Tag: china

SpaceX Starlink satellite photobombs orbital view of secret Chinese air base

One of SpaceX’s broadband-beaming Starlink satellites has been captured overflying a top-secret airbase in China that was photographed by a private American Earth-observation satellite.

The unexpected satellite alignment above Dingxin Airbase in the Gobi Desert of western China took place on Aug. 21 and created a range of unusual effects in the high-resolution image. Dingxin Airbase, which provided a backdrop for the orbital encounter, is one of the most secretive military locations in China, known for conducting complex fighter jet drills and bomber exercises, and supporting development of new military drones.

The visible-light photo, taken by one of Maxar Technologies’ WorldView Legion satellites orbiting at an altitude of 312 miles (518 kilometers), shows what appears to be a fleet of fighter jets resting on the ramp adjacent to the runway surrounded by brown, arid soil. In the upper-left corner of the image, a ghostly oblong shadow appears in the picture with a silver-colored middle section and two darker-colored arms stretching to the sides.

The photobomber is a satellite — specifically, one of SpaceX‘s Starlink internet satellites, which Maxar identified as spacecraft number 33828. The mirror effect comes from a trio of rainbow-colored reflections of the satellite, which enliven the drab desert surface below.

Susanne Hake, Maxar’s general manager for U.S. government, who posted the image on LinkedIn, described the colorful reflections as a “pan-sharpening spectral artifact,” caused by the extremely high speeds — around 5 miles (8 kilometers) per second — at which the two satellites passed each other.

“Essentially, our imaging system was merging high-resolution black & white data with color data while the Starlink zipped past at orbital velocity,” Hake wrote in the post. “Physics turned a technical imaging challenge into accidental art.”

Hake added that, although the orbital encounter underscores how crowded near-Earth space has become, the incident was more of a spectacular rarity than a concern for safety or image quality.

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HHS Calls on US to Cut Ties With China’s Organ Transplant System

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has called on the United States to sever ties with China’s transplantation system over ongoing concerns about organ sourcing.

“In China, forced organ harvesting of prisoners has continued for over 20 years. To affirm the sanctity of human life, America must sever its ties with China’s organ transplant system,” the department wrote in a post on X, pointing to an article published in The Baltimore Sun titled “America’s complicity in China’s organ harvesting.”

The HHS in July uncovered issues with a federally funded organization and identified more than 100 cases in the United States in which organ procurement occurred when patients showed signs of life or had no cardiac time marked down.

The “domestic scandal” is nonetheless “no isolated incident,” reads the commentary article, which points to the decades-long program of forced organ harvesting in China targeting prisoners of conscience.

In 2019, the independent China Tribunal concluded beyond a reasonable doubt that forced organ harvesting had taken place in China on a large scale, and practitioners of the spiritual discipline Falun Gong were the primary source. In its final report, issued in 2020, the tribunal said it believed the Chinese regime continued to harvest organs from unwilling prisoners of conscience, as there was no evidence that the abuses had stopped.

Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a spiritual discipline based on the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance. Its practitioners have been persecuted by the Chinese communist regime since 1999.

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Their Fathers’ Organs Were Stolen in China: The Xi–Putin Hot Mic Opens Fresh Wounds

Grief and shock hit 19-year-old Han Yu at once as she walked into a room filled with police.

Center in the throngs lay the lifeless body of her father, who had been in perfect health two months before the Chinese authorities threw him into jail.

Even with makeup, traces of suffering were evident. There was tissue missing from under his left eye and bruises around his chin. Black stitches led downward from his throat.

The police yelled and pushed Han out when the teen tried to unbutton her father’s clothes and check how big the incision was.

A few other relatives managed to lift his shirt up and saw that the cut went all the way to the abdomen. They pressed down on his stomach. There were no organs. It was all ice.

What did they do with the organs?

Fast forward 21 years, and the sense of horror recurred when she saw the hot mic moment of Chinese leader Xi Jinping musing with Russian President Vladimir Putin about continual, multiple transplants leading to longevity.

