China is exploiting access to the capitalist economic system to achieve global dominance and ultimately seeks to control the world economy, two former Trump administration China experts warned a congressional commission on Thursday.
Miles Yu, former State Department policy planning official for China, said the U.S. must demand strict reciprocity in dealing with the Chinese Communist Party to level the economic playing field and prevent Beijing from achieving its goals.
Four major European and American apparel and footwear manufacturers have been sued in a French court for allegedly using forced labor in Xinjiang, a mostly Muslim region in northwestern China.
Human rights groups, academic researchers and journalists have increasingly been sounding the alarm that the Chinese government is forcing more than 500,000 Uyghurs and other Muslim ethnic and religious minorities to pick cotton in Xinjiang, one of the largest cotton-producing regions in the world.
Whoever designed those horrid Olympics outfits should be sued. I wonder if they’re made in China?
On a summer afternoon nearly four years ago, Maryam Muhammet thought her family’s long journey to freedom was almost complete. The Uyghur woman had arrived in Istanbul from Egypt weeks prior with her two sons, a toddler and an infant, after fleeing the Chinese region of Xinjiang. Her husband had not yet joined the family in Turkey. The couple had heard from others in their community that Egyptian immigration officials—ostensibly acting at the behest of the Chinese government—were hassling Uyghur men as they left, so they decided he would come later, on his own.
It is nothing if not rich in irony, this latest dramatic plot twist in the ongoing “world stage” soap opera chronicling the embarrassing ups and downs of the Trudeau government’s unrequited affections for Chinese strongman Xi Jinping. Of all people, Taiwan’s heroic president, the 64-year-old feminist and liberal Tsai Ing-wen, has been forced to endure the misfortune of being dragged into the script for this week’s episode.
Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole’s speech at the party’s policy convention was an opportunity to attract Canadians wanting change. Unfortunately, as John Ivison has reported, following the speech six in 10 Canadian voters remain politically homeless. Here is my version of a speech that would have resonated with many of those politically homeless:
My fellow Canadians, as I contemplate a new future for our country, I’m reminded of what the great British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher said as she took over from a corrupt, deeply socialist party that had transformed the once strong and proud United Kingdom into an impotent, failing nation. She said, “We will stand on principle or we will not stand at all.”
Mitch McConnell and his wife, Elaine Chao, have operated for decades at the highest levels of American government. As the Senate Republican leader, Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky has long been a part of the power elite. His wife has been a member of the cabinets of two Republican presidents: secretary of labor in the George W. Bush administration and, most recently, as transportation secretary under President Donald Trump.
In the past dozen years, McConnell’s and Chao’s wealth has grown dramatically. In 2004, the couple was worth an average of $3.1 million, according to their required financial disclosures. Ten years later, they had a net worth of between $9.2 million and $36.5 million. The key to that growth was a 2008 gift from Chao’s father, James, who immigrated from China to continue his education in 1958, then brought his wife and three young daughters, including Elaine, to join him in 1961.
China’s cyber regulator has launched a hotline to report online criticism of the ruling Communist party and its history, vowing to crack down on “historical nihilists” ahead of the party’s 100th anniversary in July.
The tip line allows people to report fellow internet users who “distort” the party’s history, attack its leadership and policies, defame national heroes and “deny the excellence of advanced socialist culture” online, said a notice posted by an arm of the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) on Friday.
“Some with ulterior motives … have been spreading historical nihilistic misrepresentations online, maliciously distorting, denigrating and negating the history of the party,” said the notice.
The Pontiff has kowtowed to Beijing
Twenty years ago, the Catholics of a city in Alaska gathered enough money to build a church dedicated to the Sacred Heart. They presented the architectural drawings to the city council, whose non-Catholic members winced a bit. Were Gothic arches really meant to be painted the color of pale strawberries? Why were the bell towers capped with domes in cotton-candy stripes? But, what the hell, Catholics have their own funny ideas about what churches should look like.
Four intruders barged into the printing plant of the Hong Kong edition of The Epoch Times in the early hours of April 12, damaging computers and printing equipment. The attack is believed to be the latest effort by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to silence The Epoch Times.
In an attack on the same facility in November 2019, four masked men set fire to two printing presses. The perpetrators behind the arson attack have remained at large.
Facing growing scrutiny over its sharp power operations, the crackdown in Hong Kong and the ongoing cultural genocide in Xinjiang, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has launched an all-out propaganda campaign to rewrite the facts and discredit its critics. Recently, the CCP has also begun resorting to lawfare — the use or threat of legal action — to intimidate, silence and impose financial and psychological costs on researchers and journalists who are uncovering facts that Beijing doesn’t want us to know about.
The communist regime in China has become more active on both Twitter and Facebook to spread propaganda and disinformation in order to silence international condemnation of its persecution against Uyghurs and other minorities in Xinjiang, according to a recent report.
The disinformation campaign was a joint effort between Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials, China’s state-run media, and pro-CCP online actors, according to a report published by think tank Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) on March 30.
A Town of Essex councillor has triggered anger among many locally and far beyond after posting on Twitter about testing positive for “the Chinese Flu.”
Chris Vander Doelen, who retired five years ago from the Windsor Star and has served on council since being elected in 2018, posted the following on Friday: “Damn. My test for the Chinese flu came back positive. So I hafta lay low for another week — a punishment worse than the illness proved to be.”
I wonder how many of those critics are tied to the CCP?
Ontario is reporting more than 4,000 new COVID-19 cases for the second day in a row.
Health officials said there are 4,401 new infections on Monday, a slight drop from Sunday’s record high of 4,456 cases. It’s the third time in the past four days more than 4,000 new cases have been recorded.
Toronto taxi company considers pumping the brakes on service in some COVID-19 hotspots
A Toronto taxi company is considering pumping the brakes on providing service to some high-risk areas for COVID-19 in an effort to protect its drivers.
Beck Taxi CEO Kristine Hubbard says drivers provided their essential service at the start of the pandemic with the belief that people who were sick with the virus were staying home.
They were driving “to deliver [people’s] essential goods, to take them to their essential appointments,” she said.
John Tory’s Toronto – We’re all in this together but differently!
#TrafficAlertTO – Part of University Ave., b/n Queen St W & Dundas St, will be closed Saturday, April 10, 5am-8pm for filming. Emergency vehicles and bikes maintain access. Others making essential travel should plan another route. pic.twitter.com/XIo1ufQUgs
— TO Transportation (@TO_Transport) April 9, 2021
Doug Ford’s Ontario – No Scotch Tape for You!
h/t Paul and Mauser
HFX wanted to honor Taiwan’s president with the prestigious John McCain award. But Canada feared poking the Chinese bear.
The organizers of one of the world’s most prestigious defense gatherings are in the midst of an uncomfortable international standoff between the Canadian government and China over a major award they had planned to give to the president of Taiwan.
The standstill, which is ongoing and has not been previously reported, has created tension between the Halifax International Security Forum and the Canadian government, which is a major sponsor of the forum.
h/t MM
It has been almost exactly 70 years since my father was assigned to a two-man bunker overlooking an anonymous ridge on the 38th Parallel in Korea. The purpose of these outposts was to act as a trip-wire in the event of a mass attack of Chinese troops. Several weeks prior to June 1951, members of Dad’s battalion had been ambushed while patrolling the front, an ambush that cost the lives of several Army soldiers. But they served their purpose: to alert the battalion bivouacked a quarter-mile behind the line.
