Trump–Xi Talk Puts Taiwan Budget Deadlock Back in Spotlight

Welcome to China In Focus. I'm Tiffany Meyer. Our top story, juggling between goodwill and friction. President Trump and China's Xi spoke on the phone. More details emerging on U.S. soybean purchases and Washington's weapons sale to Taiwan. An FBI raid highlights a major security loophole with loose regulations on virus labs in the U.S. How could this be exploited by China? Senior investigative reporter Joshua Phillips explains. You wouldn't have to launch a biological warfare attack on America. You could make it look like an accident in someone's backyard. President Trump warns the U.S. would militarily secure its base on the Chagos Islands if American forces come under threat. Meanwhile, a lawmaker says the U.K.'s prime minister should consider another option. If you're determined to divest the people of the United Kingdom of these islands, please sell them to the United States. And as President Trump and China's Xi spoke by phone discussing Taiwan, as China restated its claims of the island, Taiwan's opposition delayed a new defense budget, drawing criticism from U.S. lawmakers. The Trump-Xi call has put the budget stalemate back in the spotlight. A call between President Trump and China's Xi on Wednesday has China weighing a decision to import more U.S. soybeans. But the goodwill comes as tensions rise over Washington's latest $11 billion arms sale to Taiwan this month. Donald Trump says he's had a very positive call with Chinese leader Xi Jinping. The U.S. president says China is considering buying more American soybeans as a result. The move comes as both leaders try to stabilize relations ahead of Trump's expected visit to Beijing in April. Trump says Xi is weighing an increase in soybean purchases to 20 million metric tons this season. That would be a big jump from last year, with prices for the beans jumping on the news. But even with the goodwill gesture, tensions remain. China warned the U.S. over its recent $11 billion arms sale to Taiwan, calling on Washington to handle the issue carefully. Taiwan, meanwhile, expects more weapons deals as its standoff with Beijing continues. China sees the island as part of its territory and hasn't ruled out using force to seize it. The U.S., while officially recognizing Beijing, remains Taiwan's main arms supplier. Economic friction also continues, with disputes over tariffs, technology and critical minerals still unresolved. Beyond soybeans, the two leaders discussed global flashpoints, including Iran and Ukraine. It's all part of efforts to find common ground as the world's two biggest economies navigate a fragile trade truce. Trump called the relationship extremely good, saying both sides recognize the importance of maintaining strong ties. Xi, in an official summary, said he attaches great importance to Sino-U.S. relations. President Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping spoke by phone on Wednesday. Trump later posted on True Social that Taiwan was part of the discussion. China's foreign ministry repeated its position that Taiwan is part of China and urged Washington to be cautious about its arms sales. Beijing said Trump acknowledged China's concerns and agreed to stay in communication to keep U.S.-China relations stable. Taiwan President Lai Qingde said on Thursday ties with the United States remain strong and unchanged. He also stressed that Taiwan does not belong to China. Meanwhile, Taiwan's opposition has once again blocked a plan to spend about $40 billion on defense over the next eight years. President Lai warned the move could put Taiwan at risk. The U.S. State Department and lawmakers from both parties have also responded to the development. U.S. lawmakers are criticizing Taiwan's opposition parties for blocking a new defense budget. Senator Roger Wicker said he's disappointed, while Republican Dan Sullivan warned that cutting Taiwan's defense to bow to China is playing with fire. Democrat Ruben Gallego added that with threats from Beijing rising, now is not the time to weaken Taiwan's defenses. The $40 billion defense budget includes major U.S. arms purchases, but opposition parties have stalled it, including the Kuomintang and Taiwan People's Party. Some KMT lawmakers are worried that previous U.S. delivery delays mean American contractors might struggle to meet Taiwan's large arms purchases. Meanwhile, KMT's vice chairman visited Beijing this week for a forum with Chinese official think tanks and met senior official Wang Huning. KMT chairman reportedly hopes to visit Beijing this year and meet Xi Jinping. Some analysts say the budget deadlock shows Taiwan's political divisions. They note how it allows Beijing to use it to strengthen its infiltration and fulfill Xi's goal of winning without fighting. The director of the American Institute in Taiwan, Raymond Green, called the spending essential for deterrence. He urged Taiwan's parties to find common ground. The U.S. State Department echoed that support and welcomed Taiwan's $40 billion defense budget. Taiwan's defense budget has grown steadily, now 2.5 percent of GDP, aiming for 3.3 percent by 2026. The investigation is now underway over a suspected bio lab found at a Las Vegas home. Its owner is a Chinese national who's been arrested three years ago after