“Earlier, people rarely lived to 70, but these days at 70 you are still a child,” Xi said through a translator in Russian at a massive military parade in Beijing commemorating World War II on Sept. 3.

Putin replied through his interpreter in Mandarin: “As biotechnology advances, human organs can be continuously transplanted, allowing us to become younger and younger, perhaps even achieve immortality.”

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Ex-FBI official’s leaks expose ties to high-profile investigations

A disgraced FBI veteran’s betrayal has rocked the bureau’s credibility. Charles McGonigal, once a top counterintelligence official, leaked sensitive details about a probe into a Chinese firm tied to Hunter Biden’s business ventures, as Just the News reports. His fall from grace exposes a tangled web of high-stakes investigations.

McGonigal’s leaks centered on CEFC, a Chinese conglomerate linked to Hunter Biden, while he oversaw major FBI cases from Chinese espionage to Trump-Russia probes. From 2010 to 2012, he led a hunt for a Chinese mole that saw over a dozen CIA sources vanish or die. Yet, he himself fed information to a China-linked associate, casting doubt on his loyalty.

In 2010, McGonigal investigated a CIA mole, later pinpointing Jerry Chun Shing Lee as a suspect. Lee, caught with classified notes, conspired with Chinese intelligence but wasn’t arrested until 2018, despite the FBI’s chance to nab him earlier. The delay raises questions about the bureau’s judgment under McGonigal’s watch.

Mole hunt, leaky ship

McGonigal’s role in the mole hunt was critical, yet he leaked details about CEFC to a figure tied to Albanian and Chinese interests. “A veteran FBI counterintelligence agent, Charles McGonigal, was assigned to run it,” the New York Times noted, but his own leaks to China-linked targets mock that legacy. The hypocrisy stinks of double standards.

By 2016, McGonigal was section chief at FBI headquarters, overseeing cyber-counterintelligence. Promoted by James Comey to lead New York’s counterintelligence division, he juggled probes into Huawei, WikiLeaks, and terrorist attacks like TWA Flight 800. His résumé, though glittering, now looks like a roadmap of compromised trust.

McGonigal’s fingerprints were on the Trump-Russia probe, Crossfire Hurricane, which branded Trump a Russian asset. He received early tips from Alexander Downer about Russian “dirt” on Clinton, sparking the investigation. Yet, his own leaks to foreign players suggest the FBI’s moralizing was a selective charade.

Crossfire Hurricane’s tainted roots

“I’m sure you will be glad once Tuesday has come and gone,” McGonigal texted agent Peter Strzok before the 2016 election, hinting at political bias. The FBI’s briefing to Clinton’s campaign in 2015 was a cozy heads-up about Turkish influence, while Trump’s 2016 briefing doubled as a fishing expedition. Lindsey Graham called it a “clear double standard” in 2020, and McGonigal’s role fuels the skepticism.

McGonigal’s defense lawyer, Seth DuCharme, praised his “extraordinary service” in sentencing memos, conveniently ignoring his client’s Chinese mole hunt or Crossfire ties. DuCharme’s selective storytelling sidesteps the inconvenient truth: McGonigal’s leaks undermine his heroic narrative. The omission reeks of spin.

In 2017, McGonigal fretted over leaks about a FISA warrant on Trump aide Carter Page, texting, “It will create a real issue for us if it is made public.” The irony is rich — McGonigal, the leaker, feared leaks. His actions suggest the FBI’s internal rot ran deeper than suspected.

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Censorship Concerns Surge As China Yanks Video Of Xi–Putin Organ Transplant Discussion

China’s state-owned broadcaster has rescinded international wire agency access to a hot mic video of Chinese and Russian leaders discussing longevity and organ transplants, an effort that shows the Chinese regime’s fear of attention on the topic, critics say.

The open mic exchange between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping took place in Beijing on Sept. 3, as the two leaders walked together ahead of a military parade commemorating World War II.

