China's foreign minister Wang Yi on Monday called on the new administration under President Joe Biden to reopen dialogue between the two countries but also warned the US not to meddle in China's internal affairs.

Watch:

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"We have no intention to challenge or replace the US. We are ready to have a peaceful co-existence and common developments with the US, likewise, we hope the US will respect China's core interests, national dignity and rights of development," China's foreign minister said.

"We urge the US to stop smearing the Communist Party of China and China's political system, stop conniving at or support the erroneous words and actions of the separatist forces for Taiwan independence, and stop undermining China's sovereignty and security on internal affairs concerning Hong Kong, Xinjiang and Tibet, " Wang asserted.

"China and the US have different social systems and in different stage of development, different cultures and histories, so it is natural that both sides have differences and conflicts. What is key is utilising dialogue to get to know more about each other and not be defined by differences between both countries," Yi added.

Wang pointed to the recent call between Chinese President Xi Jinping and Biden as a "positive step". Washington and Beijing have clashed on multiple fronts including trade, accusations of human rights over the past few years under the former Trump administration.

"The door of dialogue with China has always been opened. We are always prepared to start an open and public dialogue with the US that is aimed at solving problems," Yi said, saying further that, "China is happy to see American companies in China achieve bigger success. And will take beneficial measures to make improve China's business environment."

China's foreign minister also called the US to &nbsp;remove "unreasonable tariffs" on Chinese products and to "remove unilateral sanctions on Chinese companies, research and scientific institutions." 
&nbsp;

China's foreign minister Wang Yi on Monday called on the new administration under President Joe Biden to reopen dialogue between the two countries but also warned the US not to meddle in China's internal affairs.

China's foreign minister Wang Yi on Monday called on the new administration under President Joe Biden to reopen dialogue between the two countries but also warned the US not to meddle in China's internal affairs. Watch: "We have no intention to challenge or replace the US. We are ready to have a peaceful co-existence and common developments with the US, likewise, we hope the US will respect China's core interests, national dignity and rights of development," China's foreign minister said. "We urge the US to stop smearing the Communist Party of China and China's political system, stop conniving at or support the erroneous words and actions of the separatist forces for Taiwan independence, and stop undermining China's sovereignty and security on internal affairs concerning Hong Kong, Xinjiang and Tibet, " Wang asserted. "China and the US have different social systems and in different stage of development, different cultures and histories, so it is natural that both sides have differences and conflicts. What is key is utilising dialogue to get to know more about each other and not be defined by differences between both countries," Yi added. Wang pointed to the recent call between Chinese President Xi Jinping and Biden as a "positive step". Washington and Beijing have clashed on multiple fronts including trade, accusations of human rights over the past few years under the former Trump administration. "The door of dialogue with China has always been opened. We are always prepared to start an open and public dialogue with the US that is aimed at solving problems," Yi said, saying further that, "China is happy to see American companies in China achieve bigger success. And will take beneficial measures to make improve China's business environment." China's foreign minister also called the US to remove "unreasonable tariffs" on Chinese products and to "remove unilateral sanctions on Chinese companies, research and scientific institutions."

'Remove sanctions': We have no intention to challenge or replace the US, says China

Ever since Joe Biden came to power, it has become fashionable for some to claim that the Indian government will face some pushback on its internal affairs. However, America is not in a position to do any such thing.

Being a seasoned politician, Joe Biden knows better than offending India. The Indian diaspora in the US has become quite affluent and influential. Indian-Americans funded Biden's campaign and now at least 20 Indian-Americans are part of the White House team.

Also read|&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/joe-bidens-america-is-back-falls-short-of-real-action-362271" hreflang="en">Joe Biden's 'America is back' falls short of real action</a>

Also, the geopolitical realities have changed since the Obama era. Today, India is a leading global force and enjoys strong bipartisan support across the world. India sits at the high table of the United Nations Security Council. In fact, just three days back, India played a key role in shaping the UNSC statement on Myanmar.

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In addition to this, India's vaccine diplomacy spreads as far as Latin America as New Delhi is supplying vaccines to countries such as Brazil and Mexico.&nbsp;

There's a congruence of interests on the diplomatic front as India and America are on the same page when it comes to Taiwan and China. India is America's strategic counter to Chinese aggression. The quad countries are already arranging a meeting of their leaders with an eye on China. India is the only quad member that shares a land border with China and operates outside of the US Security-led alliances.

