US Sanctions Strain Ties Ahead of Trump's China Trip | China in Focus

Welcome to China In Focus. I'm Tiffany Meyer. Our top story. A scheduled Trump Xi summit is drawing closer, but Washington's sanctions arrive sooner than the U.S. president. A Chinese oil refiner has been targeted for allegedly bankrolling Iran. Beijing responded. China's pulling the plug on MEDA's $2 billion mono-steal, sending a strong signal that cross-border AI partnerships now face much higher scrutiny. A Chinese coffee chain in New York City raising national security concerns. It appears to be a simple business decision, cashless payments only, requiring customers to download an app to pay. But a watchdog group says there could be more to it. And a Chinese national charged in a years-long scheme targeting NASA employees. Officials say he posed as trusted colleagues gaining access to sensitive data. The Trump administration is stepping up pressure to cripple Iran's economic lifeline and posing new sanctions on a Chinese refiner accused of buying Iranian crude. The U.S. Treasury announced the measures Friday, saying they are aimed at cutting off Tehran's oil revenue. It also said the sanctions are intended to disrupt its so-called shadow fleet of tankers. On Monday, the sanctioned Chinese company responded. NDD's Flora Hua has the latest. Operation Epic Fury is on pause, but the economic fury is in full swing. The U.S. is warning countries and companies bankrolling Iran to stop or risk being hit with secondary sanctions. A major private oil refinery in China, Hongli Petrochemical Refinery, was among the latest to be punished. The U.S. Treasury said Friday the company is one of the largest buyers of Iran's sanctioned oil, purchasing billions of dollars' worth. On Monday, Beijing pushed back strongly, saying it will protect Chinese companies. China analysts say the U.S. moved as a bargaining chip for President Trump ahead of a meeting with Chinese regime leader Xi Jinping. This could also add a key bargaining chip ahead of a scheduled Trump-Xi meeting. In essence, the strategy is, I impose sanctions on you, forcing you to the negotiating table. From the U.S. perspective, this clearly strengthens its leverage during negotiations. The Chinese refiner denied doing any trade with Iran and says it will shift to Chinese yuan for future payments as a result of U.S. sanction. These Chinese private refiners, also known as teapot refiners, account for a third of the total refining industry in China. These refiners have been major buyers of Tehran's crude oil, and China's customs data does not record such trade. Before the U.S. blockade on ships carrying Iranian oil, roughly 80 to 90 percent of Iran's crude exports went to China. Flora Hua, NDD News. Now turning to the latest developments on MEDA's $2 billion acquisition of AI agent developer Manos, Beijing has officially announced it is blocking the acquisition following months of investigation. Last month, Chinese authorities imposed travel restrictions on Manos' CEO and chief scientist, preventing them from leaving the country. The deal was announced in December, and MEDA and Manos began early integration planning. On Monday, China's top economic planner, the National Development and Reform Commission, announced it has blocked MEDA's $2 billion acquisition of Manos. The commission oversees foreign investment security reviews. Manos was founded in China in 2022 and later relocated its headquarters to Singapore. It shut down its China operations in 2025 ahead of the MEDA deal. The company develops general-purpose AI agents capable of handling complex tasks, including market research, coding and data analysis. Without providing a detailed explanation, regulators ordered both sides to unwind the transaction entirely. A MEDA spokesperson responded that the deal complied fully with applicable law, adding the company expected an appropriate resolution to the inquiry. Analysts say Beijing's move is intended as a warning to others, deterring Chinese tech startups from following Manos' playbook. Going forward, any deals transferring Chinese technology to major U.S. firms are expected to face much greater regulatory scrutiny. According to the Financial Times, MEDA had already began integrating Manos' technology into its internal tools. Most Manos employees are now based in Singapore and have been absorbed into MEDA's operations. The question is whether Chinese authorities have jurisdiction to reverse MEDA's acquisition, which was completed months ago, or how they would enforce such an order. Chinese coffee chain and U.S. national security. You cannot pay with cash when ordering at Luckin Coffee's New York locations. A watchdog group is warning about the potential danger behind it. NTD's Sean Marshall has more. Luckin Coffee's New York City locations, you cannot pay with cash even if that's all you have. This policy can exclude customers who don't own a smartphone, lack reliable data service, or prefer not to share personal data. Or, if you would like to keep your data private from