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Trump Gets Win for U.S. Farmers in Trade War With China

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President Donald Trump collected a win in the ongoing trade war with China on Thursday as the communist nation announced that it was lifting a five-year ban on U.S. poultry effective immediately.

“The decision out of Beijing is effective immediately and the announcement sent shares of major U.S. chicken processers, Sanderson Farms, Tyson Foods and Pilgrim’s Pride to new highs for the year Thursday,” The Associated Press reported. “The Chinese market looks especially promising for U.S. poultry producers because an outbreak of African swine fever has devastated a competing protein in China: pork.”

The move comes after the U.S. and China made a partial trade deal in October in which China committed to purchasing $40-50 billion of American agricultural products every year which is a massive increase as “American farm exports to China peaked at around $25.5 billion in 2016,” The New York Times reported last month. “From China’s perspective, the biggest win is a promise by Mr. Trump to cancel an Oct. 15 tariff increase, when taxes on $250 billion of Chinese goods were set to rise to 30 percent from 25 percent.” (Read more from “Trump Gets Win for U.S. Farmers in Trade War With China” HERE)

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The U.S.-China Trade War Has Cost Americans an Added $38 Billion

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Tariffs President Donald Trump implemented against China have cost Americans an additional $38 billion since February 2018, Tariffs Hurt the Heartland found.

Americans paid a total in September of $7.1 billion on all tariffs and $4.1 billion on tariffs the Trump administration implemented, according to data anti-tariff campaign Tariffs Hurt the Heartland and consulting firm The Trade Partnership released Wednesday.

Tariffs on $112 billion worth of mostly consumer goods called List 4A went into effect in September, which forced American businesses to pay an additional $905 million, the campaign noted.

“Imagine you’re running a business, and all of a sudden, your cost of goods — overnight — goes up 15%. … We made the decision not to raise our prices and scale back marketing instead and some other things, but it’s not sustainable. If the tariffs stay, we will need to raise our prices,” homemade speaker company SVS Sound Revolution President Gary Yacoubian told the Daily Caller News Foundation. . .

The first phase of the deal, which is expected to decrease tariffs on both countries and address concerns regarding intellectual property theft and financial services, was expected to be signed in November, but a senior administration official told Reuters Wednesday that phase one could be pushed back until December. (Read more from “The U.S.-China Trade War Has Cost Americans an Added $38 Billion” HERE)

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‘South Park’ Trolls China Again

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The satire wheelhouse that is “South Park” continued its attack on China this week in response to the country banning the show for criticizing the Communist Party of China’s penchant for censorship.

“The writers of ‘South Park’ continued to tweak China in its latest edition, with Randy wearing a President Xi Jinping mask in the opening credits,” reported Deadline of this week’s episode. “The zinger recalled ‘South Park’s’ earlier poke at the lion’s cage. That, too, involved Randy, who was forced to shout out an epithet against the Chinese government.” . . .

“South Park” has been on an extended anti-China crusade this whole season, blasting anyone or, more precisely, any business that will censor itself in the name of doing business with the communist country. It all began several weeks ago when the episode “Band in China” angered the government to the point that the show was banned inside the country. Rather than cater to the country’s sensibilities, show co-creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker doubled down in their hits by issuing the most irreverent “apology” they could muster.

“Like the NBA, we welcome the Chinese censors into our homes and into our hearts,” Parker and Stone wrote. “We too love money more than freedom and democracy. Xi doesn’t look just like Winnie the Pooh at all! Tune into our 300th episode this Wednesday at 10! Long live the Great Communist Party of China! May this autumn’s sorghum harvest be bountiful! We good now China?”

One week later, the show took the criticism one step further when the character, Randy Marsh, uttered the words “f*** the Chinese government” during an episode. That was quickly followed up with another episode that mocked basketball star LeBron James for criticizing Houston Rockets General Manager Daryl Morey’s public support for the Hong Kong protesters, which had sparked massive tensions between the NBA and the Chinese government. (Read more from “‘South Park’ Trolls China Again” HERE)

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A Man Held In One Of China’s Internment Camps Was Beaten To Death By A Drunk Police Officer

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Last year, a Uyghur man imprisoned in one of China’s labor camps died. Chinese officials claimed he died from a heart attack.