Also read|&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/as-joe-biden-takes-over-the-us-does-the-world-trust-him-362269">As Joe Biden takes over the US, does the world trust him?</a>

America would think twice before interfering in India's internal affairs just as India has steered clear of interfering in America's. However, there's no guarantee that Joe Biden will be as tough on China as Donald Trump. It could be mere political compulsion, given the kind of narrative Trump had built in the last four years.

Considering, Biden is a seasoned politician, he is likely to seek more avenues of cooperation than actively stoke more conflicts with China — something Biden suggested in his first diplomatic address.

"We'll confront China's economic abuses, counter its aggressive course of action to push back on China's attack on human rights, intellectual property and global governance. But we are ready to work with Beijing when it's in America's interest to do so," Biden said. "We are ready to work with Beijing when it's in America's interest to do so."

this shows that Biden won't deal with China as Trump did. In his back pocket, he has a longstanding relationship with Xi Jinping. In a recent interview, he noted that he had spent more time with Xi than most world leaders. He said, "I had 24 to 25 hours of private meetings with him when I was Vice President. Traveled 17,000 miles with him. I know him pretty well".

India's relationship with America hinges strongly on how Joe Biden deals with China.&nbsp;

Russia

Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA) is a law aimed at pushing back Russian influence. Under this act, the US has sanctioned Turkey for buying the S-400 missile defence system from Russia. Remember, India too has ordered the S-400 systems from Russia. In fact, India is Russia's largest defence customer.

The Trump administration limited itself to 'expressing displeasure', but the question is whether Joe Biden will do the same or will he use CAATSA against India — a major potential defence buyer and a clear strategic partner. There's no guarantee, although he cannot really afford to irk India with sanctions.

So the bottom line is that the current geopolitical chessboard is complex and India has strategically positioned itself in this game. The Biden administration will have to find a way to work with India, the odd statements to appease Biden's domestic vote bank, notwithstanding.

Ever since Joe Biden came to power, it has become fashionable for some to claim that the Indian government will face some pushback on its internal affairs. However, America is not in a position to do any such thing.

Ever since Joe Biden came to power, it has become fashionable for some to claim that the Indian government will face some pushback on its internal affairs. However, America is not in a position to do any such thing. Being a seasoned politician, Joe Biden knows better than offending India. The Indian diaspora in the US has become quite affluent and influential. Indian-Americans funded Biden's campaign and now at least 20 Indian-Americans are part of the White House team. Also read| Joe Biden's 'America is back' falls short of real action Also, the geopolitical realities have changed since the Obama era. Today, India is a leading global force and enjoys strong bipartisan support across the world. India sits at the high table of the United Nations Security Council. In fact, just three days back, India played a key role in shaping the UNSC statement on Myanmar. In addition to this, India's vaccine diplomacy spreads as far as Latin America as New Delhi is supplying vaccines to countries such as Brazil and Mexico. There's a congruence of interests on the diplomatic front as India and America are on the same page when it comes to Taiwan and China. India is America's strategic counter to Chinese aggression. The quad countries are already arranging a meeting of their leaders with an eye on China. India is the only quad member that shares a land border with China and operates outside of the US Security-led alliances. Also read| As Joe Biden takes over the US, does the world trust him? America would think twice before interfering in India's internal affairs just as India has steered clear of interfering in America's. However, there's no guarantee that Joe Biden will be as tough on China as Donald Trump. It could be mere political compulsion, given the kind of narrative Trump had built in the last four years. Considering, Biden is a seasoned politician, he is likely to seek more avenues of cooperation than actively stoke more conflicts with China — something Biden suggested in his first diplomatic address. "We'll confront China's economic abuses, counter its aggressive course of action to push back on China's attack on human rights, intellectual property and global governance. But we are ready to work with Beijing when it's in America's interest to do so," Biden said. "We are ready to work with Beijing when it's in America's interest to do so." this shows that Biden won't deal with China as Trump did. In his back pocket, he has a longstanding relationship with Xi Jinping. In a recent interview, he noted that he had spent more time with Xi than most world leaders. He said, "I had 24 to 25 hours of private meetings with him when I was Vice President. Traveled 17,000 miles with him. I know him pretty well". India's relationship with America hinges strongly on how Joe Biden deals with China. Russia Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA) is a law aimed at pushing back Russian influence. Under this act, the US has sanctioned Turkey for buying the S-400 missile defence system from Russia. Remember, India too has ordered the S-400 systems from Russia. In fact, India is Russia's largest defence customer. The Trump administration limited itself to 'expressing displeasure', but the question is whether Joe Biden will do the same or will he use CAATSA against India — a major potential defence buyer and a clear strategic partner. There's no guarantee, although he cannot really afford to irk India with sanctions. So the bottom line is that the current geopolitical chessboard is complex and India has strategically positioned itself in this game. The Biden administration will have to find a way to work with India, the odd statements to appease Biden's domestic vote bank, notwithstanding.