authorities discovered an illegal bio lab he ran in California. One major concern is that it's not very difficult to start a virus testing lab in the U.S. due to a lack of strong regulations. How could the Chinese regime exploit this loophole and does it pose a potential bioweapon threat? NTT's Don Ma spoke to Joshua Phillips for Insight. He's a senior investigative reporter for The Epoch Times who investigated the bio lab in California. Take a look. So Josh, always great to have you on the show here. Now investigators are saying the makeshift lab in Las Vegas has links to the Readley bio lab found in California in 2023 which you reported on. So can you tell us more about this? What is the situation? Yeah, so a bio lab tied to a Chinese national was found in both Readley, California which is a nice little farming town and also in a place in Las Vegas. The individual who is, you know, being accused with this, he was with the lab in Readley, California. This is Jai Bei Ju and basically, he's a wanted fugitive from Canada. He was caught doing IP theft, intellectual property theft in Canada. Came to the U.S. and he was running what he's being accused of. He's awaiting trial basically in California still. The allegation is they were making counterfeit COVID-19 test kits and selling them on the internet. It was a very strange case. Authorities went in the California one. People might have heard there was a story that they had found Ebola in a Chinese bio lab in California. The reality of it is they never actually tested any of the vials. There were refrigerators with unlabeled or unknown substances. Some of them had Chinese names. Some of them had code names or pieces of paper that was assumed, you know, basically went with them. The CDC never tested any of the vials. Local officials called. Nothing ever happened with it and everything was destroyed. What is known, they had live COVID-19, live tuberculosis, live HIV, live handful of other diseases. They also had over a thousand humanized mice they were doing experiments on, part of the process of making these counterfeit COVID test kits. The individual charged with that is part of the same company that's apparently tied in with this laboratory they just found in Vegas. He claims that he's already since stepped down from that, but we're awaiting information still. We don't really know what the heck is going on with it. Okay, so Josh, what is the concern here? You mentioned live viruses and diseases in these makeshift bio labs. Is the concern that these pathogens, viruses could be released accidentally or on purpose? That, I mean, that's a real concern because, and this is how it was explained to me by several people I interviewed. Okay, concern number one, in the United States, there are really not any strong regulations against doing this. And that was a big concern the Readley lab raised. I spoke to several local officials about this. Basically, in the United States, if you want to start up a virus testing lab, it's not that difficult. You can register it. You can buy humanized mice. They're only about $7 each. They're not even expensive. You can buy live viruses and you can experiment with it. The laboratory they found in California was in the back part of the recycling center that used to be a refrigeration chamber for a local rail line, like not even a professional complex. The one they found in Vegas, this was apparently in the back of someone's house. The concern is somebody could mess up. Maybe you'll infect yourself experimenting with different viruses and then go around and who knows what you could cause. You could cause quite a bit of damage. The other concern that was raised to me, though, is how the CCP could use this because a lot of these individuals tied in with this Readley lab, Chinese citizens, people tied in with IP theft, intellectual property theft, people tied in with the United Front, just through their associations. The CCP, if they did want to use this, you wouldn't have to launch a biological warfare attack on America. You can make it look like an accident in someone's backyard. On that concern, Congress's Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party has raised such concerns of bioweapons research at the Readley lab. What do you make of those concerns? The hard reality is we'll never get answers on the Readley lab because everything was destroyed. All the evidence was destroyed. They had to hire a company to come in and basically just eradicate everything. The reason was local officials. I spoke with them. I interviewed them. They called the CDC and the CDC hung up the phone on them. In the United States, it's not even illegal to do that type of research. In fact, the individual facing charges is not facing charges because of that. He's facing charges because he's accused of selling counterfeit COVID test kits, that kind of stuff, counterfeiting. It's not related to bioweapons research. We might get answers from the Las Vegas laboratory, though, because we're not given many details yet, but they're based on the information coming out. Authorities, when they raided that lab, they did actually seize the vials. If they seized the vials, I would imagine there's no way you're going to seize things like that and not test them, if not only for safety. We might actually get