Melissa Chen on X - "@BasilTheGreat Starmer is part of the 48 Group Club, as was Cameron and Blair. Look it up. It’s not *just* a trading group. It grooms British elites in government and business and turns them into vectors of Chinese influence. No other British group enjoys more intimacy and trust with the CCP leadership"
Melissa Chen on X - "🚨UK government approves construction of the Mega Chinese embassy in London just before Starmer’s trip to Beijing to meet Xi
> This comes a day after Starmer lectures the US about how allies should behave
> There are secret chambers and tunnels - the whole thing is shady and everyone knows it
> This is not paranoia: in July 2020, the US government ordered the closure of China's consulate in Houston citing rampant espionage, theft of intellectual property, and subversive influence operations targeting American research, businesses, and politics
> it was the epicenter of Beijing's illegal spying network in the US, with activities escalating over years despite warnings
> China retaliated by closing the US consulate in Chengdu over the Houston consulate
> just like how China blocked UK’s long-standing plans renovate its own embassy compound in Beijing until this mega embassy in London was approved
> it also shut off water to the embassy and warned the UK of “consequences” if the mega embassy in London wasn’t approved"
Dave on X - "Suddenly the Chagos betrayal, the collapse of the China spy trial, and the granting of the mega embassy make sense. The traitor Starmer is selling us out to China.🤨 We will be safer and richer with China’s help, claims Starmer. Prime Minister claims Britain is ‘back at the top table’ as Tory leader attacks visit."
WORLD NEWS on X - "🚨JUST IN: In a stunning reversal that has left global alliances in tatters, French President Emmanuel Macron has openly declared Europe should roll out the red carpet for massive Chinese investment. Macron: "We need more Chinese direct investment in Europe in some key sectors.""
Edward Dowd on X - "Nice Aviator shades…Maverick he is not. France clearly is broke. They are the third highest debt to GDP ratio behind Italy & Greece in Europe. Their demographics are bad and hence their liberal immigration policies. So China pivot not surprising. Once you understand debt and demographics all the insanity you see makes sense."
Meme - "When Trump 2.0 began to claw back funds from several international (and African projects), a common talking point at the time was that "China would step in and take over those roles", I thought the talking point was funny then, but it's even funnier now seeing this graph."
Vinka Adegoke @yinkaWrites: "China keeps pulling back on funding big African projects semafor.com/
Chinese loans to Africa, yearly
Source: Boston University Chinese Loans to Africa Database"
David Sun on X - "Like the US failing to implement democracy in the Middle East, China erroneously assumed it can import infrastructure to Africa & replicate the same results as in China. Trains derail due to metal parts being stolen for cash, gangs rob passengers, weak maintenance culture etc"
Faisal Saeed Al Mutar | Facebook - "There is a deep confusion in how many people talk about global politics. When the United States says it has interests in Middle Eastern or Venezuelan #oil, the reaction is immediate. Imperialism. Exploitation. Evil West. When China props up regimes to secure cheap oil, the reaction is silence. Sometimes even praise. Because somehow that is framed as the “Global South” helping itself. I am seeing the same logic recycled around #Iran. If the US has interests in Iran (and they do), that is called immoral. But China buying heavily discounted Iranian oil while ordinary Iranians suffer under inflation and repression is treated as somehow neutral. Western governments have to explain themselves. Elections, journalists, watchdogs, angry taxpayers. at least some accountability exists. #China does not. No voters. No free press. No scrutiny. I know this is anecdotal, but ask petroleum engineers there who they would rather work with, Western companies or Chinese ones. The answer is rarely unclear. Yet one is called colonialism and the other solidarity. Western interests are bad by definition. Everyone else gets a moral exemption. The people who pay the price are the people living under these regimes. This post is for those care about people more about reality than aesthetics."
