Tag: china

Meta Chose Revenue Over Policing Chinese Scam Ads, Documents Show

Meta knowingly tolerated large volumes of fraudulent advertising from China to protect billions of dollars in revenue, a new investigation from Reuters unveiled this week. Internal documents show executives prioritized minimizing “revenue impact” over fully cracking down on scams, illegal gambling, pornography and other banned ads.

Although Meta platforms are blocked inside China, Chinese companies are allowed to advertise to users abroad, according to Reuters. That business grew rapidly, reaching more than $18 billion in revenue in 2024—about 11% of Meta’s global sales. Internal estimates showed roughly 19% of that revenue, more than $3 billion, came from prohibited or fraudulent ads.

Meta documents reviewed by Reuters describe China as the company’s top “Scam Exporting Nation,” responsible for roughly a quarter of scam ads worldwide. Victims ranged from U.S. and Canadian investors to consumers in Taiwan. An internal presentation warned, “We need to make significant investment to reduce growing harm.”

In 2024, Meta briefly did just that. A dedicated China-focused anti-fraud team cut problematic ads roughly in half, from 19% to 9% of China-related revenue. But after what one document described as an “Integrity Strategy pivot and follow-up from Zuck,” the team was asked to pause its work. Meta later disbanded the unit, lifted restrictions on new Chinese ad agencies, and shelved additional anti-scam measures.

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Texas AG sues five major TV companies for allegedly spying on state residents

exas Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton filed lawsuits Monday against five major television companies for allegedly spying on state residents by secretly recording what they watch in their own homes.

The lawsuits include two China-based television companies, Hisense and TCL Technology Group Corporation, which Paxton claimed pose serious concerns about consumer data harvesting. 

The three American companies are Sony, Samsung and LG. 

“Companies, especially those connected to the Chinese Communist Party, have no business illegally recording Americans’ devices inside their own homes,” Paxton said. “This conduct is invasive, deceptive, and unlawful. The fundamental right to privacy will be protected in Texas because owning a television does not mean surrendering your personal information to Big Tech or foreign adversaries.”

Paxton’s office said the companies have been illegally collecting personal information from users through Automated Content Recognition technology, which captures “screenshots of a user’s television display every 500 milliseconds, monitor viewing activity in real time, and transmit that information back to the company without the user’s knowledge or consent.”

The companies then sell the information to ad agencies so targeted advertisements can be shared on different platforms.

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US secretly planning five-nation club including Russia to sideline G7 – media

The US is secretly planning to create a five-nation power bloc with Russia, China, India and Japan to sideline the Western-dominated G7, several media outlets have reported.

The idea was reportedly outlined in a longer unpublished draft of the US National Security Strategy released by the administration of President Donald Trump last week. According to the Defense One news portal, that version circulated before the White House published the unclassified document and reportedly proposed a new group, dubbed the ‘Core 5’, as a forum for dialogue among major powers outside the G7 framework.

Under the reported plan, the five-nation format would hold regular summits, similar to the G7, each focused on a specific theme, with Middle East security – and the normalization of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia in particular – said to be first on the agenda.

The unpublished version reportedly lays out plans to downgrade Washington’s role in Europe’s defense, push NATO toward a tougher “burden-sharing” model and focus instead on bilateral ties with EU governments seen as closer to the US outlook, such as Austria, Hungary, Italy and Poland.

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Vatican Accepts Resignation of Jailed Bishop, Raising Questions About Religious Freedom in China

The Vatican replaced detained underground Bishop Joseph Zhang Weizhu in the Apostolic Prefecture of Xinxiang with Bishop Francis Li Jianlin in a December 5 ceremony, drawing praise from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) but serious concern from China’s underground Catholic community.

Zhang, secretly ordained in 1991 with Vatican approval but never recognized by Beijing, has been detained since May 2021 and his whereabouts remain unknown. He was arrested just after recovering from cancer surgery, along with priests and seminarians, for allegedly violating regulations requiring clergy to register with the state. Chinese authorities barred him from attending his successor’s ordination.

China officially recognizes only five religions: Buddhism, Catholicism, Islam, Protestantism, and Taoism. These groups operate under state-sanctioned patriotic religious associations supervised by the United Front Work Department (UFWD), the CCP’s propaganda and influence arm. In 2018, the State Administration for Religious Affairs was absorbed into the UFWD, bringing all religious affairs under direct Party control.

