‘Chinese Police Abducted My Mother,’ Says NTD Contributor | China in Focus

Welcome to China In Focus. I'm Tiffany Meyer. Our top story. President Trump will address the World Economic Forum in Davos this week, emphasizing the hot economy in the U.S. and what American leadership in the world looks like. Notably, Xi Jinping won't attend the forum. Greenland continues to be in the headlines. President Trump threatened new tariffs on European countries, prompting them to reach a deal. How are European countries reacting? Peng Zhenwei is currently pursuing a biomechanics PhD in Germany. Her mother, Huang Zhulian, was abducted in China on Monday over her faith. More on the daughter's urgent plea. My mind went blank when I heard about it. And more than 120 Falun Gong practitioners have died as a result of persecution in China last year. But experts warn the true toll could be far greater. We'll break down the report and what's behind this ongoing clampdown. President Trump will attend the World Economic Forum in Davos this Wednesday, where he's due to deliver a special address. The president will be at Davos in person for the first time since 2020. Last year, Trump delivered an address virtually, days after returning to the White House. Meanwhile, Treasury Secretary Scott Besson was already in Davos on Monday. He expressed full confidence in the U.S. economy and said America's first trade is transforming the world. The U.S. economy is doing quite well. As President Trump says, we have a hot economy. We have trillions of dollars coming in, in terms of investment, and we expect that to accelerate this year. In 2025, the U.S. economy picked up momentum, with real GDP growing at an annualized pace of 3.8 percent in the second quarter, and ramping up to 4.3 percent in the third. And that momentum appears to be continuing. The Atlanta Fed's GDP Now model projects real GDP growth of 5.3 percent, analyzed for the fourth quarter of 2025. America first does not mean America alone, and I think President Trump will be talking about this is what American leadership in the world looks like. The U.S. will be hosting the G20 next year, and I can tell you in the finance track, we are going to identify the lack of growth as the greatest threat to financial stability. So we are going to be pushing for growth, for deregulation. President Trump is expected to meet global business leaders in Davos on Wednesday. Meanwhile, Chinese leader Xi Jinping is not on the attendance list. Vice Premier He Lifeng is leading the Chinese delegation, and will also host a reception with CEOs of international companies. Treasury Secretary Scott Besant will meet with He Lifeng during the World Economic Forum this week. Shifting to Greenland, Secretary Besant said it would be very unwise for Europe to retaliate over the U.S. push for the island. On Monday, the Danish foreign minister said they have no ambition to escalate things. He added that discussions with the U.S. should move away from such an escalating conversation in the public space to a meeting table. Greenland continues to be a global focal point this week. Secretary of the Treasury Scott Besant called the island essential to national security in an interview over the weekend. And President Trump threatened new tariffs on European countries. NTD's Dana Monaghan reports on that, and the responses from European leaders. President Trump has continued to exert pressure on Europe in his quest to acquire Greenland. Treasury Secretary Scott Besant discusses why that is crucial, speaking on NBC's Meet the Press. Besant says if there were an attack on Greenland from Russia, or from some other area, the U.S. would get dragged in. President Trump wrote on Truth Social that NATO has been telling Denmark for 20 years to get the Russian threat away from Greenland. The president says world peace is at stake, arguing that China and Russia want Greenland, and there's nothing Denmark can do about it. The president also criticized Danish defenses in Greenland, saying they amounted to having two dog sleds, with one being added recently. President Trump said on Saturday that he is planning to add a 10 percent tariff onto Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, the UK, the Netherlands and Finland starting on February 1. The levy would increase to 25 percent on June 1, unless a deal is reached for the complete and total purchase of Greenland. European Union leaders held an emergency meeting yesterday over the tariff threat. EU Council President Antonio Costa said EU leaders have expressed readiness to defend themselves against any form of coercion. Costa is expected to convene a full summit of EU leaders later this week. Norway's foreign minister said they stand with the Kingdom of Denmark in defense of its sovereignty. But we're also ready to do more together with America and with all our allies in the Arctic. And that's exactly why we are stepping up our presence in Greenland, because if there are security concerns, we can meet them jointly. French President Emmanuel Macron called the tariffs unacceptable, saying no intimidation or threat will influence them. NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte said yesterday that he spoke with Trump regarding the security situation in Greenland and the Arctic, and that he looks forward to seeing him in Davos later this week. Meanwhile, the eight European nations on Trump's tariff list have sent a small military presence to Greenland, intended to bolster Arctic security as a shared transatlantic interest, saying the deployment poses no threat to anyone. The White House said last week that the deployment of European troops in Greenland has not changed President Trump's mind on acquiring the island. Daniel Monaghan, NTD News. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said Monday that Britain is not planning any retaliatory tariffs. While he called President Trump's threat of tariffs over Greenland completely wrong, Starmer added that a trade war would be in no one's interest. Firstly, I don't think it's right for us to choose between the US and Europe. That's not a new position today. That's the position I've consistently held, as have previous governments, because we are allies with our European partners and allies with the US, and the strength in being able to keep both those alliances served us well over the last 80 years. Germany said on Monday that there would be a strong response to additional US tariffs. It added that the European Union needed robust instruments to counter unfair trade practices. The country's foreign minister said Germany and France are in agreement they will not allow themselves to be blackmailed. Sweden also responded. The country's finance minister said the EU should push back in response to Trump's tariff threat over Greenland. So why is Greenland so important? It sits at the center of a rapidly changing Arctic, where the US, China and Russia are competing for influence. As ice melts, the region is opening access to massive untapped resources. This includes oil, natural gas and critical minerals used in everything from smartphones to military equipment. A 2008 study by the US Geological Survey estimates the Arctic holds over 1,600 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and other fuels. It's equal to Russia's entire oil reserves and three times those of the US. Greenland itself holds rare earths like lithium, uranium and other materials vital to modern technology and national defense. China's interests in the Arctic were growing so strong that it labeled itself a near-Arctic state, even though it's nowhere near the Arctic. To discuss the minerals aspect of Greenland and the global implications here, we spoke with Thomas Androsky. He's a portfolio manager at Ambess Terradin Critical Minerals Fund and author of Mineral War, China's Quest for Weapons of Mineral Destruction. Take a look. Greenland illustrates why mineralization and geology are not the answer to the problem. So let me just explain this a little bit. This is the largest island in the world and it's very richly endowed with minerals, including critical elements, rare earths among them strontium, niobium, fluorspar and other unpronounceable minerals. However, this territory doesn't have a mining industry. There are only two operating mines in Greenland, neither of which produces critical minerals. So it's really not about who owns the rocks. What's missing often is processing infrastructure, regulatory certainty, and of course, location is very difficult in Greenland. It's a very remote area. So I think this is one of those areas where mining has a potentially future, except it's not the day after tomorrow. This is a very long-term project. Given what you just laid out there, especially on the infrastructure or lacking infrastructure part, there's been several articles about this saying that Greenland could be a potential counter to Beijing when it comes to dominating the rare earth. Is that a factor here? I think it's a very remote possibility. Let me just illustrate this with one number. So Greenland is endowed with about 540 gigawatt hour of energy. Just one copper mine in Chile, arguably a large one, uses seven times more in a year. So it's very unlikely that Greenland becomes an industrial hub anytime soon. Talk to us about the infrastructure needed here, because you do see President Trump floating the idea of maybe having some refining areas on Pentagon property or lands, right? How long would it take to set up something like this? Because it does seem China has lax regulatory environmental regulations, part of why maybe they cornered the market. What would it take to develop something to counter that in the West? So let's face it, part of the vulnerability that we're experiencing right now is our own fault in the West. Some of this is related to regulatory changes, such as the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in the 1980s that decided that the radionuclides, which are often associated with rare earths, should be treated even at very low grades and very low concentration as a class seven radioactive material. And that made logistics and handling of these materials very difficult, costly, and simply mining and processing of rare earths uneconomic in the United States. So we have to look at that. We have to look at the regulatory framework. Europe also is advancing towards processing, and France and Poland, UK and other places, but doesn't have yet legislation dealing with what to do with the radioactive waste, which is generated as some of the byproducts of a production. As you mentioned, China simply doesn't have that concern, although the country has also tightened regulations regarding the domestic mining. Next month, the US will be meeting dozens of foreign ministers from allied countries to counter Beijing's