Chinese communist part

Could the Chinese gaming clampdown backfire?

When the Soviet Union still existed, visitors to Eastern Europe would smuggle illegal books and magazines to visitors. As the Chinese government announces that young people are to be banned from playing video games for more than three hours a week, it is tempting to imagine people sneaking copies of Call of Duty and Grand Theft Auto into the PRC — perhaps inside DVD cases of lavish propaganda films such as The Founding of a Republic. OK, I’m aging myself here. I know most gamers now play online. I also know the Chinese are big fans. More than half the population enjoy gaming and China has the world’s most substantial market for games.

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Has Xi Jinping overplayed his hand?

The Chinese Communist party’s origin story, like so many of its official lines, appears to be an apocryphal tale. But a month-long patriotic extravaganza leading up to its centennial celebration has featured military parades, skyscrapers emblazoned with hammer-and-sickle decor and propaganda blitzes on TV. None of the agitprop raised eyebrows as much as the main speech delivered by the Chinese president and general secretary of the party, Xi Jinping, in which he marked the milestone and praised China’s ‘tremendous transformation’ and the historical inevitability of its ‘national rejuvenation’.

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Is communism authoritarian capitalism?

On July 1, 1921, the founding congress of the Chinese Communist party was held in Shanghai, when 12 men gathered in a villa in the richest part of the city. Today, the party has over 90 million members. It has transformed not only China but the history of the entire world. The main stages in its development are well-known. In late 1920, Mao Zedong took over and reoriented the party from city workers to poor farmers. In the mid-1930s, the Long March, although a retreat, established a link between the party and the people across China. In 1949, revolution won. From 1958 till 1975, the Great Leap forward and the Cultural Revolution tried to enforce fast economic and social change.

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Will the American media stand up for Hong Kong before it’s too late?

On October 1 of last year, the New York Times printed an op-ed from Regina Ip, executive council and legislative council of Hong Kong, headlined ‘Hong Kong is China, Like it or Not’.  Ip advocated on behalf of China’s new ‘security’ law in Hong Kong. This law employed harsh police and military tactics to crack down on pro-democracy protests and resulted in the arrest of Apple Daily editor Jimmy Lai. This week, Apple Daily itself was shut down and several of the newspaper’s journalists were also arrested. But recent developments in Hong Kong did not happen overnight and did not happen behind closed doors. They happened in full view of the world.

‘Insisting’ and ‘demanding’ will get us nowhere with China

How can America hold China to account? Its ruling party has committed human rights abuses and bears responsibility for the pandemic that has killed an estimated three million people and crashed economies worldwide. The Biden administration is making feckless requests of the CCP — and not demanded much more. As questions mount about the origins of the COVID-19 virus and the growing possibility that it escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and may even be an engineered virus created through gain-of-function research, (research in-part outsourced and paid for by American taxpayers), begging China to cooperate with the US, its allies and the World Health Organization isn’t going to cut it.

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Chip Roy seeks to ban China from purchasing US land

Texas congressman Chip Roy is introducing legislation Friday to ban members of the Chinese Communist party from purchasing American land, The Spectator has learned. The bill, ‘called the 'Securing America’s Land from Foreign Interference Act’', aims to curb foreign influence gained through major land purchases throughout the United States, which Roy identifies as a major national security threat. A Chinese-based energy company recently purchased a 130,000-acre wind farm in Texas right next to a US Air Force base. Smithfield, one of the nation's largest meat producers, is owned by a Chinese firm and yet controls nearly 150,000 acres of US land.

Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

Ron DeSantis targets ‘nefarious’ China

Florida governor Ron DeSantis signed two more pieces of major legislation on Monday, this time targeting Chinese Communist party influence in the United States. HB 1523 criminalizes 'trafficking in trade secrets', while HB 7017 aims to prevent foreign influence in America's higher education system. The latter implements strict vetting of foreign researchers to avoid espionage and requires state agencies to disclose certain donations from 'countries of concern', which consist of China, Cuba, Russia, North Korea, Iran, Syria, and Venezuela. 'There is no single entity that exercises a more pervasive, nefarious influence across a wide range of American industries and institutions than the Communist party of China,' DeSantis said during a signing event in Miami, Florida.

