U.S. Firm to Take Some Venezuelan Oil Fields Previously Run by China | China in Focus

Welcome to China in Focus. I'm Tiffany Meyer. Our top story, a U.S. oil company will take over some Venezuelan oil fields previously run by Chinese and Russian companies. How Washington is challenging Beijing's foothold in America's backyard. Washington launching a pilot program in Texas to strengthen water systems against cyber attacks from China and Iran. We're on the plan to protect one of America's most vulnerable A 24.5 billion dollar court judgment in the U.S. holding China accountable. A state in the U.S. sued China over its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. How did the case reach such a huge sum and where is the case headed? And the death toll in Nepal now officially crossing a thousand. China is being accused of blocking investigations into possible causes of the catastrophic flood. A new U.S. Venezuela oil agreement is putting an American company in control of key oil fields once operated by Chinese and Russian firms. And the move is not only about the energy, it's also a direct challenge to China's long-term foothold in Latin America and the Caribbean. The White House says the deal gives U.S. oil company North American Blue Energy Partners 100-year concessions for 17 Venezuelan oil fields holding about 65 billion barrels of proven reserves. Meanwhile, the U.S. government will receive a 35% stake in the company, along with the right to buy 20% of its production at cost. It's been reported that several of the fields were previously operated or developed by Chinese and Russian companies, including Chinese firms Sinopec, CNPC, and China Concord Resources. China has spent years building influence in the U.S.'s backyard. Beijing financed Venezuela with billions of dollars in loans, invested in its oil industry, and became a major buyer of Venezuelan crude. China's economic footprint in Latin America is broad and increasingly tied to infrastructure, energy, and supply chains. That's according to the Washington-based Think Tank Center for Strategic and International Studies. And Venezuela has been one of the examples of that long-term strategy. The new oil deal is restoring U.S. leverage. Meanwhile, experts at the Atlantic Council says Washington's push into Venezuela could reduce Beijing's leverage. While legal and operational challenges lie ahead in rehabilitating Venezuela's oil fields, Washington's goal is clear. Push China out, secure energy supply chains, and reclaim dominance in the Americas. The US owes opening Venezuela's telecom sector to new investment and technology while shutting out Chinese companies. New treasury licenses ease sanctions on providers CanTV and MobileNet, but exclude firms tied to China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and Cuba. The move could test Huawei and ZTE's longstanding foothold in Venezuela as Washington extends its reach from oil to another strategic sector. The Trump administration is tapping the private sector to strengthen the U.S. water system against cyber attacks from China and Iran. It launched a pilot program Monday that will begin in Texas and expand nationwide. The pilot program, known as Project Watershed 250, is designed to make one of the most vulnerable critical infrastructure in the U.S. more secure. It will pair cyber defense resources from the private sector with local utility providers at no cost. Companies, including Google and Microsoft, will provide services as part of the program. The program will identify loopholes that hackers could exploit and fix them with cybersecurity tools. Texas Governor Greg Abbott says the need for cyber resilience is overwhelming. He notes that many rural providers don't have the resources they need to be able to protect themselves. The governor stresses that Texas is under perpetual cyber attacks, including those on water systems from China, Russia and Iran. He says that last month, more than 30 municipal water utilities across 12 states were hit by an Iranian-backed cyber attack. In 2024, then FBI Director Christopher Wray testified that Chinese hackers have been positioning on U.S. infrastructure in preparation to wreak havoc. The critical infrastructure targeted by Beijing includes water treatment plants, oil pipelines and power grids. China is fighting a $24.5 billion court judgment in the U.S. The case stems from the COVID-19 pandemic and centers on Hubei province, whose capital is Wuhan. That's where the coronavirus outbreak first emerged. Now Hubei has hired a prominent U.S. law firm to fight the judgment. White & Case has more than 2,500 lawyers worldwide, one of them is senior litigation partner Christopher Curran. He has represented many foreign governments in U.S. courts. On Monday, this law firm helped Hubei province and other Chinese defendants file a challenge asking a judge in Missouri to throw out the judgment and dismiss the entire lawsuit. The case dates back to April 2020, just months after the disease broke out in Wuhan. Back then, Missouri filed a lawsuit against China's government, the Chinese Communist Party, Hubei province, the Wuhan Institute of Virology and others. The lawsuit accused them of mishandling the early COVID outbreak, including covering up the spread and hoarding personal protective equipment. The result? A federal judge entered a nearly $24.5 billion judgment against China and other defendants. However, getting there was a winding process. At first, a lower court dismissed the case, then a federal appeals court revived part of the lawsuit. But a major turning point came in 2025, when U.S. District Judge Stephen Lamothe Jr. entered a default judgment against the Chinese defendants. The Chinese defendants had failed to respond. The judge found more than $8 billion in damages. Under federal law, that amount was tripled, bringing the total to more than $24 billion. Now, Hubei province is finding back, arguing that the U.S. court has no jurisdiction over it. Missouri responded, saying China is several years too