With Biden's dreams for America, will the US-India ties change?

US Congress on Tuesday passed new legislation&nbsp;that reaffirms the rights of Tibetans to choose a successor to their spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, a move that infuriated China.

Lobsang Sangay, Prime Minister of the Tibetan government-in-exile,&nbsp;welcomed the Tibetan Policy and Support Act passed by the US Congress, calling it a historic move and a clear message to China.

Also read:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/us-appoints-tibet-coordinator-to-send-a-message-to-china-335576">US appoints Tibet coordinator to send a message to China</a>

China regards the exiled Dalai Lama as a dangerous "splittist", or separatist, and the latest show of support from the US&nbsp;Congress could increase already tense ties between the two countries.

The Chinese foreign ministry accused the US&nbsp;of meddling in its internal affairs and warned the U.S. against signing the legislation into law, foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin told a regular briefing on Tuesday.

"We urge the US&nbsp;side to stop meddling in China's internal affairs and refrain from signing into law these negative clauses and acts, lest it further harms our further cooperation and bilateral relations," Wang said.

Also read:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/china-to-impose-visa-restrictions-on-us-citizens-over-tibet-311589">China to impose visa restrictions on US citizens over Tibet</a>

China seized control of Tibet after its troops entered the region in 1950 in what it calls a "peaceful liberation". Tibet has since become one of the most restricted and sensitive areas in the country.

The Dalai Lama fled into exile in India in 1959 after a failed uprising against Chinese rule.

The legislation calls for the establishment of a US&nbsp;consulate in Tibet's main city of Lhasa, the absolute right of Tibetans to choose a successor to the Dalai Lama, and the preservation of Tibet's environment.

The legislation also proposes a "regional framework on water security" and greater participation from the community in dialogue with China on monitoring the region's environment.

"The People's Republic of China has already completed water transfer programmes diverting billions of cubic metres of water yearly and has plans to divert more waters from the Tibetan plateau in China," the bill said.

Environmental groups and Tibetan rights activists have expressed concern about China's hydropower ambitions in the region, saying they could affect downstream water supplies.

China has said its leaders have the right to approve the Dalai Lama's successor, which many see as a coercive attempt to control Tibet, where ethnic Tibetans make up about 90% of the population.

"By passing the TPSA, Congress has sent its message loud and clear that Tibet remains a priority for the United States and that it will continue its steadfast support for His Holiness the Dalai Lama and the CTA," Sangay said.

"This is a victory for the Tibetan freedom struggle."

China accuses the US&nbsp;of destabilising the region by interfering in its internal affairs.

Relations between China and the United States have deteriorated to their worst in decades over a range of issues, including trade, Taiwan, human rights, Hong Kong, the South China Sea and the coronavirus.

The US&nbsp;bill also proposes dialogue between the Chinese government and the Dalai Lama.

US Congress on Tuesday passed new legislation that reaffirms the rights of Tibetans to choose a successor to their spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, a move that infuriated China.

US Congress on Tuesday passed new legislation that reaffirms the rights of Tibetans to choose a successor to their spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, a move that infuriated China. Lobsang Sangay, Prime Minister of the Tibetan government-in-exile, welcomed the Tibetan Policy and Support Act passed by the US Congress, calling it a historic move and a clear message to China. Also read: US appoints Tibet coordinator to send a message to China China regards the exiled Dalai Lama as a dangerous "splittist", or separatist, and the latest show of support from the US Congress could increase already tense ties between the two countries. The Chinese foreign ministry accused the US of meddling in its internal affairs and warned the U.S. against signing the legislation into law, foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin told a regular briefing on Tuesday. "We urge the US side to stop meddling in China's internal affairs and refrain from signing into law these negative clauses and acts, lest it further harms our further cooperation and bilateral relations," Wang said. Also read: China to impose visa restrictions on US citizens over Tibet China seized control of Tibet after its troops entered the region in 1950 in what it calls a "peaceful liberation". Tibet has since become one of the most restricted and sensitive areas in the country. The Dalai Lama fled into exile in India in 1959 after a failed uprising against Chinese rule. The legislation calls for the establishment of a US consulate in Tibet's main city of Lhasa, the absolute right of Tibetans to choose a successor to the Dalai Lama, and the preservation of Tibet's environment. The legislation also proposes a "regional framework on water security" and greater participation from the community in dialogue with China on monitoring the region's environment. "The People's Republic of China has already completed water transfer programmes diverting billions of cubic metres of water yearly and has plans to divert more waters from the Tibetan plateau in China," the bill said. Environmental groups and Tibetan rights activists have expressed concern about China's hydropower ambitions in the region, saying they could affect downstream water supplies. China has said its leaders have the right to approve the Dalai Lama's successor, which many see as a coercive attempt to control Tibet, where ethnic Tibetans make up about 90% of the population. "By passing the TPSA, Congress has sent its message loud and clear that Tibet remains a priority for the United States and that it will continue its steadfast support for His Holiness the Dalai Lama and the CTA," Sangay said. "This is a victory for the Tibetan freedom struggle." China accuses the US of destabilising the region by interfering in its internal affairs. Relations between China and the United States have deteriorated to their worst in decades over a range of issues, including trade, Taiwan, human rights, Hong Kong, the South China Sea and the coronavirus. The US bill also proposes dialogue between the Chinese government and the Dalai Lama.

