Tag: china

Ancient DNA Study Uncovers Mysterious “Ghost” Lineage in Tibet

Discovery of a 7,100-Year-Old Genetic Enigma

A recent genomic analysis of over 100 ancient individuals from China has revealed a previously unknown “ghost” lineage, shedding light on the genetic diversity of early populations in the region. The findings, published on May 29 in the journal Science, center on a 7,100-year-old female skeleton unearthed at the Xingyi archaeological site in China’s Yunnan province.

The study, led by researchers including paleontologist Qiaomei Fu from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in Beijing, examined 127 ancient human genomes, most dating between 1,400 and 7,150 years ago. The oldest individual, a woman referred to as Xingyi_EN, provided crucial insights into an elusive ancestral group that may have contributed to modern Tibetan populations.

Tracing the Origins of Tibetans

One of the key questions in East Asian prehistory has been the origins of Tibetan populations. Previous research indicated that Tibetans possess a mix of northern East Asian ancestry and an unidentified genetic component—now potentially linked to the newly discovered ghost lineage.

Xingyi_EN, a hunter-gatherer from the Early Neolithic period, exhibited ancestry distinct from other East and South Asians. Instead, her DNA aligned more closely with a deeply diverged Asian population that had remained genetically isolated for millennia.

The Basal Asian Xingyi Lineage

The researchers identified Xingyi_EN as part of a previously unknown lineage, which they named the Basal Asian Xingyi lineage. This group is believed to have separated from other human populations at least 40,000 years ago and remained genetically distinct due to prolonged isolation.

Unlike Neanderthals or Denisovans—archaic humans known to have contributed DNA to modern populations—this ghost lineage represents a unique branch in human ancestry. “The possible isolation allowed this ancestry to persist without apparent admixture with other populations,” Fu explained in an email to Live Science.

Genetic Legacy in Modern Tibetans

At some point, descendants of the Basal Asian Xingyi lineage interbred with other East Asian groups, introducing their genetic material into the ancestral Tibetan gene pool. “The mixed population has lasted for quite a long time and contributed genes to some Tibetans today,” Fu noted.

However, the researchers caution that these conclusions are based on a single individual’s genome. Further studies with additional samples will be necessary to confirm the relationship between this ancient lineage and modern Tibetan populations.

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Is China Building the Future of AI Governance Through Open-Source Modeling?

China’s rapid advancements in artificial intelligence (AI), led by tech giants such as Alibaba, Baidu, Tencent, and iFlytek, are increasingly being driven by a strong emphasis on open-source collaboration. Models like Alibaba’s Qwen 3 series and Qwen 2.5, which are competitive against GPT-4 Turbo, are built on open frameworks that encourage developer contributions and integration across platforms. Qwen, termed as the open-source king, is also among the top three contributors to the global open-source AI ecosystem. 

Baidu’s ERNIE series, including the widely adopted ERNIE Bot, and Tencent’s Hunyuan model similarly benefit from China’s broader AI ecosystem, where research institutions, startups, and industry players openly share tools, datasets, and model architectures. Likewise, iFlytek’s Spark 4.0 Turbo, which has also demonstrated exceptional benchmarks, reflects the success of this multistakeholder, open innovation strategy. 

Unlike the more closed and proprietary model prevalent in the United States, China’s approach leverages state support and open-source infrastructure to accelerate collective progress, allowing these companies to build, iterate, and deploy foundation models at scale while fostering a uniquely domestic AI ecosystem. Such progress not only signals that China is scaling its AI capabilities by bypassing the reliance on Western supply chains, but also highlights Beijing’s ambition to carve out a unique role in shaping the future of global AI governance.

Instead of responding to U.S. attempts to block its access to critical technologies with retaliatory export control measures, China aims to adopt a decentralized approach that will secure its industrial base in the long term. In this context, China’s strategic shift toward open-source AI development resonates with the guerrilla economic strategy. This strategy is characterized by China’s efforts to find weaknesses in the global supply chains, deepen its ties with the Global South, and showcase its domestic innovation as a better alternative to Western technology – one that is more collaborative, decentralized, democratic, and accessible. 

