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China’s Population Problem

. . .According to Beijing’s official numbers, China’s work force has declined by 25 million workers — about the combined work forces of California and Ohio — since topping out in 2011. Everywhere in China’s industrial belt, help-wanted signs hang outside the factories.

After years of officially restricting couples to one child, the cabal that rules China — never forget that this is a one-party police state — relaxed that policy a few years ago. But Chinese people did not start having more children. They’re having fewer, for the same reasons many Western societies have seen declining birth rates: Would-be parents dread the expense of children, and women delay motherhood as they pursue professional goals rather than maternal ones. The Communist bosses want Chinese couples to have more children, but Chinese couples are not obliging.

Some Chinese officials blame the declining work force for the country’s declining economic growth. The Chinese economy is still growing, and growing quickly by many standards — its 6.6 percent growth last year is more than twice what President Trump dreams of, with his unfulfilled promise of sustained 3 percent growth — but, long-term, the Chinese forecast is normalcy, at least as far as economic growth is concerned.

For a regime that has based its legitimacy on dramatic economic growth, normalcy is a crisis. And a national crisis in China is a serious thing. The future is unknowable, but the wise man would not bet very much on Xi Jinping’s career coming to an end because of an election. A Chinese recession might very well end in a Chinese revolution.

Governments always operate in ignorance, and authoritarian governments suffer from this more than the governments of liberal societies. That is because in liberal societies, the spontaneous orders of markets, civil society, and open intellectual life help to organize and deploy useful knowledge in ways that centralized bureaucracies cannot. (Read more from “China’s Population Problem” HERE)

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Foreign Influence: Chinese Illegal Aliens Come to Our Border Without Any Vetting, yet They Are Released

The Democratic push for open borders and for other countries’ nationals to determine our destiny is the ultimate foreign influence over our government. The biggest threat is the large number of Chinese aliens coming in, thanks to the lack of a full border wall and more aggressive use of the military at the border. Now that Democrats appear to be so concerned about sovereignty and foreign influence with the Ukrainian government, perhaps they will pay attention to one of the forgotten problems of their open border policies.

“Chinese nationals are coming to our border in increasing numbers with absolutely no way to vet them and they are all allowed into our country as legitimate asylees,” said one veteran agent who patrols the Rio Grande Valley Sector in an interview with CR.

“This is the biggest national security, espionage, and cybersecurity threat to our nation that policymakers in Washington are completely ignoring,” said the agent who must remain anonymous because he is active duty and is not authorized to speak to the media.

I reached out to the agent after reading media releases nearly every day from CBP referencing Chinese illegal aliens at the border. Just Wednesday, CBP in the Laredo Sector reported on a group of illegal aliens caught who hailed from Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, and … China. One of these is not like the other. A news release from Tuesday references a stash house in Mission, Texas, with “nine subjects and determined them to be Chinese nationals.”

Based on data from weekly Texas border apprehension reports that CR has been given by an agent in the field, a total of 118 Chinese nationals have been apprehended just in Texas during the first two weeks of September.

This is a pace of over 3,000 Chinese nationals coming through the border just in Texas alone under very suspicious circumstances every year. Last year, according to CBP, 991 were caught at the entire southwest border, plus another 86 at the northern and maritime borders.

Why do I say suspicious?

“Every Chinese alien I’ve encountered has run from us rather than surrendering,” said the Texas border agent. “Then they claim asylum. But if they are trying to claim asylum, why are they running? Why are they overwhelmingly male if they are fleeing persecution? Also, after they fly into Brazil, they ditch their documents and come with nothing on them but cash. Lots of cash. They are also wearing fancy clothes like Gucci. They are coordinating their trafficking already overseas and some are paying the cartels along with other smuggling entities as much as $70,000. These are wealthy people.”

Hmmm … a Chinese government hell-bent on espionage and asymmetrical warfare against America, thousands of Chinese migrants who come with zero identification and know they can play the “communist card” on us and be placed into asylum proceedings or get in undetected … do you think the Chinese government would ever exploit that?