US Congress passes new Tibet law on the next Dalai Lama; infuriates China

A&nbsp;US-funded project using satellites to track and publish water levels at&nbsp;Chinese&nbsp;dams&nbsp;on the&nbsp;Mekong&nbsp;river was announced on Monday, adding to the superpowers'&nbsp;rivalry&nbsp;in Southeast Asia.

The 4,350-km (2,700-mile) waterway - known as the Lancang in China and flowing south through Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam - has become a focus of competition.

Beijing has dismissed&nbsp;US&nbsp;research saying&nbsp;Chinese&nbsp;dams&nbsp;have retained water to the detriment of downstream nations, where 60 million people depend on the river for fishing and farming.

Also read:&nbsp;<a href="http://13.235.153.162/world/chinas-combative-nationalists-see-a-world-turning-their-way-349658" hreflang="en">China’s combative nationalists see a world turning their way</a>

The&nbsp;Mekong&nbsp;Dam Monitor, part-funded by the State Department, uses data from cloud-piercing satellites to track levels of&nbsp;dams&nbsp;in China and other countries.

The information will be open for everyone in near real-time from Tuesday.

A separate indicator of "surface wetness" is to show which parts of the region are wetter or drier than usual: a guide to how much natural flows are being affected by the&nbsp;dams.

"The monitor provides evidence that China's 11 mainstream&nbsp;dams&nbsp;are sophisticatedly orchestrated and operated in a way to maximize the production of hydropower for sale to China’s eastern provinces with zero consideration given to downstream impacts," said Brian Eyler of the Washington-based Stimson Center, a global think tank which operates the virtual water gauges.

'POSITIVE BENEFITS'

China has been critical of past research, including a study by Eyes on Earth - part of the&nbsp;Mekong&nbsp;Dam Monitor project - which said water had been held back in 2019 as other countries suffered severe drought.

"The United States has been unable to provide good evidence throughout," the state-backed China Renewable Energy Engineering Institute said in a Dec. 4 report.

Also read:&nbsp;<a href="http://13.235.153.162/world/china-in-nudge-to-us-makes-a-new-promise-to-tackle-global-warming-349485" hreflang="en">China, in nudge to US, makes a new promise to tackle global warming</a>

"The positive benefits of&nbsp;upstream Lancang river hydropower on downstream&nbsp;Mekong&nbsp;neighbours&nbsp;are clear and obvious," it said, adding that water stored in reservoirs during the flood season helped prevent both downstream floods and droughts.

China agreed earlier this year to share water data with the&nbsp;Mekong&nbsp;River Commission (MRC) - an advisory body to Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam that had long sought the information for better planning.

China and the United States have rival bodies working with&nbsp;Mekong&nbsp;countries: the Beijing-based Lancang-Mekong&nbsp;Cooperation and the&nbsp;Mekong-US&nbsp;Partnership.

The two nations are also at odds in the South China Sea, where Washington challenges Beijing's claim to most of the waterway, a major conduit for trade that is also rich in energy resources.

A US-funded project using satellites to track and publish water levels at Chinese dams on the Mekong river was announced on Monday, adding to the superpowers' rivalry in Southeast Asia.

