This Thursday, thousands of athletes from more than 100 nations will arrive in Beijing to participate in the Winter Olympiad, a made-for-TV spectacular.
In 2011, NBC agreed to a $4.38 billion contract with the International Olympic Committee to broadcast the Olympics through the 2020 games, the most expensive television rights deal in Olympic history. NBC then agreed to a $7.75 billion contract extension in 2014, to air the games through 2032.
Prince Andrew made eight trips to China as a guest of an organisation accused of being a puppet for the Chinese Communist Party’s feared intelligence agency.
During the visits – most made on behalf of his Pitch@Palace business mentoring initiative – the Duke of York heralded closer UK-China co-operation, prompting critics to this weekend accuse him of being a ‘useful idiot’ for Beijing.
The visits, made between 2010 and 2019, were at the invitation of the Chinese People’s Institute of Foreign Affairs (CPIFA).
China’s ambassador to the US has said the two countries could face a “military conflict” over the future of Taiwan, in an unusually explicit reference to the prospect of war.
“The Taiwan issue is the biggest tinderbox between China and the United States,” Qin Gang told the US public broadcaster National Public Radio (NPR), on Friday. “If the Taiwanese authorities, emboldened by the United States, keep going down the road for independence, it most likely will involve China and the United States, the two big countries, in the military conflict.”
Tensions over the island’s place in the world continue to grow. Beijing considers Taiwan to be a breakaway province of China. In November the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, told Joe Biden that any support for Taiwanese independence from the US would be “like playing with fire” and that “those who play with fire will get burned”.
The gospel on climate change has been that, first and foremost, fossil fuels must go.
Coal, oil, gas (liquefied or otherwise)… out, out out. Close the oilsands, cancel the pipelines, end the fracking, get rid of the nuclear plants while you’re at it. The imperative is all about ridding the world of supply, getting us off our existing addictions, whether or not there was an alternative available to take its place. It was taken for granted … or on blind faith … that the alternatives would be there. Technology would advance, innovation would flourish. Just get rid of the bad stuff and we’ll worry about supplying the good stuff later. It’ll work, I promise you. We can do this! No more coal! No more coal!
For those wondering why Joe Biden is soft on China, consider this never-before-reported revelation: the Biden family has done five deals in China totaling some $31 million arranged by individuals with direct ties to Chinese intelligence — some reaching the very top of China’s spy agency.
Indeed, every known deal that the Biden family enjoyed with Beijing was reached courtesy of individuals with spy ties. And Joe Biden personally benefitted from his family’s foreign deals.
Online reports citing an anonymous Beijing diplomat have speculated that Chinese president Xi Jinping, during a recent phone call, may have asked Russian president Vladimir Putin not to invade Ukraine during the upcoming Beijing Olympic Games. A Russian attack incursion would steal Xi’s thunder and take the spotlight off of his glorious nation’s peerless hosting ability, thereby depriving him of the opportunity to showcase the superiority of the Chinese Communist Party. If Putin were to sack Ukraine during the Olympics, it would create a highly negative backdrop for the Olympic Games. In other words, it would be a bummer for Xi.
As the Beijing Winter Olympics draw near, the absurdity, moral compromise, and peril of granting the Games to China become increasingly clear. While some naively optimistic advocates once hoped the sporting event would encourage an evermore aggressive Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to play nice with liberal democracies, the notion is now undeniably more ludicrous than Boris Johnson’s dance moves.
A bizarre race against time is under way for the US Navy to reach one of its downed fighter jets – before the Chinese get there first.
The $100m F35-C plane came down in the South China Sea after what the Navy describes as a “mishap” during take-off from the USS Carl Vinson.
The jet is the Navy’s newest, and crammed with classified equipment – and, as it is in international waters, is technically fair game.
Whoever gets there first, wins.
China’s state-run Global Times published a summary of an interview with former President George W. Bush on Wednesday to discourage calls for a boycott of the upcoming 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics.
OTTAWA — An intelligence expert said the federal government’s decision not to conduct a formal national security review on the takeover of a Canadian lithium mining company by a Chinese state-owned company was a “mistake.”
The government misjudged the takeover’s significance to Canada’s economic and national security both in the present and future, said Wesley Wark, a visiting professor at the University of Ottawa who specializes in international affairs and intelligence gathering.
“The kinds of explanations that have been offered by the government to date I find wholly unsatisfactory and very narrowly focused,” he told a House of Commons committee Wednesday.
CanSino-McMaster deal may turn out to be ‘case study of what not to do in partnerships with China’: expert
The federal government has trumpeted previous vaccine partnerships with a China-based company as one of the reasons why Canada was pinning its hopes on a COVID-19 vaccine candidate from China early in the pandemic.
But The Fifth Estate has reviewed those partnerships and found that a collaboration with McMaster University in Hamilton stalled years ago and never resulted in an approved vaccine anywhere in the world.
… After the deal fell apart, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told reporters that the reason Canada partnered with CanSino was because of the “well-established partnership” between scientists in Canada and China “that has been effective in the past.”
China has promised to deliver a “green and clean” Winter Olympics, which gets under way on 4 February.
Organisers say they have prioritised protecting native species, reducing greenhouse gas emissions and cutting down on resources used.
But there’s been criticism that this will be the first Winter Olympics to rely entirely on artificial snow – and that some events will be held in the middle of a nature reserve.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi softened her previous criticisms of China’s communist regime as her husband and son scored big business deals in China, Breitbart News senior contributor Peter Schweizer’s new book reveals.
A government report on Chinese espionage activities in Canada accuses Beijing of engaging in a “systematic campaign of intelligence-gathering, persuasion, influence, and manipulation” against the Chinese community.
In the report obtained by Global News, Canadian officials alleged the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office was tasked with “influencing or manipulating” community members, and using “coercive tactics” against dissidents and minorities.
“This involves intimidation of OC (Overseas Chinese) at every level of society,” the report said.
Early in January, China’s state news agency Xinhua posted a video reminding young Chinese men born in the year 2000 that they were eligible to get married. “Post 00s have reached legal marriage age,” it declared.
The hashtag swiftly popped up in the top-searched list of Weibo hot topics, but many read it as the government’s attempt to put pressure on them. “Who dares to get married these days? Don’t we need to make money?” one questioned. “Stop nagging me!” said another.