What is astounding is that we treat them as asylees despite the suspicious circumstances and the lack of vetting.

“We share nothing with China, so they can just make up a name and we have no way of checking into them,” said the agent who also worked in evidence collection at the station for several years. “We literally have no idea who they are before we release them. They just give us a random name a birthdate and we have no way of verifying it. None of those from China are in the system and they certainly don’t share criminal histories with us. All of them are released into the asylum system.”

Thus, when the director of National Intelligence warned in its latest Worldwide Threat Assessment, “China’s intelligence services will exploit the openness of American society, especially academia and the scientific community, using a variety of means,” this is a perfect example. They know we are gullible enough to treat those coming from China as “fleeing communism,” even though we have no idea of knowing if the government is sending them.

The scary thing is that not only is China our top cybersecurity threat, but much of the hacking now comes from within the United States. Now, we don’t have evidence it’s coming from those who cross the border because we also bizarrely bring in a tremendous amount of them through our visa system and on green cards. But those coming through the border have absolutely no vetting.

Shockingly, China is not listed as one of the 35 or so “Special Interest Alien” countries, whose border crossers require more vetting. For example, if an Iranian national is caught at the border, they are automatically interrogated by the FBI. That is not the case for Chinese nationals. Often, agents will be forced to rely on a private translating service to even interview Chinese nationals because few agents are fluent enough in Mandarin.

As it is, we hand out roughly 70,000 to 85,000 green cards to Chinese national every year, more than to nationals of any country other than Mexico. In addition, we have, by far, more foreign students from China than from any country. In fact, 363,341 Chinese nationals were here on student visas for the 2017/2018 academic year, roughly one third of the growing total of over 1 million foreign students every year.

Chinese immigrants have been very productive for the most part, but how in the world could we possibly vet these people and be sure that the Chinese have not either initially sent any of them as operatives or is manipulating those they know are here studying technical fields with bribes and threats to their relatives back home. Any wonder why China is stealing our R&D left and right?

In January, one Chinese student was indicted for being an “illegal agent” at the direction of a “high-level intelligence officer.” As CNN reported at the time, “The sheer size of the Chinese student population at U.S. universities presents a major challenge for law enforcement and intelligence agencies tasked with striking the necessary balance between protecting America’s open academic environment and mitigating the risk to national security.”

Now consider how bad it has to be for them to send people to our border given how generously we hand out visas. The fact that wealthy, young Chinese nationals can easily get a student visa but come through our border and then run from agents should scare us all.

And we haven’t even discussed the birth tourism scam of Chinese nationals giving birth to babies here while on tourist visas and grabbing citizenship for their kids thanks to liberals insisting that our Constitution somehow mandates this national suicide. Of course, the Russians are just as bad about scamming out this liberal loophole. Talk about Russian influence in our elections; their kids who wrongly steal American citizenship can then get to vote 18 years later!

In his resignation letter, former Secretary of Defense James Mattis noted that Russia and China are our biggest strategic threats and that we must “be resolute and unambiguous in our approach to those countries” and “use all the tools of American power to provide for the common defense.”

That should include closing all the insane immigration loopholes as well as deploying our military in a meaningful way at our border. We are essentially as a state of cold war with China and immigration is a very dangerous pipeline through which they can direct asymmetrical attacks on us. Never in our history did we continue mass migration – both through visas and at the border – from countries that were at war with us.

Indeed, if we are going to discuss impeachment on grounds of foreigners influencing our politics, then every open border member of Congress should be impeached. (For more from the author of “Foreign Influence: Chinese Illegal Aliens Come to Our Border Without Any Vetting, yet They Are Released” please click HERE)

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Former Intel Officer Caught Boarding Plane to China With Secret Military Docs

A former Defense Intelligence Agency officer was sentenced to 10 years in prison after being caught boarding a plane to China while carrying secret national defense documents.

