China Watch
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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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On May 28 in New York, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney declared that a strong Canada “will help make America great again.” His announcement came at a high-stakes moment, with China’s foreign minister arriving in Ottawa to build out the road map for the Canada-China “strategic partnership” and Minister Dominic Leblanc heading to Washington in an attempt to salvage USMCA. It’s all interconnected.
Struck last fall against the backdrop of trade tensions with Washington, the Canada-China partnership is alarming security experts on both sides of the border. They understand Beijing is working hard to build up its coercive power over Canada and to use Canada as a back door into the United States. They also know the U.S. will use its economic power — including its ability to impose harsh trade terms on Canada — to stop Canada from getting too deeply ensnared by Beijing.
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Federal prosecutors have appealed the high profile acquittal of a former RCMP officer accused of helping China conduct foreign interference in Canada.
A notice of appeal filed late last week asked the B.C. Court of Appeal to overturn the May 13 not guilty verdict and order a new trial for William Majcher.
The Public Prosecution Service of Canada argued the judge erred when she dismissed the charge that Majcher was effectively a Chinese government agent.
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BEIJING — The Philippines defense secretary and his family have been banned from entering China over comments he has made about Beijing’s claims in the South China Sea, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Thursday.
Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro and his wife and kids are banned from entering China, including Hong Kong, while individuals and groups in China are also banned from having any sort of transaction with Teodoro, the ministry said in a statement
Teodoro is known for using strong language to counter China’s claims over the strategic waters, calling them a “fiction and lie” that no Southeast Asian country would accept.
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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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China has become the first country in the world to operate an underwater data center, or UDC, powered by wind. Located off the coast of Shanghai, the complex represents a significant advance in the country’s strategy to secure energy supplies in the face of the accelerated growth of artificial intelligence, reduce dependence on fossil fuels, and reduce the environmental impact of its technology infrastructure.
The initiative is the result of a collaboration between private company HiCloud Technology and state-owned China Communications Construction, which involved an investment of 1.6 billion yuan, equivalent to about $236 million.
With an initial capacity of 24 megawatts, the facility is submerged at a depth of 10 meters in the Lin-gang Special Zone, within the China Pilot Free Trade Zone in Shanghai. This location allows seawater to be used as a natural cooling system, reducing the proportion of energy used to cool the infrastructure to less than 10 percent.
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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.
President Trump told the press at a White House event he does not think China is engaging in agit prop campaigning to drive Americans to not support AI Data Centers. His response suggested even if China could do such a thing, it wouldn’t be effective.
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China’s plan to become a world leader in AI by 2030 is a fixture of practically every Congressional briefing and expert commentary on Beijing’s AI ambitions. The plan’s logic — introduced in 2017 — was simple and alarming: Beijing would direct capital, mobilize its firms, recruit talent, and execute with the strategic patience of a state-led innovation ecosystem. Nearly a decade later, that frame has only hardened. Beijing’s recently issued 15th Five-Year Plan directs Party organs to take “extraordinary measures” to strengthen technological self-reliance and launch a new “AI+” initiative to integrate AI across the nation’s strategic sectors. Beijing has the legal architecture to compel its firms to do its bidding, so Washington has largely concluded that Beijing’s AI sprint reflects deliberate industrial policy, and built America’s response around that assumption.
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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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On May 8, Taiwan’s Legislative Yuan broke a grueling six-month stalemate by passing a landmark $25 billion defense budget, catching many observers off guard. The vote brought sudden end to an agonizing legislative deadlock that had pushed U.S.-Taiwanese relations to the edge. For months, long-simmering frustration in Washington over Taiwan’s defense trajectory has threatened to boil over, catalyzed by an unprecedented bipartisan open letter from U.S. senators, demanding that Taiwan authorize the pending defense packages.
Chinese interference ‘systemic,’ report says as minister returns to Canada – National– globalnews.ca
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Canadian researchers are calling for a more coordinated response by G7 countries to counter “systemic” Chinese foreign interference, particularly as technology and tactics evolve and Beijing’s agents embed themselves further into societies.
Wednesday’s report by the Montreal Institute for Global Security comes a day before Canada is set to welcome China’s foreign minister to Ottawa for the first time in a decade.
Speaking alongside the report’s authors on Parliament Hill, former member of Parliament John McKay urged Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand to raise the issue of foreign interference with her counterpart Wang Yi during his visit.