Chinese-owned companies, as the FBI advised United States citizens to do on March 31st, though the FBI did not mention Luckin specifically. Luckin Coffee is a Chinese company, so under China's national security laws, companies are required to cooperate with state intelligence requests. At Luckin's brick-and-mortar stores, you must use their app to order. Tony Zielinski, a former lawyer and politician, is challenging this for a second time. The other thing that's good news is the FBI has issued a warning to residents in America to not download the Chinese app because that could be harmful in terms of the communist China regime gaining access to your data or possibly even installing malware that could cause your device to malfunction. This is because on March 21st, 2026, a New York general business law went into effect, prohibiting most food stores and retail establishments from refusing cash payments. Their charge or goal at the time was to help address inequities that exist amongst people that don't have credit cards or don't have smartphones. And so I saw how this could be applicable to the situation with Luckin Coffee. And to no surprise, Luckin Coffee still is requiring people to download the app. So I went into the Luckin Coffee shop, asked to buy with cash. They refused. I filed a complaint with the state that Luckin Coffee is in violation of legislation that they recently passed. And I received a notice from the state indicating that they're going to communicate once again with Luckin Coffee that they must follow state laws. Now, I went in again because it was like a few weeks since that time. Again, they refused. So I followed up with another complaint. And I said, look, they're still not complying with state law. Now, the penalty is, because they're not complying with state law, the penalty the first time is $1,000 fine. Second time is up to $1,500. So hopefully that catches their attention and they start complying with the law. New York cash requirement law mirrors a New York City law that has been in place since 2020. Luckin has positioned itself as a technology company, arguing its app-based model sets it apart from traditional retailers. I'll tell you what's really ironic here is the fact that in the SEC filings for Luckin Coffee, they indicate that they must follow Chinese law, even if that means sharing individual users' data and other information with the Chinese Communist government. They put that in their SEC filing. So they're complying with Chinese laws, but they're not complying with American laws. We have an American law that says you need to provide cash option. They thumb the nose at the American laws and follow the Chinese laws. And our legislators in Washington, they aren't doing anything about it. We reached out to Luckin Coffee for a statement, but did not get one NASA staff tricked in a years-long scheme. Song Wu, a Chinese national, is accused of posing as trusted colleagues to gain access to sensitive aerospace software. Federal investigators say he is now facing charges but remains at large. The case dates back several years after NASA's inspector general flagged suspicious emails tied to a fake aerospace professor. Officials say the account was an impersonation used to request expert-controlled software and source code from NASA engineers and other U.S. researchers. Over time, investigators uncovered a broader operation targeting dozens of victims between 2017 and 2021. Those victims included personnel from NASA, the military, federal aviation officials, universities, and private industries. Authorities identified the suspect as Chinese national Song Wu, an engineer at a state-owned aerospace and defense company. Officials say he and co-conspirators posed as colleagues and friends to build trust. They would then ask for restricted models and design software used in aerospace and weapons development. In some cases, it worked, with victims unknowingly violating U.S. expert-controlled laws by sharing protected material. Song was indicted in 2024 on 14 counts of wire fraud and 14 counts of aggravated identity theft. The charges come after a joint investigation by NASA's inspector general and the FBI. He faces decades in prison if convicted but remains at large with a federal arrest warrant issued. Two Americans were killed in clashes between Philippine troops and suspected communist guerrillas in the central Philippines last week. The deadly fighting was first reported on Sunday. The two Americans are Laia Peroles, born in San Diego, and Kaidana Rene Sorum, from Washington. They died alongside 17 others. Philippine forces suspect they were combatant members of the New People's Army, or NPA, the armed wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines. The NPA is a Maoist group that seeks to overthrow the Philippine government and reduce U.S. influence in the country. Washington has designated the group as a terrorist organization. The Filipino task force leading the fight against communists is warning Filipino-Americans in the U.S. It says they should