Tag: china

How China Is Censoring Scientific Research Across The Globe

We all know how serious environmental degradation is in China. Its emissions have skyrocketed, air and water quality have plummeted, and critical habitat and ecosystems have disappeared. That’s why unadulterated research on the topic is critical to better informed policy. But my recent experience shows that China’s censorship model is spreading to the West, hindering that research from taking place.

In 2012 I published an academic paper in the journal Environmental Politics coining the term “authoritarian environmentalism” to describe the way that environmental policy is made in China. This year, I was approached by Lu Liao, a professor of urban planning at Renmin University in Beijing, to submit a paper to a special issue on China in Environmental Policy and Governance, a respected journal published by the major academic publisher Wiley, based in New Jersey.

I suggested reviewing what we have learned about “authoritarian environmentalism” since 2012. “The idea of revisiting the 2012 paper sounds very timely and meaningful,” replied Liao, who sits on the editorial board of Environmental Policy and Governance.

That’s when things went awry. The proposal I sent her included a new research question about whether the policy model in China is flawed by design, a form of greenwashing intended to legitimate one-party rule rather than improve the environment.

After a few days, Liao wrote back to report some “intriguing context from my own position,” as she called it. “Due to current sensitivities around ideology and international relations in China, many Chinese universities are quite cautious about discussions involving certain terms, and faculty are prohibited from publish[ing] work on some sensitive topics.”

I was “invited” to withdraw my submission and seek publication elsewhere. China’s censorship regime was being extended to a Western scholar and to a Western academic journal.

I reached out to the journal’s editor, Andy Gouldson, professor of environmental policy at Leeds University, who has done work in China, seeking clarification. He confirmed that “there are sensitivities for the guest editors of the special issue” and invited me to submit the paper as a regular contribution. I’ll decline. I won’t publish in a journal that bends to China’s censorship regime.

Put aside the irony that my research on authoritarianism in China was sidelined by authoritarianism in China. The bigger scandal here is how Western academics and publishers are willing to allow PRC censorship to dictate the terms of their trade.

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Florida AG Subpoenas Medical Firms Over ‘Backdoor’ on China-Made Devices

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier has subpoenaed two medical companies selling Chinese-made patient monitors over concerns that the devices could send patient data to China.

Uthmeier’s office stated in a press release that they had taken legal action against Contec Medical Systems, a China-based company known for making patient monitors, and Epsimed, a Miami-based company that resells Contec-made monitors under its own brand name.

The office alleged that Contec “concealed serious security problems” in its products, including a built-in “backdoor” that could “allow bad actors to manipulate data” on the devices without knowledge of either the patient or the provider, and programming that automatically sends patient information to an IP address that belongs to a university in China.

“Some of the most private, personal information” is going to China “without the consent, and in most cases, the awareness of the patient,” Uthmeier told The Epoch Times. “I think there’s a major consumer protection issue for Floridians, for Americans as a whole, and we’re not going to stand for it.”

Uthmeier’s office alleged that Contec and Epsimed may have violated a state law, the Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act, in their assurances on product quality when the products appear to fall far short of standards given their security vulnerabilities. He threatened to pursue damages, civil penalties, and injunctive relief to protect consumers.

Contec Medical Systems is headquartered in Qinhuangdao, a port city located in northern China’s Hebei Province. It has an affiliate called Contec Medical Systems USA Inc. in Illinois to handle the U.S. market.

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How Much of Trump’s ‘Built in America’ Phone Is Actually Built in America?

The Trump Organization unveiled Trump Mobile, “a next-generation wireless provider with bold ambitions and a customer-first mission,” on Monday. The organization also teased the T1 Phone—which is slated for an August release and available for preorder—as a “gold smartphone engineered for performance and proudly designed and built in the United States.” The origins of the phone seem to be more of an aspiration than a reality.

Eric Trump, the executive vice president of the Trump Organization, told conservative podcaster Benny Johnson that “eventually, all the phones can be built in the United States of America” (emphasis added), per The Wall Street Journal. Given the phone’s hardware and $499 price, the Journal determined that the phones will likely be imported from China because “only Chinese makers like Xiaomi and Oppo have hardware to match.” (President Donald Trump threatened to impose 25 percent tariffs on foreign-made phones just last month.)

Max Weinbach, an analyst at market research firm Creative Strategies, also believes that the T1 Phones are Chinese in origin. Based on its hardware, Weinbach says the T1 Phone is a custom variant of the Wingtech REVVL 7 Pro 5G (the T-Mobile version retails for about $170). Wingtech itself is a Chinese semiconductor designer and manufacturer partially owned by the Chinese Communist Party that is listed in the Bureau of Industry and Security’s Entity List, which “identifies persons or addresses of persons reasonably believed to be involved…in activities contrary to the national security or foreign policy interests of the United States.”