Left wingers just hate the US and the West
China rejects German claim it targeted military plane with laser - "China has disputed Germany's claim that it targeted a military plane with a laser fired from a warship, as a diplomatic spat between the two countries deepens... China has been accused of using lasers to target military aircraft before, primarily by the US. China has denied doing so."
dan linnaeus on X - "Chinese entities snapped up farmland near 19 US military bases and recent small drone incursions over installations at Hill Air Force Base in Utah and Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio sparked concerns in Dec ‘24. Now an unnamed natsec official says they built secret drone bases inside the US. While unconfirmed, this is not as far fetched as some would think as we recently saw the Mossad disclose during the 12-day war that they set up clandestine drone bases inside Iran. “We saw what the Ukrainians were able to do with their drones after parking tractor trailers near Russian airbases. The same holds true for the U.S.. Unless an aircraft is having some sort of maintenance, it is on the flight line, not in a hanger,” writes @SeniorChiefEXW , a former FBI National Security Intelligence Supervisor."
Mike Solana on X - "look my opinion of the new york times was low but jesus christ"
"Europe and China are, in some ways, natural allies in an era when the United States has opted for nationalist brio. Both remain officially committed to the concept of rules-based international trade, even as China is frequently accused of breaching the details. Both affirm the scientific reality of climate change, while mobilizing investment and know-how to combat it."
Melissa Chen on X - "I wish it was *just* the New York Times. Most people are still clinging devoutly to the quasi-sacred myth of the "liberal world order." They don't seem to realize that it was a historically contingent arrangement that no longer served the nation that created it, and her allies. Yet, the liberal internationalist brainrot on display here claims that both "Europe and China remain officially committed to the concept of rules-based international trade." Really? Literally the reason it's broken is because China expertly weaponized and corrupted it. They did it by selling the illusion that globalization was "win-win" when the reality was exactly the opposite. If you think the path out of decline is the one you've been on, then keep digging in, Europe."
Europe, like China, loves to control the internet and crack down on political opponents, so.
cbcwatcher on X - ""The Israeli Ministry of Defense has officially suspended the supply of Chinese electric vehicles from BYD to IDF officers due to concerns over data collection via embedded communication systems and sensors. Ynetnews reported on this. The ban came after numerous warnings from cybersecurity experts, who emphasized that Chinese vehicles could be used as tools for espionage.""
The people who hate the US hate Israel too, so the fact that "Zionists" are raising the alarm just makes them double down
Reckoning with Reality: Correcting National Overconfidence in a Rising Power - "Do the public in a rising authoritarian power overestimate their country’s reputation, power, and influence in the world? Excessive national overconfidence has both domestic and international consequences, but it has rarely been systematically studied. Using two studies conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic and another conducted later, I show that the Chinese public widely and systematically overestimate China’s global reputation and soft power, even during a national crisis. Critically, informing Chinese citizens of actual international public opinion of China substantially corrects these perceptions. It also moderately alters their evaluations of China, its governing system, and their expectations for the country’s role in the world. These effects from simple information interventions are not fleeting, suggesting that overconfidence can be meaningfully corrected and triumphalism mitigated. The findings have both theoretical significance and important policy implications."
'Will China really become the world's leading economic power?' - "Will China really become the world's leading economic power? They point to the Japanese example that stagnated after its meteoric rise in the 1980s. For a long time, the consensus was that the curves would cross in the 2020s and 2030s. However, at the end of 2022, economists at Citibank estimated that the date would be in the mid-2030s. Those at the Japan Centre for Economic Research, for their part, believe that China will never pass this mark, as did economist Mohamed El-Erian, President of Queens' College, Cambridge (UK), in the Financial Times, in September 2023. London's Centre for Economics and Business Research calculated that China would indeed become the world's largest economy for 21 years, before the US reclaims the lead in 2057, itself to be overtaken by India around 2081. Pessimists point to China's difficulty in making the transition to a true consumer society, and the burden of an aging population that has already reached its peak... the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has made a pact with its population, reiterated by Xi Jinping at the beginning of his term: By 2049, the 100th anniversary of the People's Republic, he will have built a "great modern socialist country," a "strong" power. The prospect of the top of the podium is implicit."