The constitution protects only “normal religious activities,” without defining what “normal” means, and forbids religion from disrupting public order, impairing citizens’ health, or interfering with education. Clergy must support CCP leadership and adhere to the Sinicization of religion. Religious activity is restricted to approved premises, and the state maintains control over clergy appointments, publications, finances, and seminary enrollment. Minors are forbidden from entering places of worship, and pastors and imams have been instructed to emphasize socialist values in their teachings.

Under the Sinicization campaign, the Three-Self Patriotic Movement and the Chinese Christian Council drafted a five-year plan to retranslate the Old Testament and provide new commentary on the New Testament to align scripture with socialist ideology. A 2020 university textbook even rewrote the Gospel account of the woman caught in adultery, replacing Jesus’ mercy with a fabricated story in which he stones the woman and declares, “I am also a sinner.”

Across Henan province, officials forced Protestant churches to replace the Ten Commandments with Xi Jinping quotes. Authorities have ordered the removal of crosses and replaced images of Christ and the Virgin Mary with portraits of Xi. These campaigns censor religious texts, compel clergy to preach CCP ideology, and mandate the display of political slogans.

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NYT Editorial Board Urges US To Prepare For Future War With China

The New York Times editorial board released a video this week calling for the US to “prepare for the future of war” and urged the Pentagon to take drastic steps to be better prepared for a potential fight with China, a conflict that could quickly turn nuclear.

“US politicians often boast that America has the ‘Strongest and most powerful military in the history of the world’ but behind closed doors, they’re being told a different story,” the editorial board said. “New York Times Opinion has learned that the Pentagon has been delivering a classified, comprehensive overview of US military power called the Overmatch brief. The report shows what could happen if a war were to break out between China and the United States. The results are alarming.”

The video said that a war with China might seem “purely hypothetical,” but claimed that Chinese President Xi Jinping ordered the Chinese military to be ready to seize the island of Taiwan by 2027. However, that timeline is based on claims from the CIA and has never been confirmed by Chinese officials. Xi reportedly told President Biden last year that there were “no such plans” to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027.

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Defense Bill Requires Trump Spy Agencies To Declassify COVID-19 Origins Intel, Chinese Obstruction

Slipped into the nearly 3,100-page National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) is a provision that requires “declassification” and “transparency” related to the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, and would require the Trump administration’s spy agencies to release its intelligence related to the Wuhan Institute of Virology where COVID research was offshored by the Obama administration in October of 2014 with a grant to EcoHealth Alliance, a New York City nonprofit run by Peter Daszak. 

In March of 2018, Daszak submitted a grant proposal titled Project DEFUSE (short for “Defusing the Threat of Bat-borne Coronaviruses”) to DARPA, which sought to create genetically modified bat coronaviruses with enhanced potential for human infectivity – including features that could enable aerosol (airborne) transmission. The proposal was ultimately rejected by DARPA over safety concerns – however “if funding became available,” then certain components of particular interest could proceed.

So, let’s see if the NDAA passes with this language – and whether it confirms the above Fauci-funded adventures in Wuhan. Of note, Peter Daszak – unlike Fauci – was not pardoned by former President Joe Biden and the infamous autopen. 

The text of the NDAA – specifically section 6803 of the text, calls on the Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard to work with the heads of all 18 US spy agencies to “perform a declassification review of intelligence” related to “the origins of Coronavirus Disease 2019,” and related to “efforts by government officials of entities of the People’s Republic of China” to cover up the origins of the pandemic. 

“DNI Gabbard remains committed to declassifying COVID-19 information and looks forward to continued work with Congress to share the truth about pandemic-era failures with the American people,” a DNI spokesperson told Just the News.

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China Successfully Operates World’s First Thorium Molten Salt Reactor

An experimental Chinese nuclear plant reportedly just crossed a historic threshold, successfully operating the world’s first thorium-based molten salt reactor (TMSR). The Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics has broken a major scientific barrier by successfully converting thorium to uranium in a historic first.

The Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post reports that the breakthrough, which took place at an experimental reactor out in the Gobi Desert, is “poised to reshape the future of clean sustainable nuclear energy.” 

The process works by using a “precise sequence of nuclear reactions” in which naturally occurring thorium-232 absorbs a neutron, becoming thorium-233. Through a decay process, that isotope breaks down into protactinium-233 and then finally into uranium-233, a potent form of nuclear fuel that can sustain chain reactions for nuclear fission.