China’s framing of AI as a critical national priority is not only about boosting national competitiveness but also about showcasing its private sector, which appears to be thriving under state control. The evolving nature of China-U.S. AI competition is now centered around how the private sector is leading this innovation game, which approach countries will leverage to lead the next wave of AI innovation, and how global powers – even middle and emerging AI powers – will respond. 

What strengthens this evolving policy position is China’s greater advocacy for its open-source model as an ideological tool to surpass the importance of Western technology. China is rapidly positioning itself as a leader in shaping international norms and frameworks of AI governance that align with the needs of small and emerging AI powers. President Xi Jinping, at last year’s G-20 summit, stated that AI development “should not be a game of rich countries.” China has repeatedly raised the issue of inclusive AI governance at global platforms like the United Nations through its AI Capacity-Building Action Plan and U.N. AI resolution. This approach helps China to strengthen its influence in the growing race to shape AI standards and frameworks. 

China’s growing emphasis on open-source AI has enabled it to scale alternatives that are less reliant on Western supply chains and licensing regimes. This strategy not only enhances China’s technological resilience amid export controls but also positions it as a credible actor in promoting alternative norms and frameworks for global AI governance.  

China’s AI diplomacy is aligned with its homegrown technology development model, and it may harm the existing influence of Western norms. The United States’ reliance on closed-source AI models, despite its liberal democratic ethos, may limit its ability to lead global conversations on inclusive and collaborative AI development. 

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Feds bust Chinese-Canadian fraud ring operating in 37 states targeting seniors

Multiple Chinese nationals have been indicted for their role in orchestrating an elaborate transnational fraud and money laundering scheme targeting elderly U.S. and Canadian citizens.

Sixteen people were indicted overall, living in the states of California, Georgia, Hawaii, Maryland, New York, Rhode Island, Tennessee and Texas. Two are Canadian citizens; three are Canadian residents, according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The indictment was unsealed in the U.S. District Court of Rhode Island in a case stemming from an ICE investigation that identified 300 victims in at least 37 states who lost a combined initial more than $5 million. Investigators also identified a bank account through which they believe approximately $16 million in additional suspected fraudulent funds were laundered.

The bust comes after the greatest number of Chinese and Canadian illegal border crossers were reported under the Biden administration, The Center Square exclusively reported.

According to the charging documents, the Chinese nationals sent pop-up messages to seniors’ computers purporting to be a well-known technology company claiming the victims’ financial accounts had been compromised, their computers had been hacked, or they were the focus of a criminal investigation. The messages instructed them to call a “live agent” who said their financial assets were at risk or could be garnished and they could help protect them. The seniors were then connected with other fraudsters who claimed to be their financial institution representatives or from government agencies, including the Federal Trade Commission and Federal Reserve Bank.

The fraudster then instructed the seniors to transfer their money through wire or cryptocurrency to accounts they claimed were managed by federal agencies. They also instructed them to withdraw their funds in cash and purchase gold bars and give the cash or gold bars to a purported government courier who would come to their home to transfer it to a secure government location, according to the charges.

Key indictments include Chinese nationals in New York including Nanjun Song, 27, who was illegally living in Brooklyn on an overstayed B2 visa. He was charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering and arrested by ICE Homeland Security Investigations Las Vegas agents. He remains in federal custody in Rhode Island.

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Teaching Or Treason? U.S. Alleges Fed Economist Spied For Beijing

In May 2013, John Rogers, a longtime Federal Reserve economist, was in Shanghai for an academic forum when he received an email that would eventually alter the course of his life and career.

The message was from someone claiming to be a Chinese graduate student. Rogers says he declined an offer of payment but kept in touch, later accepting an all-expenses-paid invitation to return to China. That visit, U.S. prosecutors allege, marked the beginning of a yearslong effort by Chinese intelligence to extract sensitive information from inside one of the most important economic institutions in the United States.