From 2024
Ken Cao-The China Crash Chronicle on X - "China has a soft power deficiency. It feels like East Asian influence is everywhere right now, but not evenly distributed. South Korea and Japan are winning the global culture game. K-pop, anime, Squid Game, Parasite — culture that travels because people want it. That’s soft power. China, meanwhile, gets memed. Social credit jokes. Censorship jokes. And yes — Winnie the Pooh. Because soft power isn’t about money or market size. It’s about cultural attractiveness — a concept Joseph Nye laid out decades ago. And culture only works when it’s authentic. Korea and Japan export creativity bottom-up. China tries top-down. When every story, film, game, or artist has to pass a political filter, the result is propaganda, not culture. And propaganda doesn’t inspire fandom; it triggers skepticism. Ironically, China has incredible culture — history, art, aesthetics, creativity. But the system suffocates it before it can breathe. Soft power can’t be bought. It can’t be coerced. And it definitely can’t be censored into existence."
Aakash Gupta on X - "Xi just told the world he wants reserve currency status and nobody’s repricing what that actually requires. The yuan sits at 1.93% of global reserves. The dollar is at 57%. That gap has nothing to do with rhetoric or trade deals. It’s about something China has refused to do for 40 years. Reserve currencies require open capital accounts. Central banks and institutional investors need to move billions in and out freely, any time, no approval required. That’s the entire point of holding reserves: liquidity when you need it. China operates a closed capital account. Every cross-border transaction requires approval from SAFE. There’s a 2% daily band on currency movement. The PBOC intervenes constantly to prevent “market-induced volatility.” In 2015-16, when capital started flowing out, Beijing burned through $1 trillion in reserves and tightened controls to levels not seen since the Asian financial crisis. This is the trade-off Xi won’t discuss. Reserve currency status requires surrendering control over your own financial system. The dollar became dominant because anyone can buy or sell unlimited amounts, anytime, with no government approval, backed by rule of law that doesn’t change based on political priorities. China’s entire economic model is built on the opposite premise: state control over capital flows, managed exchange rates, and the ability to intervene whenever markets move in uncomfortable directions. Xi is essentially asking for the benefits of reserve currency status while maintaining the control mechanisms that make reserve currency status impossible. Goldman says the yuan is 25% undervalued. That undervaluation is the policy. A “strong currency” that appreciates freely would crush China’s export model and trigger exactly the kind of capital flows Beijing has spent decades preventing. The yuan can become more widely used in bilateral trade. It already has. But replacing the dollar in central bank reserves requires something Xi didn’t mention in his essay: trusting Beijing to never freeze your assets, never impose sudden capital controls, and never change the rules when it becomes politically convenient. The 2022 sanctions on Russia showed every central bank what happens when you hold reserves in a currency whose issuer can freeze them. China is betting that fear will drive diversification. But the alternative to trusting Washington has never been trusting Beijing. Central banks that don’t trust anyone still hold dollars, because at least they can move them."
Ken Cao-The China Crash Chronicle on X - "The Chinese yuan will never be the world’s reserve currency. Not next year. Not in 10 years. Not in your lifetime. Headlines love shouting “the dollar is dying,” “BRICS is coming,” or “digital yuan will replace the USD.” That’s noise. Money isn’t about GDP charts or trade volume. It’s about trust, freedom, and transparency, and China fails all three. In 2008, Wall Street was on fire, yet the world still rushed into U.S. dollars and Treasuries. Why? Trust built over decades: rule of law, open markets, deep liquidity. The yuan isn’t even fully convertible. Capital flows are controlled at the whim of the CCP. Want your money out? Xi might say no. Transparency? The U.S. argues in public and fixes problems. China deletes bad news. Evergrande collapsed long before most citizens knew. No central banker moves trillions into a system with fake data, state banks, and party-controlled courts. Even Chinese elites don’t trust the yuan. They rush money overseas. A global currency starts at home. And China’s doesn’t."
Ken Cao-The China Crash Chronicle on X - "Xi jinping should be the one most concerned if the post World War 2 order crumbles. Not Scott Bessent. For decades, the CCP believed the post-WWII order was an American scam: good for the U.S., bad for China. So Beijing demanded a “new international order” and quietly worked to weaken the old one. That belief was fatally wrong and China's biggest cognitive mistake. China was one of the greatest beneficiaries of the postwar system. WTO rules powered its export boom. After joining WTO, China’s exports surged from $266 billion in 2001 to over $3 trillion today. U.S.-backed global security gave China decades of peace to grow. Multilateral frameworks enabled its global expansion. Then came 2018. The U.S. itself began tearing down the order—trade wars, tariffs, exits from global institutions. Only then did Beijing realize the truth: the postwar order wasn’t America’s private club. It was a global public good—and China’s lifeline. Now Beijing says it wants to “defend” that order. Too late.When the system collapsed, China’s iron rice bowl shattered with it. The good times for China are over."
