Tag: china

UPenn Can’t Explain Mystery Donation From Chinese Company

The University of Pennsylvania pocketed a $3 million donation last year from a mysterious Hong Kong shell company that is owned by a Shanghai businessman with deep ties to Chinese government officials.

The donation from Xu Xeuqing, who has no apparent connection to the University of Pennsylvania and was previously embroiled in a Shanghai public corruption scandal, raises questions about the true source of the money. Documents reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon show Xeuqing has close ties to the Chinese Communist Party.

China has poured money into American universities in recent years, in part to buy influence on campuses, experts say. The donation comes as federal prosecutors have increased scrutiny on the Chinese government’s influence-buying and espionage operations at American universities.

“Unequivocally they’re using the money they’re providing the universities to garner influence there,” said Ben Freeman, the director of the Foreign Influence Transparency Initiative at the Center for International Policy. “It’s not the sole motive, but it’s one of a variety of motives.”

Foreign money has poured into the school over the past few years with a significant portion coming from China. The Ivy League school received $61 million in gifts and contracts from China between March 2017 and the end of 2019; over the previous four year period, it took in just $19 million from Chinese donors.

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The USDA has identified some of the mystery seeds sent unsolicited from China as herbs like rosemary and sage

Part of the mystery around the unsolicited packets of seeds US residents are receiving from China has been solved.

A US Department of Agriculture official said in a recorded statement released on July 29 that 14 species of the seeds have been identified as herbs and other plants including hibiscus and mint.

“We have identified 14 different species of seeds, including mustard, cabbage, morning glory, and some of the herbs like mint, sage, rosemary, lavender, then other seeds like hibiscus and roses,” said Osama El-Lissy, a deputy administrator for the USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service.

“This is just a subset of the samples we have collected so far,” he said.

Since late July, people across the US and in countries including Canada and the United Kingdom have reported receiving packets of seeds they did not order, and are marked as coming from China.

Some of the packages’ labels indicate that the packages contain jewelry, though US state officials say they are mislabeled since they actually contain small packets of seeds.

All 50 US states have now issued warnings against planting the seeds, according to a July 29 report from CNN, and have been instructed in many instances to instead contact state or local authorities.

“People who receive seeds should not plant or handle the seeds,” Richard Ball, the New York State Commissioner of Agriculture, said in a July 27 statement.

They should “store them safely in a place children and pets cannot access,” and email the USDA “immediately.”

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DARPA’s Man in Wuhan

Michael Callahan’s career began in USAID and in the bioweapons labs of the former Soviet Union, advancing the agenda of the global bioweapons and pharmaceutical cartels. He would take what he learned there to execute a massive expansion of DARPA’s biodefense portfolio and today finds himself squarely in the center of the origins of the coronavirus pandemic.

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China Says Mysterious Seed Packages Are “Forged” And Aren’t Really From The Country’s Postal Service

It was just two days ago that we highlighted a mysterious trend that was sweeping the U.S.: citizens were receiving unsolicited packages of seeds, with return addresses from China, for apparently no reason at all.

In our report, we suggested the mailings could be some sort of agricultural warfare brewing between the U.S. and China – where agriculture remains a key point of trade tensions – and where a cold war of sorts appears to be bubbling up under the surface. 

After multiple reports in the U.S. media regarding the seeds, China’s Foreign Ministry responded on Tuesday by saying that China Post (the country’s state owned mail service) “has strictly followed regulations that ban the sending and receiving of seeds,” according to Bloomberg.

Further, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin says that the parcels were “forged” and “not from China”. China has supposedly requested that the U.S. mail the seeds back to China so they could investigate further.

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Got seeds you didn’t ask for? Don’t plant them; report them.

 The Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services (VDACS) has issued a warning about seeds that could be dangerous to the environment.

VDACS said some Virginia residents have received packages they didn’t order, containing seeds that appear to have originated from China. It’s not clear what types of seeds are in the packages, but they could be invasive plant species, according to VDACS. The packages were sent by mail and may have Chinese writing on them.

People who receive the seeds are urged not to plant them. VDACS encourages anyone who receives unsolicited seeds in the mail to contact the Office of Plant Industry Services (OPIS) at 804-786-3515 or through the ReportAPest@vdacs.virginia.gov email, especially if they appear to come from China.

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Wuhan lab admits to having three live strains of bat coronavirus on site

The Chinese lab eyed as a potential source of COVID-19 has admitted having three live strains of bat coronavirus on-site — but insisted none are the source of the global pandemic.

The Wuhan Institute of Virology has since 2004 “isolated and obtained some coronaviruses from bats,” its director Wang Yanyi said in an interview that aired Saturday, according to Agence France-Presse.

“Now we have three strains of live viruses… But their highest similarity to SARS-CoV-2 only reaches 79.8 percent,” Yanyi said, referring to the coronavirus strain that causes COVID-19.

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Chinese Ambassador Struggles To Explain Shocking Footage Of Handcuffed & Blindfolded Uighurs Loaded Onto Train

During a Sunday morning BBC news program, China’s ambassador to the UK Liu Xiaoming was in a rare segment asked point blank about viral footage which purports to show a terrifying scene from Xinjiang province of Muslim minority Uighurs being handcuffed and loaded onto train cars. 

While the footage, which appears to have been secretly caught via drone, appears to be a year old or more, it resurfaced in recent weeks, gaining millions of views and reigniting allegations of Uighur people being mass shipped to communist ‘reeducation’ camps and sprawling detention centers. 

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