ExclusiveTrump Renews Push to 'Open Up' China Amid Trade Talks in London

Welcome to China In Focus, I'm Tiffany Meyer. Our top story. U.S.-China trade talks are heating up again in London. President Trump is renewing his push to open up China, but adds that dealing with Beijing is, in his words, not easy. And if we don't open up China, maybe we won't do anything. As Chinese officials remain largely silent on the trade talks, Huawei's founder is offering rare public remarks on the U.S. chip bans. A major deportation sweep. Over 120 Chinese nationals flown out of the U.S. in one of the largest removals in years. It's part of Homeland Security's nationwide crackdown on illegal immigration. A Chinese researcher is arrested at Detroit airport, accused of smuggling sensitive biological materials from Wuhan. The case raises fresh concerns over U.S. national security. And COVID-19 cases in China have more than doubled in just one month, but residents say the situation on the ground is even worse. Day two of high-stakes U.S.-China talks, with both sides eyeing their next moves amid rising tensions and a renewed push from President Trump. We want to open up China, and if we don't open up China, maybe we won't do anything, but we want to open up China. It'll be a great thing for China, a great thing for the rest of the world. U.S.-China trade talks continued into a second day Tuesday in London, following six hours of negotiations between top officials on Monday. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick called the talks going well, while Treasury Secretary Scott Besson described them as a good meeting. But on the other side, Chinese officials have mostly stayed quiet about the talks so far. Tuesday's discussions focus on easing restrictions around rare earth minerals and advanced technologies. After a temporary trade truce last month in Geneva, both Washington and Beijing appear to be doubling down on export restrictions for leverage. China is tightening its grip on rare earth, while the U.S. is eyeing ethane as a bargaining chip. Ethane is a key ingredient for making plastics and is heavily imported by China. At the same time, the White House is ramping up limits on cutting-edge tech. Last month, the Commerce Department issued a global ban on certain AI chips, especially those made by Huawei, the Chinese telecom giant with ties to China's military. Meanwhile, Huawei's founder Ren Zhengfei spoke to Chinese state media on Tuesday. He said the U.S. is exaggerating his company's capabilities. Speaking about the banned AI chips, Ren said they are, quote, Some analysts say Ren's remarks signal growing pressure on Beijing. They point to both domestic economic challenges and U.S. strategies targeting China. The high-stakes talks are expected to continue through at least Wednesday. More than 120 illegal Chinese nationals were deported from the U.S. last week, one of the largest removals to China in recent years. The move is part of the Department of Homeland Security's ongoing push to enforce immigration laws. Here's more. I said yesterday that the deportees were between ages of 19 and 68. They were placed on a special high-risk charter flight after receiving final removal orders from the detention facilities. The agency says many of those deported were convicted of serious crimes, including murder, lewd acts with a minor, human trafficking, rape and drug trafficking. ICE says the operation both enhanced public safety and strengthened national security. The recent arrests included 96 males and 26 females, all with final removal orders coming from ICE detention centers nationwide. Back in January, ICE carried out its fifth large-scale deportation flight to China. They sent back Chinese nationals who were ordered to leave and no longer had legal grounds to stay in the U.S. A Chinese researcher from Wuhan is facing federal charges after allegedly trying to smuggle biological materials into the U.S. Chen Xuanhan was arrested Sunday upon arrival at the Detroit airport. Han is a researcher from Wuhan, the Chinese city where COVID-19 was first detected, before becoming a global pandemic. During the investigation, U.S. border officials found that Han had sent four packages from China to the University of Michigan in 2024 and 2025, and first claimed the packages contained plastic cups, but later admitted they contained biological materials related to roundworms. She now faces federal charges for smuggling and making false statements. Following the arrest, an FBI official in charge of the Detroit field office on Monday called Han's case a serious threat to public safety and national security. The agent also said it undermines the integrity of America's research institutions. Han is the third Chinese student recently charged with smuggling illegal biological materials into the U.S. Last week, two others were arrested for bringing in dangerous crop-killing fungus samples. One of them was a lab researcher at the University of Michigan. Both individuals received funding from the Chinese regime. They were accused of posing a threat to the U.S. food supply. Coming up, COVID-19 cases in China have more than doubled in just one month, but residents say the situation on the ground is even worse. OpenAI is sounding the alarm. China-linked groups are hijacking AI tools for covert attacks, from fake social media blitzes to password hacks across the U.S. We dig into the latest reports. And Taiwan is indicting four suspected Chinese spies, and prosecutors are seeking prison terms of more than 18 years. More on that after the break here from China In Focus. Welcome back to China In Focus. I'm Tiffany Meyer. COVID-19 cases in China surged 160 percent in May, according to official data from the Chinese Communist Party. But residents across the country say the situation feels even worse based on what they're experiencing every day. NTT correspondent Jason Blair has the update. Four hundred and forty-one thousand cases of COVID-19, including 600 serious ones and seven deaths, were reported in China by the communist regime for May. That's a 160 percent increase from April. Chinese health authorities say the current variant, which is related to Omicron, peaked in May and is showing, quote, a downward trend in some provinces. However, U.S.