Kevin Kiley on X - "The illegal bio lab just raided in Las Vegas was operated by the same LLC and Chinese nationals as the one discovered in Reedley, CA. Here's what we know about the Reedley lab from a highly disturbing report I requested by the Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party. It was run by an international fugitive from China named Jiabei "Jesse" Zhu. After running various state-connected companies in China, he moved to Canada, where he set up dozens of corporations to "steal valuable American intellectual property and unlawfully transfer" it to China. The Supreme Court of British Columbia found he committed "fraud on an epic scale," resulting in a $330 million judgment. He then fled to America, assumed the alias David He, and set up several more companies, including the one behind the bio lab. He was indicted in 2023 and has been in custody ever since, but his partner and other associates have not been. The Reedley lab was discovered in December of 2022, when a code inspector came upon a suspicious warehouse. Inside, she found many Chinese nationals "wearing white lab coats, glasses, masks, and latex gloves," along with "thousands of vials of biological substances" and 1,000 mice. It was later learned these were "transgenic" mice "genetically engineered to catch and carry the COVID-19 virus." A further inspection found "blood, tissue and other bodily fluid samples and serums" along with thousands of vials of "suspected biological material." Some of the vials were labeled with the names of infectious agents, while others were labeled in a "code" that was never deciphered. At first, the CDC refused to investigate, and even hung-up on local officials who asked for help. After Rep. Costa got involved, the CDC did an inspection and found "at least 20 potentially infectious agents, including HIV, Tuberculosis, and the deadliest known form of Malaria." Yet the CDC did not bother to test any samples, even those with unknown contents, making it "impossible for the Select Committee to fully assess the potential risks that this specific facility posed to the community." The Select Committee report calls this "baffling." Later, local officials discovered a refrigerator in the lab labeled “Ebola.” While the supposed purpose of the lab was to sell test kits, in fact all the company did was buy counterfeit kits from China and re-sell them in the United States. Thus, there was a "lack of apparent legitimate (or even profit-motivated criminal) motive in the operation of the illegal facility." Meanwhile, Jesse Zhu, its operator, was "receiving unexplained payments via wire transfer" from Chinese banks. The report concluded that "no one knows whether there are other unknown biolabs because there is no monitoring system in place." Now we know that there was at least one other, but we still don't know how many more. That is why it is critical for Congress to pass my bipartisan legislation, authored with Rep. Costa and Rep. Valadao, to find these labs and shut them all down."
Tara Servatius on X - "INCREDIBLE: So, to recap: Biden's CDC refused to raid a US-based, deadly biolab run by a Chinese illegal alien. The CDC & FBI were finally embarrassed into doing the raid of the warehouse in 2023, by members of Congress, but the CDC destroyed the evidence. They then DIDN'T BOTHER to raid his home, the most obvious place to check next, the place he was keeping the rest of the bioweapons, it turns out. A place just 3 miles from a major air force base. The Trump FBI just did the home raid, & holy cow!"
China condemns Pokemon, Detective Conan for spreading ‘Japanese militarism’ - "China’s military news agency yesterday warned that Japanese militarism is infiltrating society through series such as Pokemon and Detective Conan, after recent controversies involving events at sensitive sites. In recent days, anime conventions throughout China have reportedly banned participants from dressing as characters from Pokemon or Detective Conan and prohibited sales of related products. China Military Online yesterday posted an article titled “Their schemes — beware the infiltration of Japanese militarism in culture and sports.” The article referenced recent controversies around the popular anime series Pokemon, Detective Conan and My Hero Academia, saying that “the evil influence of Japanese militarism lives on in sports and culture.” Last month, a Pokemon card game event that was scheduled at the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo for Jan. 31 was canceled after Chinese backlash... The article also condemned table tennis player Tomokazu Harimoto for praying at the Togo Shrine, which is dedicated to Togo Heihachiro, an admiral in the First Sino-Japanese War who China sees as a pioneer of Japanese militarist expansionism. It also referenced the Japanese boy band Rampage, whose choreography was previously criticized for resembling the Nazi salute."
