Tag: china

TikTok and America’s fake Internet Freedom War

Just about every layer of America’s media and political class shares his view that China is a force of pure undemocratic evil that needs to have its kneecaps shot out. From the respectable prog-left, to the radical center, and the right — the push to restrict China’s incursion into America’s telecommunication space enjoys multi-spectrum partisan consensus. Everyone who is anyone backs Steven Bannon’s vision. So no surprises there.

What interesting about seeing this “the Internet is a threat” stuff put into an official presidential executive order is that for years the Chinese government has been basically saying the same exact thing: that the Internet is a dangerous weapon that can be wielded by an aggressive foreign power.

But instead of being seen as a sensible and correct position — which it was, especially in the beginning — China was mocked and criticized as a weak, authoritarian power that’s afraid of letting its people communicate freely with the outside world. “THIS IS WHAT CHINESE COMMUNISM LOOKS LIKE,” we were told. “THIS IS HOW EVIL THEY ARE!”

Meanwhile, as if to prove China’s point, America launched bottomless-dollar initiative to make sure China wouldn’t be able to control its own domestic Internet space. Under Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, this came to be known as America’s war for “Internet Freedom” — a war which actually started back in the early 2000, when this privatized Pentagon tech first began to go global.

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Eyeing big China box office, Hollywood bows to censorship

The lure of the massive Chinese market has led Hollywood to readily self-censor its films to please Beijing, according to a new report by Pen America, an anti-censorship group.

Screenwriters, producers and directors in the huge US film industry are changing scripts, deleting scenes and altering other content, afraid of offending Chinese censors who control the gateway to the country’s 1.4 billion consumers, according to the report released Wednesday.

The actions include everything from deleting the Taiwanese flag from Tom Cruise’s bomber jacket in the upcoming “Top Gun: Maverick,” to removing China as the source of a zombie virus in 2013’s “World War Z.”

But it also means completely avoiding sensitive issues including Tibet, Taiwan, Hong Kong politics, Xinjiang and the portrayal of LGBTQ characters, the report said.

Faced with blacklisting and other punitive measures, Hollywood producers are even censoring films not targeting the Chinese market, in order to not impact others planned for Chinese theaters, Pen America says.

“Steadily, a new set of mores has taken hold in Hollywood, one in which appeasing Chinese government investors and gatekeepers has simply become a way of doing business,” the report said.

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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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