Tag: China

Nikki Haley warns Republicans on China: ‘If they take Taiwan, it’s all over’

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Potential 2024 GOP presidential hopeful Nikki Haley sounded the alarm to House conservatives Wednesday that China is hell-bent on world domination — and that Taiwan is ground zero.

In a closed-door meeting with members of the Republican Study Committee (RSC), Haley, who served as former President Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations, said that if China takes control of Taiwan, Beijing will be emboldened to seize other territories around the globe.

The U.S. must take stronger action against China, Haley said, starting with organizing a boycott of the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing with allies like India, Australia, Japan, South Korea and Canada. Continue reading.

Biden, E.U. end 17-year Airbus-Boeing trade dispute, seek to calm relations after Trump

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BRUSSELS — President Biden and European Union leaders reached a deal Tuesday to put to rest a 17-year-old trade dispute about subsidies for aircraft manufacturers, officials said, a significant step in calming trade relations after the fury of the Trump years.

A five-year truce, which was announced at a meeting Tuesday in Brussels between Biden and the top leaders of E.U. institutions, was the latest effort in a transatlantic reconciliation tour that the new president started last week at the Group of Seven summit in Britain.

At each stop, including at NATO on Monday, Biden has tried to mend ties that were damaged under President Donald Trump, who often drew close to traditional American adversaries and targeted longtime allies with vitriol. Continue reading.

Critical entities targeted in suspected Chinese cyber spying

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RICHMOND, Va. — A cyberespionage campaign blamed on China was more sweeping than previously known, with suspected state-backed hackers exploiting a device meant to boost internet security to penetrate the computers of critical U.S. entities.

The hack of Pulse Connect Secure networking devices came to light in April, but its scope is only now starting to become clear. The Associated Press has learned that the hackers targeted telecommunications giant Verizon and the country’s largest water agency. News broke earlier this month that the New York City subway system, the country’s largest, was also breached. 

Security researchers say dozens of other high-value entities that have not yet been named were also targeted as part of the breach of Pulse Secure, which is used by many companies and governments for secure remote access to their networks. Continue reading.

Biden’s NSC to focus on global health, climate, cyber and human rights, as well as China and Russia

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The incoming Biden administration plans to restructure and expand the operations of the White House National Security Council, establishing new senior positions on global health, democracy and human rights, and cyber and emerging technology, signaling a sweeping shift in priorities, according to a senior adviser to the Biden transition.

Russia, which the Trump administration had subsumed into the NSC directorate for European affairs, will again be given its own NSC senior director, the adviser said, speaking on the condition of anonymity before the plans and positions were announced Friday.

“We expect to be taking a stronger position on China than has been the case in past Democratic administrations,” with significant new staff positions to handle “a much more assertive China abroad and a much more repressive China” at home, the adviser said. Continue reading.

Trump’s war on immigrants is hurting his fight against China

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They have more people. Until we do, too, it will be hard to contain Beijing.

One of the only Trump-era policy initiatives to secure bipartisan support has been the president’s decision to reverse America’s “engagement” with China and instead try to decouple the world’s two largest economies. Both parties see an emerging strategic competitor as China lifts its gross domestic product and productivity, recruits allies, silences political opponents, and tries to absorb semiautonomous territories like Taiwan and Hong Kong. One of the greatest conundrums in Washington is how U.S. officials can counterbalance Beijing’s rise.

At the same time, President Trump has been pursuing an immigration policy supported by only his own party, seeking to foreclose the flow not just of undocumented migrants but also those who come here legally.

These two policies are at odds with each other. The best way to ensure that the United States maintains the upper hand against China is easy: It can welcome more of the tens of millions around the world who’d like to move to our shores — not as an act of charity but as an exertion of national power. To compete, we need more people. Continue reading.

Trump: If Biden Wins, You’ll ‘Have To Learn To Speak Chinese’

“If I don’t win the election, China will own the United States,” the president claimed in an interview.