A US-funded project using satellites to track and publish water levels at Chinese dams on the Mekong river was announced on Monday, adding to the superpowers' rivalry in Southeast Asia. The 4,350-km (2,700-mile) waterway - known as the Lancang in China and flowing south through Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam - has become a focus of competition. Beijing has dismissed US research saying Chinese dams have retained water to the detriment of downstream nations, where 60 million people depend on the river for fishing and farming. Also read: China’s combative nationalists see a world turning their way The Mekong Dam Monitor, part-funded by the State Department, uses data from cloud-piercing satellites to track levels of dams in China and other countries. The information will be open for everyone in near real-time from Tuesday. A separate indicator of "surface wetness" is to show which parts of the region are wetter or drier than usual: a guide to how much natural flows are being affected by the dams. "The monitor provides evidence that China's 11 mainstream dams are sophisticatedly orchestrated and operated in a way to maximize the production of hydropower for sale to China’s eastern provinces with zero consideration given to downstream impacts," said Brian Eyler of the Washington-based Stimson Center, a global think tank which operates the virtual water gauges. 'POSITIVE BENEFITS' China has been critical of past research, including a study by Eyes on Earth - part of the Mekong Dam Monitor project - which said water had been held back in 2019 as other countries suffered severe drought. "The United States has been unable to provide good evidence throughout," the state-backed China Renewable Energy Engineering Institute said in a Dec. 4 report. Also read: China, in nudge to US, makes a new promise to tackle global warming "The positive benefits of upstream Lancang river hydropower on downstream Mekong neighbours are clear and obvious," it said, adding that water stored in reservoirs during the flood season helped prevent both downstream floods and droughts. China agreed earlier this year to share water data with the Mekong River Commission (MRC) - an advisory body to Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam that had long sought the information for better planning. China and the United States have rival bodies working with Mekong countries: the Beijing-based Lancang-Mekong Cooperation and the Mekong-US Partnership. The two nations are also at odds in the South China Sea, where Washington challenges Beijing's claim to most of the waterway, a major conduit for trade that is also rich in energy resources.

US announces project to track water levels of Chinese dams situated along Mekong river

After provoking India militarily, China recently claimed that COVID-19 originated in India.&nbsp;Now, it is trying to build dams to control water supply.

What is driving China's behaviour? Has the incoming Biden administration and its promise to work with India against China rattled Beijing?

In the United States, Democrats and Republicans don’t agree on much these days. But they agree on one thing. They believe that China under Xi Jinping presents a threat to global security. Beijing, well aware of this has been cautious about dealing with US President-elect Joe Biden.

Also read:&nbsp;<a href="http://13.235.153.162/world/china-prepares-to-build-dam-on-brahmaputra-river-in-tibet-india-raises-concern-346417" hreflang="en">China prepares to build dam on Brahmaputra river in Tibet; India raises concern</a>

Xi Jinping waited for weeks before sending his congratulations. The Biden administration is making plans to contain China, and it wants India's help.

Joe Biden's candidate to replace Mike Pompeo is Antony Blinken, who wants India to be a key American partner in dealing with China from a position of strength.

While speaking to Indian Americans earlier this year, Blinken said that India and the US "have a common challenge which is to deal with an increasingly assertive china across the board, including its aggression toward India at the line of actual control, but also using its economic might to coerce others”.

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That statement is a reflection of the hard line that Biden has taken against the dragon. The president-elect, during his campaign called Xi Jinping a thug, and backed India over China in the ongoing border standoff.

Considering this, Chinese state media is warning that relations may not improve under Joe Biden. Last week, Chinese ministry of foreign affairs adopted a cautious tone, calling for "no conflict" or "confrontation" with US.

The tensions at the border haven't simmered, with Beijing doubling down on its aggression. India and the United States are expected to mount a strong anti-China front and take the dragon head on.

After provoking India militarily, China recently claimed that COVID-19 originated in India. Now, it is trying to build dams to control water supply. What is driving China's behaviour?

After provoking India militarily, China recently claimed that COVID-19 originated in India. Now, it is trying to build dams to control water supply. What is driving China's behaviour? Has the incoming Biden administration and its promise to work with India against China rattled Beijing? In the United States, Democrats and Republicans don’t agree on much these days. But they agree on one thing. They believe that China under Xi Jinping presents a threat to global security. Beijing, well aware of this has been cautious about dealing with US President-elect Joe Biden. Also read: China prepares to build dam on Brahmaputra river in Tibet; India raises concern Xi Jinping waited for weeks before sending his congratulations. The Biden administration is making plans to contain China, and it wants India's help. Joe Biden's candidate to replace Mike Pompeo is Antony Blinken, who wants India to be a key American partner in dealing with China from a position of strength. While speaking to Indian Americans earlier this year, Blinken said that India and the US "have a common challenge which is to deal with an increasingly assertive china across the board, including its aggression toward India at the line of actual control, but also using its economic might to coerce others”. × That statement is a reflection of the hard line that Biden has taken against the dragon. The president-elect, during his campaign called Xi Jinping a thug, and backed India over China in the ongoing border standoff. Considering this, Chinese state media is warning that relations may not improve under Joe Biden. Last week, Chinese ministry of foreign affairs adopted a cautious tone, calling for "no conflict" or "confrontation" with US. The tensions at the border haven't simmered, with Beijing doubling down on its aggression. India and the United States are expected to mount a strong anti-China front and take the dragon head on.