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John Cena’s car-crash Taiwan apology

In an unforgivably cringeworthy mea culpa delivered in surprisingly fluent Mandarin, John Cena has apologized to his fans in China. He had said in a promotional interview with a Taiwanese media outlet that Taiwan would be 'the first country that can watch' his new Fast & Furious movie, F9. Uh oh. To the Chinese Communist party and a billion Chinese citizens, the slightest hint of Taiwan’s sovereignty is considered blasphemy in the highest order. 'I made a mistake,' the former WWE champion said in a groveling video posted to the Chinese social media platform, Weibo. 'Now I have to say one thing which is very, very, very important: I love and respect China and Chinese people.' He continued: 'I’m very sorry for my mistakes. Sorry. Sorry. I’m really sorry.

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Fauci must answer for his role in Wuhan’s COVID lab

We still don’t know the origins of COVID-19, a full year and a half out from the start of the pandemic. The Chinese government initially claimed that the virus was spread through a wet market in the Wuhan province or that it perhaps came to China from parts of Europe in frozen food trucks. Almost immediately, any inquiries into how the outbreak started beyond the CCP’s original story were brushed aside and dubbed conspiracy theories by the US’s corporate media. Quite why is a question that should trouble any independent-minded person. When Sen.

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The American media: the CCP’s useful idiots

There was a shooting spree at several massage parlors outside of Atlanta last week. The killer confessed in custody that his motivation was a combination of religious guilt and sex addiction. But the American media used the occasion to push a race-based explanation for the killings — an explanation that no investigators, including the FBI, have been able to prove thus far. By any and all factual indications, this was not a crime based on the victims’ race, but their occupation. American reporters ignore all that. Instead they sensationalize for a social-media audience of woke identitarians — and now the Chinese Communist party is getting in on the act. The CCP is employing the same talking points via their state media outlets as we see in our ‘free’ ones.

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Joe Biden’s dire opening chapter on the world stage

Thoughtful observers of life often comment on the richness of the English language, its huge polyglot vocabulary, its precision, it sinewy expressiveness. It is doubtless politically incorrect to say so, but English has also shown itself to be a conspicuous ally of political liberty. I have commented on this in the past, noting that 'there seems to be some deep connection between the English language and that most uncommon virtue, common sense'. Speakers of English can be plenty extravagant, it may go without saying, but there is something about English — exactly why, I do not know — that acts to tether thought to the empirical world.

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A diplomatic disaster in Alaska

It goes without saying that when conducting high-level diplomacy, you don’t insult the other party at a joint press conference before the negotiations begin. And if you choose to do something so foolish, you must be ready when the other party retaliates in its response. It is incredible that secretary of state Antony Blinken and national security adviser Jake Sullivan did not understand this when they began talks with their Chinese counterparts in Alaska yesterday. At what was supposed to be perfunctory two-minute statements by the US and Chinese delegations to the press before the talks began, Blinken and Sullivan criticized Chinese activities against the Uighurs, in Hong Kong and Taiwan, as well as for cyber attacks on the US and economic coercion of US allies.

The Beijing Winter Olympics boycott is doomed

In 2022, the Winter Games will descend on Beijing, China’s polluted capital, giving everyone that weren’t we just here? feeling. The world can once more expect to be equally horrified and dazzled by the sheer level of control China exerts over its population. Only one force on the planet stirred a sort of trembling adoration in China, but he’s sadly no longer president. Now, western liberalism is pathetically left trying to nag China into submission, with China mostly not even noticing. A soon-to-be failed, Republican-led attempt to boycott the Beijing Winter Games is under way that has the party split along seemingly surprising lines. It's the NeverTrump wing calling for a boycott, or, rather, those Republicans who the Trump base offers a chilly reception.