But Radio Free Asia (RFA) reported that the man, referred to only as Ghalipjan, was actually beaten to death by a drunk police officer while in custody. Ghalipjan, 35, was detained in Pichan county in one of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region’s (XUAR) internment camps. RFA estimates that more than “1.5 million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities accused of harboring ‘strong religious views’ and ‘politically incorrect’ ideas since April 2017” have been detained in the labor camps.

China claims the camps are education facilities to reduce terrorism, but as The Daily Wire previously reported, the centers are run like third-world prisons where detainees are regularly sexually assaulted, tortured, experimented on, and given little to no food — all while living in deplorable conditions.

RFA reports that it received a letter from a source that said Ghalipjan’s mother was told the day he died that it was due to a heart attack from an undiagnosed heart condition. The authorities told her that he was sent to a nearby hospital. Ghalipjan’s family went to the hospital to see his body and found he still had a defibrillator attached to his chest. Family members were not allowed to inspect his body.

“Communist Party cadres from No. 1 village in Pichan’s Lamjin (Lianmuqin) township, where Ghalipjan lived with his wife and five-year-old child, oversaw the burial of the young man on the same night that he died, and inexplicably denied family members the right to wash his body according to Muslim funerary traditions,” RFA reported from the letter. (Read more from “A Man Held In One Of China’s Internment Camps Was Beaten To Death By A Drunk Police Officer” HERE)

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Chinese President Vows to Crush Hong Kong Pro-Freedom Protesters’ Bones to ‘Powder’; Chinese State Media: West Paying the Price for ‘Backing’ Riots

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By American Military News. Chinese President Xi Jinping threatened to grind bodies into “powder” and “smash” the bodies of anyone who attempts to split Hong Kong from China.

“Anyone who attempts to split any region from China will perish, with their bodies smashed and bones ground to powder,” Xi reportedly said in a statement on Sunday.

“Any external forces that support the splitting of China can only be regarded as delusional by the Chinese people,” he added.

The Chinese leader made the warning while visiting Nepal and did not name any specific territories or countries in his comments, but the Hong Kong protests are now in their 29th week.

Tens of thousands of pro-democracy demonstrators have been protesting for 29 weeks in Hong Kong after a proposed extradition bill would let the Chinese government extradite individuals charged with crimes in Hong Kong to mainland China for prosecution. (Read more from “Chinese President Vows to Crush Hong Kong Pro-Freedom Protesters’ Bones to ‘Powder’” HERE)

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West Is Paying the Price for Supporting Hong Kong Riots, Chinese State Media Says

By CNN. The Chinese government and state-run media have accused Western countries of hypocrisy in their attitude to violent protests in Spain, Chile and Hong Kong over the past week.

Some articles even allege that demonstrations in Europe and South America are the direct result of Western tolerance of Hong Kong unrest, now in its 20th week. . .

The same day, an editorial in state-run tabloid Global Times accused Hong Kong demonstrators of “exporting revolution to the world.”

“The West is paying the price for supporting riots in Hong Kong, which has quickly kindled violence in other parts of the world and foreboded the political risks that the West can’t manage,” the editorial said. (Read more from “West Is Paying the Price for Supporting Hong Kong Riots, Chinese State Media Says” HERE)

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Here’s How a Massive, Mysterious Pro-China Troll Mob Silenced NBA Exec’s Twitter Account

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An enormous pro-China Twitter mob descended on Houston Rocket’s General Manager Daryl Morey after his ill-fated Hong Kong tweet and, in the process, thrust the NBA into the hotspot, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Morey was the victim of what experts say is a massive, coordinated assault after his Oct. 4 tweet supporting Hong Kong protesters, the report noted, citing a review of about 170,000 tweets directed at the NBA executive. Experts are not ruling out the possibility that the full-throated attack was state-sponsored.

“I’m not saying this is a state-affiliated operation,” Clemson University researcher Darren Linvill told TheWSJ on Wednesday. “But I’ve only seen so many brand-new accounts used at one time when it was a state-affiliated operation.” . . .