-based physician and current affairs commentator Tang Jingyuan told The Epoch Times that the data for June hasn't been released yet. He says, I think their purpose of saying it is to avoid panic among the public, that there will be a larger scale outbreak this summer. This wave of epidemic is still developing. He's also skeptical about China CDC's claim that the treatment drugs are still effective with the new strain. A traditional Chinese medicine physician in China told The Epoch Times he knows people who have died and, quote, the hospitals don't say it is COVID-19 and the Communist Party does not admit it and does not allow hospitals to say it. A resident in Shenzhen told The Epoch Times that he's been seeing long lines at fever clinics. He says the symptoms of the patients are all sore throats, fever, etc., which last for at least more than a week. He also says that even if someone dies, the government will not let people know that he died of this disease. Another resident in Shenzhen told The Epoch Times a higher proportion of children have been infected. Symptoms are generally fever and chills. Doctors don't tell patients what virus it is and ask them to go back to take COVID-19 testing at home. Many people tested positive. The Chinese Communist Party has a long history of releasing unreliable data and covering up information, including arresting a doctor at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic who tried to warn about a new respiratory illness spreading. Currently, the NB181 strain is classified as a, quote, variant under monitoring by the WHO and has been detected in other countries, but is currently only dominant in China. Jason Blair, NTD News. What's the scope of Chinese infiltration on U.S. college campuses and how urgent is the threat? NTD's Steve Land spoke with Congressman Riley Moore for insight. Congressman Riley Moore, thank you for joining us. Thank you for having me. Congressman, switching gears a little bit, you've been a very outspoken critic of the Chinese Communist Party. President Trump has now blocked Harvard from enrolling international students and researchers, saying America's adversaries, including the CCP, are compromising our national security through higher education. Talk to us about the scope of infiltration that you're seeing on U.S. college campuses and how urgent you think this is. Well, the president is 100 percent right, and it's systemic around the entire apparatus of higher education here in the United States. What people need to keep in mind is currently China, there has 300,000 of their citizens here on student visas across our college campuses here in the United States, and they are an adversary. And now, I don't remember during the Cold War us handing out 300,000 visas to the Soviet Union. Now, did we? That certainly wouldn't make any sense. We've seen time and time again, folks who are on these visas have been caught spying. There was also a report that was recently done by the Stanford newspaper that exposed the intel gathering and spying that currently exists at Stanford University. By the way, these two individuals who were caught just recently trying to smuggle this fungus into the country that would have devastating effects on us, particularly in the agriculture space, they were on student visas, a J-1 student visa. That's University of Michigan. And let me remind you, University of Michigan, we had several Chinese nationals on student visas there as well who were caught spying in a joint military exercise in between the Taiwanese and the U.S. military up in one of the Great Lakes. So this is happening all the time. That's why I've introduced a piece of legislation called the Stop the CCP Visas Act, which would end all student visas for Chinese nationals here in the United States. Congressman, a Wall Street Journal article outlines how Harvard is educating up-and-coming CCP officials. But it's not just there. They have two-week programs, shorter programs that have high-level officials in Beijing central government coming to Harvard's JFK School. Xi Jinping's daughter also reportedly studied at Harvard. How concerning is all of this to you? Well, it's extremely concerning. And so we're opening ourselves up to this. It's like, why are we educating our adversaries in the world to make them better at supplanting our position? That doesn't make any sense to me whatsoever. So that's why I have to stop the CCP Visas Act. And I'm urging Congress to hopefully pick it up soon and pass it, because the president is correct. And you've also seen Secretary Rubio talk about this as well. This is a national security threat to the United States, and we have to stop it. How will your bill complement the White House's actions on China? Well, it'll codify it into law to prevent all further student visas from being issued. It will become the law of the land, and we will no longer issue student visas. Now, another big headline today and yesterday, President Trump announcing new travel restrictions on citizens from more than a dozen countries. He cited reasons such as terrorist activity, hostile governments, and higher chances of visa overstay, which we saw in Boulder, Colorado, that terrorist attack. What kind of implications will this have on our national security? Well, it'll strengthen our national security. And President Trump is doing the right thing. We just saw that terrorist attack in Boulder, Colorado, an Egyptian national on a visa in which that individual overstayed and committed a horrific terrorist act. So we need to stop those things. He's targeting the right countries to keep our citizens safe here in the United States. He's got my 100% support on that. Congressman Riley Moore, appreciate you joining us. Thank you so much. A warning from OpenAI, China-linked groups are increasingly using ChatGPT for malicious activities. These include fake social media posts, polarizing political content, malware development, and password attacks. In a report released Thursday, the companies of the tactics are becoming more advanced, but most remain relatively small in scale. In the past three months, OpenAI disrupted 10 covert operations, with four likely tied to China. The company banned the accounts involved. Since ChatGPT launched in late 2022, concerns have grown over how easily AI can create convincing text, images, and audio. OpenAI reports that its tools have been misused to create malware and spread disinformation through fake social media posts. The banned accounts linked to China that were posting content criticizing U.S. trade policies and trying to sow division. One campaign, called Sneer Review, used ChatGPT to generate fake dialogue on platforms like X and Facebook, posing as real engagement. OpenAI also uncovered efforts to influence U.S. politics using fake profiles with AI-generated faces. Some groups also used AI for cyber activities, like scraping public data, developing new tools, and cracking passwords. Despite these tactics, most efforts were caught early and didn't reach wider audiences. Taipei prosecutors have indicted four individuals suspected of spying for the Chinese Communist regime. They're facing jail terms of more than 18 years. Here's more. In a statement, Taipei prosecutors said the four, all previously members of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party, were indicted on espionage and other charges. The Taipei prosecutors said in a statement that their suspected crimes included divulging or delivering classified national security information to China. Last week, Taiwan's presidential office said it could not comment on the cases, given the ongoing legal proceedings. But it said that any person guilty of crimes like these should be subject to the most severe punishment. The Chinese Communist Party sees Taiwan as part of its territory and has pledged to take control by force if necessary. That's despite never having ruled it. The U.S. is bound by law to sell weapons so Taiwan can defend itself. That's all for today's China In Focus. I'm Tiffany Meyer. If you have any feedback on the show or have something you'd like to see us cover, send us an email at chinainfocusandtd.com. We'd love to hear from you. For on-the-clock original news coverage, visit us at ntd.com or download our NTD app. Thanks for watching. See you tomorrow.