China Creep on Campus: Dozens of Colleges Fail to Disclose Millions in Chinese Donations

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Dozens of top American universities that received funding from the Chinese government failed to disclose those donations to the Department of Education, prompting concerns from education watchdogs about Beijing’s growing influence on campuses.

More than 100 U.S. universities host or once hosted Confucius Institutes, programs underwritten by the Chinese government that teach Chinese language and culture to American college students. The Department of Education requires all credentialed universities to disclose foreign gifts of more than $250,000, but only about 30 percent of institutions with Confucius Institutes have disclosed their financial ties to Beijing, according to a Washington Free Beacon review of federal records.

The Free Beacon reached out to all 75 institutions that did not report their funding to the federal government; 22 of them responded. A common theme of the responses was that the colleges did not disclose their donations because their annual receipts did not meet the $250,000 threshold. For example, a spokesman from the University of Wisconsin-Platteville said the college declined to disclose its 2019 Confucius Institute donations because it received only $246,711.

Rachelle Peterson, director of policy at the National Association of Scholars, called the lack of accountability at prestigious universities “alarming.”

“It is extremely alarming how little transparency there is,” she said. “$250,000 is much too high of a threshold. Gifts of money at much smaller amounts can be very swaying over a college or university, especially the humanities [departments] which traditionally have lower funding.” (Read more from “China Creep on Campus: Dozens of Colleges Fail to Disclose Millions in Chinese Donations” HERE)

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WATCH: North Korea Blows up South Korea Joint Office; South Korean Troops and Tanks Amass on Border With North After Embassy Attack

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By Straits Times. North Korea destroyed a building that was a key symbol of inter-Korean cooperation, in an apparent attempt to exert pressure on Seoul and Washington for their stalled dialogue.

Smoke was seen billowing from the inter-Korean liaison office building located in the border city Kaesong on North Korea’s side of the demilitarised zone yesterday, following the sound of an explosion.

North Korea’s state-owned Korean Central News Agency later confirmed that the facility had been “tragically ruined with a terrific explosion”.

The move, the culmination of a series of threats and harsh rhetoric, prompted a stern warning from South Korea’s presidential Blue House that it would “strongly respond if North Korea takes any action that further worsens the situation”.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said Japan would analyse the situation and respond in close coordination with South Korea and the United States.

(Read more from “WATCH: North Korea Blows up South Korea Joint Office” HERE)

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South Korean Troops and Tanks Amass on Border With North After Embassy Attack

By Mirror UK. South Korea has stationed tanks on the border with the North, threatening a strong reaction after Kim Jong-un’s regime blew up an embassy building.

Tensions are high on the peninsula after the office – set up to encourage better relations between the neighbours – was “ruined” in a “terrific explosion”.

It has led to fears of military clashes in the heavily guarded Demilitarised Zone (DMZ) that divides the neighbours, who are technically still at war, after the North said its troops were prepared to enter the area.

South Korean troops are amassing after the attack on the inter-Korea liaison office in the border town of Kaesong this morning.

The North fired its weapons in a rage after anti-Kim Jong-un leaflets were distributed by defectors branded “human scum” by the secretive state. (Read more from “South Korean Troops and Tanks Amass on Border With North After Embassy Attack” HERE)

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Chinese Military Officer Arrested While Allegedly Trying to Steal U.S. Medical Research

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A Chinese military officer was caught trying to leave California with university research materials this week, after allegedly lying on an application to obtain a visitor visa for a work-study exchange program, the Justice Department announced.

Xin Wang, a scientific researcher and officer with China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA), was arrested at LAX as he was attempting to board his flight to Tianjin, China, according to court documents unsealed this week. He faces visa fraud charges.

Wang entered the U.S. on March 26, 2019, to conduct scientific research at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), according to his J1 non-immigrant visa application. The application, however, is said to have contained fraudulent statements — including claims that his service with the PLA had ended in 2016 — that were made to increase the chances that he would receive visa approval.

