Tag: china

Cannabis timeline pushed to 20,000+ years

New research suggests cannabis use may date back 20,000 years or more, far earlier than previously thought.

Most scholars agree cultivation of cannabis began in Asia between 10,000 and 12,000 years ago, during the advent of farming following the last ice age. But a 2023 morphometric study of ancient cannabis seeds suggests it may have begun far earlier — 20,000 years ago or more — in what is now Western China and the Tibetan Plateau.

The study looked at the size of seeds, which began to change as people started using them thousands of years ago.

People have been living in the Tibetan Plateau for up to 38,000 years, and in Central Asia for up to 50,000 years, so it is plausible cannabis has been used up to that long.

Cannabis has been around for millions of years, and the oldest plant material discovered so far is seeds dated to 8000 BC, found in Okinoshima, Japan at a neolithic site linked to the Jomon people. The seeds were likely used as food and to make oil.

Pottery found at an ancient archaeological site in Taiwan and dated to the same period, around 8000 BC, has impressions made with hemp cord, meaning cannabis was used widely across Asia by that time.

Along with using it as a source of food, the 2023 study suggests that by 6000 BC, cannabis was being cultivated for its fibre — what we now call hemp. It was around 3000BC that people began selecting cannabis for its trichomes, which contain the medicinal and psychoactive compounds.

Those findings align with a 2021 genomic study that also places domestication around 10000 BC, with a slightly different timeline — hemp selection beginning around 4000 BC, and medicinal/psychoactive use emerging around 3000 BC. Cannabis also appears to have reached the Indian subcontinent from China around that time.

“The first users were probably nomadic peoples,” explains Barney Warf, a professor of geography at the University of Kansas. “We know this from burial mounds of chieftains.”

Warf authored the 2014 paper High Points: An Historical Geography of Cannabis, which traces the spread and use of cannabis from ancient to modern times.

Several nomadic tribes are thought to have been the main conduit for bringing cannabis from Central Asia into India, the Middle East, Northern Africa and Europe between 4000 BC and 2000 BC, says Warf, along routes that would later become known as the Silk Road.

One possible origin for the word ‘Cannabis’ is the Scythian word, ‘Kanab,’ which itself may have come from the Assyrian word ‘Qunubu’. The Scythians were a nomadic group dated to between 900 BC and 200 BC and the Assyrians were in Mesopotamia between 2000 BC and 600 BC.

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Building Our Enemy: China Still Gobbling Up High-end Chips and Chip Forges

News flash to politicians and media: China is preparing for war. All-out kinetic, military war. The communist regime has already been engaged in what it calls “Unrestricted Warfare” — economic, social, and political offensives, espionage, propaganda, technological theft, cyberattacks, disinformation, critical infrastructure attacks, and more — in other words, all-out asymmetric warfare against the United States and the West. A bipartisan group of congressmen has sent Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick a letter urging the Trump administration to close critical gaps in U.S. export controls over semiconductor manufacturing equipment (SME) and more vigorously engage our allies to adopt similar restrictions on those technologies that threaten their and our security. That would seem to be a no-brainer since China’s phenomenal military expansion has been (and continues to be) built with U.S. technology.

China’s Massive Military Buildup

Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) are dead serious. China’s September 3, 2025 “Victory Day” military parade in Tiananmen Square was the largest military display in CCP history and showcased a broad array of new advanced weapons systems: ICBMs, hypersonic anti-ship missiles, satellite hunter missiles, fighter jets, fourth-generation battle tanks, stealth attack drones, underwater attack drones, robotic wolves, and much more. (See full video of the parade here.)

It is no secret that Xi Jinping and the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) have been on a rapid, massive armament modernization and buildup for more than a decade. This has been especially notable regarding China’s navy, which now, in terms of quantity, is the largest in the world. (In 2024, the U.S. Department of Defense reported that China’s naval fleet numbered 332 vessels, compared to America’s 291). All of these advances are dependent on research and development (R&D), technology, materials, processes, education, and training provided by, or aided by, U.S. corporations and the U.S. government.

Allowing China to Leapfrog Us

In response to the Chinese buildup, President Donald Trump has called for an enormous military budget of $1.5 trillion for 2027, an increase of 50 percent over the $1 trillion 2025 budget. That includes a huge shipbuilding program and the launch of his “Golden Dome” missile defense system.

