Blacklisted Chinese University Sends University of Minnesota $3.5M | China in Focus

Welcome to China In Focus, I'm Don Ma. In for Tiffany Meyer, our top story. Chairman of House Select China Committee calling U.S. colleges to shut down joint institutes in China. This after a blacklisted Chinese college sent over $3 million to the University of Minnesota. The U.S. is blacklisting 30 more Chinese companies over forced labor concerns. What products are covered? Senator Mark Warner is calling a recent Chinese hack into U.S. telecom companies the worst telecom breach in American history. How are everyday Americans reacting to Beijing spying? We hit the National Mall in D.C. to find out. And Taiwanese President William Lai is set to visit three Pacific nations next week. But all eyes are on his planned U.S. stopovers. What his office is saying about the trip? Chinese money flowing into U.S. higher education in the spotlight. A Chinese university sitting on Washington's blacklist has sent the University of Minnesota over $3.5 million since 2018. And that's according to the Washington Free Beacon. Sun Yat-sen University is on Washington's radar because it's involved in Beijing's weapons development. The institute is home to a national supercomputer center and is subject to U.S. export controls. The University of Minnesota holds a joint MBA program with the Chinese University. The U.S. school doesn't appear to work with Sun Yat-sen on supercomputing, which is tied to nuclear weapons development. Still, a China expert told the Washington Free Beacon that there should be more layers of scrutiny when dealing with blacklisted entities, as Beijing has long been stealing American technology through academic exchanges. Congressman John Mueller is the chairman of the House Select China Committee. He said the U.S. must ban research collaboration with blacklisted entities. In a statement to NTD, he wrote, The Chinese regime is driving its military advancements through U.S. taxpayer-funded research and joint institutes in China. He added that Georgia Tech did the right thing by shutting down its China-based joint institute, and other universities should follow suit. NTD reached out to the University of Minnesota for comment, but did not hear back. Chinese regime leader Xi Jinping sent a congratulatory letter to Sun Yat-sen University last week to mark its 100th anniversary. He urges the institute to align its development with major national strategies. Zooming out, Chinese money has been flowing to U.S. universities. According to Bloomberg, over 100 U.S. colleges received gifts or contracts from China from 2013 to 2019. Harvard tops the list, taking in over $90 million. Trailing behind are the University of Southern California and University of Pennsylvania, both pulling in over $67 million. Next is Stanford University, at $58 million. And New York University, $44 million. The Department of Education said top U.S. universities have massively underreported funding from China, Russia, and others. The department launched investigations targeting top schools, including Harvard, Yale, Stanford, and Georgetown. Following the investigation, schools reported $6.5 billion in previously unreported foreign money. The U.S. is banning more food and metal imports from China over concerns about forced labor in the Xinjiang region. Here are the details. The new restrictions cover a range of products, from tomato paste and walnuts to gold and iron ore. The offerings come from about 30 Chinese companies. The companies were added to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act entity list. It aims to prevent goods made with forced labor from entering the United States. There are now over 100 Chinese companies on the blacklist since the act was signed into law in December 2021. Twenty-three of the newly added companies are in the agriculture sector. Others mine, smelt, and process metallic materials including copper, lithium, beryllium, nickel, manganese, and gold. Despite the restrictions, there's still concern that China might find loopholes like exporting to the U.S. through Mexico. In a press conference Friday, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said the idea that Chinese products are entering through Mexico is false. She said her government will make the point clear in upcoming trade meetings with the U.S. and Canada. It's the worst telecom hack in our nation's history by far, in the words of Senator Mark Warner, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. He's referring to a Chinese breach into U.S. telecom companies, including Verizon, AT&T, and Lumen Technologies. Authorities said China-linked hackers had intercepted surveillance data intended for American law enforcement agencies. The hackers stole U.S. customer call records and communications from a limited number of individuals who are primarily involved in government. That's according to a statement from the FBI and CISA. There were also reports that Chinese hackers targeted telephones belonging to then-presidential