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How China targets Uighur expats in the US

It has been more than two years since Ziba Murat has heard the voice of her ailing mother, Gulshan Abbas, a retired physician who was abruptly ‘disappeared’ in September 2018 in Xinjiang province, China. While exact facts and figures are hard to come by, it is widely reported that at least three million Uighurs in China have been forced into concentration camps, which Beijing calls ‘reeducation’ facilities for stamping out ‘Islamic extremism’. The scale of the ongoing atrocities is bone-chilling: from forced sterilizations and sexual violence to beatings and indoctrination. The Chinese government’s assault extends to Uighurs abroad.

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The useful idiots of TikTok

Tyrants have always had useful idiots to whitewash their crimes but few have proven as useful and idiotic as those who support China in their oppression of the Uighurs. The northwestern region of Xinjiang is where China’s Muslim minority is persecuted, and according to Human Rights Watch, this means mass arbitrary detention, torture, forced political indoctrination and surveillance using the collection of biometric data. Religious freedoms are severely curtailed under the guise of counter-terrorism measures, the charity says, with restrictions on facial hair, clothing, religious education and online speech. A bleak investigation this week by the BBC found evidence that China is forcing hundreds of thousands of Uighurs to pick cotton for the fashion industry.

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The Democrats don’t care what you think about their scandals

I’ve watched with a mixture of amusement and surprise over the last few days as my right-wing friends have descended into indignation and finger-wagging on Twitter. Their disapproval is aimed at the mainstream media, Democrats, Big Tech and their henchmen over the Eric Swalwell and Hunter Biden developments. The amusement came from watching people post old tweets from hacks like Ben Rhodes or CNN anchor Christine Amanpour, expecting them to atone for being wrong. The surprise came from the same activity — surprise that my friends just don’t get it. They don’t give a damn. They won.

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Hunter becomes the hunted

Are the chickens coming home for Hunter Biden? It certainly seems so, though experts differ on the critical question of whether they are coming home to roost or roast. Wednesday’s news, splashed via an official communiqué from his father’s transition operation, that Hunter is being investigated by the US Attorney’s Office for possible tax fraud makes me want to bet for ‘roast’ not ‘roost’. Here’s Hunter’s statement from Wednesday, in full: ‘I learned yesterday for the first time that the US Attorney’s Office in Delaware advised my legal counsel, also yesterday, that they are investigating my tax affairs.

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Pompeo to governors: China is watching you

This is an edited transcript of Mike Pompeo's speech to state governors at the National Governors Association 2020 Winter Meeting: Thank you Gov. Hogan, Gov. Cuomo, and all of you for being here today. It is hard to follow the President's State of the Union the other day. I am not passing out copies of my speech, so you cannot tear them up at the end. I have got to know some of you as I traveled throughout the states. I have probably traveled more throughout the country than other secretaries of state. I think it is important that the American people know what our diplomats are doing around the world and why we are doing it. Last year I received an invitation to an event that promised to be 'an occasion for exclusive dealmaking’.

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The high cost of Beijing’s demands for uniformity

Last month, the Vatican and the Chinese Communist party announced the renewal of a two-year agreement on the appointment of bishops in China. Under the deal in 2018, the Catholic Church lifted the excommunication of bishops hand-picked by the atheist CCP and formally recognized them. Besides interfering in such appointments, Beijing subjects Chinese Catholic congregations to state regulation and the reeducation of what it considers insubordinate priests. These methods are evidence of the party’s efforts to cull Catholicism of the traditions, doctrines, and practices that have defined the faith for millennia.  Anyone who prizes religious freedom worldwide should be disturbed. Why is Beijing so hostile toward those looking to practice their faith according to their conscience?

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Rejoining the WHO will be Joe Biden’s first mistake as president

In emails obtained by the Associated Press, the World Health Organization reveals it has recorded 65 cases of coronavirus among staff at its headquarters in Geneva. The WHO had previously and publicly denied any such outbreaks, just two weeks ago. This follows a pattern. The WHO has been been duping the public quite consistently in the past nine months. It has covered up for China on the sources of COVID-19. It has worked with China to limit public information as to when the virus spread to Europe. It has repeated China’s talking points, even rehashing the CCP’s disastrous claim back in February that the novel coronavirus could not be transmitted by humans.

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