But if we continue providing Beijing with the cutting-edge technology that allows China to leapfrog over our latest weapons systems, we are trapping ourselves on a deadly treadmill that guarantees we will bankrupt America while giving the CCP eventual military dominance and global hegemony. We could spend $2 trillion, $3 trillion, or $4 trillion on new razzle-dazzle weapons systems, all to no avail if we then turn around and provide China with the technology to defeat those systems, as we have been doing for years. In 2021, TNA published a three-part article series on America’s suicidal technology transfers to China: China’s Tech War, China’s Chip Foundries Still Dependent on Foreign Tech Transfers, and China’s Brain: Made in USA. The evidence is crystal clear: Without the continuous treasonous transfers of American technology and know-how, Xi Jinping’s jaw-dropping hi-tech weapons systems would not exist. But the madness and treason continue.

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Trump Admin To Launch New Free-Speech Site To Combat Censorship Abroad

In response to what the Trump administration says is a rising tide of censorship in Europe, the State Department is launching a new app that will give users worldwide access to content that has been censored in other countries.

This includes not only Europe but also China and Iran. The platform, called Freedom.gov, will go live over the next several weeks, according to the State Department, and will be operable on iOS and Android devices.

“Freedom.gov is the latest in a long line of efforts by the State Department to protect and promote fundamental freedoms, both online and offline,” the State Department stated in an email to The Epoch Times. “The project will be global in its scope, but distinctly American in its mission: commemorating our commitment to free expression as we approach our 250th birthday.”

Lauding the move, Jeremy Tedesco, senior counsel at the Alliance Defending Freedom, a civil rights legal group that has been critical of recent EU speech laws, stated on X that “for 250 years, this is what America does,” citing examples such as Radio Free Europe, which broadcast into communist countries during the Cold War.

“If Europe’s bureaucrats don’t want you to see it, that tells you everything,” Tedesco stated. “Because even if your government fears freedom—ours doesn’t.”

The First Amendment, which prohibits the U.S. government from “abridging the freedom of speech,” has provided a legal restraint against government censorship that most other countries lack. 

Recent European speech laws, most notably the Digital Services Act (DSA), were ostensibly written to combat what lawmakers deemed “hate speech,” “harmful speech,” and “misinformation,” as well as pornography and abusive AI deep fakes. But critics of European speech codes say they are becoming increasingly draconian.  

In 2025, Virginie Joron, a French member of the European Parliament, called the DSA a “Trojan horse for surveillance and control.”

In Finland, Paivi Rasanen, a member of parliament, was charged for quoting Bible verses online in 2019, criticizing her church’s participation in a gay pride event. 

“I never imagined that quoting the Bible in a Twitter post would lead to years of criminal charges, yet this is now the reality in Europe,” she told The Epoch Times.

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Researchers Identify Chinese Influence Network That Targeted Trump, Japan Elections

Researchers have uncovered a network of more than 330 social media accounts linked to China that targeted U.S. President Donald Trump, Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, human rights organizations, and other countries to push pro-Chinese Communist Party (CCP) narratives, according to a Feb. 26 policy brief.

The Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), a think tank based in Washington, discovered the network coordinating to push these narratives between December 2025 and February 2026 across X, YouTube, Tumblr, Blogger, and Quora.

The researchers identified six “clusters” of accounts that focused on different narratives, which were aimed at attacking political figures seen as acting against the CCP’s interests.

The largest nexus included 151 accounts that targeted audiences in the United States, including ones posing as American citizens and criticizing Trump’s policies, such as claiming that he had caused or worsened the fentanyl crisis. Notably, accounts with few or no followers made posts that generated thousands of replies, indicating the use of what researchers say is an “inauthentic amplification network.”

“This tactic is used to manipulate platform algorithms into pushing content into the feeds of real users,” the brief reads.

Another cluster attacked Takaichi before the Japanese election, portraying her as “corrupt and militaristic.”

A separate cluster of activity targeted Uyghur activists and promoted anti-Uyghur sentiments among Canadian and Japanese users. The CCP has persecuted the Uyghur minority in the Xinjiang region for years, conducting mass surveillance and forcing them into slave labor. There is also emerging evidence of forced organ harvesting from the group. The United States has designated the Uyghur persecution as a genocide.

A fourth narrative accused U.S. organizations of “collusion” with Taiwan and payouts to undermine China while denying the CCP’s human rights abuses.

A fifth cluster accused the United States of interfering with Honduran elections, and a sixth amplified criticism of and supported protests against the Philippine president.

In some cases, the inauthentic accounts adopted names and images similar to those of official organizations, such as U.S. agencies.

