Kong to Taiwan, and the pandemic triggers a second global wave of shutdowns. Watch for National Intelligence Director John Ratcliffe to publicly describe in granular detail intelligence about China's nefarious actions inside the U.S. Details: Trump officials plan to sanction or restrict trade with...

BEIJING -- China on Friday became one of the last major countries to congratulate U.S. President-elect Joe Biden, who is expected to make few changes to U.S. policy in conflicts with Beijing over trade, technology and security.