Beijing Purges Third Top Official, Sparking Speculations | China in Focus

Welcome to China In Focus. I'm Tiffany Meyer. Our top story. Another top official of the Chinese Communist Party ousted. Did the order come from Xi Jinping himself or from a rival faction? And what does it say about Xi's grip on power? An expert weighs in. Nearly two years behind bars in China, an American scientist known for detecting North Korea's nuclear tests is accused of espionage. But a former U.S. official says China may have wanted his expertise to cover up something. Washington is ramping up efforts to curb Beijing's AI growth. But some U.S. tech giants are still providing AI services to Chinese firms despite those restrictions. A $150 million counterfeit postage scam. A court in California ordered a Chinese individual to pay $158 million for the losses caused by the scheme. And China's top diplomat claiming Pacific nations are nobody's backyard, warning third parties should stay out of China's ties in the region. And a recent Chinese missile test has launched a nuclear-capable threat to the island nations and their Western partners. A new twist in the Chinese Communist Party's internal power struggle. The party says it has expelled Ma Xingrui, a member of its decision-making body at the top level. Is Chinese leader Xi Jinping ousting a key ally? Or does the move signal that a rival faction is gaining the upper hand? NTT's Juliet Song has the story. Beijing has expelled Ma Xingrui, a top official from the Communist Party. Ma was a member of the decision-making body made up of top party leaders. He's the third one from the group to be purged since last year. That means one-eighth of the group members have been purged so far. Ma has been considered a core member of Xi Jinping's faction, which begs the question, was he purged by Xi himself or a rival faction? China analyst Tang Jinyuan believes the latter is true. On the surface, Ma was brought down by corruption charges. Authorities accuse him of legally accepting gifts and trading power for money. Tang says that's what makes this purge unusual. Given that such behavior is widespread among Chinese officials, charges like these alone are not enough to bring down such a high-ranking official. Analysts often find clues about what led to officials' downfall in the wording of official announcements. For example, the official announcement of China's former security chief's purge said his political ambitions were inflated. Former Chinese defense minister Li Shangfu was described as disloyal. Both officials were given suspended death sentences. No similar language appeared in the official announcement regarding Ma. This means Ma didn't commit any major political wrongdoing. But how come corruption charges could take him down? What does it mean? It means the opposing faction was bent on purging him, but Xi is not powerful enough to protect him. Tang says another sign that the rival faction has gained the upper hand is that its members have replaced Xi's trusted aides in key positions. Ma Xingrui, who previously served as party secretary of China's northwestern Xinjiang region, was replaced by an official from the rival faction. Tang noted that four officers promoted to the rank of general since last year also belonged to rival factions. So how could you say that Xi has a solid grip on power? Why would he remove his own people from key positions? He wouldn't be so stupid, purging his own trusted aides and filling the positions with people from opposing factions. How is it going to unfold? We'll keep you updated as the situation develops. Juliet Song, NTD News. The United States has resumed strikes against Iran. American officials say the mission is aimed at degrading Iran's ability to attack civilians and shipping in the Strait of Hormuz. President Trump also reimposed an Iran blockade near the Strait of Hormuz on Tuesday. It covers Iran's entire coastline, blocking ports, oil terminals and all ships, regardless of their flag. What does it mean for China? We spoke to James Robbins, senior vice president for research and business development at the Institute of World Politics. Now, in the past, the vast majority of Iran's oil went to China. What impact do you see this having on China? Well, not a good impact for China. Their reserves were brought way down by the last round of blockade. I don't think that they've been refilled since then. They get a large percentage of their oil from Iran, and now Iran is going to be back down to zero in terms of their exports of oil. So it's a very difficult situation for the PRC. I think in the first round of fighting, they were not really helping out the Iranians very much. In fact, they were encouraging Iran to stop and to open the Strait back up because it's a direct imposition on China. I don't think that the Iranians are making friends with China now by reimposing their blockade of the Strait. So definitely negative thing for Beijing. Oil prices climbed above $86 a barrel early on Tuesday, hitting their highest level in a month. This came after President Trump said Monday that he would impose a 20% fee on all ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz the next day, saying he had decided to replace the 20% fee with trade and investment deals from Gulf states. A Chinese-born American seismologist has spent nearly two years detained in China and is now facing espionage charges. Yuling Chen, a U.S. citizen, is accused by Beijing of spying. But his family and U.S. officials say he's being wrongfully detained. Chen was arrested in November 2024 at a Beijing airport while preparing to return home to Boston after visiting family. His work focuses on detecting seismic signals from nuclear tests, including North Korea's underground nuclear tests. His wife told Reuters that Chinese authorities have questioned him more than 100 times about that research. A former U.S. official said China may be seeking his expertise on ways to conceal underground nuclear weapons tests. U.S. officials have made Chen's release a priority. Chen was charged with espionage last year, and he has yet to stand trial. President Trump raised Chen's detention with Chinese regime leader Xi Jinping in May. But his wife says Beijing has not taken action. According to Reuters, the case could come up again during Xi's planned visit to Washington in September. Washington has spent the past year tightening restrictions on Beijing's access to advanced artificial intelligence. But a recent report highlights how some of America's biggest AI companies are still doing business with Chinese firms despite those broader efforts. According to a Friday report in the Financial Times, OpenAI and Google have confirmed they've been providing AI services to Singapore-based subsidiaries of Alibaba, Baidu and Tencent. Their apparent companies are on the Pentagon's blacklist of Chinese firms the Department of War says are tied to Beijing's military. And the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party calls the list a warning for U.S. governments, businesses and people. The chair of the committee says the companies on the list are working with the Chinese military against U.S. national interests. OpenAI says it already suspended access for Alibaba-affiliated users this month over concerns they were using its AI to train competing models. The process, known as distillation, uses one AI model's output to improve another. The move comes as Washington tightens restrictions on advanced AI technology to slow China's growth. Meanwhile, Anthropic has taken a stricter approach. The company has banned Chinese firms from accessing its most advanced AI models. The recent developments highlight a major challenge for Washington. Efforts to limit Beijing's access to advanced AI become more difficult when U.S. firms continue supplying those tools to Chinese-affiliated companies. 158 million dollars. That's the amount a federal court in Los Angeles ordered a Chinese woman to pay in restitution last week. Angela Chen was also sentenced to two and a half years in prison. She admitted to using fake postage stamps to ship tens of millions of packages. The scheme caused more than 150 million dollars in losses to the U.S. Postal Service. From 2019 to 2023, Chen operated a parcel delivery company in the city of Industry with another Chinese individual, providing shipping services to Chinese logistics companies. Court documents indicate that a vast majority of the shipping labels used by the company were counterfeit. China's top diplomat claims that Pacific Island nations are independent states, not anyone's backyard. He also says China's ties with the region should not be influenced by any third party. Wang Yi has made the remarks Tuesday during talks in Beijing with his Solomon Islands counterpart. But those comments came just days after a provocative Chinese nuclear submarine missile test. A Chinese nuclear subtest fired an ICBM into the South Pacific on July 6th. That's the same day that another Pacific Island nation, Fiji, signed a historic defense treaty with Australia. The new pact makes Fiji one of Australia's few formal treaty allies. It could also become the foundation for a broader, multilateral security framework in the South Pacific. Many see Beijing's missile test as a blunt warning against closer ties with the West, prompting pushback even from a longtime friend in the region. Solomon Islands Prime Minister said, quote, China is a good friend of the Solomon Islands, but this is not something a friend does, adding, be our friend, but don't threaten us. The nation also launched a formal diplomatic protest with Beijing. During the meeting with his Solomon Islands counterpart, Wang Yi also said China has no geopolitical intentions and does not seek a sphere of influence. But reality tells a very different story. In recent years, Beijing has quietly shifted from simple economic aid to deeper political ties, police cooperation, and long-term security partnerships across the region. Last year, Beijing and several Pacific nations issued a joint statement, declaring Taiwan an inseparable part of Chinese territory. In 2022, China signed a security agreement with the Solomon Islands. Since then, Beijing has expanded police training and law enforcement cooperation with countries, including the Solomon