Japan Denies Report on Trump-Takaichi Phone Call | China in Focus

Welcome to China In Focus. I'm Tiffany Meyer. Our top story divided over a phone call. Did President Trump tell Japan's prime minister not to provoke Beijing over the sovereignty of Taiwan? The Wall Street Journal says yes. Japan says no. Hong Kong's worst fire in decades has been extinguished after three days. The blaze has killed 128 people with 200 still missing. Operation Southern Spear. The U.S. is ramping up troops in the Caribbean. Could it have broader implications beyond countering narco-terrorism? A Latin America correspondent for The Epoch Times breaks it down. We're really seeing probably the largest military buildup in the region since the 1962 Cuba missile crisis or even since World War II maybe. Did President Trump ask the Japanese prime minister to not provoke Beijing over the sovereignty of Taiwan on Monday? Japan says no. A Japanese government spokesperson said Thursday such a remark was not made. This comes amid escalating tensions between China and Japan over Taiwan and a U.S.-China trade deal that's still being finalized. The tensions began with a remark from Japan's new prime minister, Senaia Takahichi, weeks ago. She said Japan could intervene militarily if China invaded Taiwan. Since then, China's relations with Japan have worsened. China suspended Japanese seafood imports and cut flights between the two countries. On Monday, President Trump called Chinese leader Xi Jinping saying that he'd like China to buy U.S. soybeans faster. Trump said the two also discussed fentanyl and Russia's war on Ukraine. Hours after speaking with Xi, Trump called Japan's prime minister, Takahichi, briefing her on the conversation. President Trump told me that we are very close friends and that I could call him at any time. The Wall Street Journal reported that Trump advised Takahichi not to provoke Beijing on Taiwan's sovereignty over the phone, citing Japanese officials briefed on the call. The report said Trump's advice was subtle and he didn't push Takahichi to retract her comment. The report noted that Japanese officials were concerned Trump didn't want tensions over Taiwan to jeopardize the U.S.-China trade deal. Beijing has promised to buy 12 million metric tons of U.S. soybeans by the end of this year, but so far only purchased a little over a million. Two days after her call with Trump, Takahichi said that she wants to improve ties with China through constructive dialogue. Japan has always been open to constructive dialogue with China. Therefore, it is my responsibility to maximize our national interest and build an even better comprehensive relationship with China through dialogue from now on. On Thursday, China urged the U.S. to rein in Japan and prevent any actions to revive militarism. Trump said he had agreed to visit Beijing in April and he would visit the U.S. later next year. Hong Kong's worst fire in decades has killed 128 people and left around 200 missing. The high-rise fire was finally brought under control Friday, 48 hours after it began. As the blaze was contained on Friday, families had the grim task of looking at photographs of the dead taken by rescue workers. Local resident Mira Wong, whose parents were living in Wong Fook Court, was looking for news of her father. I just recognized some pictures. Maybe my body is on my desk. My body is still missing here. Another resident who did not want to be identified said a friend's wife was among those unaccounted for. Rationally speaking, it means there's no hope. Hope just means having hope in your heart. That's all, right? Think about it. It's been after so many hours. Yesterday, I heard there are still 99 missing. So, having hope is not true. But the bodies still have to be found, right? Let me see if they've found them. Later, I'll go to the school to ask. Locals say many of the apartment complex's residents were elderly. The fire at the complex, which was wrapped in bamboo scaffolding and green mesh for renovation work, quickly spread on Wednesday. Hong Kong's security chief said fire alarms in the complex had not been working properly. Police said they had arrested three construction company officials on suspicion of manslaughter for using unsafe materials, including flammable foam boards blocking windows. Residents were told by authorities last year that they faced relatively low fire risks after complaining repeatedly about fire hazards posed by ongoing renovation works. The fire is Hong Kong's deadliest since 1948. Washington is stepping up its military presence in the Caribbean with Operation Southern Spear. U.S. troops are being deployed across the region alongside the USS Gerald Ford aircraft carrier. While officials announced the operation as a means to combat narco-terrorism, could it also be a move to push back against foreign adversaries? To discuss this further, NTD's