Has US President-elect Biden's promise to work with India rattled China?

The United States&nbsp;on Tuesday accused&nbsp;China&nbsp;of "flagrant violation" of its obligation to enforce international sanctions on North Korea and said Washington would offer rewards of up to $5 million for information about sanctions evasions.

Speaking to Washington's Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank, Deputy Assistant Secretary for North Korea State Alex Wong accused&nbsp;China&nbsp;of "seeking to undo" the U.N. sanctions regime aimed at persuading North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons.

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The State Department launched a new website, DPRKrewards.com, that will offer payouts of up to $5 million for tips to boost sanctions on North Korea, including on businesses in China.

"I want to tell you more are forthcoming," Alex Wong, the US deputy special representative on North Korea, said of sanctions.

Also read:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/china-gave-covid-19-vaccine-candidate-to-north-koreas-kim-jong-un-us-analyst-346652" hreflang="en">China gave Covid-19 vaccine candidate to North Korea's Kim Jong Un: US analyst</a>

In a speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Wong acknowledged that Pyongyang has not yet taken "any concrete steps toward denuclearization" and voiced alarm over its unveiling of a massive long-range missile at a parade in October.

His hard-nosed assessment stands in contrast to the rosy statements over the past four years by Trump, who has boasted that he prevented a catastrophic war and said he deserves the Nobel Peace Prize.

But Wong mostly took aim at China, a frequent target of the Trump administration, as he accused Beijing of ignoring UN sanctions that it itself voted for over its ally's missile and nuclear programs.

"The premature sanctions relief that Beijing can't achieve through the diplomatic front door, it is instead trying to achieve through the backdoor -- by choosing not to rigorously implement its UN Security Council resolution obligations," Wong said.

"The examples of this chronic failure are numerous, growing, and worrying."

He said that US vessels provided information to Beijing 46 times since 2019 about North Korean fuel-smuggling in Chinese waters, and in the past year observed 555 cases of North Korean shipments of coal of other sanctioned exports to China.

"On none of these occasions did the Chinese authorities act to stop these illicit imports. Not once," Wong said.

Wong said that 20,000 North Korean workers still worked in China, going against UN-backed efforts to stop what is widely seen as slave labor that the regime exports for revenue.

China has been pushing to ease sanctions on North Korea, believing the regime should see incentives for denuclearisation, and is widely seen as fearing an economic implosion of its impoverished neighbour.

Trump resisted calls for sanctions relief in his February 2019 meeting with Kim in Hanoi, and Wong insisted Tuesday that such pressure provided "key impetus" for North Korea to take "serious denuclearization steps."

The United States on Tuesday accused China of "flagrant violation" of its obligation to enforce international sanctions on North Korea and said Washington would offer rewards of up to $5 million for information about sanctions evasions.