Xi at the parade told Putin that “these days at 70 you are still a child,” prompting Putin to remark that continued organ transplants could allow one to live younger and even reach immortality. Xi in response said that it is predicted that there’s a chance of humans living to 150 years old.

The conversation became global news and sparked discussions about the Chinese regime’s state-sanctioned forced organ harvesting, a taboo topic in China. CCTV has since taken down the livestream video that captured the exchange and removed the moment from replays.

CCTV also sent a letter through its lawyer to Reuters—which licensed the video through CCTV and edited it into a four-minute clip—requesting the news agency to remove the footage on the grounds that the clips Reuters published exceeded the agreed-upon scope.

CCTV lawyer He Danning claimed Reuters’ “editorial treatment applied to this material has resulted in a clear misrepresentation of the facts and statements contained within the licensed feed.”

Reuters withdrew the video and issued a “kill” notice to its clients on Sept. 5. The agency said it had earlier distributed the clip to more than 1,000 media clients around the world, including major international news broadcasters and TV stations.

In a statement, Reuters said it was removing the content because it no longer has the legal permission to publish this copyrighted material.

“We stand by the accuracy of what we published. We have carefully reviewed the published footage, and we have found no reason to believe Reuters longstanding commitment to accurate, unbiased journalism has been compromised,” Reuters stated.

According to the London-based China Tribunal, forced organ harvesting has taken place in China for years “on a significant scale,” and practitioners of the Falun Gong spiritual group are the primary victims. It said that persecuted religious minorities including Uyghurs are also potential targets. Since 1999, millions of Falun Gong practitioners have been incarcerated in prisons, labor camps, and other facilities, with hundreds of thousands tortured and untold numbers persecuted to death, according to the Falun Dafa Information Center.

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US War Department To Shift Focus From China To ‘Threats’ In Latin America

US War Department officials are proposing to shift the US military posture away from a focus on China, instead prioritizing alleged threats in Latin America and the Caribbean, Politicoreported on 6 Saturday.

A draft of the newest National Defense Strategy places “domestic and regional missions above countering adversaries such as Beijing and Moscow,” Politico revealed, citing three people briefed on early versions of the report.

The news comes one day after Trump signed an executive order for the Department of Defense to be renamed the “War Department” to better reflect its mission.

Politico notes that the move, if implemented, would anger politicians in both the Republican and Democratic parties who have long been hostile to China and called for aggressive policies to counter its rise.

“This is going to be a major shift for the US and its allies on multiple continents,” said one person briefed on the draft document. “The old, trusted US promises are being questioned.”

The document was prepared by Elbridge Colby, the War Department’s policy chief. Politico reports that the shift away from China and toward the Western Hemisphere appears to be already underway.  

The War Department deployed thousands of National Guard troops to support police in Los Angeles and Washington, DC, and has established a militarized zone across the southern border with Mexico that allows troops to detain civilians.

The policy shift may also result in the US withdrawing some troops from Europe and cutting military assistance programs for fellow NATO members.

“NATO allies increasingly expect some of the roughly 80,000 U.S. troops in Europe to leave over the next several years,” Politico added.

The proposed policy shift comes amid escalating tensions between the US and Venezuela.

This week, Trump authorized the US military to shoot down Venezuelan warplanes if commanders judge them a threat to US naval and air forces in the Caribbean. “If they do put us in a dangerous position, we’ll shoot them down,” Trump told reporters Friday.

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US Credibility At Stake In The Senkakus

On May 3, Japanese Air Self-Defense Force fighter jets scrambled from Okinawa in response to a helicopter that took off from a Chinese Coast Guard vessel in an apparent territorial defense posture. The helicopter wasn’t near a port or any of Japan’s 430 inhabited islands. It was flying near the Senkaku Islands.

Long administered by Japan, and recognized by the U.S. as Japanese territory, the Senkakus have emerged as a flash point in the increasingly confrontational Japan-China relationship and the broader U.S.-China competition.

Far from a quarrel over empty rocks, the Senkaku Islands dispute resides at the volatile intersection of China’s rising nationalism, Japan’s strategic vulnerability, and, critically, America’s alliance credibility.