Sam Cooper on X - "WASHINGTON/OTTAWA – A groundbreaking study has mapped 2,294 organizations with proven links to the Chinese Communist Party's "united front" influence apparatus across the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Germany—with Canada exhibiting nearly five times the per-capita penetration rate of the U.S. and the highest density of CCP-linked organizations among all four democracies."
Lee Humphrey on X - "When so called Chinese police stations were discovered in Canada & in the US during the Biden/Trudeau era, the FBI arrested countless Chinese-Americans & the DoJ prosecuted them. In Canada the RCMP arrested no one, refused to even comment on whether these police stations existed & no one was prosecuted. If the past is a predictor of the future, we know where this is going, which is no where!"
Desmond Shum on X - "China’s Prosperity: Built by Households, Claimed by the State
Let this sink in. The IMF puts China’s 2025 GDP per capita at $13,806 a year — roughly $1,150 a month. But using China International Capital Corp (CICC) income buckets below, only about ~2.5% of Chinese actually clear that level in monthly income — ~35 million out of ~1.4 billion. Most don’t live anywhere near the “average.” So when outsiders swoon over the skyline, the mega-bridges, the high-speed rail to end of map, and the factory machine that exports “cheap and good” to the world, keep the base reality in frame:
•~547 million live on < $145/month.
•~1.33 billion earn < $724/month.
Official stats show Chinese workers averaged 48.6 hours a week in 2025 — basically seven hours a day, every day of the week. That’s the point: China’s wealth was allocated by the state — into bureaucracy, infrastructure, capacity, and export power, not household income. This isn’t prosperity for Chinese people. It’s industrial power—financed by households, enforced by silence."
International Cyber Digest on X - "‼️🇮🇹 Italy's domestic intelligence and counterterrorism police have been breached by Chinese state-sponsored hackers. 5,000 agent names, roles, and locations were obtained directly from government servers. "The attacks were aimed at locating dissident Chinese citizens on Italian territory and identifying agents engaged in investigations into Chinese groups," said Italian police."
Michael Ron Bowling on X - "China hacked an Italian police data base. The Italians discovered the attack because the Chinese knew to much about their operations during meetings between the countries Something similar happened in the US when a Chinese Ambassador complained about an email the US hadn't even sent yet"
Ken Cao-The China Crash Chronicle on X - "1. China’s official population of 1.4 billion is grossly inflated; the real figure may be 900 million–1.1 billion. China’s population statistics are structurally inflated due to decades of political incentives, data manipulation, and demographic contradictions.
2. Demographic Math Problem: China reportedly grew from 1.1B (1990) to 1.4B (2020) (+300M). This occurred despite the one-child policy (1979–2015) and low fertility (~1.5 or lower). Basic demographic modeling using official fertility data would project ~890M by 2020, not 1.4B.
3. India Comparison: India had higher fertility (~3+ per woman) and grew logically from 860M in 1990 to 1.38B today. China’s similar growth despite much lower fertility is obviously inconsistent.
4. “400 Million Births Prevented”: CCP claims one-child policy prevented 400M births. Yet population still allegedly grew by 300M, creating statistical contradiction.
5. Systemic Data Inflation: Local officials inflated population figures to secure fiscal transfers. Double counting migrants (rural + urban) likely occurred. Deaths sometimes underreported to retain pension benefits.
6. Birth Data Manipulation: 2016 two-child policy reportedly produced 18.8M births. Hospital/vaccination data suggests ~13M actual births. Annual inflation of birth numbers compounds over decades.
7. Physical Evidence – “Ghost” Phenomena: ~65M empty apartments nationwide. Up to 1.7M empty villages. Underpopulated third-tier cities and rural collapse.
8. Satellite & Nightlight Indicators: Nighttime light intensity allegedly inconsistent with reported population density.
9. COVID Impact: pandemic mortality further exposed demographic weakness.
Strategic Implication: overstated population undermines China’s economic potential, labor force, consumption base, and geopolitical leverage."