Islands and Kiribati. And in some cases, Chinese police have even taken part in community affairs. Several Western think tanks warn these police deals could lead to dual-use military facilities. For Beijing, the prize is huge. It breaches America's second island chain defense, isolates Taiwan diplomatically by flipping its former allies, and secures dozens of crucial votes at the United Nations. But the West is not sitting still. Faced with China's rapid push across the Pacific, the US, Australia and Japan are taking the lead in expanding their engagement with island nations. Those efforts include security cooperation, infrastructure, development, climate initiatives, and diplomatic partnerships. The region is becoming an increasingly important front in the broader strategic competition across the Indo-Pacific. The Growing Coalition of Countries is turning up the pressure on Beijing over its claims in the South China Sea. In response, China is urging Europe to stop backing what it calls an illegal ruling. The warning comes two days after more than a dozen countries and the European Union reaffirmed support for a landmark international arbitration ruling. The 2016 decision rejected China's sweeping maritime claims. China's foreign ministry responded on Tuesday, pushing back after several European countries joined the US-led statement. The joint statement, signed by countries including the UK, Japan and the Philippines, says China's expansive claims have no legal basis under international law. Beijing claims almost the entire South China Sea through its so-called Nine-Dash Line, but neighboring countries dispute those claims. An international tribunal operating under a UN treaty ruled against China's claims, saying they are not supported by international law. While Beijing rejects the decision, European countries recognize the same UN legal process being the ruling. China is now urging Europe to stop backing what it calls the illegal ruling, warning the dispute could affect ties with the EU. Beijing also says it has summoned diplomats from several European countries that signed the statement, along with the EU delegation in China. Coming up, the AI boom is changing China's workforce and creating new challenges for millions of young graduates. And your digital twin. How the global digital advertising industry feeds on your data and makes money from it. And how Chinese companies are riding the wave to enter your life. An expert weighs in. More on that after the break here on China In Focus. Welcome back to China In Focus. I'm Tiffany Meyer. China is racing to become a global leader in artificial intelligence and advanced technology. But that push is reshaping its universities and leaving millions of young graduates facing a tougher job market. More than 10 million Chinese students have graduated each year since 2022, entering a workforce strained by slower growth and changing demand for skills. Humanities, arts and language majors are facing fewer opportunities as universities shift toward AI and technology-focused programs. From 2021 to 2025, Chinese universities cut more than 12,000 undergrad programs, mostly in traditional fields, while adding more than 10,000 in emerging industries. Youth unemployment among 16 to 24-year-olds is above 15 percent. And some estimates suggest more than 15 million people could be competing for work this year, including graduates still looking for work. Because Beijing often withholds information, the actual numbers might be higher. It's now pushing hiring campaigns and AI training programs to create more opportunities. But many young workers are turning to gig jobs as they struggle to find roles tied to their degrees. Meanwhile, the U.S. is also seeing AI reshape the workforce. But the pressure is more limited. According to the U.S. Labor Department, recent college graduate unemployment was around 6 percent in the past year. And between 2022 through 2025, it hovered around 4 to 5 percent. For both countries, the challenge is the same, adapting education for an AI-driven economy while millions of young workers try to keep pace. How does the global digital advertising industry make money from your data? And why do you get ads from Chinese retail platforms, even if you've never used them? Rex Lee, cybersecurity advisor at MySmartPrivacy, weighs in. He also explains why some governments are exploring Linux-based alternatives. I want to dig into the tech lobby part and how much money there is, because you've also mentioned how Chinese companies such as Tianwen Qian are ranking among the world's largest targeted advertisers and just how much money they have. Talk to us about that and the concerns that that does raise. So you have a symbiotic relationship between social media apps and platforms and chat bots being developed by domestic and foreign app developers, whether it's Google, Apple, Microsoft or ByteDance, Tencent, Badoo, it doesn't matter. They develop the platforms and then they provide the vehicle for targeted advertising through Google's global ad tech core and ecosystem of micro cores that are distributed all over the world in every country, wherever devices are