late to challenge the ruling. The state attorney general's office says Missouri will continue to hold China accountable. For now, the fight moves back to federal court in Missouri. The death toll in Nepal now officially crossing a thousand. Authorities in Nepal are starting to and China is being accused of blocking investigations into possible causes of the catastrophic flood last week. NTD's international correspondent, Aryan Pasdar, has the latest. And a warning, the following report contains footage that might be disturbing for some viewers. In south-central Nepal, authorities are carrying out temporary burials of identified bodies in They're taking the necessary actions as concerns for health risks are rising. We are managing the dead bodies for temporary burial because the dead bodies are continuously decomposing day by day. Authorities collected DNA samples of the disease, allowing them to locate and retrieve remains if victims are identified later through family claims. The death toll is now officially at over one thousand, six days after a massive flood hit Nepal and Tibet, which is controlled by China. Thousands more remain missing. On a more positive note, almost a thousand children might have been safe when a school principal took swift action as soon as he learned about the incoming flood. He quickly organized buses and motorbikes to pick up students. When I left the school, the water filled inside the school. We people take the right decision at the right time so we are able to save people's lives. Meanwhile, on the Chinese side, the Chinese Communist Party is censoring footage of the disaster on social media and on television. There's been speculation that China's hydropower projects caused the floods. According to a former member of Nepal's government, the CCP is not allowing scientists to investigate what happened and monitor the glaciers, saying instead China is preventing our people from crossing into its territory, even as families are still waiting for their loved ones to be found. Ariane Pasdar, NTD News. Coming up, surviving on wild vegetables and tree bark, watching family members die of starvation. A North Korean defector details her harrowing escape from the socialist regime. More on that after the break here on China In Focus. Welcome back to China In Focus. I'm Tiffany Meyer. What is life like under a socialist regime? Surviving on wild vegetables and tree bark, seeing family members die of starvation, and bringing a bag of rice from a foreign country is considered a crime. American Thought Leader's host Yania Kelley spoke to Grace Zhou, founder of the Broken Chains Foundation, about her harrowing escape from North Korea. Let's dive in. Grace Zhou, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders. It's my great pleasure to be here. Grace, you escaped from North Korea. You have a truly unbelievable story. Tell me your story. How did you get out? It's a long story in short. The first escape happened when I was six years old. It was back in 1998. I was able to cross the river with my mother's help. My mother, she was carrying me in her backpack, and my mother was holding my sister's hand. Three of us were able to cross the river by half swimming and half walking. We crossed the river in only about 30 minutes, and then we finally reached the land of China. That was the beginning of our journey. We were wandering in China for 10 years. We were seeking help, and we were seeking refuge. But because the Chinese government is not allowing us or recognizing us as refugees, we were forcibly sent back to North Korea multiple times. Thankfully, the UN and the United Nations were recognizing our family as refugees and granted us refugee status. We were able to escape the dictatorship regime back in 2008. We were able to fly with the flight from China to America, and we finally found freedom in America. I've interviewed a number of people who have escaped North Korea. It strikes me that crossing the river is obviously very difficult. You may get across into China, but even being sent back, in some cases when people are sent back, they're killed. Dig into this story for me a little more. I think that for us living in a free society, it's difficult to understand how it works over there. I want to explore that through your experiences. Yes, sir. For my family, actually, it was very close to the moment that we were sentenced forever, for a lifetime in North Korea, and probably my life will be ended up differently. My life could be living in a couple of years in the political prison camp, and due to the hardship, I probably already died. Another path that was in front of us was public execution as a whole family. But we were very lucky. We did not end up there. We finally found another chance, and then was able to escape. The main help came from the Korean American missionary. His name was Philip Buck, and he was able to bribe the six officers from North Korea at the time, and were able to rescue our family back in 2006. It was our last attempt to escape North Korea at the time. With the US$10,000 bribing money, our family was able to change the documentation and be able to be released from the prison. If that help didn't arrive on time, probably our family ended up differently. I cannot really imagine if that happened to our family. Tell me what life was like in North Korea. What made you try to leave that first time in the late 90s? Back in the late 90s, I had a big family member, like eight family members in the family. I had two younger brothers, I had two older sisters, grandmother, and father and mother. But my memory when I was six years old was every day we were cold and hungry constantly. I remember for almost 10 days straight, we were just starving and drinking cold water only. We were able to collect water from the water stream next to our house, and we were very lucky to have that. Because many people didn't have water resources at the time, too. So we were able to collect water, bring it home, pour it in the big jar. And then little