In January of this year, Rogers was arrested by the FBI on federal charges of economic espionage, the Wall Street Journal reports. He is accused of conspiring with Chinese operatives posing as students, handing over internal Federal Reserve materials in hotel rooms in China, and accepting travel accommodations arranged by his handlers. Authorities said they found $50,000 in cash at his Washington-area apartment, which his wife claimed as hers.

Rogers, who left the Fed in 2021, has denied all charges, maintaining that he never knowingly assisted a foreign government. His attorney argues that the indictment is misleading and lacks critical context. “The indictment presents an overly-simplistic, one-sided, and skewed version of events,” the lawyer said, adding that the defense team would mount a full rebuttal in court.

The case is one of the most detailed yet in exposing Beijing’s efforts to cultivate informants within U.S. institutions not traditionally seen as espionage targets, such as the Federal Reserve. American officials say China has broadened its intelligence gathering under President Xi Jinping, targeting not just defense contractors and tech companies, but also government economists and financial policymakers.

A 2022 Senate committee report alleged a coordinated campaign by China dating back at least to 2013 to gain insight into the Fed’s internal operations and decision-making. In one incident cited by the report, Chinese authorities allegedly detained a Fed employee in a hotel and threatened to jail him unless he shared economic data. The Chinese Foreign Ministry at the time dismissed the allegations as “political disinformation.”

In response to the report, Fed Chair Jerome Powell defended the central bank’s security policies, noting that staff travel and contacts with foreign nationals are subject to strict review. The Fed tightened its rules further in 2021, banning staff from accepting gifts or compensation from individuals or organizations in countries under U.S. export controls, including China.

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China’s Groundbreaking Diabetes Breakthrough—And the Global Backlash

In a revelation that could transform global healthcare, Chinese scientists have reportedly developed a stem cell therapy that reverses both Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes. While this scientific leap offers new hope for over 500 million people worldwide living with the chronic disease, it also threatens to shake up the multi-billion-dollar pharmaceutical industry that thrives on treating—not curing—diabetes.

At the core of this innovation is a technique that uses a patient’s own fat cells to generate insulin-producing islet cells. These engineered cells are then transplanted into the body, where they naturally regulate blood sugar levels. Since the cells are autologous (derived from the same person), there’s no risk of immune rejection, and patients don’t require immunosuppressants.

Initial trials have produced jaw-dropping results:

  • A 25-year-old woman with Type 1 diabetes went off insulin completely within 75 days.
  • A 59-year-old man with Type 2 diabetes was insulin-free in just 11 weeks. One year later, he remains off all medication.

This therapy takes advantage of induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) technology, a method of reprogramming adult cells to behave like embryonic stem cells. Scientists then coax these cells into becoming islet cells, which the pancreas uses to produce insulin.

The process essentially rebuilds a diabetic pancreas from the inside out—without the need for donor organs, immune-suppressing drugs, or lifelong insulin therapy.

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CCP Mounting Unrestricted Warfare to Suppress Shen Yun, Lawmaker Says

The Chinese regime’s growing campaign to suppress a New York-based performing arts firm is tantamount to unrestricted warfare, according to Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.).

“They fight on every single inch of the battlefield,” Perry told The Epoch Times, referring to the Chinese Communist Party.

Unrestricted warfare is a doctrine that leverages all available nonmilitary means to subdue an enemy. Under such tactics, China is taking advantage of the U.S. judicial system and the freedom of the media, Perry added.

Shen Yun showcases dance and music performances under the tagline “China before communism.” The company was founded in 2006 by practitioners of Falun Gong—a faith group brutally persecuted by the Chinese regime since 1999—and has been a target of the CCP since.

Over the past year, the regime’s effort targeting Shen Yun has escalated significantly, with dozens of bomb and death threats aimed at intimidating theaters that host Shen Yun performances along with the company’s training facilities in upstate New York. Following a secret directive from top leadership in Beijing, Chinese agents in the United States have tried to bribe the IRS to open a probe against Shen Yun. They also went to Orange County, where Shen Yun is based, to surveil local Falun Gong practitioners. Attack articles targeting Shen Yun appear on Western media, which are then boosted on social media X by thousands of accounts with suspected links to Beijing.