sold that are supported by Android, iOS and Windows. There's an ad tech core, whether it's Russia, China, South America, Mexico, Europe, UK, anywhere in the world. So within these ad tech cores are the advertisers. They're the ones who bid on the targeted advertising. So if you're talking about Nike tennis shoes between you and your friends and everybody's had this experience, they go home and they're flooded with ads from Google's ad tech server. They may not have ever used Shen or Timu ever. People may say, I don't have any Chinese apps or platforms for security purposes on my phone, yet they're getting ads from Timu and Shen or bidding for those targeted ads along with Amazon, Walmart, McDonald's, Pepsi, Disney, all these companies they bid because what people don't realize is that you have a digital twin. Your digital twin is made up of your name, image, likeness and data. Pretty much everything that was ever collected about you through your phone, computer or connected products supported by Android, iOS or Windows forms what's called an identifiable digital DNA profile, which is your digital twin. So when you're talking about Nike tennis shoes with me, for instance, and then those ads start to flood, what happens is the conversation is recorded. It's identified, not by live human beings. It's all automated, but with AI. And then it goes out to what's called an RTV platform, which is a real-time bidding platform. And that's where all the global advertisers bid the highest amount of money who gets to send you that ad. So if you get one from Timu, they outbidded Amazon. If you get one from Amazon, they outbid Timu. If you get one from Walmart, they outbid Timu and Amazon. And that's how it works. 24 hours a day, 365 days a year in real time. Now this poses huge, again, huge privacy, security, safety, and even national security risks because the data mining that's being done in the surveillance is indiscriminate. It doesn't distinguish between consumerism, your business information, your medical information, your legal information, your employment information. It doesn't distinguish between any of that. It just, all of that information is carte blanche collected from you. And that brings us right back to the need for the Electronic Bill of Rights. You've mentioned how it's gaining traction across Europe, the UK, Africa, and also Australia, and how a representative from Australia contacted you to talk about that. Talk to us about some of the recommendations and what could we see being implemented either over there or maybe even here in the U.S. So what you're seeing across Europe, and this is making big news, it's not widely reported in the United States. You hear little blurbs of this. But if you do some research, you'll find that the governments of Germany, France, other EU member nations, African member nations, India has kind of been out in front of this because they banned apps and platforms from China for a long time. There's like over 40 or 50 countries that don't even allow apps and platforms from China or Russia, and they're starting to ban those from the United States. Well, consequently, these governments are now realizing that the Android OS, Apple iOS, and Microsoft Windows operating systems support targeted advertising, which means nothing on the device is secure. Again, going back to the T-Mobile admission, basically T-Mobile told me that I should not use any phone or computer supported by those operating systems within the defense industry to go use Linux or back then they had Blackberry. Well, those choices are limited. Today, what's going on right now is you're seeing an adoption of the Linux operating system and Linux apps, mainly what are called Debian Linux operating system and apps, which are 100% secure. There's no targeted advertising. You don't have to click on, I agree, to give up your privacy, security, or your data sovereignty to utilize Linux. And you're starting to see that catch on because there are large scale Linux development houses called Red Hat Developers, and they can develop at scale to support an enterprise business or support a government. This has been happening in the oil and gas industry for many years. This is another issue. As you know, I spoke at UTC or the Utilities Technology Council annual meeting for the utility industry. And the utility industry is starting to look at this as well because they like the oil and gas industry are building private LTE networks. So they too are starting to look at this trend to move towards Linux and Debian Linux operating system and private apps. There's some other operating systems out there that I'm examining like Graphene OS. I've examined Pure OS and some other operating systems, which I also present in my sessions to these governments under best practices and solutions because people are asking me, Rex, you know, we know that there's a problem here. What do we do about the problem? Well, Rex Li, as always, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you, Tiffany, for having me on. 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 chinainfocus.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 tomorrow.