What’s Really at Stake for China

While control of the islands could marginally strengthen China’s anti-access/area-denial (A2AD) posture and expand its Exclusive Economic Zone, the real driver of China’s policy is rooted in its broader goal of undermining the U.S.-led alliance system in Asia. This effort is a critical step in the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) pursuit of a grand strategy bent on achieving regional hegemony and ultimately displacing the United States as the world’s leading superpower.

Despite a long and bitter history between Japan and China, the Senkaku Islands, named the Diaoyu Islands in China, were a peripheral issue until 2012. That year, Japan nationalized three of the Senkaku islands by purchasing them from a private owner in an attempt to prevent their development by a hardline Japanese governor. Instead of diffusing tensions, the move led to anti-Japanese protests across China and elevated the islands to a matter of national pride.

But the protests were not a spontaneous outpouring of long simmering anti-Japanese sentiment triggered by the nationalization of three barren rocks; they were state enabled. In a country where public demonstrations are suppressed, the CCP allowed and encouraged widespread displays of outrage. By letting nationalism flare, Beijing cloaked its ensuing policy shift towards the islands it defines as “inalienable“ parts of its territory as a reaction to public sentiment rather than a calculated assertion of power and a component of their strategic ambitions.

That China’s policy shift towards the islands occurred in 2012 was no coincidence. An increasingly self-assured China perceived the U.S. as weakened, viewing the post-2008 Global Financial Crisis shock to U.S. economic power as a strategic opening. And with rising confidence in their military and economic power, the CCP, under the new leadership of Xi Jinping, began shedding its decades long “hide and bide“ strategy in favor of a more aggressive foreign policy with a mandate to “actively accomplish something.”

For China, the Senkaku dispute is less about the intrinsic value of eight uninhabited rocks than about the future of the regional order. China knows that if it can erode Japan’s ability to control the islands without triggering a U.S. response, America’s security guarantees would appear flimsy and negotiable. Beijing’s ultimate Senkaku Islands objective, then, is to expose the vulnerabilities of the U.S.-Japan alliance and thus weaken a cornerstone of American power in Asia. For China to achieve national rejuvenation, it must erode the system of U.S. alliances that stands in its way.

How China Applies Pressure: A Campaign of Attrition

Since 2012, China has transformed the Senkaku Islands dispute from a dormant issue into a calibrated campaign of coercion. China’s incremental pressure strategy aims at weakening Japan’s control and eroding confidence in the U.S.-Japan alliance.

At sea, China relies on constant presence operations. In 2023, Chinese government vessels entered the contiguous zone around the Senkaku Islands on 352 out of 365 days—the highest number since record-keeping began in 2008, according to data from the Japan Coast Guard. Additionally, Chinese Maritime Militia boats often harass Japanese fishermen and shadow Japan Coast Guard patrols.

The PLA Navy (PLAN) has also ramped up its footprint. China’s destroyers, cruisers, and surveillance ships conduct regular patrols near the islands, mapping the battlespace and normalizing their presence. Now the world’s largest navy, PLAN operations are becoming more frequent and more complex.

In the air, Beijing declared an Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) over the East China Sea in 2013, encompassing the Senkakus. While ignored by the U.S. and Japan, the ADIZ signaled China’s intent to claim the airspace as its own. The PLA Air Force (PLAAF) now regularly flies J-11 fighters, H-6K bombers, and UAVs near the islands, prompting Japan to scramble jets hundreds of times per year.

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Sanctuary Rescuing 47 Beagles from Chinese Testing Lab

In a daring and costly mission dubbed Operation Freedom Fetchers, Wyoming’s Kindness Ranch Animal Sanctuary has begun the process of rescuing 47 beagles from a research facility in China — dogs believed to be connected to American-owned or funded experiments.

The first group of ten beagles touched down in Los Angeles on August 25, after a grueling flight from Shanghai, a night at a Centers for Disease Control quarantine facility, and a 20-hour van ride to the sanctuary in Hartville, Wyoming.