Ron Rockwell Hansen, 60, was convicted after pleading guilty to trying to communicate, deliver, or transmit U.S. secret government information to China, according to a Tuesday press release from the Justice Department.

Hansen, a retired Army Warrant Officer, was initially arrested June 2, 2018, as he was attempting to board a plane to China “while in possession of SECRET military information,” the press release stated.

“Ron Rockwell Hansen received hundreds of thousands of dollars for betraying his country and former colleagues,” John C. Demers, assistant attorney general of National Security, said in the release. “These cases show the breadth of the Chinese government’s espionage efforts and the threat they pose to our national security.”

Federal prosecutors said Hansen might have been trying to “disappear” when he was caught leaving for China, Utah-based newspaper the Standard-Examiner reported in 2018, citing court documents. (Read more from “Former Intel Officer Caught Boarding Plane to China With Secret Military Docs” HERE)

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China’s Chilling ‘Concentration Camp’ Footage; China Has Already Lost the Trade War (VIDEO)

By Frank Chung. Australia’s Foreign Affairs Minister has described chilling drone footage published online appearing to show hundreds of blindfolded and shackled men in China as “deeply disturbing”.

The footage appeares to show Uighur Muslim men at a train station being transferred, presumably to detention camps, by Chinese police.

Human rights groups accused China’s ruling Communist Party of holding up to one million mainly Uighur people in “concentration camps” in the northwest Xinjiang region. China vehemently denies the allegations.

The footage, which could not be independently verified, was published to YouTube last week by a newly created account calling itself War on Fear. Clips were also posted to Twitter by the handle @warcombatfear.

“Our aim is to fight fear,” the video description said.

(Read more from “China’s Chilling ‘Concentration Camp’ Footage” HERE)

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Helen Raleigh: China Has Already Lost the Trade War. Here’s Why

By Fox News. China already lost in the trade war with the U.S. Although you will never hear Chinese authorities, especially President Xi Jinping, admit it as such, the evidence is everywhere and only becoming more compelling by the day.

Reuters recently reported that based on the Chinese government’s own data, China’s economic slowdown has worsened in August, with “growth in industrial production is at its weakest in 17-1/2 years amid spreading pain from a trade war with the United States and softening domestic demand. Retail sales and investment gauges worsened too.” Despite such poor readings, Premier Li Keqiang insists that China is still on track to achieve 6 to 6.5 per cent growth rate this year.

Given the Chinese government’s tendency to present a rosier economic picture to satisfy political goals, most China watchers believe that Li’s statement was an about-face, and that the actual economic situation is much worse.

Researchers at the Brookings Institute estimated that China had inflated its GDP growth rate by close to 2 percent every year between 2008-2016. So in reality, China hasn’t seen a 6 percent growth rate for nearly a decade (someone should send a copy of this to Premier Li). Moreover, the actual size of the Chinese economy was an estimated $10.9 trillion, 18 percent lower than the officially stated $13.4 trillion, as of 2018.

President Donald Trump’s trade tariffs struck the Chinese economy when it was already declining and the effects have been devastating. The tariffs have not only reduced imports from China , but also caused foreign companies to shift their supply chain out of China. Beijing had hoped that its stimulus measures, including tax cuts and easy credits to local governments and big businesses, would reduce or even eliminate anticipated negative impacts on the Chinese economy. However, the latest data are a wakeup call that those stimulus measures were not sufficient enough to absorb the blow from the trade war. (Read more from “Helen Raleigh: China Has Already Lost the Trade War. Here’s Why” HERE)

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China Detains Former U.S. Air Force Pilot Working for FedEx Amid Trade War Tensions

China detained and released former U.S. Air Force colonel and FedEx pilot in Guangzhou in September while he was waiting for a flight to his home in Hong Kong, according to his family’s lawyer in Florida

Todd A. Hohn was returning to Hong Kong after piloting FedEx delivery planes throughout Asia from a FedEx hub in the Guangzhou airport when he was arrested by Chinese authorities, The Wall Street Journal reported.