President Donald Trump continued his xenophobic warnings about China on Tuesday, claiming that if he loses the election, everyone in the U.S. will have to learn to speak Chinese.

“Look, China will own the United States if this election is lost by Donald Trump,” he said in an interview with conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt. “If I don’t win the election, China will own the United States. You’re going to have to learn to speak Chinese, you want to know the truth.”

Demonizing China has been central to Trump’s reelection campaign ever since the coronavirus pandemic took hold. The president and his allies have attempted to shift attention away from the White House’s actions by blaming China for the global pandemic. Continue reading.

Russia is trying to ‘denigrate’ Biden while China prefers ‘unpredictable’ Trump not be reelected, senior U.S. intelligence official says

Washington Post logoRussia is “using a range of measures” to interfere in the 2020 election and has enlisted a pro-Russian lawmaker from Ukraine — who has met with President Trump’s personal lawyer — “to undermine former vice president [Joe] Biden’s candidacy and the Democratic Party,” a top U.S. intelligence official said in a statement Friday.

The remarks by William Evanina, director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, were some of the most detailed to date about foreign interference in the presidential race and come after earlier criticism from Democratic lawmakers that Evanina had not shared with the public some of the alarming intelligence he gave them in classified briefings.

Evanina also said that the government of China does not want Trump to win reelection in November, seeing the incumbent as “unpredictable.” Evanina described China’s efforts to date as largely rhetorical and aimed at shaping policy and criticizing the Trump administration for actions Beijing sees as harmful to its long-term strategic interests. Continue reading.

Trump’s two main foreign foes plan a major pact

Washington Post logoThe autocratic regimes in Beijing and Tehran are feeling the heat from Washington. The former is locked in a bitter, damaging trade war with the United States; the latter has seen its country’s economy mauled by sanctions reimposed by the Trump administration after it broke from the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and world powers. But the tariffs and sanctions have yet to yield President Trump the acquiescence from both parties he seeks. And recent developments suggest these two putative American adversaries may be finding greater common cause.

Last week, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif acknowledged in a parliamentary session that his government is, “with confidence and conviction,” in negotiations with China over a 25-year strategic partnership that could involve about $400 billion in Chinese investment through various sectors of the Iranian economy. An outline of the accord’s details surfaced in an 18-page leaked document online, whose provenance is unclear though it roughly aligns with mooted plans previously announced by the Iranian government. According to the New York Times, a version of the document dated in June that its reporters obtained is a draft of a pending agreement with China. Continue reading “Trump’s two main foreign foes plan a major pact”

FBI director says China aims to become “world’s only superpower”

Axios logoFBI Director Christopher Wray gave a speech today at the Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C. in which he laid out “more detail on the Chinese threat than the FBI has ever presented in an open forum.”

Why it matters: China’s increasingly aggressive behavior under General Secretary Xi Jinping is ringing alarm bells in the U.S.

Details: Wray described the multi-pronged efforts they have seen from China to take advantage of Americans and of U.S. innovation and technology, including the Equifax hack, theft of sensitive military technology, pressure to self-censor, and economic coercion applied to state and local-level U.S. elected officials.

  • “If you are an American adult, it is more likely than not that China has stolen your personal data. … Our data isn’t the only thing at stake here — so are our health, our livelihoods, and our security,” he said.
  • “We’ve now reached the point where the FBI is opening a new China-related counterintelligence case approximately every ten hours.” Continue reading.

China, Iran targeting presidential campaigns with hacking attempts, Google announces

Washington Post logoChinese and Iranian government hackers have targeted the Gmail accounts of staffers working on the presidential campaigns of Joe Biden and President Trump, respectively, Google announced Thursday.

There were no signs the accounts were compromised, a Google threat analyst said in a tweet Thursday, and law enforcement was notified.

The disclosure is a fresh reminder that nation states are actively seeking to gain access to presidential campaigns — a practice that has taken place in every presidential election dating back more than a decade. Continue reading.