China US

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Chinese cars are a security risk.

That’s the message Washington has been sending the American consumer: Cheaper vehicles aren’t worth exposing sensitive data to theft. Hence the massive tariffs aimed at China.

The difference is that Stellantis is now openly telling investors that these partnerships are central to its long-term strategy.

But while America was focused on keeping brands like BYD and NIO out of local dealerships, the global auto industry quietly found another way in.

And Stellantis just made that strategy official.

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Federal authorities on Wednesday shut down 13 internet domains said to be used by China for operations to obtain classified and sensitive U.S. government information, the Justice Department said.

The internet sites were used by Chinese actors to recruit Americans and others with access to secret information while posing as fraudulent professional consulting services, according to a department statement.

“The fake consulting company domains seized by the FBI illustrate the lengths the Chinese government’s intelligence services will go to as they try to use AI-generated content to trick, recruit, or coerce current and former U.S. security clearance holders into sharing sensitive information,” said Roman Rozhavsky, assistant FBI director for counterintelligence and espionage.

“The FBI and our partners have observed China’s intelligence services resort to using AI, professional networking sites, and online payment platforms to target Americans, and we have taken actions to defend the homeland and our national security.”

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Judge said only a handful of allegations were even worth considering

A Chinese man cannot file a racial discrimination lawsuit against the University of Notre Dame for a legal brief that commented on genocide in the country.

District Court Judge Gretchen Lund tossed out the self-filed suit from Bing Chen, which raised concerns about an amicus filed by the Catholic university’s religious liberty clinic. Chen sought more than $1 billion in damages – $1 for every Chinese person in China, along with $1 for every American living in the United States.

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Beijing’s censorship cannot erase memories of its 1989 military assault on peaceful demonstrators in Tiananmen Square, ‌U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Wednesday, ahead of the anniversary of China’s violent suppression there.

Rubio’s statement largely mirrored his past remarks on the crackdown but ‌is likely to be reassuring to Chinese dissidents and ⁠pro-democracy supporters at a time when President Donald ⁠Trump has repeatedly ⁠touted his relationship with China’s leader, Xi Jinping, whom he met ‌in Beijing last month.

According to human rights groups, Chinese troops opened fire on ⁠pro-democracy protesters in Tiananmen Square ⁠and killed hundreds if not thousands of people.

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A US journalist, Thomas Pauken II, faces charges for allegedly acting as an unregistered agent for China. Federal authorities claim he prepared confidential political reports for Chinese intelligence, intended for President Xi Jinping. Pauken, who lived in China for over a decade, denies espionage, stating he only performed professional work without proper paperwork….

A US-based journalist and political commentator who spent years working in China has been charged by federal authorities with allegedly acting as an unregistered agent for the Chinese government.

Thomas Pauken II, a commentator and author who lived in China for more than a decade, is accused of carrying out activities on behalf of Chinese government-linked contacts without properly registering with the US attorney general, according to federal court documents reported by Politico.

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BEIJING: China imposed export controls on Friday (May 22) on three precursor chemicals shipped to North America, as Washington and Beijing step up cooperation against drug trafficking following US leader Donald Trump’s visit to Beijing.

The chemicals will now require licences from government agencies to be exported to the United States, Canada and Mexico, China’s commerce ministry wrote in a statement.

China is the primary origin of precursor chemicals used to make fentanyl, a highly potent opioid underpinning a deadly drug epidemic in the United States.

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U.S. President Donald Trump entered his final talks with Xi Jinping on Friday touting economic wins that gave markets little to cheer, while Beijing warned Washington about mishandling Taiwan and said its war with Iran should never have started.

Trump is making the ‌first visit by a U.S. president to China, America’s main strategic and economic rival, since his last in 2017, and has been seeking tangible results to beef up his dented approval ratings ahead of crucial midterm elections.

“We’ve made some fantastic trade deals, great for both countries,” Trump said, seated beside Xi in a decorative red armchair at the opulent Zhongnanhai complex, a former imperial ‌garden that houses the offices of Chinese leaders.

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President Donald Trump said Thursday that China plans to pour “hundreds of billions of dollars” into American companies led by executives who joined him during high-level meetings with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing.

Speaking during an interview with Sean Hannity on Fox News, Trump said the executives accompanying him to China were there to secure economic opportunities that could ultimately bring jobs back to the United States.

“Those business people are here to make deals and to bring back jobs,” Trump said. “China’s going to invest hundreds of billions of dollars with those people that were in that room today.”

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In an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity Thursday from Beijing, President Trump said that during their summit, Chinese President Xi Jinping assured him that China would not provide military equipment to Iran for its war in the Middle East.

Asked by Hannity how big of a discussion the two leaders had regarding China’s support for Iran, Mr. Trump responded, “We discussed it. When you say support, they’re [China] not fighting a war with us or anything.”

According to Mr. Trump, Xi told him that he’s “not going to give [Iran] military equipment. That’s a big statement. He said that today. That’s a big statement. He said that strongly.”

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As Donald Trump and Xi Jinping came face to face outside China’s Great Hall of the People, the pair exchanged a historic handshake, with this opening moment laying bare the nature of their relationship — a body language expert asserting that Xi holds the upper hand.

The two leaders sat down for two hours of talks on Thursday, May 14, with the entire world looking on as Xi hailed US-China relations as the world’s “most important” and Trump declared the discussions “extremely positive”.

From the very beginning of the visit, the power dynamic between the two men has been unmistakable, according to body language expert Louise Mahler, who argued “if life is a competition, for me, Xi won.”

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President Donald Trump claimed that Chinese President Xi Jinping was “impressed” by the U.S.’s performance in its war with Iran and that it may soon resume imports of oil from the United States.

