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U.S. ban on foreign-made humanoid robots targets China over security risks www.cbc.ca
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The U.S. Federal Communications Commission is banning imports of new foreign-made humanoid robots and power inverters, citing national security risks, in a move that targets China.

Beijing quickly accused the U.S. of protectionism.

The measures are likely to test relations with Beijing ahead of a planned U.S. visit by Chinese leader Xi Jinping to meet with U.S. President Donald Trump in September. China dominates the global market for humanoid robots with an estimated market share of roughly 85 per cent.

The FCC’s ban also includes new imports of quadruped robots, often referred to as four-legged robot dogs. The agency said imports of advanced robots pose cybersecurity and other national security risks. Offshore production of such equipment also leaves U.S. supply chains vulnerable to disruptions.

The ban on power inverters, which are used to convert direct current (DC) electricity into alternating current (AC) electricity and are used in renewable energy systems, data centres and household appliances, could have sweeping ramifications.

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The Trump administration on Monday criticized China for conducting a test launch of a provocative submarine-launched, nuclear-capable missile that the State Department called a sign of Beijing’s continuing arms buildup.

China carried out the test launch on Monday of what analysts say is likely an advanced JL-2 missile or new JL-3 multi-warhead submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM), a strategic weapon shown during a military parade in September.

A spokesman for People’s Liberation Army navy provided no details on the type of submarine or missile involved, or the launch and splashdown locations, or the distance traveled.

 

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Among the many industries that China and the USA are competing in, space is a rising battleground. The two countries that have tried their best to form a bond in trade and truth but remain contentious in spirit. China is rapidly advancing its lunar exploration program and is expected to eventually send taikonauts to the Moon, as per media reports.

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The competition to return humans to the Moon is no longer being spoken about as a distant ambition. According to Nasa Administrator Jared Isaacman, it has become a direct contest between the United States and China, with both countries working towards lunar landings within a remarkably similar timeframe. Although official schedules suggest the US is targeting a return in 2028 while China has set its sights on landing astronauts before 2030, Isaacman believes the practical difference between those goals is much smaller than it appears. His remarks reflect a growing sense inside the US space agency that the coming few years will shape the future of human exploration beyond Earth. Rather than treating the next Moon landing as a symbolic achievement, Nasa is framing it as the beginning of a much longer effort to establish a lasting presence on the lunar surface before turning its attention towards missions to Mars.

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Do American pharmaceutical companies conducting clinical trials on drugs in China help the CCP’s military capability? A bipartisan group of lawmakers wants to know, and they’ve opened an investigation into drugmakers, including Merck, Eli Lilly, Pfizer, Bristol Myers ⁠Squibb, and AbbVie (a spinoff of Abbott Laboratories), and are demanding that they detail their policies and due diligence efforts in their overseas operations.

Rep. John Moolenaar (MI-02), chair of the China Select Committee, is leading the charge:

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On May 13, 2026, Air Force One landed in Beijing for President Donald Trump’s first state visit to China in nearly a decade. That same morning, the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations published a report titled The Evolving World and the Right Way to China-US Coexistence. The summit dominated global media coverage for two days. The report received almost none.

The Beijing summit produced familiar imagery: honor guards, a state banquet in the Great Hall of the People, and carefully choreographed warmth. Chinese leader Xi Jinping announced that both sides had agreed to “strategic stability” as a framework for the next three years, and both leaders praised the collegial atmosphere.

Beneath the pageantry, China’s premier foreign policy think tank had published its own assessment of the state of bilateral relations. Read against Mao Zedong’s original theory of protracted struggle, its report describes the current moment not as a step toward partnership but as the product of a strategy in which struggle precedes and produces cooperation on terms favorable to Beijing. Treating that stabilization as evidence of strategic convergence, rather than as a single stage within a longer competition, would be a misreading worth correcting.

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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”.