Morey’s account was inundated with comments from pro–Chinese government accounts in the 12 hours after he posted his tweet, which championed Hong Kong’s fight for freedom. The tweets mentioned him more than 16,000 times, Ben Nimmo, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, noted in a separate analysis of Morey’s tweets.

“It looks like there were humans at the keyboard for many of these posts,” he told reporters. “This wasn’t primarily a bot swarm. It was a troll mob. Which is a lot harder to deal with.” Twitter has not responded to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment about the campaign. (Read more from “Here’s How a Massive, Mysterious Pro-China Troll Mob Silenced NBA Exec’s Twitter Account” HERE)

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Chinese President Has Chilling, Dire Warning for Hong Kong Protesters (VIDEO)

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As street battles between protesters and police continue to escalate in Hong Kong, China’s authoritarian leader warned Sunday any further attempt to divide the country will literally be crushed.

Chinese President Xi Jinping made the comments during a visit to Nepal, where he became the first Chinese president in more than two decades to visit the country.

“Anyone attempting to split China in any part of the country will end in crushed bodies and shattered bones,” he told Nepalese Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli, China’s state broadcaster CCTV reported. “And any external forces backing such attempts dividing China will be deemed by the Chinese people as pipe-dreaming!”

Xi made the explicit comments at a meeting where the two signed more than 20 agreements Sunday, including one commissioning a feasibility study of a China-Nepal cross-border railway project. The railway construction is being considered under an ambitious project that’s a component of China’s signature Belt and Road Initiative. . .

China has seen growing international pressure due to the escalating Hong Kong pro-democracy protests during the last four months. The demonstrations began in June over a contested extradition bill and have snowballed into a wide-ranging anti-government, anti-police and anti-China movement. (Read more from “Chinese President Has Chilling, Dire Warning for Hong Kong Protesters” HERE)

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Elite American Institutions Keep Bowing to Communist China… over and over Again

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By The Daily Caller. . .The NBA provided the latest example Sunday night, when league commissioner Adam Silver apologized for Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey’s tweet in support of pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong. Rockets star James Harden followed suit and apologized to China for Morey’s tweets. . .

China Daily, the communist government’s propaganda arm, used the NBA’s conciliatory reaction to warn other companies to learn “a lesson: The big Chinese market is open to the world, but those who challenge China’s core interests and hurt Chinese people’s feelings cannot make any profit from it.” . . .

American universities have allowed the Chinese government to fund centers called Confucius Institutes that provide the communist regime with avenues to infuse pro-China propaganda into American academia. Eighty-nine Confucius Institutes were operating in the U.S. as of September 2019, according to the National Association of Scholars.

Hollywood has self-censored for years in order to ensure access to the Chinese market. The U.S. government published a report in 2015 detailing how filmmakers tailor their messaging to appease Chinese audiences and—more importantly—Chinese government censors.

“U.S. filmmakers self-censor scenes, dialogue, images, and themes they fear will jeopardize their film’s chance of receiving Chinese approval for import,” stated the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission’s report, titled, “Directed by Hollywood, Edited by China.” (Read more from “Elite American Institutions Keep Bowing to Communist China… over and over Again” HERE)

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American Renewal: NBA’s Surrender to China Shows Money Still Talks Louder Than ‘Social Justice’

By The Daily Caller. Over the weekend, Houston Rockets General Manager Daryl Morey sent out what would seem to the average person to be a pretty innocuous tweet: “Fight For Freedom. Stand With Hong Kong.”

Morey was voicing support for the ongoing pro-democracy protests taking place in the city. He certainly wasn’t expressing an uncommon opinion — American politicians on both sides of the aisle have also praised the historic protests. But China didn’t like Morey’s tweet. Presumably acting upon the demands of the Chinese government, Chinese businesses began pulling their NBA sponsorships, and Chinese broadcasters and streaming platforms threatened to stop airing NBA games altogether.