Perry, who sits on the House foreign affairs and intelligence committees, said it was important to take these threats seriously.

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US State Department Concerned Over Malaysia’s Arrest of Falun Gong Practitioners Before Xi’s Visit

Malaysia’s decision to detain dozens of Falun Gong practitioners before and during a visit from Chinese leader Xi Jinping has drawn alarm from the U.S. State Department and human rights advocates.

Two days before Xi’s arrival in mid-April in the country’s capital, Kuala Lumpur, about two dozen police officers appeared at a private venue where nearly 80 Falun Gong practitioners had gathered for a routine study of spiritual texts. The officers demanded their identification documents and forcibly detained them.

Those arrested include a woman older than 80 and a 10-year-old child. Among the group were also 29 people originally from China who are seeking protection from the sweeping persecution targeting their beliefs in China. Several are U.N. refugees. The 47 Malaysian citizens were released hours after Xi left, and the Chinese nationals were freed during the two weeks that followed.

The mass arrest marked the first of its kind in Malaysia, taking place as Xi toured Southeast Asia to promote the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) as a reliable trading partner amid a tariff war with the United States.

The U.S. State Department expressed concern about the reports.

“We call on the Chinese Communist Party to end its nearly 26-year campaign to eradicate Falun Gong and to cease its attempts to pressure other governments to repress the practice of Falun Gong,” a department spokesperson told The Epoch Times.

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Huawei Hires Jeffrey Epstein’s ‘Dark Arts’ Spin Doctor To Beat Off Trump Ban

Chinese telecom giant Huawei Technologies has hired the former public relations firm of sex predators Jeffrey Epstein and Harvey Weinstein as it fights against Trump administration efforts to ban the use of its computer chips over espionage and national security concerns.

Sitrick Group, owned by veteran publicist Michael S. Sitrick, registered this month as a foreign agent of Huawei and its American subsidiary FutureWei, according to documents filed with the Department of Justice. Sitrick, who calls himself one of the “most accomplished practitioners of the dark arts of public relations,” will provide “strategic counsel, media relations, analyst relations, data insights, content strategy, and public communications” for Huawei at a rate of $75,000 per month, according to a contract disclosed to the Department of Justice.

It could signal that Huawei—and its overseers in the Chinese Communist Party—are taking a new approach to fighting U.S. government sanctions against the company. American officials have warned for years that the CCP uses Huawei to conduct espionage and surveil critics of China’s government. The Trump administration issued a warning to tech companies last week that using Huawei chips would “violate U.S. export controls” issued against the Chinese firm. The Chinese government shot back that it will take “resolute measures” against the United States for blacklisting its chips.

Sitrick, whose memoir is entitled The Fixer, has represented thousands of clients, including companies like PepsiCo and McDonald’s and actresses Halle Berry and Kim Basinger. He’s also represented some controversial names in his nearly 40 years in the PR business.

Weinstein hired Sitrick’s firm in 2017 after the Hollywood mogul had been accused of sexual offenses. Dozens of women later accused Weinstein of sexual assault. Sitrick executive Sallie Hofmeister, a former reporter for the Los Angeles Times, served as Weinstein’s primary publicist and issued statements on behalf of Weinstein that “any allegations of non-consensual sex are unequivocally denied.” Weinstein is serving life in prison following several rape convictions. Sitrick Group resigned from representing Weinstein in April 2018. Hofmeister is listed as a Sitrick Group representative on the Huawei account, according to documents filed with the Department of Justice.

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USDA ends ‘maximum pain bird flu gain-of-function experiments’ with Wuhan lab parent

The U.S. Department of Agriculture canceled its $1 million collaboration with the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the parent to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, to conduct gain-of-function experiments on bird flu viruses, Secretary Brooke Rollins told Rep. Ben Cline, R-Va.