While this breakthrough was just publicized this month by a report by Science and Technology Daily, the TMSR has apparently been operational for years. Li Qingnuan, Communist Party secretary and deputy director at the Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics, told the outlet that “since achieving first criticality on October 11, 2023, the thorium molten salt reactor has been steadily generating heat through nuclear fission”.

If the reports are true, this breakthrough would signal an incredible leap forward in a nuclear technology race that China is already winning handily. Although the United States is still the world’s biggest producer of nuclear energy, that status won’t last much longer. In the same time period that the United States built the overdue and over-budget Plant Vogtle, China built 13 reactors of similar scale, and has 33 more on the way. Beijing is also making major forays into the nuclear sectors of emerging economies, with particularly concerted efforts in Africa.

“The Chinese are moving very, very fast,” Mark Hibbs, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and expert on the Chinese nuclear sector, told the New York Times. “They are very keen to show the world that their program is unstoppable.”

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Don’t Fall in the China Trap

Is the Chinese economy collapsing? Or is something worse waiting in the wings? The short answer is that we could be looking at something much worse than a crashing economy. China could be part of a collapse of the global monetary system.

We’ll begin the analysis with the latest official economic releases from China. These releases showed some of the weakest performance by the Chinese economy since the 2020 pandemic collapse.

Things Aren’t Looking Good

Industrial production growth for October declined to 4.9% (year-over-year) from a prior level of 6.5%. This was the weakest reading since August 2024. Some sectors receiving state support such as autos, computers, shipbuilding and telecommunications did better than average, but the broader manufacturing sector slowed materially, and mining output also weakened.

Retail sales in October were also fragile. There was overall growth of 2.9%, but certain sectors crashed, including household appliances (- 14.9%), building materials (- 8.3%), and automobiles (- 6.6%).

Sectors showing strength included jewelry (+37.6%, although this can be partly a proxy for buying gold in the form of jewelry) and cosmetics (+9.6%). This was the smallest increase in retail sales in years and is especially weak considering that October traditionally marks the beginning of a seasonal buying surge.

The most disastrous data came from fixed-asset investment (FAI), which showed a 1.7% year-to-date decline. This is the steepest decline since the pandemic crash year of 2020.

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The Oldest Known Eclipse Record is Shedding Light on Early Celestial Mysteries, Revealing the Location of a Misplaced Ancient Chinese City

Using ancient Chinese records, scientists have calculated Earth’s variable rotational speed back to 709 BCE, based on the earliest datable total solar eclipse.

The team’s work sought evidence to support the recently developed reconstruction of the solar cycle stretching back to the 8th century BCE. To do so, they analyzed descriptions of the solar corona produced in the ancient Chinese Lu Duchy’s capital, Qufu, which provided new information about the Earth’s rotational speed over time, as revealed in a new paper in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Eclipse Records of the Lu Duchy Court

Written in the Spring and Autumn Annals of the Lu Duchy court, it is reported that on July 17, 709 BCE, “the Sun was totally eclipsed.”

Ancient Chinese rulers filled their courts with ancient astronomers, tasked not with understanding the physical nature of the universe but with interpreting the signs and portents the night skies might hold. Notable astronomical events, such as auroras and eclipses, were believed to provide insight into whether cosmic forces approved of an emperor’s decision-making. The scrutiny placed on interpreting the meaning of these events led China to keep the ancient world’s best astronomical records.

A later addendum to the record in the first century CE states that the eclipse “penetrated the center of the Sun, and it was completely yellow above and below.” However, there is no documented provenance to support the claim that this quote originated with a witness to the event.

“What makes this record special isn’t just its age, but also a later addendum in the ‘Hanshu’ (Book of Han) based on a quote written seven centuries after the eclipse,” explained lead author Hisashi Hayakawa, Assistant Professor from the Institute for Space-Earth Environmental Research and Institute for Advanced Research at Nagoya University. 

“It describes the eclipsed Sun as ‘completely yellow above and below.’ This addendum has been traditionally associated with a record of a solar corona,” Hayakawa continued. “If this is truly the case, it represents one of the earliest surviving written descriptions of the solar corona.”

Locating Qufu from an Eclipse

The work not only revealed information about the Earth and Sun, but also about the geography of ancient China. Where the Lu Court at Qufu was believed to reside at the time would not have had the view of the eclipse described in the annals. The implication, therefore, is that earlier historical research obviously must have had the city’s location wrong. 