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How China purchased a prime cut of America’s pork industry

Nathan Halverson takes us inside this major investigation of America’s pork industry.

Smithfield Foods, producer of the iconic holiday ham, was one of America’s flagship food companies, steeped in centuries of U.S. tradition.

The Virginia-based pork company derived its ham from a curing process Native Americans taught settlers five centuries ago. It owned part of Main Street in the bucolic town of Smithfield – including a restaurant, a historic Southern hotel and the company’s nearby headquarters.

C. Larry Pope, its president and CEO, had a fireplace in his sprawling executive office, which looked more like a hunting lodge than the command center for what had become America’s largest pork business.

But in 2013, a Chinese firm bought this quintessential slice of Americana – Main Street and all. The takeover, valued at $7.1 billion, remains the largest-ever Chinese acquisition of an American company.

Naturally, it riled patriots and protectionists. Pope’s mother asked him why he sold to the communists. Pope also had to defend himself in the local newspaper: “These are not Russian communists. They like Americans.”

Some xenophobia was to be expected. Anti-Chinese racism in America goes back nearly as far as, well, holiday ham.

But behind the usual flag waving and Red Scare antics lies a stark new reality: Chinese companies, at the urging of their government, have launched a global buying spree, a new phase in their unprecedented economic experiment. And they’re targeting a resource that climate scientists, economists, the U.S. government, even Wall Street, all forecast will become dangerously scarce in the coming decades: food.

Food is poised to become the oil of the 21st century, with scarcity and demand creating a situation ripe for wars, riots and uprisings.

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Ex-Air Force pilot arrested for allegedly training Chinese military pilots without authorization

A former U.S. Air Force fighter pilot who once trained American servicemembers on advanced combat aircraft, including the F-35, has been arrested and accused of illegally training Chinese military pilots, federal prosecutors said Wednesday.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) said Gerald Eddie Brown Jr., whose call sign is “Runner,” was taken into custody in Jeffersonville, Ind., and charged with providing and conspiring to provide defense services to Chinese military pilots without authorization.

Prosecutors allege Brown violated the Arms Export Control Act, a federal law that regulates the export of U.S. defense articles, services and military technology and requires government approval before they can be shared with foreign governments or nationals.

“The United States Air Force trained Major Brown to be an elite fighter pilot and entrusted him with the defense of our Nation. He now stands charged with training Chinese military pilots,” Assistant Attorney General for National Security John A. Eisenberg said. “When U.S. persons – whether military or civilian – provide training to a foreign military, that activity is illegal unless they have a license from the State Department.”

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China’s Biological Weapons Labs in America

China has been maintaining at least two facilities — one in California and the other in Nevada — that are part of a biological weapons program.

A Declaration of Arrest Report, issued by the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department in connection with the detention of Ori Solomon on January 31, states that there is a “deeper conspiracy” between an illegal biological lab in Reedley, California and a residence containing apparently dangerous substances in Nevada.

On January 31, Las Vegas SWAT and federal agents raided a home on the eastern outskirts of the city and seized over a thousand vials of an unknown substance or substances. Those vials have been sent to an FBI lab in Maryland for analysis.

A housecleaner tipped off authorities after she and others temporarily residing at the home got “deathly ill.”

Solomon was the property manager of the location.

Jiabei Zhu, a Chinese national also known as Jesse Zhu, Qiang He and David He, is the listed agent of a company, David Destiny Discovery LLC, that is the registered owner of the Las Vegas house along with Zhaoyan Wang, his business partner and the mother of his child.

Zhu will go to trial in April on federal charges for the operation of the lab in Reedley, near Fresno in the Central Valley.

Fortunately, in California, Code Enforcement Officer Jesalyn Harper in December 2022 noticed a garden hose connected to a supposedly abandoned building. She entered the structure and discovered what appears to have been a secret biological weapons laboratory. Inside, Harper found Chinese nationals working in white coats.

The lab stored nearly a thousand transgenic mice — 773 live and more than 175 dead — “genetically engineered to catch and carry the COVID-19 virus.”

Authorities also found medical waste and chemical, viral, and biological agents. There were on-site at least 20 potentially infectious pathogens, including those causing coronavirus, HIV, hepatitis, and herpes.

The lab contained a freezer labeled “Ebola.” The freezer held unlabeled sealed bags used to store high-risk biological materials. Researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology are studying Ebola, which has a natural fatality rate of 50%, undoubtedly to weaponize it.

The Reedley facility was run by Chinese fronting for parties in China. Among the fronts is Zhu.