Speaking at a House Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee hearing, Rollins said “it is my understanding that those [experiments] have been discontinued just in the last few months” when Cline asked for their status, started in the Biden administration, and that if she’s wrong, “then 100%, yes,” USDA will stop them.

Cline said her predecessor Tom Vilsack “defended and distorted this risky research” when Vilsack testified, denying it was a “collaboration” even though the “project title” calls it that and claiming there was no “data sharing” even though public records show USDA visiting the China lab to “share results on site.” The Chinese researcher lists the Wuhan Institute of Virology as an affiliation, Cline said.

“It is outrageous that U.S. taxpayer dollars were ever used by the Biden USDA to fund joint experiments with the Chinese Communist Party, especially research that could be catastrophic if mishandled or weaponized,” Cline said in a statement.

The White Coat Waste Project, which exposed through public records requests the five-year project on what it called “maximum pain bird flu gain-of-function experiments” on birds as young as a day old, cheered Rollins’ declaration.

“Taxpayers shouldn’t be forced to pay for the creation of pandemic-causing pathogens, and now, following a White Coat Waste campaign, they won’t have to,” President Anthony Bellotti said.

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China has an off-switch for America, and we aren’t ready to deal with it.

Imagine waking up tomorrow and your phone has no signal. Your smart home isn’t working. Your Ring camera is offline. You get in your car, but your GPS won’t route. Worse, every traffic light in town is out. Intersections are a mess of blaring horns and confusion. Sirens echo in the distance. You drive to an ATM, hoping to grab some cash. The screen flickers, then goes black. It’s not just your neighborhood. It’s not just your state. The entire nation has gone dark.

This scenario is digital darkness, caused by China’s “off-switch” for America. It is the penultimate step in China’s strategy to defeat America before gunning for global control.

So-called “assassin’s maces” play a central role in China’s plan to become the world’s sole superpower by 2049. Of the many known assassin’s maces, four demand immediate attention:

1) Tactical Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Weapons: China develops tactical EMP weapons that can disable entire regions by targeting civilian infrastructure America relies on to function. These compact pulse generators can hover above unprotected data centers, destroying electronics inside with pinpoint electromagnetic blasts. Several dozen well-coordinated EMP strikes could wipe out cloud infrastructure, disrupting America’s power, transportation, communications and financial systems nationwide.

2) Deep Sea Fiber Cuts: Over 95 percent of global internet traffic travels through undersea fiber cables. China recently unveiled deep-sea cable cutters capable of severing cables at extreme depths. Recent disruptions near Taiwan and the Baltic Sea suggest these tools are already in use. Cutting a few lines disrupts global communications instantly and fractures U.S. military coordination.

3) Anti-Satellite Weapons: As America stockpiles low earth orbit satellites, China expands its anti-satellite arsenal to include missiles, parasitic satellites and lasers designed to disable or destroy orbital assets. In March 2025, the U.S. Space Force reported that Chinese satellites performed aggressive “dogfighting” maneuvers in orbit. This capability allows China to carry out precise strikes designed to trigger the dreaded Kessler Cascade, a chain reaction of satellite collisions capable of destroying all low earth orbit satellites within days, crippling internet, communications and surveillance systems. 

4) Cyber Attacks: China’s cyber weapons are the most deeply embedded assassin’s mace. Just this week, U.S. investigators uncovered rogue communication devices hidden in Chinese-made solar inverters and batteries. Such undocumented components can bypass firewalls, allowing China to remotely monitor, destabilize and disable critical infrastructure. Chinese-made chips, routers and switches embedded throughout U.S. networks contain dormant firmware that, upon activation, could place critical U.S. infrastructure under Chinese Communist Party command.

The Chinese army’s “blended domains” philosophy strips traditional boundaries between war and peace. An omnipresent battlefield erases any line between military and civilian enterprise. The doctrine is described in “Unrestricted Warfare,” the 1999 book in which Chinese military leaders promote the use of psychological, technological and informational attacks to undermine and subsequently overwhelm America.

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