Don Ma spoke with Marcus Schackes, editor-in-chief of the Epoch Times Brazil and Latin America correspondent for Epoch Times USA. We're really seeing probably the largest military buildup in the region since the 1962 Cuba Missile Crisis or even since World War II, maybe. Now, all this has twofold implications. One, we're talking about actually fighting narco-terrorism and drug trafficking. Of course, it is a known drug trafficking route, the Caribbean into the United States, but then there's the broader geopolitical dimension to this. When we talk about Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela, for instance, we're talking about countries that have been enablers of U.S. adversaries in the region. So, can you go deeper on that point in relation to China in terms of this deployment of the Gerald Ford strike group in the Caribbean Sea? Sure. So, here's the way I look at it. When we talk about the Caribbean, we're talking about a very strategic region, for instance, for the Panama Canal. So, one of the things we've seen amid the buildup is that there used to be a huge U.S. naval base in Puerto Rico called Roosevelt Roads. It fell into disuse in the early 2000s after the U.S. gave sovereignty of the Panama Canal back to Panama. One of the things we've seen amid the buildup is these bases being reactivated. So, right now in Peru, there's this huge port called the Shanghai Port. It's basically Chinese-built, and people say it can have dual use, so military-civil use, which essentially means it's a port that has Chinese influence and military capabilities in the U.S.'s doorstep. If you go to Argentina, you will see a space base, which is run by the People's Liberation Army, to the point that when it was being built, not even Argentine authorities could go in there without Chinese permission. I could go further. We've seen these countries shifting their main trading partner from the U.S. to China throughout the region, to the point that now if you exclude Mexico and Colombia, basically everybody has China as their largest trading partner. Some people say the U.S. has been slipping on the wheel, and this seems to be now a priority of the Trump administration. I mean, we now have Marco Rubio as the Secretary of State, and he's obviously the first Latino Secretary of State in the history of the United States. His parents are survivors from the Cuban communist regime, which has been one of the largest neighbors of U.S. adversaries in the hemisphere. So right now what we're seeing is that the reinforced military presence in the region, in the U.S.'s near abroad, essentially serves as leverage to roll back foreign influence in the region and assert that the U.S. has security in its near abroad. It's not only about warfare, but we can think about it in broader terms. For instance, China would need Brazil to provide food and iron ore in the case of an invasion into Taiwan. If the U.S. has enough pressure, it might stop Brazil from doing that. If it hasn't, maybe it won't. So you start to see how the chessboard is kind of set up in the region. What would be the outcome in terms of the Caribbean if China's influence in the region, along with Russia's and Iran's, was left unchecked? What would happen? What could that mean for the U.S. and rest of the free world? So I'll give you some examples. I'll first talk about the ones that most directly threaten U.S. national security, and then I'll branch out a little bit into the bigger geopolitical sphere of things. So when we talk directly about national security, for instance, in 2007 there was a threat of a terrorist attack into the JFK airport in New York, which the FBI debunked last minute. They almost blew up a big part of that airport. This was an attack which was directly connected to Iran and Hezbollah in Lebanon, and it was developed through the Iranian network in Latin America. We're talking Guyana and Venezuela. Venezuela, for instance, has used state-run airlines to ship in terrorists from Hezbollah into Latin America. When we talk about, for instance, the tri-border area in Paraguay, Argentina, and Brazil, that's where, for instance, Iranian terrorists helped plan the 1992 and 1994 bombings of first the U.S., the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires, the capital city of Argentina, and then in 1994 a Jewish community center. So, of course, this was an Argentine issue, but the 2007 planned bombing of the JFK airport was not. So you start to see how it can serve as a basis for operations. When we talk about the crisis in the southern border in previous years, we're also talking about the presence of these agents, of military-aged males, Chinese and otherwise, crossing the southern border in massive numbers. But then when we talk again about the bigger geopolitical sphere of things, we're also talking, like I said, about the U.S.'s capacity to