The United States on Tuesday accused China of "flagrant violation" of its obligation to enforce international sanctions on North Korea and said Washington would offer rewards of up to $5 million for information about sanctions evasions. Speaking to Washington's Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank, Deputy Assistant Secretary for North Korea State Alex Wong accused China of "seeking to undo" the U.N. sanctions regime aimed at persuading North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons. The State Department launched a new website, DPRKrewards.com, that will offer payouts of up to $5 million for tips to boost sanctions on North Korea, including on businesses in China. "I want to tell you more are forthcoming," Alex Wong, the US deputy special representative on North Korea, said of sanctions. Also read: China gave Covid-19 vaccine candidate to North Korea's Kim Jong Un: US analyst In a speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Wong acknowledged that Pyongyang has not yet taken "any concrete steps toward denuclearization" and voiced alarm over its unveiling of a massive long-range missile at a parade in October. His hard-nosed assessment stands in contrast to the rosy statements over the past four years by Trump, who has boasted that he prevented a catastrophic war and said he deserves the Nobel Peace Prize. But Wong mostly took aim at China, a frequent target of the Trump administration, as he accused Beijing of ignoring UN sanctions that it itself voted for over its ally's missile and nuclear programs. "The premature sanctions relief that Beijing can't achieve through the diplomatic front door, it is instead trying to achieve through the backdoor -- by choosing not to rigorously implement its UN Security Council resolution obligations," Wong said. "The examples of this chronic failure are numerous, growing, and worrying." He said that US vessels provided information to Beijing 46 times since 2019 about North Korean fuel-smuggling in Chinese waters, and in the past year observed 555 cases of North Korean shipments of coal of other sanctioned exports to China. "On none of these occasions did the Chinese authorities act to stop these illicit imports. Not once," Wong said. Wong said that 20,000 North Korean workers still worked in China, going against UN-backed efforts to stop what is widely seen as slave labor that the regime exports for revenue. China has been pushing to ease sanctions on North Korea, believing the regime should see incentives for denuclearisation, and is widely seen as fearing an economic implosion of its impoverished neighbour. Trump resisted calls for sanctions relief in his February 2019 meeting with Kim in Hanoi, and Wong insisted Tuesday that such pressure provided "key impetus" for North Korea to take "serious denuclearization steps."

US accuses China of 'flagrant violation' of North Korea sanctions

The United States National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien recently assured Vietnam and the Philippines of support against China’s “aggressive” actions in the South China Sea.

Hitting out at this, the Chinese embassy in Manila accused O’Brien of “stirring up trouble in the South China Sea”, as reported by the South China Morning Post. The embassy reportedly also accused US NSA of "provoking a rift between China and the Philippines".

In another statement from the Chinese Embassy in Hanoi, Chinese officials called on the US to end its campaign against China especially in terms of the South China Sea and the Mekong River.

Also read: S<a href="http://13.235.153.162/world/south-china-sea-us-vows-support-to-philippines-and-vietnam-over-row-with-china-344931" hreflang="en">outh China Sea: US vows support to Philippines and Vietnam over row with China</a>

"The US is not a party to the South China Sea dispute... but has been openly interfering in the issues under the name of safeguarding stability... and freedom of navigation," The South China Morning Post quoted Chinese embassy in Hanoi embassy as saying in a statement.

"Its purpose is never to help regional countries to resolve the dispute but to maintain its hegemony in the region," the statement claimed.

O’Brien met the Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc and Foreign Affairs Minister Pham Binh Minh, urging them to end end “illegal re-routing of Chinese exports.

He further told them that the US would help wither in purchasing American helicopters. Additionally, O’Brien confirmed the delivery of missiles worth $18 million, as pledged by Donald Trump in April.

Also read:&nbsp;<a href="http://13.235.153.162/world/philippines-china-seek-to-jointly-develop-energy-projects-in-south-china-sea-335695" hreflang="en">Philippines, China seek to jointly develop energy projects in South China Sea</a>

During the ASEAN Summit, O`Brien claimed that China`s actions in the Mekong river basin and the South China Sea were a threat to peace, stability, and sovereignty.

In response, Chinese embassies hit out at O’Brien claiming his remarks represented “Cold War mentality”, while adding that the goal of his visit was “not to promote regional peace and stability but to create chaos in the region”.

”In recent years, to safeguard its regional and global hegemony, the US has regarded itself as patron and judge of regional countries and directly intervened in the South China Sea and other issues," a statement read.

The United States National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien recently assured Vietnam and the Philippines of support against China’s “aggressive” actions in the South China Sea.

The United States National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien recently assured Vietnam and the Philippines of support against China’s “aggressive” actions in the South China Sea. Hitting out at this, the Chinese embassy in Manila accused O’Brien of “stirring up trouble in the South China Sea”, as reported by the South China Morning Post. The embassy reportedly also accused US NSA of "provoking a rift between China and the Philippines". In another statement from the Chinese Embassy in Hanoi, Chinese officials called on the US to end its campaign against China especially in terms of the South China Sea and the Mekong River. Also read: South China Sea: US vows support to Philippines and Vietnam over row with China "The US is not a party to the South China Sea dispute... but has been openly interfering in the issues under the name of safeguarding stability... and freedom of navigation," The South China Morning Post quoted Chinese embassy in Hanoi embassy as saying in a statement. "Its purpose is never to help regional countries to resolve the dispute but to maintain its hegemony in the region," the statement claimed. O’Brien met the Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc and Foreign Affairs Minister Pham Binh Minh, urging them to end end “illegal re-routing of Chinese exports. He further told them that the US would help wither in purchasing American helicopters. Additionally, O’Brien confirmed the delivery of missiles worth $18 million, as pledged by Donald Trump in April. Also read: Philippines, China seek to jointly develop energy projects in South China Sea During the ASEAN Summit, O`Brien claimed that China`s actions in the Mekong river basin and the South China Sea were a threat to peace, stability, and sovereignty. In response, Chinese embassies hit out at O’Brien claiming his remarks represented “Cold War mentality”, while adding that the goal of his visit was “not to promote regional peace and stability but to create chaos in the region”. ”In recent years, to safeguard its regional and global hegemony, the US has regarded itself as patron and judge of regional countries and directly intervened in the South China Sea and other issues," a statement read.