and vice-presidential candidates Donald Trump and J.D. Vance. Warner said this is an ongoing effort by China to infiltrate telecom systems around the world for huge amounts of data. As China seeks to export its surveillance model overseas, are people willing to have their phone calls and messages tapped by a communist regime? NTD Sam Wong was out at the National Mall in DC to survey the crowd. That's crazy to think that, oh, you're getting scored based off your facial recognition and also everything that you got going on in your life. It seems quite restrictive. If it were me, I'd be, feel a little concerned. So recently the U.S. has found out there's a hacking campaign going around. Basically, they're going around compromising major telecom companies like AT&T, Verizon, and stuff like that. So just wondering, are you concerned that China is tapping into your messages and phone calls? Yeah, again, it's obviously something to be concerned about, especially being a young teenager with like always on our phones, social media, stuff like that. That's a very interesting question. When we're buying security systems, we have to make sure that those security systems that we buy off of Amazon, they're not using a Chinese cloud. It's always concerning when someone has your data that you're maybe not willingly giving to them. But also, I think the internet these days, nothing is secure. To be honest, all governments do that. Do you ever read into China's human rights record or anything else? Yes, I know a lot about Tiananmen Square and how people are, the Uyghurs in the Northwest are being treated. I'm worried about people there. I don't know whether it's going to happen to people here. You know, that's a lot of privacy and whatever information that you do throw out there, like you could be texting your parents about information on their car, next thing you know, you could just end up with like nothing one day. So yeah, I would be definitely concerned if that's the case with China's tapping into our phones. Taiwanese President William Lai is set to visit the island's last three diplomatic allies in the Pacific during a trip beginning next Saturday. That includes the Marshall Islands, Tuvalu and Palau. Taiwan declined to give details on possible U.S. transit stops along the way. Take a listen. We are still in the midst of meticulously planning the related stopovers and aren't able to reveal anything more to everyone. Taiwanese presidents usually use visits to other countries to transit through the U.S., which doesn't have formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan. Beijing is very opposed to any interaction between U.S. and Taiwan leaders. The Chinese Communist Party claims Taiwan as its own and has vowed to take it under by force if necessary. China has staged military drills around Taiwan after presidential stopovers in the U.S. Under pressure from the Chinese regime, some countries have cut ties with Taiwan. The island only has formal diplomatic relations with 12 countries. A congressional commission says the U.S. should boost future arms sales to Taiwan to help build deterrence against China. The commission suggests adding Taiwan to NATO Plus, a list of countries that stand beside the world's biggest military alliance. NTD's Joy Chu reports from Taiwan. This would add Taiwan to sort of the most elite category of security assistance partners and ease the process of export control review on potential transfers to Taiwan. The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission under the Congress said in its annual report that the U.S. should amend the Arms Export Control Act to include Taiwan on the list of NATO Plus recipients. The commission was created by Congress to provide recommendations about China to Congress. In 2024, China tried to influence Taiwan's democratic elections, and PLA aircraft have already violated Taiwan's air defense identification zone over 2,300 times, the highest number on record. Taiwan remains a potential flashpoint in the tensions between the U.S. and China. Beijing has repeatedly threatened to bring Taiwan under their control by force if necessary. Reporting from Taiwan, Joy Chu, NTD News. Right now, any arms sales to Taiwan exceeding 14 million dollars must be reported to Congress. But if Taiwan is accepted into NATO Plus, the threshold for notifying Congress will be raised to 25 million dollars. Coming up, workers at a famous Cognac brand in France protest a plan to bottle the spirit in China. Unions fear job losses and say it's a threat to the industry's heritage. Over 100 workers block a highway in China, the leading financial hub Shanghai. They're protesting after going 10 months without pay. And a powerful forum on Capitol Hill is celebrating a milestone. 