be wary of being lured by left-wing activist groups into joining Filipino communist insurgents. The task force also warned that the deaths should prompt reflection on the consequences of involvement in certain networks. Coming up, tensions rising between Europe and China. The European Union is sanctioning dozens of entities in China over Russia. And China is retaliating with its own sanctions. And could China's social credit system see a global rollout in the form of digital IDs? And why is the World Health Organization pushing for a pathogen access and benefit sharing system? Reggie Littlejohn joins us to unpack it all. More on that after the break here on China In Focus. Welcome back to China In Focus. I'm Tiffany Meyer. The European Union announcing its 20th package of sanctions against Russia in an effort to stop its war on Ukraine. Nearly three dozen entities in China are targeted. Beijing immediately fighting back using sanctions of its own. NTD's Flora Hua has the latest on the sanctions showdown. The European Union's new sanctions further target Russia's reliance on third countries for buying high-tech items and skirting Western sanctions. That includes shipping dual-use products to Russia, meaning those that have both civil and military use, such as drones. On Saturday, Beijing strongly pushed back against EU sanctions, urging the EU to remove all Chinese companies and individuals from the sanction list. That's after China added seven EU entities to its export control list on Friday. The move would ban these entities from receiving dual-use products originating in China. Most of the European entities are needing defense suppliers. Beijing said the sanctions against them were for their arms sales to Taiwan. It's worth noting China is the EU's second-largest trading partner and remains the bloc's largest source of goods. The trade deficit last year was worth roughly $350 billion. Chinese manufacturers' reliance on the EU market grew after the U.S. placed tariffs on China. Flora Hua, NTD News. Could China's social credit system see a global rollout in the form of digital IDs? Why is the World Health Organization pushing for a pathogen access and benefit sharing system? And what could that mean for lab leaks and bioweapons on a global scale? Joining us now to unpack all of this is Reggie Littlejohn. She's the founder of Anti-Globalist International and co-founder of the Sovereignty Coalition. Reggie Littlejohn, thank you so much for joining us. Great to have you back on the show. Thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure to be back. Now, there's been a growing trend, if you will, of different governments either talking or wanting to implement digital IDs. We saw inklings of this during the pandemic, but the UK was really taking off the headlines recently with the cut the FAF campaign to have just nationwide digital IDs. Talk to us about the global spread of this, if you will, because there's a lot of attention on China and the social credit system where supporters are like, oh, this makes life so easy, so convenient. But if you somehow find yourself on the wrong side of the party, there's a lot of stories of people suddenly they can't get on certain trains, they can't get to certain hotels, they can't get their bank accounts. What are the security concerns if this does go global? Well, Tiffany, as you know, my original mission had to do with stopping forced abortion in China, and I've been looking at this Chinese human rights violations for decades. And so when COVID hit, what I saw was a Chinese style social credit system possibly being implemented worldwide through the World Health Organization, because what they wanted, they were terrifying everybody concerning COVID and wanted to do what they call a vaccine passport, which was like the original name for what has now become just a health ID or even just a digital ID. And in 2023, they partnered with the EU to roll out international interoperable digital IDs. And these IDs, I think you can see really what the vision behind them is, from the World Economic Forum, they ran an article and it was 2021, right in the beginning of COVID, about what digital IDs to do. So according to the World Economic Forum, you will need them to open a bank account, to access healthcare, to travel, to participate in social media, to even own a communications device like a laptop or a cell phone. And in China, what that means is you follow all the rules, you never criticize the government online, you never jaywalk, etc, etc. If you do all of that, then you can lead what looks like a normal life. But if you, God forbid, criticize the government, then the punishments come in. So for example, you can lose your job, your kid might not be able to go to the best school, you won't be able to borrow money to buy a home, or, or start a business. If you keep it up, you can be severed from your credit cards and your bank accounts, like what happened to the Canadian truckers. Okay, so people think that this can't happen in the West, it already