Officials claim Wang revealed that he had instructions from the director of his military lab to observe the layout of the UCSF lab with the understanding that they wanted to try to replicate it in China. He was also accused of attempting to bring materials to China with him and had already emailed research. (Read more from “Chinese Military Officer Arrested While Allegedly Trying to Steal U.S. Medical Research” HERE)

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Recent Study Suggests COVID-19 Was Spreading in August

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Coronavirus may have been present and spreading in Wuhan as early as August last year, according to a study that analysed satellite imagery of car parks outside major hospitals and search engine data.

The study, by researchers from Harvard medical school, Boston University of Public Health and Boston children’s hospital, looked at images captured between January 2018 and April 2020 and found a “steep increase” in vehicle counts starting in August 2019 and peaking in December 2019. Between September and October, five of the six hospitals observed had their highest daily volume of cars in the period analysed.

China’s foreign ministry rejected the study, calling it “extremely absurd”.

According to the study, the increase in vehicle volume coincided with a rise in queries on the Chinese search engine Baidu for “cough” and “diarrhoea”, about three weeks before the confirmed rise in coronavirus cases in early 2020. The researchers noted that while queries for cough coincided with the influenza season, diarrhoea is a symptom specific to Covid-19. . .

The origins of Covid-19, which was first detected in a cluster of cases associated with the Huanan seafood market in late December, has become an increasingly sensitive question as China fights off accusations that it should be blamed for the pandemic, which has killed more than 400,000 people around the world. (Read more from “Recent Study Suggests COVID-19 Was Spreading in August” HERE)

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‘Determined for War’: China Orders Fighter Jets

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Several Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) fighter jets and a U.S. military transport plane flew in Taiwan’s airspace Tuesday morning, Focus Taiwan reported.

Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense (MND) confirmed the activity in a statement issued Tuesday afternoon, saying: “[S]everal Chinese Su-30s briefly entered Taiwan’s air defense identification zone southwest of Taiwan, and Taiwan’s Air Force responded with radio warnings and monitored their movements until they flew off.”

Focus Taiwan described China’s fighter jet activity as an “intrusion” into Taiwan’s airspace, while the U.S. C-40A transport plane that flew through Taiwan’s airspace earlier on Tuesday was described by the MND as having done so with Taiwan’s permission. . .

Chinese military “experts” commented on the PLA fighter jets’ flight through Taiwan’s airspace Tuesday in an article published by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) newspaper Global Times on Wednesday:

The U.S. warplane’s rare flight over Taiwan showed the increasing collaboration between the U.S. military and Taiwan secessionists, and the Chinese mainland’s fighter jet sorties and approaches sent them a powerful warning and demonstrated how much the PLA was determined and prepared for war.

(Read more from “‘Determined for War’: China Orders Fighter Jets” HERE)

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China’s Exports and Imports Fall Amid Coronavirus

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China’s exports and imports both fell in May as the coronavirus and trade tensions with the U.S. weighed on demand at home and abroad.

Exports fell 3.3 percent compared to a year earlier to $206.8 billion and imports dropped 16.7 percent to $143.9 billion, the Chinese customs agency said Sunday. . .

The fall in exports came after a surprise 3.5 percent rise the previous month. Analysts were expecting the decline, attributing April’s rise to orders placed before virus restrictions hit overseas economies and predicting that American and European customers would also cancel other orders. (Read more from “China’s Exports and Imports Fall Amid Coronavirus” HERE)

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Iran, Russia, China, Turkey Celebrate ‘Collapse’ of U.S.

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Authoritarian regimes throughout the world are pushing narratives that appear to gloat over and celebrate that chaos unfolding in the United States. On Monday, Iran’s media pushed stories that highlighted the “collapse,” while quoting Russian sources portraying that the US is flailing about as its world order comes crashing down.

The US became the world’s most powerful country, a global hegemonic superpower, after the Soviet Union and its client states fell apart in 1989. However, Russia, China, Iran and increasingly Turkey have all awaited the period when the world would become multi-polar again. They have sought to work more closely together, and they have sat frequently at global forums that the US does not attend.