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Former Intel Officer Drops Truth Bomb – CIA and ODNI Covered Up 2020 CCP Election Interference, Fired Him for Speaking Out

A former National Intelligence Officer for Cyber under President Trump and Joe Biden has come forward with explosive allegations: the CIA and Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) deliberately buried evidence of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) interference in the 2020 presidential election—and fired him when he refused to play along.

The whistleblower’s damning post came in response to General Mike Flynn’s tweet Monday questioning why foreign election interference by the CCP wasn’t exposed back in 2020:

“So there was foreign interference by the CCP in the 2020 presidential election. Who was running the USIC at that time and why didn’t this get exposed back then? @CIADirector.

Can we get four years of our lives back!?” Flynn asked, tagging President Trump and former DNI Tulsi Gabbard.”

Former intel officer Christopher Porter didn’t mince words in his reply:

“Sir, I WAS in charge of election analysis and DID call it out. CIA and ODNI tried to cover up the evidence and when I wouldn’t go along with it, terminated me.”

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LA mayor once joined pro-Cuba communist group, now it’s part of CCP-linked network behind protests

The far-left “brigade” of pro-Communist Cuba activists which Karen Bass was a key member of years ago is currently embedded in the Chinese Communist Party-linked financial network that is behind the Los Angeles protests — some of which have turned violent — in the city where she is now mayor.

Decades ago, Bass was a member of — and was repeatedly identified as a leader in — the Venceremos Brigade (VB), a far-left activist group sympathetic to the Communist revolution in Cuba and which U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies as well as Cuban defectors have identified as being co-opted by Cuban intelligence services. The VB was also linked to violent groups such as the Weather Underground.

Nowadays, the VB is fiscally sponsored by a Manhattan-based Communist organization known as The People’s Forum, which is part of wealthy Marxist businessman Neville Singham’s broad financial network. The VB is also tied to other Singham-linked endeavors such as the far-left BreakThrough News as well as the radical revolutionary Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL).

The Marxist PSL has also been a key organizer of the protests in Los Angeles and elsewhere, which have sought to oppose the efforts by U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement (ICE) to crack down on illegal immigration.

The VB’s website says that it “is an entirely volunteer-run grassroots organization and we need the support of our friends, comrades, and supporters to continue this critical anti-imperialist work” and that “the People’s Forum (‘TPF’), a 501(c)(3) non-profit, is the Venceremos Brigade’s fiscal sponsor.”

The brigade’s website touts that “in the last 50 years, approximately 10,000 people from the US have traveled to Cuba with the VB, including elected officials, labor leaders, artists and entertainers, academics, activists, and social movement leaders.” In the 1970s, Bass — the activist turned congresswoman turned mayor — was one of them.

David Atlee Phillips, the chief of the Latin America Division of the CIA until 1975, penned an article in 1982 where he assessed that Communist Cuba’s Intelligence Directorate — Dirección General de Inteligencia or DGI — had a strong level of control over the VB.

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Flight Tracker Allegedly Spies Mysterious Chinese Transport Planes Heading for Iran

At least three transport planes from China reportedly flew to Iran in the three days after Israel began attacking Iran’s nuclear program and military command structure, their cargoes and missions unknown.

The UK Telegraph reported on Tuesday that all three of the cargo planes “flew westward along northern China, crossing into Kazakhstan, then south into Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan,” and then dropped off radar screens as they approached Iran.

All three of the planes apparently filed false flight plans that showed their destination as Luxembourg, but none of them flew anywhere near Europe. Later flights from the same region did head toward Luxembourg, which is the home base of the company that operates the aircraft, Cargolux.

Cargolux, which is partially owned by a Chinese company, on Tuesday denied its planes entered Iranian airspace. The company blamed “faulty public tracking data” for creating the appearance of the planes surreptitiously flying into Iranian airspace.

All three of the planes were Boeing 747 cargo planes, which the Telegraph noted are “commonly used for transporting military equipment and weapons, and hired to fly government contract orders.”

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Kash Patel Drops 2020 Election Interference Evidence Bombshell

FBI Director Kash Patel dropped a bombshell Monday evening, handing Congress an intelligence report that raises serious questions about China’s role in the 2020 election. According to the report, Chinese operatives mass-produced counterfeit U.S. driver’s licenses as part of a broader scheme to flood the system with fake mail-in ballots—benefiting… you guessed it… Joe Biden. 

This wasn’t just foreign meddling—it was industrial-scale fraud, enabled by a broken mail-in voting system the Democrats have long been exploiting. The report confirms what many of us suspected all along: the integrity of the 2020 election wasn’t just compromised—it was hijacked.