“Chinese authorities in Guangzhou detained and later released one of our pilots on bail after an item was found in his luggage prior to a commercial flight,” FedEx said in a statement to The Wall Street Journal. “We are working with the appropriate authorities to gain a better understanding of the facts.”

Hohn reportedly had “nonmetallic pellets used in low-power replica air guns” in his bag when he was detained. Chinese officials said he was transporting ammunition, and he is now facing a criminal investigation, those familiar with the issue told WSJ. . .

Hohn’s detention comes amid tight U.S.-China trade-war tensions and as FedEx faces two other investigations by the Chinese government after the country received “complaints from users” and added that foreign operators ought to protect the “legitimate interests” of Chinese companies, according to a June 2 South China Morning Post (SCMP) report citing China’s top postal regulator. (Read more from “China Detains Former U.S. Air Force Pilot Working for FedEx Amid Trade War Tensions” HERE)

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Surprise: India and Russia Challenging China in South China Sea

India is challenging Chinese influence in the South China Sea with its outreach to regional powers, including Russia, with which it has agreed to launch a maritime route that would partly go through the hotly contested waters, analysts said.

Under the memorandum of understanding signed by India and Russia – two traditional security allies – during a regional economic forum this week, a new Indo-Pacific sea route will extend from the port city of Vladivostok, in Russia’s Far East, to Chennai, on the Bay of Bengal in eastern India.

The shipping route will partly traverse the South China Sea, the scene of numerous territorial disputes involving China and neighbouring countries over the years.

In addition to cooperating on the planned maritime route, India and Russia could ramp up their alliance in the military and technological spheres, according to a joint statement released at the economic forum in Vladivostok. . .

“This could signal that India’s cooperation with Russia is now coming to a substantial phase,” Hu Zhiyong, a research fellow at the Institute of International Relations of the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, said in an interview. (Read more from “Surprise: India and Russia Challenging China in South China Sea” HERE)

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John Bolton Accuses China of Stealing F-35 Technology to Make a Stealth Fighter. Is This What He Was Talking About?

US National Security Adviser John Bolton recently accused China of stealing US technology to make a stealth fighter, a charge Beijing has denied.

On a visit to Ukraine last week, Bolton said an unnamed fifth-generation aircraft “looks a lot like the F-35, that’s because it is the F-35. They just stole it”. . .

The FC-31 is made by the Shenyang Aircraft Design and Research Institute, a branch of the state-owned Aviation Industry Corporation of China.

The aircraft, which made its maiden flight in 2012, has broadly similar specifications to the F-35 although it does have twin engines rather than the American jet’s single engine.

The Chinese fighter has a maximum take off weight of 25 tonnes, a combat range of 1,200km (746 miles) and a top speed of Mach 1.8, or 2,205km/h (1,370mph), whereas the US fighter’s take-off weight varies between 27 and 32 tonnes, has a top speed of Mach 1.6 and a range of up to 2,200km (1,367 miles). (Read more from “John Bolton Accuses China of Stealing F-35 Technology to Make a Stealth Fighter. Is This What He Was Talking About?” HERE)

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LISTEN: Tech Entrepreneur Explains How Wall Street Sells U.S. Out to China

Foreign states — including China, Russia, and Saudi Arabia — procure intellectual property (IP) developed in America via venture capital (VC) operations, explained entrepreneur Jim Phillips, CEO of NANOMECH and founder of QuSHELL, in a Friday interview on SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Tonight with hosts Rebecca Mansour and special guest host Rick Manning.

Manning introduced Philips as a personal friend, listing some of his professional history, saying, “[Jim Phillips] was involved in an executive or founding role in places like Motorola Skytel, a whole variety of different companies that were at the cutting edge of technology at the time. He’s credited with being instrumental in launching things like instant messaging, cable modems, PCS fixed cellular, [and] machine-to-machine-to-machine communications.”