stop countries from providing China with food and iron ore or other resources in times of war. So if there's a war over Taiwan, let's suppose the CCP invades Taiwan, this is the kind of threat that can be projected in the near abroad of the United States that could act either as dissuasion or even to make the U.S. lose time as it tries to send reinforcements into East Asia. If they have a threat in the Panama Canal and the U.S. needs to cross it with warships, that's also a problem. If Venezuela has a credible threat of helping in some way in a terrorist attack with Iran, like the 2007 JFK case I just mentioned, all of that composes a panorama where it would make it harder for the U.S. to have a quick response and be operational as soon as possible. So that's really how it plays out in the crisis. Well, okay, Marcos, we always get valuable insight when we speak with you. Thank you very much for your time. Always a pleasure. Coming up, Tesla's sales crisis is intensifying with China's market contributing to the slump. Meanwhile, Elon Musk has shifted the company's focus to self-driving cars and humanoid robots. Controversy surrounding Trump's pardon of the founder of the world's largest cryptocurrency platform, Binance. Details on the $2 billion transaction linked to Trump's family crypto firm. You might not know who this gentleman is, but I'm sure his sons do, who are involved in their crypto enterprise. After the break, here on China In Focus. Welcome back to China In Focus. I'm Tiffany Meyer. Tesla is facing a sales crisis that seems to be intensifying. Meanwhile, CEO Elon Musk is shifting the company's focus to self-driving cars, humanoid robots, and his $1 trillion pay package. The EV maker has faced pressure in the world's three biggest car markets, Europe, China, and the U.S. For Europe, it's particularly dark, with industry data showing sales plummeted 48.5% across the continent in October, compared to the same month last year. For the year, its sales are down about 30% in the region, while industry YDV sales jumped 26%. A wave of Chinese brands has entered Europe with intriguing designs and broader choice on types. And stats show rival BYD outsold Tesla in the region more than two to one. The weak European results suggest there's no quick fix for the sales turmoil that began last year, which was sparked by Musk publicly praising far-right figures, setting off protests across the region. Musk's gone relatively quiet on politics, but Tesla's European business has not recovered, signaling more fundamental problems. More widely, Tesla's global vehicle deliveries are expected to decline 7% this year, figures showed, after a 1% drop in 2024. That's despite record Q3 deliveries, boosted by American buyers, racing to beat the expiration of an EV tax credit at the end of September. Yet, as recently as 2023, Tesla's Model Y SUV was the world's top-selling car, gas or electric. Analysts say the EV maker's narrow lineup of models has grown stale, and needs a new model to revive sales. But as Musk looks to robotics, there's little evidence of one in the pipeline. President Trump recently pardoned Zhang Pengjiao, the Chinese-born Canadian founder of crypto exchange Giant Binance. Zhang had pleaded guilty to failing to prevent money laundering on the platform. Months before applying for the pardon, his company processed a $2 billion transaction through a crypto firm linked to the Trump family. We spoke with Rex Lee, cybersecurity advisor at MySpark Privacy, about controversies surrounding this move. Rex Lee, thank you so much for joining us. Great to have you back on the show. Thank you, Tiffany, for having me on the show. When it comes to digital security, some are looking to things like crypto or unregulated areas. There was one incident, if you will, recently that's been making a lot of headlines, which is President Trump pardoning Binance's Zhang Pengjiao, or CZ, the billionaire founder of Binance. Now, he was asked about that, and there was a clip that's been making the rounds where President Trump says he doesn't know who that is, even though he pardoned him. What are the concerns over this pardon in particular? Trump, God bless him, he might not know who this gentleman is, but I'm sure his sons do, who are involved in their crypto enterprise. Zhang Pengjiao, or CZ, is actually a Chinese-born citizen who immigrated to Canada. Does that mean he's associated with the CCP or the Chinese government? No. And there's been really no direct ties to him personally, but there are ties to the Chinese government and the CCP through Binance. So let's talk a little bit about CZ and the pardon. He actually committed anti-money laundering violations at Binance. Binance was actively enabling their platform to support thousands of suspicious transactions, including those tied to Hamas, ISIS, and Al-Qaeda. And they were utilizing the