The NBA acted quickly, issuing one statement in English apologizing to China for Morey’s “regrettable” statement and one statement “translated” into Mandarin, which articulated something entirely different, according to ABC News — that the NBA was “extremely disappointed” with Morey’s “inappropriate” tweet that “severely hurt the feelings of Chinese fans.” Two of Morey’s best players on the Houston Rockets, James Harden and Russell Westbrook, also came out and publicly apologized, insisting, “We love China.”

Morey, of course, deleted the tweet and did what is typically required of sinners against social justice here in the United States — he genuflected towards the powers that be, offered a humiliating apology, and all but begged for the preservation of his career. But in this case, Morey wasn’t sinning against social justice, he was sinning against the powerful Chinese government, a brutal authoritarian regime that imprisons, tortures, and murders political dissidents, religious minorities, and anyone who dares promote democracy. Troublingly, this dictatorial power now appears to extend even into the U.S., with Morey’s public admonishment likely to have a chilling effect on any future high-profile criticism of the Chinese regime. (Read more from “American Renewal: Nba’s Surrender to China Shows Money Still Talks Louder Than ‘Social Justice’” HERE)

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U.S. and China Agree to Start Potentially Massive Trade Deal (VIDEO)

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The White House announced Friday evening that the United States and China have agreed to the first step of a massive trade deal that is seemingly beneficial on both sides. The Wall Street Journal reports that the core part of this initial economic “truce” means that the U.S. will “shelve a planned increase in tariffs on goods imported from China, while Beijing said it would increase purchases of U.S. agricultural products.”

(Read more from “U.S. and China Agree to Start Potentially Massive Trade Deal” HERE)

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Hunter Biden Invested in a Chinese Tech Company That Was Recently Blacklisted for Human Rights Concerns

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A Chinese tech company recently blacklisted by the United States government over human rights concerns has business ties to Hunter Biden, son of Democratic presidential candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden.

On Monday, the U.S. Department of Commerce announced that 28 Chinese entities would be added to the list of firms that U.S. companies are barred from doing business with, as they “have been implicated in human rights violations and abuses in China’s campaign targeting Uighurs and other predominantly Muslim ethnic minorities.”

“The U.S. Government and Department of Commerce cannot and will not tolerate the brutal suppression of ethnic minorities within China,” said Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross.

One of the added entities is Megvii Technology, a company in which Hunter Biden owns a stake through his investment fund, Bohai Harvest RST (BHR). According to Fox Business, Biden has a 10 percent stake in the investment company.

A story in the Intercept from earlier this year explains the Biden-Mevii relationship in greater detail. In 2017, the report explains, BHR invested in one of Megvii’s divisions, Face++, which makes facial recognition software.

Human Rights Watch initially issued a report in May that said Face++ code was found in an app used by Chinese police to track people in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region. The organization later said that the code was “inoperable.” In April, the New York Times listed Megvii as one of multiple tech companies behind software used in China’s technological crackdown on Uighurs, but the company at the time said that it was focused on “commercial not political solutions.”

Megvii also says that the U.S. government’s blacklist decision was a wrong.

“Megvii strongly objects to the company’s designation on the U.S. Commerce Department’s Entity List, for which there are no grounds,” reads a company statement. “We are committed to making sure our technology has a positive impact on society and we are in compliance with all laws and regulations in jurisdictions where we operate.”

Megvii is a private company that is currently trying to go public, though Goldman Sachs said it is re-evaluating its involvement in the initial public offering (IPO) in light of the blacklisting. A September story at Wired points out that the IPO filing admits that police make use of its technology, but not in the context of Uighur surveillance. Instead, “It presents case studies that make its surveillance offerings sound more cuddly.”

Hunter Biden’s role at BHR and the fact that the announcement of the fund coincided with his 2013 trip to China aboard Air Force Two as part of a U.S. delegation are at the heart of President Donald Trump’s efforts to have both Bidens’ dealings in the country looked at by the Chinese government.

Trump suggested last week that “China should start an investigation in to the Bidens, because what happened in China was just about as bad as what happened with Ukraine.” A Chinese official responded this week that the country has “no intention of intervening in the domestic affairs of the United States.” (For more from the author of “Hunter Biden Invested in a Chinese Tech Company That Was Recently Blacklisted for Human Rights Concerns” please click HERE)

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