Speaking with Fox News’s Sean Hannity after his meeting with the Chinese leader, Trump expressed his belief that a good relationship with the other superpower was a good thing and that positive relationships with “very powerful” countries are desirable. He then suggested the view was mutual vis-a-vis China and that Beijing gained further respect for the U.S. during the war with Iran.

After boasting of successes in Venezuela and Iran, Trump said he and Xi spoke about the matter at their meeting.

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The Trump/Xi meetings in China were private. It appears that there were no big breakthroughs and “wins” for Trump to bring back to the United States.

Trump tried to flatter the Chinese leader, who responded with threats about Taiwan.

The Trump trip, where he took a bunch of the world’s richest CEOs with him, appears to have been a total bust on all fronts. Republicans were hoping that Trump would have another one of his fake deals with China to announce that would help to get farmers who are being devastated by the president’s toxic combo of war and tariffs off their backs, but there was no big announcement.

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President Trump said Friday that he and Chinese President Xi Jinping made some “fantastic trade deals” and both want the Iran conflict to end during this week’s summit in Beijing, as both countries look to claim the visit as a win — and aim to keep their relationship on a stable footing after last year’s trade war.

The leaders of the two superpowers are holding a bilateral meeting and lunch at China’s seat of power — the Zhongnanhai Garden compound — late Friday morning local time, before Mr. Trump leaves China and heads back to Washington. They met for tea and walked around the centuries-old gardens, mostly out of earshot of reporters.

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President Donald Trump said Thursday that China had agreed to purchase 200 Boeing jets, speaking of an order for “200 big ones” in a broadcast interview.

“It was sort of like a statement but I think it was a commitment,” Trump said, describing his conversation with President Xi Jinping in a Fox News interview.

“That’s a lot of jobs,” Trump told Fox host Sean Hannity in excerpts released by the broadcaster.

Shares fell after the spots were released.

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TAIPEI, Taiwan – President Trump is in Beijing for high-stakes talks with Chinese leader Xi Jinping. The president is expected to confront Xi over China’s support of Iran.

The Chinese leader is sending a strong message of his own, challenging U.S. policies on Taiwan.

But the war with Iran especially looms large as the two leaders meet, with President Trump expected to press Xi over China’s support for Tehran.

“You’ve got to remember, China is supporting everything to Iran that it needs in this war except combat personnel. It is a comrade in arms. It is an enemy combatant,” said Gordon Chang, with Gatestone Institute.

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Xi Jinping warned Donald Trump that tensions over Taiwan could push the US and China towards “clashes and even conflicts”, according to Chinese state media reports on their closed-door meeting in Beijing.

According to a readout published by Xinhua, Xi told Trump that if the Taiwan issue is “handled well”, relations between the two countries could maintain “overall stability”.

But he cautioned that mishandling the issue would place the wider US–China relationship in “great jeopardy”.

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Chinese President Xi Jinping had stern words for President Trump on Taiwan as they met in Beijing on Thursday, warning of potential “clashes and even conflicts” if the issue isn’t “handled properly,” according to Chinese state media.

During their summit, the two leaders are seen as aiming to stabilize their trading relationship after last year’s trade war. They’re also grappling with uncertainty over the United States’ war with Iran. But the issue of Taiwan loomed large.

The closed-door session lasted roughly two hours and 15 minutes. The White House characterized the meeting as “good.”

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The White House is escalating pressure on China over what U.S. officials describe as Beijing’s economic and material support for Iran and Russia ahead of President Donald Trump’s upcoming summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Senior administration officials said President Trump has already confronted Xi multiple times over China’s role in helping sustain adversarial regimes through oil purchases, dual-use exports, and sensitive technologies tied to military programs.

A senior administration official told reporters Sunday that Trump has discussed with Xi “the revenue that China provides to both those regimes and therefore as well as dual use goods, components and parts, not to mention the potential of weapons exports.”

“I expect that conversation to continue,” the official added during a White House briefing previewing Trump’s trip to Beijing.

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When Donald Trump visits Beijing this week, the focus of think tankers and pundits will largely be on what the policy outcomes will be, and there is a tendency to lean towards the negative. Will China deepen the trade war? Will Trump bristle at Xi’s stance on the war against Iran?

But for the trajectory of the relationship between China and the United States, the summit could play a constructive role, facilitating a peaceful recognition of the shift in power dynamics between the two countries and globally. Perceptions in both countries of one another, and of the role each seeks to play in the world, will be shaped by the art of the summitry and what the meeting between the two leaders conveys.

Historically, high-profile summits have proven to be important turning points in U.S. foreign policy by mediating enduring tensions in bilateral relations. The 1959 US-Soviet summit humanized the Soviet Union and Nikita Khrushchev in the eyes of some Americans. The 1972 Nixon visit to China allowed pro-rapprochement sentiment to emerge and circulate in American public discourse, contributing to ongoing discussions and debates on diplomatic normalization for years following the summit. The 1985-87 US-Soviet summits between Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev were crucial for transforming bilateral distrust into trust.

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Three years ago, in the idyllic town of Woodside south of San Francisco, the United States and China held their first high-level talks on the dangers posed by artificial intelligence. President Xi Jinping and his longtime foreign minister appeared serious in their conviction that a channel should be a established between Beijing and Washington — a red phone for AI in case of emergencies.

They authorized a diplomatic effort that would begin in 2024 in Switzerland, only months before the U.S. presidential election. A large U.S. delegation arrived with high hopes that were abruptly dashed, according to four sources who attended the talks. The Chinese contingent dismissed American concerns over runaway AI as academic, almost theoretical, quickly turning the conversation to export controls seen in Beijing as yet another U.S. effort to hold China back.