dominance in critical minerals. According to Bloomberg, the hope is that these countries will sign bilateral deals to diversify supply chains away from China. What do you make of those moves? How successful might they be? They're important, but they're insufficient. I don't think governments themselves can solve this problem. Something has to be done to incentivize capital, the capital market, to go back into this space. To give you an example, our S&P 500 index has only four mining companies. They represent less than one percent of the value of the index. And we're not even talking about critical minerals, because only one of them produces critical minerals, and it's not rare earths. And now we turn to an urgent plea from an anxious daughter. Hongjuan Wang is currently pursuing a biomechanics PhD in Germany. Her mother, Huang Zhulian, was abducted in China on Monday over her faith. Wang practices Falun Gong, a spiritual meditation that's been brutally persecuted in the country for over two decades. My mind went blank when I heard about it. At the time, I was about to go to work. I checked my phone and saw my sister's message saying that our mother had been abducted. Hui's sister tried to visit the local police station in Yantai City, Shandong Province, where their mother had been detained, but she was turned away. The police pointed at my sister and swore at her. He then dragged her by her clothes to get her to leave the police station. He was ferocious, and my sister was scared to tears. My heart is really heavy now. The police just suddenly showed up and abducted my mother. No warning at all. She just suddenly wasn't home anymore. The same thing happened just a little over a decade ago. The day I took the college entrance exam, my father passed away due to a car accident. Two months later, police officers suddenly came and took my mom away, just like this time. At the time, I just graduated from high school. My younger sister was still in elementary school. I just felt, all of a sudden, our home was so empty. During that time, Hui's mother was released, but police kept her under surveillance. Hui is now calling for her mother's full release and more attention on the ongoing persecution of Falun Gong practitioners in China. So far, more than 5,300 have died as a result of the persecution, and an unknown number have had their organs forcibly harvested. But the actual death toll is far higher due to Beijing's strict censorship on the information. According to a report published Monday by Falun Gong official website Minghui, more than 120 Falun Gong practitioners have been persecuted to death in 2025. This is believed to be only a small part of the real death toll due to censorship in China. The report highlights that most of them had been detained in prisons, detention centers, or brainwashing facilities, where they suffered severe physical and psychological torture. Nearly 80 percent of them were over the age of 60, with oldest being 94. The persecution of Falun Gong began in 1999. That's when then-Chinese leader Jiang Zemin ordered a nationwide campaign aiming to eliminate the practice. At the time, the number of Falun Gong practitioners had exceeded the membership of the Chinese Communist Party. Falun Gong is a spiritual practice whose core values are truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance. It includes meditation that practitioners say improve both physical and moral well-being. Since the campaign began more than two decades ago, at least 5,300 practitioners are reported to have died as a result. Rights groups warn the true number of victims is likely far higher. That's due to the Chinese Communist Party's long-standing practice of censoring or concealing data from the public. Coming up, China is reporting the lowest birth rate since 1949, the year the Chinese Communist Party took over. And the country's population continues to shrink for a fourth consecutive year. What could be the cause and what's at stake? We break it down. And Japan's prime minister called for an early election to address economic issues and rising threats from China. More on that after the break here on China In Focus. Welcome back to China In Focus. I'm Tiffany Meyer. China's demographic crisis is continuing to snowball as Beijing's measures failed to reverse the trend. Official data published Monday show the country's population has shrunk for a fourth consecutive year. The birth rate has now fallen to its lowest level since the Chinese Communist Party came to power in 1949. According to Beijing's official data, less than 8 million babies were born last year. That's roughly 1.5 million fewer than the year before. But some China experts say the real situation could be even worse given the Chinese regime's history of fabricating data. To break it down, only about five to six babies were born last year for every 1,000 people in China. On the other hand, last year's number of deaths is rising faster than the number of births. It's pushing the country's population further into decline. Meanwhile, fewer Chinese people are getting married, which is also affecting the birth rate. In China, newborns outside of marriage are still very rare. And in 2024, the number of new marriages in China fell to a historic low, dropping 20 percent. Analysts say China's high youth unemployment, rising living costs and social pressures are all contributing to these trends. And