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US Military Boards 3rd Sanctioned Oil Tanker on the Indian Ocean, Pentagon Announces

U.S. military forces boarded a third sanctioned oil tanker on the Indian Ocean after it was tracked from the Caribbean Sea, officials announced Tuesday.

The Pentagon stated that U.S. military forces boarded the Bertha vessel overnight without incident, according to a post on X. Video footage included in the post shows military helicopters flying around the vessel.

“Three boats ran and now all three have been captured,” the Department of War stated. “The vessel was operating in defiance of President [Donald] Trump’s established quarantine of sanctioned vessels in the Caribbean and attempted to evade. From the Caribbean to the Indian Ocean, we tracked it and stopped it. No other nation has the global reach, endurance, or will to enforce sanctions at this distance.”

The post added that the military would continue to “deny illicit actors and their proxies freedom of maneuver in the maritime domain.”

The Bertha, which flies under a Cook Islands flag, is linked to Shanghai Legendary Ship Management Company Limited and falls under sanctions imposed in January 2020, according to the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control.

Following the capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro in Caracas by U.S. forces in January, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the Trump administration would move to enforce a quarantine of sanctioned oil tankers operating to and from Venezuela.

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China’s ‘Magic Weapon’ Reaches Deep Into America and the West

In 2023, the FBI arrested two Chinese-Americans, Lu Jianwang and Chen Jinping, for operating a Chinese police station in Manhattan. Chen pleaded guilty and faces up to five years in prison for acting as a Chinese agent, while Lu, who has connections to Chinese authorities, pleaded not guilty and is awaiting trial. He faces 20 years for obstruction of justice.

According to the Department of Justice (DoJ), the police station was established to monitor and intimidate Chinese dissidents in the U.S. What is concerning, however, is that this is not an isolated case of serious infiltration. Nor is such activity limited to the U.S. alone. Safeguard Defenders, a Madrid-based NGO, has identified 102 Chinese police stations in 53 countries.

The audacity of operating police stations in other countries highlights how far China is willing to go to silence critics as it seeks global dominance in economic, military, and cultural fields. This ability was not built overnight. Its foundation was laid by Mao Zedong himself with the creation of the United Front Work Department (United Front), one of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) “three magic weapons,” alongside armed struggle and party building. The front reports directly to the CCP’s central committee.

According to Cheryl Yu, a China expert and fellow of the Jamestown Foundation, Mao described the United Front’s work as “unifying our real friends to attack our real enemies.” Deng Xiaoping expanded that to a more aggressive approach: “unifying those who can be unified, neutralizing those who can be neutralized, and dividing those in the enemy camp who can be divided.” Current CCP supreme leader Xi Jinping has used it for the “Great Rejuvenation” of China.

Yu’s detailed report states that the first mention of the United Front working abroad appears in a 1985 document. Another document lists five overseas tasks: increasing people’s love for the motherland and the party; promoting Chinese culture; encouraging Chinese abroad to support their country’s development; promoting unification with Taiwan; and creating a positive international environment for the CCP.

Over decades of “assiduously cultivating” overseas Chinese groups, the CCP has turned those seemingly harmless goals into a global network of influence—groups and individuals it can mobilize to promote its interests. Yu’s report states there are over 2,000 such groups in the U.S., U.K., Canada, and Germany; the worldwide number could reach “tens of thousands.”

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Texas Sues Drone Maker Anzu Over Alleged Ties to CCP

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is suing drone-maker Anzu Robotics, alleging that the U.S.-based company misled consumers and concealed its ties with the Chinese communist regime.

Paxton announced the lawsuit on Feb. 19, accusing the Texas-based startup of rebranding products sourced from Chinese drone giant Da Jiang Innovations, commonly known as DJI.

Founded in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen in 2006, DJI has been flagged by U.S. regulators as a security risk because of its ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

The U.S. Commerce Department added DJI to its export control list in 2020 for aiding the CCP’s human rights abuses. The Treasury banned U.S.-based individuals from trading DJI shares the following year because of similar concerns. The Pentagon blacklisted DJI as a Chinese military company in 2022, noting that the Chinese regime requires all Chinese companies to allow it to use them as part of its military-civil fusion strategy.

In the lawsuit, Paxton accused Anzu of making false and misleading representations to Texans about its business relationship with DJI, data-sharing practices, and software development.

Anzu markets itself as an American-owned, made-in-Malaysia alternative, but much of its drone technology is licensed from DJI, which receives payments for every drone that Anzu orders, the complaint alleges.

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