Matching historical sources and modern archaeology to discern the actual location was a task unto itself. Eventually, the researchers pinpointed a new site some 8 kilometers from the previously purported location of Qufu. With his PhDs in both solar physics and Asian history, Hayakawa was uniquely suited to the task.

“This correction allowed us to measure the Earth’s rotation during the total eclipse accurately, calculate the orientation of the Sun’s rotation axis, and simulate the corona’s appearance,” Hayakawa said.

Our planet has not always rotated at the same speed. At the time of the observation, 2,700 years ago, due to a variety of factors, including the Moon’s pull on the tides, it rotated faster than it does today. By correlating the revised location of Qufu with the date, the researchers were able to accurately measure the Earth’s rotational speed between the 8th and 6th centuries BCE.

“This new dataset fixes coordinate errors in previous Earth rotation studies. Additionally, it improves the accuracy of dating and reconstructing historical astronomical events,” Mitsuru Sôma, coauthor from the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, said.

“This unique historical addendum for the possible solar coronal structure is critical for providing a spot reference on solar activity reconstructions from tree rings and ice cores, as well as providing independent validation of solar activity models,” explained Mathew Owens, coauthor and professor of Space Physics at the University of Reading.

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US Agency for Global Media CEO Kari Lake Discusses Pro-CCP Corruption at Radio Free Asia and Pro-EU Radio Free Europe’s Attempted Regime Change in Hungary – SLAMS Seditious Democrats

United States Agency for Global Media CEO Kari Lake recently spoke to The Gateway Pundit about the corruption and taxpayer-funded left-wing Globalist propaganda within her agency, as she continues her many-months-long crusade to expose the rot. 

It can be recalled that Lake gave bombshell testimony before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on USAGM’s record of waste, fraud, mismanagement, self-dealing, and national security failures in June, and each day, she is finding more.

Established in 1994, the federal agency oversees taxpayer-funded grantee news outlets, including the Voice of America, the Office of Cuba Broadcasting, the Middle East Broadcasting Networks, Radio Free Asia, and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, with the intent of delivering news and information to people worldwide. However, the news content produced has become infested with leftwing ideology and Globalist propaganda, funded by taxpayers to the tune of nearly $1 billion per year.

Lake recently revealed in a Frank Speech interview that one of the grantees, Radio Free Asia (RFA), shut down its operations and began auctioning off equipment worth thousands of dollars for literal pennies, while falsely claiming that it was necessary because the US government had not paid them. Lake, however, shut down the auction and sent in auditors to “find out where every single penny went,” she said.

While speaking to The Gateway Pundit, Lake explained that RFA was attempting to offload “millions of dollars worth of equipment that was paid for by the taxpayer” from “HD cameras that cost thousands– in some cases tens of thousands of dollars– to teleprompters, to full-on, literally news sets for pennies!” This presents a national security issue, Lake said, explaining that equipment, such as hard drives and laptops, cannot simply be sold off by the independent entity “unless we have verification that they’ve been cleaned and scrubbed of any data and information that could be problematic if it got into the wrong hands.”

And despite RFA’s claims that they stopped programming and began auctioning equipment because they weren’t receiving money, Lake says, “we have paid them every single penny that was appropriated to them.”

She also revealed the “interesting” timing of their move to end news coverage and begin the fire sale, which coincided with President Trump’s visit to Busan, South Korea, for the 2025 APEC Summit, where he participated in high-stakes meetings with various Asian leaders, including Chinese President Xi Jinping. “It was right before, just a few days before, President Trump’s historic trip to Asia, his five-day trip, where he did amazing things, like signing peace agreements, signing amazing trade agreements with many Asian countries,” Lake told The Gateway Pundit. “It was really a good news tour for the President, which they did not cover because they said we didn’t pay them.” This makes sense for a USAGM grantee that Lake says “has not always been in alignment with our foreign policy” and is guilty of pushing “anti-American” and “pro-CCP coverage.”

Additionally, it was recently revealed that another USAGM grantee, Radio Free Europe (RFE), had been using its Hungarian-language service, Szabad Europa, to undermine US ally Hungary’s conservative Prime Minister, Viktor Orban, with Globalist propaganda meant “to destabilize that country,” Lake said.

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