. . .

Phillips added, “More is going to be invented in the next five years than in the history of mankind, and that’s going to compound. That’s just going to continue to happen. So, while it’s a great time to be alive, we’re also — as a country — incredibly vulnerable right now. We’re at war like we’ve never been. It’s just not bombs. People don’t see it. We have a thing called cyberwarfare with a country called China and other countries that’s just phenomenal.”

“We have competitors [and] adversaries like China and Russia,” continued Phillips, “and they are dying to get into the lead. China has said they want to take over America. Right now, they’re growing three times faster than we are. Before long, their GDP will be greater than ours, and people can’t even fathom what that means [for the future]. To that extent, we have to protect our intellectual property. People don’t realize … 60 to 65 percent of the GDP valuation is based on intellectual property. We’re having it stolen, just non-stop. You hear about it in the news, but you don’t hear a lot about how to prevent it.”

“In one of my companies, for instance, I walk in, [the] FBI’s all over, and they say, ‘You’re the second most-hit firewall in the United States by China,’” recalled Phillips. “I didn’t even know it, and they said, ‘By the way, we’re going to have problems even protecting you. You’re going to have to go into logbooks to protect your science and your technology.” (Read more from “Tech Entrepreneur Explains How Wall Street Sells U.S. out to China” HERE)

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Things Are Worse Than We Imagined in China

Earlier this week, I met with some Christian friends who have lived and worked in China for many years. What they shared with me was chilling and sobering. (They are well-connected and not simply airing personal opinions.) . . .

Arrests, brutal interrogations, imprisonments, disruption of meetings, beatings, destroying of “unauthorized” Bibles and Christian books are increasingly common. In one instance that was shared with me, those owning non-approved Bibles and other resources were hit with “stiff fines and the books earmarked for destruction. But not before they (the materials) were first dumped in piles on the street before they were carted off…followed by the pastor who was then sent to prison.” . . .

Second, President Xi really does have megalomaniacal plans. By removing presidential term limits, he is setting himself up to be emperor for life (as my friends couched it).

Not only so, but I was told that the government, from top to bottom, seems to be in lock step with him (in particular, when it comes to persecuting Christians). . .

Third, while the Chinese people may have enjoyed having more liberties, they are more concerned with a healthy economy. And since more and more Chinese have more and more money, they don’t mind the crackdowns on their liberties, which include greater monitoring of their day-to-day lives. (Read more from “Things Are Worse Than We Imagined in China” HERE)

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Trump Tariffs Tank Asian Equities, Chinese Yuan. China Ready to Negotiate.

By Daily Wire. President Donald Trump’s latest trade war escalation against China appears to have had an immediate effect on Asian markets and the Chinese Yuan, sending both tumbling early on Monday morning.

“China’s yuan currency fell to 7.1487 to the dollar, its weakest level since early 2008 at the height of the global financial crisis,” AFP reported. “On equity markets, Hong Kong led losses, slumping more than three percent, with investors also spooked by fresh violent protests in the city that saw police use water cannon for the first time. Shanghai lost 1.3 percent and Tokyo ended the morning more than two percent off.”

Chinese Vice Premier Liu He indicated early on Monday that the communist nation was willing to negotiate with the U.S. to prevent the trade war from escalating. (Read more from “Trump Tariffs Tank Asian Equities, Chinese Yuan. China Ready to Negotiate.” HERE)

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China Willing to Resolve Trade Dispute With U.S. via Dialogue: Newspaper

By Reuters. Chinese Vice Premier Liu He said on Monday that China is willing to resolve its trade dispute with the United States through calm negotiations and resolutely opposes the escalation of the conflict, a state-backed newspaper reported.

Liu, China’s top trade negotiator, was speaking at a tech conference in Chongqing in southwest China, the Chongqing Morning Post reported. (Read more from “China Willing to Resolve Trade Dispute With U.S. via Dialogue: Newspaper” HERE)

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