platform and crypto as a way to launder money. And this is in the indictment and the crimes he was charged with, and the crimes he admitted to. So it's not that he was falsely accused of anything and then unjustly imprisoned. He actually admitted and confessed to these crimes. He had to serve four months in federal prison over it all. Now, on the pardon itself, I think, as you noted earlier, it's not illegal to pardon him. But politically, there are some questions because, as you mentioned, his Binance, or at least had poured quite a lot of money into one of Trump's son's companies or the stablecoin area. So what kind of political questions is that part raising? Well, first of all, before the pardon ever took place, Abu Dhabi-backed crypto MGX company invested $2 billion into Binance. That investment in Binance was pushed to World Liberty Finance, which is a crypto firm part owned, not wholly owned, but part owned by the Trump family. So the $2 billion was put into an account and then invested in World Liberty Financial, which is the company that's behind stablecoin. Is it coincidental that $2 billion got pushed to World Liberty Financial and then this pardon comes about? So it's not like he was pardoned and then later on the $2 billion came, the $2 billion was already invested. So there's some questions on that. And that's not really from my research as much as this has been reported by CBS News, 60 Minutes. My question is, you're giving a pardon to this guy, but he's somebody who admitted to the crime. If he had pled not guilty to the crime and was convicted, then you can see, hey, there's some question here. The guy was trying to plead his innocence and he was falsely imprisoned, but he was in prison based on his own confessions. So that, I think, is something that needs to be asked about. In terms of that 60 Minutes CBS report, Eric Trump did respond to it saying that since it's partly owned by the Trump family, that President Trump had nothing to do with it, which some of the critics were saying, how could you not know when $2 billion is entered into it? It does seem especially with the last election in 2024, we did see President Trump quite open or favorable towards crypto. With this pardon, some are pointing into that being like, is it a pay-for-play? You can't really prove that, but there are questions around that. What are your thoughts on why President Trump is so inebriate, if you will, with crypto? Well, of course, it's his family, separate of him. He's already got his money, so he can compartmentalize himself and say, I don't know nothing about this. As far as Eric Trump and the other Trumps that are invested heavily in this, they stand to make not billions, potentially trillions, because if you look at recent legislation, such as the Big Beautiful Bill and the Genius Act and other crypto legislation, that's going to benefit world finance. So their back company, World Liberty Finance, stands to be the leader as crypto moves from data mining or crypto mining to intrinsically back digital currency. So once it has intrinsic value tied to currency, actual currency, then that's going to be the leader. And they stand to benefit heavily, not only from the $2 billion invested by MGX, but also through the recent legislation. I want to delve into that, because as you mentioned, you know, Azizi himself maybe doesn't have direct ties, but finance, the company does have opay link ties to the Chinese regime. So given that, what are the national security questions that that raises when it comes to a pardon like this? Well, you know, there's Chinese financial institutions that are involved in finance. There are key executives in the company that have ties back to China, such as their CFO, Hina Chen, and Zhen Kai He, finance custody, head of finance custody, and Li La Wang, finance associate, all have ties back to China, as well as one of their independent directors, Zhen Wang, is also tied back to China, but also, coincidentally, maybe, but also associated with DHR Partners, a Chinese-focused private equity firm, again, co-founded by Hunter Biden and Christopher Hines. Now, does that mean Hunter Biden and Christopher Hines are still involved? Are they going to benefit from Binance? Who knows? But they do still own part of, they founded and own part of 25% of DHR Partners. So they're involved either directly or indirectly, and they'll benefit financially from this with Binance. So yes, there is a national security threat here. There's privacy issues. There's financial sovereignty issues. Rex Leos, always, though, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for having me on the show. That's all for today's China In Focus. I'm Tiffany Meyer. If you have any feedback on the show or something you'd like to see us cover, send us an email at ChinaInFocus at ntd.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 soon.