To coordinate efforts against the US, these countries all have state media that is well funded, such as RT, TRT, Iran’s Tasnim and Fars News and numerous Chinese media outlets. The policies of these countries are to slowly undermine the US and wait for moments of US weakness to push their agendas.

The leadership in Turkey and Iran view their goal as undermining the US through a more religious lens linked with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Muslim Brotherhood that influences Tehran and Ankara respectively. Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan sought to capitalize on the recent riots in the US, claiming that America is part of an “unjust order” in the world.

Iran’s former president made similar comments about the declining US “order.” This is a reference to the concept of the “axis of resistance” in Iran, and the defeat of US “arrogance.” Ever since the Islamic Revolution in Iran of 1979, there had been a call for a third way between the US and Soviet Union in the 1980s that would bring about the defeat of Western systems and the rise of political Islam rooted in Tehran and then in Ankara. (Read more from “Iran, Russia, China, Turkey Celebrate ‘Collapse’ of U.S.” HERE)

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China Threatens the UK After Boris Johnson Offers 3 Million Hong Kong Citizens Refuge

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China on Wednesday told Britain to “step back from the brink” and “stop interfering” in China’s affairs after Prime Minister Boris Johnson said he would offer 3 million Hong Kong citizens the right to come live in the UK. . .

“Today about 350,000 people hold British Nationals (Overseas) passports and another 2.5 million people would be eligible to apply for them. At present these passports allow for visa-free access for up to six months,” Johnson said.

“If China imposes its national security law, the British government will change its immigration rules and allow any holder of these passports from Hong Kong to come to the UK for a renewable period of 12 months and be given further immigration rights including the right to work which would place them on the route to citizenship.” . . .

China hit back, telling Johnson that his intervention would “backfire.”

“We advise the UK to step back from the brink, abandon their Cold War mentality and colonial mindset, and recognise and respect the fact that Hong Kong has returned” to China, Zhao Lijian, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman, said at a briefing, according to Agence France-Presse. (Read more from “China Threatens the UK After Boris Johnson Offers 3 Million Hong Kong Citizens Refuge” HERE)

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Leaked Documents Reveal China Withheld Crucial Information About the Coronavirus at the Start of the Outbreak

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China withheld key information about the coronavirus for weeks after it first emerged in January, delaying the international response to the outbreak, a new investigation has revealed.

Chinese officials failed to share the genetic map, or genome, of the virus for over a week after first decoding it and failed to reveal that the virus could be transmitted between humans for a further two weeks, according to internal World Health Organization documents and testimony obtained by the Associated Press.

The AP reported on Tuesday that while scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology decoded the virus on January 2, Chinese health officials did not publish the details of their findings until over a week later, on January 12.

It wasn’t until January 20 that the Chinese state alerted the World Health Organization and other governments that the virus could pass between people, according to the Associated Press investigation.

This was only after a laboratory in Shanghai led by scientist Zhang Yongzhen published the information a day earlier. (Read more from “Leaked Documents Reveal China Withheld Crucial Information About the Coronavirus at the Start of the Outbreak” HERE)

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Will You Believe Them This Time? Scientists Say Half the World May Die From Chicken Virus

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Mass chicken farming is leaving humans vulnerable to a killer virus which could wipe out half of the world’s population, a scientist claims.

American nutritionist Dr Michael Greger says that diseases harboured by poultry pose an even greater risk to mankind than coronavirus. . .

But Dr Greger, who made the grim prediction in his new book “How To Survive A Pandemic”, says intensive chicken farming could be an even greater threat to the world as we know it. . .

The doctor argues that raising poultry in smaller flocks, allowing them to roam in less crowded and more hygienic spaces will help to slow the spread of viruses.

However, the doctor also warns that even this may not be enough to prevent disaster, as a viral link between chickens and humans will still exist. (Read more from “Will You Believe Them This Time? Scientists Say Half the World May Die From Chicken Virus” HERE)

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