440 million people have now quit the Chinese Communist Party. This comes two decades after a groundbreaking editorial series sparked the movement. More on the event after the break here on China In Focus. Welcome back to China In Focus. I'm Don Ma in for Tiffany Meyer. China is announcing fresh financial support this week for exporters who would be hard-hit from higher Trump tariffs. It's just one example of rising economic nerves across the globe as countries await Trump's new trade moves. And China could have the most to lose. Here's the story. China is known as the world's factory, and we want to show you why. This is the Bairong World Trade Center in Beijing. This place is massive. It is sprawling. Floors and floors of Chinese-made merchandise, things like bikes, stuffed animals, hair dryers, as items made in China are often a big part of American lives. As talk of further tariffs on all Chinese goods heats up, as promised by President-elect Trump on the campaign trail, a few things worth remembering. China is the world's top manufacturing country, making about 30 percent of all of the stuff used around the world. Electronics like these phone cords top the list. Furniture, toys and clothing aren't far behind. No surprise, China is also the world's top exporter, shipping almost $3.4 trillion worth of goods globally. But China's strength isn't just about money, including often-criticized government subsidies. It's about the ecosystem. Everything that's needed to make anything, the entire supply chain, it's already here. And once things are made, China has the means to move merchandise quickly. A key goal of Trump's threatened tariffs is to bring more jobs and industries back to the US. But look at all of this merchandise. China's system has a grip on the world, and unseating it as a top maker and seller, it's a task much easier said than done. Cognac workers in France are protesting a plan to move bottling to China. Unions say 72,000 jobs could be lost to China, not to mention the loss of French know-how in Cognac production. NTD's international correspondent David Vives spoke with a Cognac union spokesperson. This week, hundreds of NSC Cognac workers in France walked off the job, protesting a potential plan to move bottling operations to China. China recently imposed stiff financial penalties up to 39 percent on European brandy imports in response to EU tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles. To bypass these penalties, NSC is considering trials in late 2024, including sending bottles, labels and corks to China for assembly. Union spokesperson Henri Lalouette warns that bottling in China could lead to the loss of production know-how and up to 72,000 jobs in the region. They plan to do the packaging in China. That includes glass, labels, cardboard, packaging, and then the know-how. Then there's the fact that the product quality control will also be on site. Even if Hennessy told us that labels, corks and the like can be exported to China, we all know very well that this kind of thing only lasts for so long before a Chinese branch will supervise the bottling of Cognac. Lalouette says he believes the only solution is legal protection for the product, meaning it can be made outside of France. He suggests following the example of Champagne, which is legally protected to prevent counterfeiting and preserve its producers' know-how. Champagne is a protected brand. This goes for both for the product itself and for its bottling. So we call authorities to do the same thing be done for Cognac. What we call Cognac must be a product which should necessarily be linked to a whole process that takes place solely in France. We need to protect the trademark, the know-how, and not sell it off altogether. More protests are scheduled next week among Cognac unions. David Vives, NTD News, Paris. A protest erupting in a suburb of Shanghai Thursday. The city is China's leading financial hub. Over 100 workers blocked a key entry on a highway, demanding compensation for unpaid wages. NTD's Juliet Song has more. Traffic jam on a Chinese highway. As workers protest over unpaid wages, a woman was heard complaining inside her car. How can I get to work? I'm going to be late for work. A separate clip shows protesters getting arrested. Chinese media reports say authorities dispersed the protesters and the normal flow of traffic later resumed. The protesters work for a leather seat cover company. One of them told Chinese media outlets that they haven't been paid for the past 10 months. Together, voices heard they were forced to amp up the pressure by taking over a highway. Economy-related protests are on the rise in China. A report from Freedom House released Wednesday says over 900 protests erupted in the third quarter this year, a 27 percent increase from the same period last year. Most of the protesters are workers and property owners. Juliet Song, NTD News. China announced Friday that it would expand visa-free entry to nine more countries. That's as it looks to boost travel to help revive a sluggish economy. Those countries include Japan, Bulgaria, Romania, Malta, Croatia, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Estonia, Latvia. Starting next Saturday, citizens of those countries will be able to enter China for up to 30 days without