According to officials who spoke to Just the News, the reports—flagging potential foreign interference in the lead-up to the 2020 election—were neither corroborated nor seriously investigated. In fact, they were quietly pulled back from intelligence agencies right around the time then-FBI Director Chris Wray told Congress there were “no known plots” of foreign meddling. 

Convenient timing, isn’t it? While Trump was being accused of endangering democracy, the intelligence community was sitting on evidence that might have blown the lid off the election narrative—and they buried it.

The documents were handed over to Sen. Chuck Grassley, who had warned the FBI that the intel was being ignored—not investigated—even though there was clear evidence of fake licenses tied to foreign election interference.

“Thanks to the oversight work and partnership of Chairman Grassley, the FBI continues to provide unprecedented transparency at the people’s Bureau,” Patel told Just the News. “To that end, we have located documents Chairman Grassley requested, which detail alarming allegations related to the 2020 U.S. election. Specifically, these include allegations of plans from the CCP to manufacture fake driver’s licenses and ship them into the United States for the purpose of facilitating fraudulent mail-in ballots – allegations which, while substantiated, were abruptly recalled and never disclosed to the public.”

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Spy Satellite Uncovers Massive Stealth Flying Wing At Secretive Chinese Base

China is well aware that Western spy satellites, including those operated by the U.S., maintain constant overhead surveillance of high-value military assets, such as bases and research facilities. 

The deliberate exposure of a previously unseen, large, low-observable flying-wing HALE (High-Altitude Long-Endurance) unmanned aerial vehicle at the Malan test facility may not have been an accident. 

Instead, it appears to be a deliberate act of signaling by Beijing to the Trump administration, highlighting the rapid acceleration of China’s next-generation air combat capabilities at a time when the global security environment is rapidly deteriorating.

With the war in Ukraine ongoing and tensions in the Middle East escalating into a hot crisis, Beijing’s timing suggests an intent to assert technological parity and deterrence against the U.S. Broadly speaking, the world is entering a more dangerous and unstable era — a shift from a unipolar world with the U.S. in control to a bipolar geopolitical order, where volatility is expected to intensify throughout the 2030s.

The War Zone’s Tyler Rogoway cited new satellite spy images via Planet Labs that show the previously unseen HALE drone at a secretive test base near Malan in Xinjiang province. 

“Specifically, the craft was parked outside of a sprawling new facility that was built very recently to the east of the base, connected to it by a very long taxiway leading to a security gate,” Rogoway said.

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Shanghai Billionaire Connected to Chinese Communists and Husband of Code Pink Founder Is Behind the Recent Anti-Ice Riots

In August 2023, The New York Times published a rare informative and honest journalism. The New York Times wrote exposed the so-called anti-war group Code Pink as a Communist China shill or front group.

Kristinn Taylor reported at the time.

Code Pink co-founder Jodie Evans, 68, has deep roots in the Democratic Party, having served as the campaign manager for the 1992 presidential campaign of former California Governor Jerry Brown. In the 2008 presidential campaign, Evans served as a host for Obama fundraisers in Hollywood with her then husband Max Palevsky (who passed away in 2010 at age 85) and as a campaign bundler.

Evans married Singham, 69, in 2017.

Fellow Code Pink co-founder Susan ‘Medea’ Benjamin protested against President Trump at his arraignment in Washington, D.C. on Thursday, reported TGP’s Jordan Conradson.

Trump was the only U.S. president to not start any new wars, yet the so-called antiwar group Code Pink stood against him in his first term – and now in his second term.

It is clear Code Pink is not an “anti-war” group. Instead, Code Pink is a shill for the communists.

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Cuomo campaign aide who worked for companies tied to Chinese Communist Party quits after Post queries

A mayoral campaign aide to Andrew Cuomo resigned after The Post questioned the years he spent working for companies tied to the Chinese Communist Party and his meteoric rise through the Democratic Party, which alarmed local politicos and national security experts alike.

Dr. Lining “Larry” He stepped down from his role as Cuomo’s Asian outreach director Friday, a week after The Post reached out to him and the Cuomo campaign about his extensive business ties to his native China.

He had served as an executive for a powerful state-owned conglomerate that has CCP cells embedded in its corporate hierarchy, records and news reports obtained by The Post showed. 

These links, along with his association with a NYC political operative with known Beijing ties, worried experts who study the CCP’s international influence efforts, which China calls the “United Front.”

“His position as an Asian community liaison fits with a tactical pattern that such actors are using to gain political legitimacy and influence,” said Dr. Audrye Wong, a fellow with the American Enterprise Institute and United Front expert.

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