For sanctuary director John Ramer, the moment was bittersweet.

“This isn’t just about ten dogs. It’s about exposing the secrecy and cruelty of billion-dollar institutions that profit off the suffering of man’s best friend,” he said in a Facebook post.

Ramer first learned of the beagles in May, when a contact at the group White Coat Waste alerted him to their plight and connected him with others involved in the rescue attempt. After securing video proof and documentation, Kindness Ranch agreed to take on the challenging and costly rescue.

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Fentanyl Financiers: Treasury Links Mexican Banks and Chinese Networks to Cartel Money Laundering

The U.S. Department of the Treasury is stepping up its efforts to identify the ways that drug cartels move their funds. Most recently, Treasury officials identified the presence of Chinese money laundering networks that are working with Mexican drug cartels and other criminal entities to move large sums of cash.

In a series of notices from the U.S. Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, authorities warned financial institutions about the methods that criminal organizations are using to launder money. According to FinCEN, investigators reviewed 137,153 Bank Secrecy Act reports from 2020 to 2024, identifying $312 billion in suspicious transactions tied to Chinese money laundering networks.

Of significant concern to FinCEN is the apparent ties between Mexican drug cartels and Chinese money laundering groups. The report comes just weeks after FinCEN and the U.S. Treasury sanctioned two Mexican banks and one brokerage firm that they alleged had been laundering money for various drug cartels and had also been helping funnel money into China to pay for fentanyl precursors, Breitbart Texas reported at the time.

The ties between drug cartels and Chinese groups are fueled in part by currency laws in both Mexico and China, which limit the amount of U.S. dollars that can be deposited and moved in Mexico, as well as China’s control of international currency within its country. Treasury officials claim that money laundering groups from China buy U.S. dollars from drug cartels and then sell them further ahead to Chinese individuals or businesses who are trying to evade China’s cash control laws.

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China Capitalism Myth: CCP Controls Companies, Capital, and Stock Market

China apologists often claim that China is no longer communist, but such claims are complete nonsense, reflecting an incredibly selective and superficial analysis of what the reality is in China. For one thing, the ruling party is the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). And the name was not chosen arbitrarily. It is a communist country.

Apart from the CCP, there are 8 minor parties, but these parties have to concede to the ruling role of the CCP, meaning it would technically be illegal for one of them to plan or even suggest that they should replace the CCP as the ruling party. So politically, China is 100% communist.

As for the economic system, with the state controlling more than half of all companies, it can hardly be considered capitalist.

Most media and many economists mistakenly claim that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) controls only a limited share of the economy, citing the percentage of firms directly owned by the state. But focusing narrowly on state-owned enterprises (SOEs) hides the much broader reality: state control extends through multiple layers of ownership, networks, and connections, reaching the majority of China’s corporate sector.

Of 40 million registered firms in China, about 391,000 are 100% state-owned (SOEs), 629,000 are at least 30 percent state-owned, and nearly 867,000 have some level of state ownership. Altogether, the capital of firms with state stakes accounted for about 68 percent of the economy in 2017.

State owned firms can own significant shares in other firms, extending the states reach. Scholars have identified 978,609 firms within three degrees of separation from an SOE and more than 3.5 million firms indirectly tied through joint ventures. Among the top 1,000 private owners in China, 78 percent are state-connected, 63 percent directly and 14 percent indirectly.

If mixed-ownership models are included, where SOEs hold a 30 percent stake or maintain indirect equity ties, the total number of state-connected firms ranges from 600,000 to 3.5 million. SOEs also use enterprise groups to spin off subsidiaries, list them on stock exchanges, and bring in private capital while retaining state control.

This state dominance has accelerated. Between 2000 and 2019, the number of private owners directly connected to the state nearly tripled, while indirect connections grew even faster. By 2022, 71 percent of Chinese companies on the Fortune 500 list were state-owned, rising to 84 percent by asset size. By 2021, 54% of China’s largest firms were state owned.

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