a visa. Beijing has now granted visa-free access to 38 countries, compared to only three pre-pandemic. Adding Japan to the list suggests a willingness from the China side to improve ties. Relations between the two have soured in recent years, especially after a Chinese spy plane recently entered and violated Japanese airspace. Japanese citizens had visa-free access to China before the pandemic, and Tokyo has been pushing to have the status resumed. Shifting gears, Australia reiterating its defense commitments with Southeast Asian countries in a high-level security summit in Laos on Thursday. Here's the Australian defense minister. Earlier this year, the Australian government released our national defense strategy, outlining a new approach to defending Australia and our interests. In it, we committed to strengthen our defense engagement with regional partners under the ASEAN framework. ASEAN stands for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. The defense minister said Australia sees the organization as key to maintaining peace in the Indo-Pacific. China has territorial disputes with several nations in the group, like the Philippines and Malaysia. But China is also ASEAN's biggest trading partner. The association is closely watching how the upcoming Trump administration will execute its plan for the region. Under President Biden, the U.S. has pushed for a free and open Indo-Pacific policy, enhancing the U.S. presence in the region to deter China's threats, while emphasizing that it's not seeking conflict. Back to the summit, China's defense minister declined a meeting with U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin. In response, China said that the U.S. is fully responsible for the failed meeting. China's decision marks a protest against a $2 billion arms sale to Taiwan that Washington approved last month. Austin called the missed talks unfortunate. North Korea's leader Kim Jong-un accused U.S. Friday of stoking tensions and warned of a nuclear war. That's according to North Korean state-run media. In a speech at a military exhibition Thursday, he called for developing and upgrading weapons, and noted North Korea would continue advancing defense capabilities to strengthen its strategic position. Kim's speech follows international criticism over growing military cooperation between North Korea and Russia. North Korea has sent more than 10,000 troops to Russia to support its war against Ukraine. On Capitol Hill, a forum marks a major milestone. 440 million Chinese citizens have cut ties with the Chinese Communist Party and its affiliates. Two decades after the release of editorial series, nine commentaries on the Chinese Communist Party by the Epoch Times. NTD's Jason Blair reports. The Tui Dong or Quit the Party movement celebrates 20 years. As one of the largest grassroots movements in history, it has helped 440 million people disconnect themselves from the Chinese Communist Party or CCP. Xi Van Fleet lived through the CCP's cultural revolution when millions lost their lives and Chinese traditional culture was attacked and ridiculed. She says that the CCP's communist ideology enslaved the minds of the Chinese people. And now I think they found an opportunity to participate in this movement to free themselves from this toxic, deadly ideology. Today also marks 20 years since the nine commentaries on the Communist Party was published. The book details the CCP's record of propaganda, persecution, famine, massacre, tyranny and censorship to help people who grew up in the ideology to break free from its grip. John Lenczowski was the principal Soviet affairs advisor to President Reagan. He says the Tui Dong movement and books like the nine commentaries on the Communist Party help support the breakdown of a communist system. He says the power of the Chinese Communist Party depends on lies and removing objective morality. There is a relationship between truth and morality. And if people stop and think and are exposed to alternative, to the real truths in the face of the party's lies, then they're going to be less inclined to cling to the reef and be accessories in the instruments of the repression of their own people. Reporting in Washington, DC, Jason Blair, Entity News. That's all for today's China In Focus. I'm Don Ma. If you have any feedback on the show or have something you would like to see us cover, send us an email at ChinaInFocus at Entity.com. We'd love to hear from you. For round-the-clock original news coverage, visit us at Entity.com or download our Entity app. Thanks for watching. See you soon. Coming up on Entity, stay tuned for America's Hope with Kelly Wright. Tonight's theme, Succeeding Against All Odds. Kelly welcomes two guests, Clifton Talbert and Jim Goodwin, who have overcome significant challenges in their lives. Talbert, a Pulitzer Prize nominee, and Goodwin, the publisher of the historic Oklahoma Eagle, share their stories of resilience and vision. That's tonight at 10 pm after China In Focus. Thanks for watching. See you soon.