girls and boys, we will drink water from the big jar every day. And adults in the family, like my father and my mother, they were fighting every day to look for food. And my grandmother was helping little children in the family. And my 10-year-old sister and 17-year-old sister, they would always go to the mountain in the plastic and wear the shoes, trying to protect their feet from the snake or water. And then they will come home at late night with bags of wild vegetables. So our daily food was relying on the wild vegetables, tree barks. And I also remember some of the tree leaves that we can consume. Whatever we can consume from the nature, we tried to collect everything. But that didn't help. At the end of 1998, June, my grandmother passed away by starvation. And her last wish was to eat one baked potato. But my family at the time, we were not able to provide that as well. And my father, he passed away while he was looking for food. And his crime was he brought a bag of rice from our distant relatives in China, and he crossed the border without a legal passport. And that become the illegal and crime. He was tortured. He got beaten so bad in the prison cell during his interview from the officers. So when he was transferring from detention center in the countryside to the city for the legal trial, he passed away on a train. But the government just noticed us with a single word and say, my father was criminal, and he got passed away. So with that heartbreaking news, my mother decided to leave our home. But last straw was right after my grandmother passed away. Actually, six officers from our hometown visited our family and kind of telling us to leave the village. And the last words they said was, if we don't leave the home by 15 days later, or within 15 days, they said they will come back and check. And if we are still living there, then they will burn our house down. So that was last words warning from our government officers. They supposed to protect us, they supposed to provide food for us and house for our family, but they denied our citizenship, and they were kicking us out from the village. So my mother said, hey, this is not the country where we can rely on. So she decided to leave our home. So it took almost four days for us to reach the border and cross the border to China. So this was the river that you're talking about now? The Tumul River is the border between China and North Korea, and almost all the North Korean defectors, we have to cross that river to cross the border. Wow. You basically had absolutely no choice. Well, for North Korean people in North Korea, we don't have a choice. We only have obedience. We only need to follow whatever they tell us. As adults, my mother and my father, they have to listen to the leaders or the government officers. So we don't have any freedom to choose or to make a decision in our country. When your mother decided to cross that river, there's a good chance that you're not going to make it. There are so many, sir. Actually, each time when we cross, our heart shrinks into a really tiny little nut. Because each time when we cross the border, we have to hide under the bush, and we have to look around and observe around and make sure there's no soldier will catch us behind us. After we thought that's safe, then we will start to move quietly and slowly and efficiently. Otherwise, if an officer, whoever's guarding the border, if they're watching us or if they found us, they're always allowed to shoot us at any time. You must have been a very disciplined five-year-old. I was. I think my mother, she was a very strong and strict woman in the family. So I remember my brothers and sisters, we never get wild in the house. We're always trying to act. And before we act anything, we're trying to watch around us and obey and just be good girl and good boy in the family. Otherwise, we were not able to survive each moment. After the river, you kind of went into the mountains, if I understand that correctly. Yes, sir. So the journey is actually after we locked out our log cabin in the countryside. And my mother, she actually making us line up in the front of the house and observe the scene and look at the sky. And it was a very clean nighttime full of stars. And she said one word to us, but at the time we did not understand. But after I become adult, I finally understood what that means. So she told me that boys and girls look this scene and remember this scene. This is your home. This is your origin. No matter where you go in the world after you grow up, don't forget this is your origin. So I did not know because after we escaped our home, we always have to change our identity, hide our identity and lie to the people or friends that we came from different hometown in China, or we escaped from different country, or we came from South Korea, we always have to hide our identity because we don't want anyone to find out that we came from North Korea. And when I was seven to 12 years old, I was actually believed that I was the same girl or same people as other Chinese girls, because we were talking same language at the time, we were eating same thing and wear clothes the same thing. I didn't really realize the difference. But when I was 12 years old, we got caught in China, and we forcefully repatriated to North Korea. So at that time, I realized, okay, I was born in North Korea, because I am North Korean citizen, I shouldn't be same as other girls, we don't have any rights. So that was the first time I realized the difference between North Koreans and Chinese citizens. And each time when we escape, we have to walk unpaved road, we have to hide in the mountains. We will, of course, starve, and we will manage ourselves to get to the border and then cross the border to China. What happened to your other siblings? And to watch the full interview, visit NTD Plus, and check out American Thought Leaders with Jania Kellick. 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 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 tomorrow.