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Internal orders issued by China’s top military authority have met widespread resistance at the grassroots level following the purge of two of the country’s most senior generals, according to multiple sources close to the People’s Liberation Army who spoke to The Epoch Times. After Central Military Commission (CMC) Vice Chairman Zhang Youxia and chief of the Joint Staff Department Liu Zhenli were placed under investigation on Jan. 24, at least two directives issued by the CMC General Office to theater commands and group armies were ignored or only passively acknowledged. Sources said the grassroots troops within the military are expressing...

According to unconfirmed reports, General Zhang Youxia, China’s vice-chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC), sent a company of troops (over a hundred or more) to the government’s Yingxi Hotel in western Beijing on 18 January. Their mission was to arrest Xi Jinping. A few hours before, the Chinese president – alerted by an informant – set in motion countermeasures. Troops under the command of Cao Qi, head of Xi’s Central Guards Bureau, ambushed Zhang’s soldiers. In the ensuing gunfight at Yangxi Hotel, nine guards were reportedly killed along with dozens of Zhang Youxia’s soldiers. Throughout China, military movements have...

“IN AN UNCERTAIN world, China is the biggest certainty.” So proclaimed a Chinese spokesman in December. Amid a war in Europe, turmoil in the Middle East and America’s rewriting of the geopolitical order, some in the West may be inclined to agree. As The Economist went to press, Britain’s prime minister, Sir Keir Starmer, was visiting China’s president, Xi Jinping, the latest among a series of Western leaders who have headed to Beijing in search of deals and dependability. Yet in recent days politics in China has proved anything but certain. On January 24th the defence ministry said that the...

A billionaire with links to the family of Xi Jinping was reportedly taken from his apartment in the Four Seasons in Hong Kong by Chinese police and taken to the mainland. Xiao Jianhua, one of China’s richest men, is currently in police custody on the mainland, the Financial Times and New York Times reported. He may be assisting with a graft investigation, part of the Chinese president’s sweeping campaign that critics say is more about consolidating power than tackling corruption. If Chinese police were involved in Xiao’s abduction from Hong Kong, it would appear to violate the former British colony’s...

On May 30, 2014, The New York Times published a story by Ian Johnson about what seems to be a concerted government effort to clamp down on Christian churches in Wenzhou, the city with the highest percentage of Christians in China. It has long been known that there are regional differences in official attitudes toward religion, not always reflecting the views of the central government. It is conceivable that the events in Wenzhou could be a relatively local matter. But at any rate one aspect of the story makes one wonder: The provincial head of the Communist party who initiated...

Xi Jinping has offered Europe new trade partnerships and promised to uphold the “values” of the United Nations. The move is an apparent attempt to capitalise on the continent’s growing rift with the United States. On Tuesday, Sir Keir Starmer became the latest leader to travel to Beijing after Mark Carney and Petteri Orpo, the prime ministers of Canada and Finland. In a meeting with Mr Orpo on Tuesday, the Chinese president said China and Europe were “partners, not adversaries” and invited Finnish companies to “swim in the vast ocean of the Chinese market”. He also appeared to snub Donald...

Chinese dictator Xi Jinping has removed China’s most senior general and the chief of combat planning and operations amid allegations of corruption and “violation of party discipline.” An editorial in the People’s Liberation Army Daily accuses the men of having “undermined Xi’s authority, abetted political and corruption problems that impaired the party’s leadership over the armed forces, and damaged efforts to develop combat effectiveness.” General Zhang Youxia, the senior of the two vice chairmen overseeing China’s approximate equivalent of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Central Military Commission, and a longtime Xi ally, was abruptly removed from his post...

“We’re going to allow, it’s very important, 600,000 students,” Trump told reporters. “We’re going to get along with China. But it’s a different relationship that we have now with China.” There are currently 270,000 Chinese students studying in the United States, according to the Los Angeles Times. Back in May, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that the Trump administration would begin to "aggressively revoke" the visas of Chinese students.

I'm probably one of the most antiwar posters on Free Republic. I hate every bit of what we're doing in the Mideast and Europe. Deploying troops to Syria and Gaza, funding and aiding the Ukraine s**thole. Constantly warring with other nations on behalf of our (lol) "allies." It's all folly, even evil. This is hitting different. Venezuelan Communist criminals confiscated -literally stole - American oil fields, private property that belonged to Americans and American companies. Nobody has been held to account until now. Maduro is a criminal dictator who fk'd with our electoral and immigration systems in a major way....

As video of U.S. military operations inside Venezuela began to surface on social media, President Donald Trump has announced that overnight the U.S. military carried out a “large scale strike” against Venezuela and captured President Nicolas Maduro.