answers because of the connections to the Las Vegas lab. Josh, you said earlier that the CCP somehow could use these bio labs. Is there evidence that shows the CCP is directly involved in these incidents? Only indirectly. I did look into that pretty extensively. I went to San Francisco, Chinatown, looked into some of the associations tied in with it. You do have some CCP-tied individuals connected to the lab. You also, through the same network, have what are called the Little Red Schools, which are Chinese Communist Party indoctrination centers, schools for young kids based in Las Vegas. You do have CCP connections. In terms of Chinese Communist Party biowarfare projects, it's a lot of smoke and mirrors. What a lot of people would tell you, most countries would say, we do not have a biowarfare program, but they all do. The reason is, what is a biowarfare program? A biowarfare program is virus research. A biowarfare program is gain-of-function research. A biowarfare program looks like what was just found in Las Vegas. That is what they actually look like, but they just call it something else, which is virus research or whatever else. That is the form that biological weapons research programs take. On this issue of biowarfare potentially, we've seen recent cases of Chinese nationals being charged and convicted of smuggling biological pathogens into the U.S. I'm just wondering here, just finally, is all of this connected in some way? We don't know. Hopefully, we get answers. Without a doubt, it is known this. Individuals tied in the Chinese Communist Party have established very, very unsafe, very low-quality, containing probably very dangerous pathogens in the United States, experimenting with them with humanized mice on presence, meaning that they are developing things that could potentially infect humans. We do know that Chinese nationals tied in, based on what we're hearing from the CCP, have in fact, as you mentioned, been smuggling pathogens into the United States, including things that could be agro-terrorism. For example, that one of them was a fungus that could have destroyed a lot of our crops and killed cattle and killed humans, but mostly destroyed our food supply. All of these should raise alarms. All of these really should raise alarms. If it did turn out that the lab in Reedley, California had Ebola, which we never got answers on, but there were packages sealed in such a way to contain such pathogens, and with a label that did say Ebola, it was destroyed, we'll never know, but that is the fact in terms of what was found. That could have very easily been something that could have led to a lot of people dying, and hopefully we get answers on it. Still a lot of unanswered questions, but like you said, at the very least, despite this, this should raise alarms to everyone. Thank you so much, Josh, for speaking with us. Absolutely. Thank you. President Trump warned the U.S. would militarily secure its base on the Chacos Islands if American forces were threatened. In a Truth Social post Thursday, he said he had a productive discussion with the U.K. Prime Minister about the island's future. The islands are home to Diego Garcia, a strategic U.S. military base that enables power projection across the Indian Ocean. The U.K. recently decided to transfer the sovereignty of the islands to Mauritius, an African country with ties to China. Under this arrangement, the U.S. would be able to continue operating its military base under a lease. But some lawmakers have expressed concerns the deal would allow China to spy on it. Trump said he understands that the deal Stalmer negotiated is the best he could achieve. The statement marks a shift in Trump's stance on the future of the base. Even though his administration had previously supported the deal, the president said last month it was, quote, an act of great stupidity. Meanwhile, Senator John Kennedy is calling on the U.K. to reconsider the deal and do what he says is the right thing. If you're determined to give away these islands to Mauritius, which never owned them, which inevitably is going to help China, if you're determined to divest the people of the United Kingdom of these islands, please sell them to the United States. Kennedy said he would gladly sponsor a bill to fund the purchase. He said it would allow the U.S. to maintain control of what he called one of the most important military bases in history. The last nuclear treaty between the U.S. and Russia expires Thursday. That means the countries no longer have limits on their arsenals. China is rapidly building its own nuclear weapons supply. President Trump is calling for a treaty that includes the U.S., Russia and China. Coming up, Panama stands firm against China's threats after its court ruling on a canal. More on why the decision matters for U.S. trade and national security. And espionage concerns about China. U.S.