did. And then finally, in China, if you keep it up, you will just disappear. And we have the infrastructure to do that in the West, and they are very heavily rolling out these digital IDs. And in the wrong hands, they can be used as tools of mass surveillance and totalitarian control, similar to the China social credit system. I want to dig into that last part, but what about privacy on a global level? If you do have this sharing system where countries can share, if China has access to that, could they take away our access to things? Well, sure they could. I mean, so the whole idea of digital privacy is just ridiculous, because things get hacked all the time. And people's data gets out into the dark web or whatever all the time. And to the extent that these digital IDs are international and interoperable, that means that they are going to have to be accessible by China, meaning the Chinese Communist Party. Definitely a lot of concerns there. You mentioned kind of the impetus for a lot of these ideas came from the pandemic. We saw parts of different areas doing this, if you will. I want to go to the WHO, because actually in less than a month, coming right up in the middle of May, the WHO's Pathogen Access and Benefit Sharing, or PABS, system is scheduled to be voted upon. That's at the World Health Assembly in Geneva. First, what would this PABS system do? What is it trying to do? This is part of the insane aftermath of the way that the World Health Organization handled the pandemic. I mean, they basically used the China model of, you know, mask mandates, vaccine mandates, lockdowns, etc. And that was copied by the World Health Organization, you know, the suggestions, and people copied it all over the world. And so then, you know, having completely muffed the response to COVID, the World Health Organization says, well, if we had more power, we would have been able to do a better job. So instead of apologizing, they're just trying to amass power to themselves. And one of the ways of doing this is the Pathogen Access and Benefit Sharing system. So what this is, is that it encourages countries to go out into their swamp, to go out into their jungle, to go out into their sewer system, wherever they can find a pathogen with pandemic potential. In other words, a pathogen like COVID that can hurt people or kill people, okay. And don't eradicate it, don't quarantine it, no, and they will then not quarantine it, not eradicate it, they will send it to labs all over the world, ostensibly to create vaccines and other therapeutics. But what this does is it greatly increases the chances for lab leaks, and possibly even bio terrorist attacks. And to the extent that COVID-19 was a lab leak from the Wuhan lab, they are exponentially increasing risks like that, again, and they don't have focus on dangerous gain of function research. So we're heading, I believe that if this passes, we are going to be heading into a situation of chronic lab leaks, which will then greatly enrich big pharma, okay, which big pharma, of course, are major contributors to the World Health Organization. They will also give those governments so inclined the pretext to again, adopt the China model and impose mask mandates, vaccine mandates and lockdown. I want to dig into that because during the pandemic, of course, the WHO had a lot of recommendations or guidelines, but those were technically recommendations. They couldn't dictate what other countries would do. But it sounds like with a lot of this, our own sovereignty would be going out the window. It sounds honestly quite horrifying here, given, you know, this very bleak future, if you will, what can people and countries do to stand up against this? Well, okay, so in terms of what the WHO says, we only make recommendations. Okay, that's true. But this new pandemic treaty is going to have an enforcement mechanism, which we don't really know what it is, but it's not going to be without teeth. And then beyond that, a lot of countries say that if they are following the WHO recommendations that their doctors have, you know, don't have liability, so they just follow. So even though the WHO is not forcing them to follow, they do rely very heavily on the recommendations of the WHO. So they have to be taken very seriously. What can people do? In America, the main thing that people can do is you can go on my website, antiglobalist.net, that's antiglobalist.net and sign our petition against the PAV system. We've got a petition right there. And we would love to be able to go to Geneva and say, look, we've got power many 10,000, 100,000 signatures on this to stop the PAV system from all over the world. Definitely a lot at stake here. Reggie Littlejohn, though, as always, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you so much for having me. That's all for today's China In Focus. 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 chinainfocusatntd.com. We'd love to hear from you. For around the clock original news coverage, visit us at ntd.com Thanks for watching. See you tomorrow.