BREAKING: President Trump announces successful strike against Venezuela, says Nicolas Maduro has been captured

Loud explosions, accompanied by sounds resembling aircraft flyovers, were heard in Caracas around 2:00 am (06:00 GMT) Saturday, an AFP journalist reported. The explosions come as US President Donald Trump, who has deployed a navy task force to the Caribbean, has raised the possibility of ground strikes against Venezuela. Thick columns of black smoke also rose over the city’s skyline. On Monday, Trump claimed a strike had been carried out against a "docking facility" in the country, though today’s blasts appear to be centered within the capital's metropolitan core rather than on the coast.

President Donald Trump announced that he will travel to Beijing in the spring to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Trump wrote on Truth Social that he spoke with Xi by phone on Monday. “I just had a very good telephone call with President Xi, of China,” Trump wrote. “We discussed many topics including Ukraine/Russia, Fentanyl, Soybeans and other Farm Products, etc. We have done a good, and very important, deal for our Great Farmers — and it will only get better.” Trump continued: Our relationship with China is extremely strong! This call was a follow up to our highly...

The woman Larry Summers asked for advice on how to get “horizontal” with in emails to Jeffrey Epstein is a high-flying economist, The Post can reveal. The ex-Treasury Secretary was referring to Chinese macro-economist Keyu Jin, 43 — then a tenured London School of Economics professor and Harvard graduate — and daughter of a top Chinese associate of President Xi Jinping. In several messages from 2018 and 2019, married former Harvard president Summers, 70, confided in his “wing man” Epstein about a woman he was chasing and delivered blow-by-blow updates of his pursuit. Jin Keyu speaking at the World Economic...

DONALD Trump has just blown a hole in Vladimir Putin’s warchest – and the shockwaves are already rippling through Moscow, Beijing and New Dehli. In a move branded by the Kremlin as “an act of war”, the US President slapped sweeping sanctions on Russia’s oil titans Rosneft and Lukoil – and within hours, the pain began to bite. Global oil prices surged nearly five per cent overnight, China’s state oil giants froze Russian purchases and India – Moscow’s biggest remaining lifeline — is preparing to slash imports. For Putin, the timing couldn’t be worse. His forces are still pounding Ukraine,...

Oil prices jumped and energy companies helped the FTSE 100 to a record high after Donald Trump announced new sanctions on Russia’s two biggest oil producers.Brent crude increased by 5.2% to $65.83 a barrel – a two-week high – after the news of the fresh restrictions on Rosneft and Lukoil, as the US president ramps up pressure on Vladimir Putin to end the war in Ukraine.The jump in oil price also boosted shares in the energy companies Shell and BP by about 3%, which in turn helped to drive the FTSE 100 to a record high of 9,594.82.

Four major state-owned Chinese oil companies have suspended their purchases of seaborne Russian oil in response to the new sanctions imposed by the Trump administration on Rosneft and Lukoil, according to a Reuters report, citing anonymous trade sources. The suspension, if confirmed, would put Russia under major economic pressure to end its war on Ukraine. China is a key strategic partner of Russia. Beijing's large-scale oil purchases have aided Moscow through punishing Western sanctions related to its invasion of Ukraine. The four oil firms involved are PetroChina, Sinopec, CNOOC, and Zhenhua Oil, per Reuters.

In recent weeks, the world has witnessed a defining moment in the Xi Jinping era—a moment when the full weight of China’s political and military machinery has turned inward. From sweeping purges within the People’s Liberation Army to the Communist Party’s latest five-year planning session, it is clear that Xi is tightening the reins of control across every lever of state and society. Xi Jinping is not merely the head of state; he is the state. As General Secretary of the Communist Party of China, President of the People’s Republic, and Chairman of the Central Military Commission, he holds the...

He Weidong was China second highest ranking official in the militaryThe Chinese Communist Party has expelled nine top generals in one of its largest public crackdowns on the military in decades.Nine men were suspected of serious financial crimes, a statement released by China's defence ministry said.Most of them were three-star generals and part of the party's decision-making Central Committee. They have also been expelled from the military.While the statement cast the expulsion as part of an anti-corruption drive, analysts say it could also be seen as a political purge. It comes on the eve of the party's plenum where the...

Perhaps US intelligence has an idea about who is increasingly the real power behind the throne in BeijingXi Jinping effectively vanished in July and the first half of August. Some China watchers speculated that his unexplained absence was a sign he was losing his grip on power. But he has since reappeared and been very visible again. At the end of the month, he visited Tibet, then indulged in a high-profile, backslapping meeting with Vladimir Putin and the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Tianjin. He capped off his busy two weeks with the September 3 military parade in Beijing...