-based self-driving taxi company Waymo is facing scrutiny from lawmakers over its use of Chinese-made vehicles. More on that after the break here on China In Focus. Welcome back to China In Focus. I'm Tiffany Meyer. Panama is standing firm on its decision to push China out of its canal. On Wednesday, the country's president responded to China's threats over the eviction of a Hong Kong company from two key ports. The dispute highlights the ongoing tug-of-war between the U.S. and China over trade and influence in Latin America. Panama's president, Jose Raul Molina, rejected China's threats, saying his country respects the rule of law. Chinese officials claimed it was an effort by the U.S. to seize control of the ports and undermine international norms. They added that Panama could face, quote, The warning came after Panama's Supreme Court ruled last week that it was unconstitutional for Hong Kong-based CK Hutchison to control its ports. It's worth noting the Panama Canal connects the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, handles roughly 40 percent of U.S. maritime cargo and 5 percent of global trade. Analysts warned that in times of conflict, the Chinese regime could After the ruling, Panama handed management over to Danish shipping giant Maersk for the time being, while it looks for a new long-term operator. It's a major win for the U.S., as Washington seeks to reduce Chinese influence in Latin America and the Western Hemisphere. A heated Senate hearing is putting the spotlight on America's self-driving car industry and its reliance on Chinese-made vehicles. lawmakers pressed autonomous car companies, especially Waymo, over safety concerns, outsourcing and the use of foreign technology. During a hearing Wednesday, senators questioned Waymo executives about plans to use cars from a Chinese automaker. They also raised concerns about the company's use of overseas workers who can control these robo-taxis remotely during emergency situations. Lawmakers warned that Chinese-made technology and overseas workers could pose potential national security and safety risks on American roads. Waymo, a self-driving taxi company owned by Google's parent company Alphabet, first launched its robo-taxi service in 2020 in Arizona. Just one year later, Waymo partnered with Chinese automaker Zeker. Since then, the company has expanded to major U.S. cities, including San Francisco, Los Angeles, Miami and Austin. In 2025, Waymo's self-driving services were used roughly 15 million times across these cities, with plans to expand even further. But the U.S. rules finalized that same year could block imports of vehicles with self-driving or connected software linked to China. Chinese-made vehicles have been under scrutiny over national security concerns they could gather U.S. road data, images and video. Lawmakers worry that information could be sent back to the Chinese regime, potentially putting Americans and critical infrastructure at risk. The Chinese Communist Party is waging a war against God, according to Ambassador Sam Brownback. Lawmakers heard from a variety of witnesses on the tactics authoritarian regimes use to suppress faith. NTD's Chris Bobb has the story. At a Capitol Hill hearing Wednesday, former Ambassador-at-Large Sam Brownback told lawmakers that the Chinese Communist Party is leading a global persecution campaign against faith, targeting Christians, Buddhists, Uyghur Muslims and especially Falun Gong practitioners. Communist China will spend billions of dollars this year alone to suppress every faith that exists in that country. And they save their greatest anger and bile for the Falun Gong. We should see them as our greatest ally. These are people behind enemy lines that will stand up to the regime, that will stand up to the oppressors, because they overcome their fear with their interior faith. They will fight, even if it means their life. Brownback says China uses advanced surveillance technology to crush religious freedom. Literally, it's a war on God. They can find that one person out of 100,000 that will actually lead people against a regime that's driven by their faith. They can pinpoint that person and get him or her. Brownback urged the U.S. government to more openly support religious leaders targeted by authoritarian regimes. But you act through these people that are people of faith and back them. Have the vice president, the secretary of state, go to Dharamsala, India and meet with the Dalai Lama and say, we are behind you guys. Bring the head of Falun Gong, the gentleman that brought Falun Gong out, who is now exiled in the United States, bring him here and laud them for what they have done in standing up and trying to bring ancient Chinese civilization back. Dr. Stephen Schneck warned that U.S. programs supporting religious freedom abroad are at risk. That the programs of USAID, programs at the Department of State, some programs at the U.S. Institute of Peace, Voice of America, these programs, nation building programs, frankly, have been a critical component of the United States effort to promote religious freedom abroad. So around the world, the funding that the United States government has been providing, that money has largely withered and dried up as a result of the Doge cuts. As lawmakers seek to hold the Chinese regime accountable, one bill moving through the Senate is the Falun Gong Protection Act. Passed by the House last May, the legislation now has eight Senate co-sponsors and targets forced organ harvesting and other systematic abuses against people of faith in China. Reporting from Washington, D.C., Chris Bobb, NTD News. 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 chinainfocusatntd.com. 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