now, China's aging and shrinking population is slowing its economy even further. The demographic crisis carries major implications, including a shrinking labor force and lower domestic consumption. It could even affect whether China's military has enough adult males to recruit. In recent years, Beijing has introduced a series of policies aimed at boosting birth rates. Those measures include higher taxes on birth control, extended parental leave and a three-year cash incentive of about $500 per year for children born after January 1st, 2025. Japan's Prime Minister Sanae Takeichi is calling a national election next month. She is rallying support for increased spending and a new strategy to accelerate defense buildup to counter China. Here's that story. Japan's Prime Minister Sanae Takeichi said she will call a national election on February 8th. She wants voter support for higher spending, tax cuts and a new security strategy expected to accelerate Japan's defense buildup. I stake my position as Prime Minister on this decision. I ask the people of Japan to directly judge whether they can entrust the governance of the nation to Sanae Takeichi. The international situation is growing increasingly severe. The Chinese military conducted military exercises around Taiwan. Economic coercion is also evident, where it, China, seeks to force other countries to submit to their demands by controlling upstream materials in supply chains that the world relies on and that are widely used for civilian purposes. Takeichi promised a two-year halt to an 8% consumption tax on food and said her spending plans would create jobs as well as boost household spending and increase other tax revenues. Government figures show a possible consumption tax would reduce government revenue by an estimated $32 billion a year. That sent the yield on Japan's 10-year government bonds to a 27-year high earlier on Monday. The snap vote will mark Takeichi's first electoral test since becoming Japan's first female premier in October. Calling an early election allows her to capitalize on strong public support. Polls over the weekend show her approval rating sitting above 70%. British politicians and hundreds of protesters gathered over the weekend to oppose China's proposed mega-embassy in London. This would give China its biggest embassy in Europe. But protesters worry about transnational repression and the risk to national security given the site's proximity to sensitive financial data cables. NTD's Malcolm Hudson has more for us from London. Hundreds of people gather in protest outside Royal Mint Court, the proposed site of a new Chinese mega-embassy in London. Now people are here for two reasons. The first being that last week it was revealed that the Chinese plan to expand basement rooms at this site close to highly sensitive fibre-optic cables connecting London's two financial centres. And the second reason being that the Prime Minister plans to go to China in the coming days and so we're expecting the decision of whether this embassy will go ahead or not. Protesters held flags and banners, chanting no mega-embassy. Conservative party leader Kemi Badenoch called for the British government to stop the proposed mega-embassy amid serious concerns about China. Whether it's spying, disrupting a lot of our services, issues with trade, the harassment of British nationals with connections to China, the harassment of the people of Hong Kong. There's so much that we're concerned about. The Telegraph newspaper reported that the plans for the site, located near the touristic Tower of London, include 208 secret rooms and a hidden chamber. Critics fear the secret basement rooms could be used to detain dissidents who have fled from the Chinese regime. Hong Kong activist Chloe Chung is based in London and has a 1 million Hong Kong dollar bounty on her head. That's around $130,000. She says she fears for her safety. Giving China the biggest embassy in Europe is kind of saying that, okay, you can do whatever you want in this country, you can harass people here, you can sanction our MP, we don't care and we're going to give you this embassy. That is the wrong signal to the Chinese Communist Party. Royal Mint Court is also between the financial hubs, the City of London and Canary Wharf. The proposed hidden chamber would be located in close proximity to data cables said to be crucial for financial sector communications. Human rights activist Benedict Rogers said this is deeply concerning. You can't imagine it's a coincidence that the Chinese apparently are building these rooms right above these cables. It's been reported that they're going to tear down a wall that separates the rooms from the cables, presumably so that they can hack into them. And that seems to me an extremely dangerous situation. The decision on whether to approve the Chinese embassy plans has been repeatedly pushed back by the government. Ministers have promised to make a decision by January 20th, ahead of Starmer's expected visit to China. Last November, prominent US lawmakers wrote to the British Foreign Secretary urging the UK to deny approval. They said the close proximity to critical communication cables could jeopardize intelligence sharing between the UK, the United States and other Five Eyes partners. Malcolm Hudson, NTD News, London. 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 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.