American NSA's visit to Vietnam, Philippines represents 'Cold War mentality': Chinese embassies

In addition to a deadly pandemic and a weakened economy, President-elect Joe Biden will inherit one more challenge when he takes office in January: a toxic relationship with the world’s second-largest economy.

President Donald Trump has placed tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars of products from China, imposed sanctions on Chinese companies and restricted Chinese businesses from buying U.S. technology — a multiyear onslaught aimed at forcing Beijing to change its trade practices and as punishment for its authoritarian ways. He shows no sign of letting up in his final days in office: On Thursday, Trump issued an executive order barring investments in Chinese firms with military ties.

The hard choices for Biden will include deciding whether to maintain about $360 billion worth of tariffs on Chinese imports that have raised costs for U.S. businesses and consumers, or whether to relax those levies in exchange for concessions on economic issues, or other fronts, like climate change.

Biden will need to walk a careful line. He and his advisers view many of Trump’s measures, which were aimed at severing ties between the Chinese and U.S. economies, as clumsy, costly and unstrategic. They say they want to take a smarter approach that combines working with the Chinese on some issues like global warming and the pandemic, while competing with them on technological leadership and confronting them on other issues like military expansionism, human rights violations or unfair trade.

But even if it departs from Trump’s punishing approach, the Biden administration will be eager to maintain leverage over China to accomplish its own policy goals. And the new administration will face pressure from lawmakers in both parties who view China as a national security threat and have introduced legislation aimed at penalizing Beijing for its human rights abuses, global influence operations and economic practices.

“This is likely going to be a period of continuing uncertainty on the U.S.-China front,” said Myron Brilliant, the executive vice president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. “There is no question that President Trump has adopted a tough stance on China, and this probably doesn’t give President-elect Biden a lot of political flexibility early on, but we expect a significant departure in tone, style and process.”

Biden has given few details about his plans for U.S.-China relations, other than saying he wants to recruit U.S. allies such as Europe and Japan to pressure China to make economic reforms, like protecting intellectual property. He has pledged to devote more resources to enhancing American manufacturing capacity, infrastructure and technological development, to ensure the United States retains an edge over China even as it invests huge sums in fields like telecommunications, artificial intelligence and semiconductors.

But Biden will face pressure from both parties not to revert to the approach that he and many of his predecessors had earlier embraced in trying to transform China’s economic practices by bringing it into the global economy.

Like many Democrats and Republicans in the 1990s and early 2000s, Biden argued that integrating China into the global trading system would force Beijing to play by international rules, to the benefit of U.S. workers. In 2000, he voted to grant China permanent normal trading relations, which paved the way for China’s entry into the World Trade Organization and deeper global economic ties.

In 2016, Trump won the presidency in part by loudly rejecting that approach, arguing that the United States needed to isolate, not integrate, Beijing.

Biden acknowledges that China exploited the international system, and he has called for a more aggressive approach. Biden has said the United States must get “tough with China,” and referred to Xi Jinping, the Chinese leader, as a “thug.”

Congress is also relatively unified on taking a tough stance on China. Hundreds of China-related bills are circulating, including several bipartisan efforts that echo Biden’s emphasis on competing with China by investing in U.S. industries like quantum computing and artificial intelligence.

Biden’s first moves on China could also be dictated by Trump’s last months. Many trade experts say they are concerned Trump, who has promised to make China “pay” for not doing enough to contain the coronavirus, could amp up his economic fight. Several of Trump’s aides are bitter at China for its role as the source of the coronavirus, which they see as a major contributor to Trump’s loss, people familiar with their thinking say.

One area of focus is the trade deal that Trump signed with Chinese officials in January. While China has largely kept commitments to open up its markets to U.S. companies and Trump’s advisers have continued to defend the pact, Beijing has fallen far behind schedule in its promise to buy an additional $200 billion of goods and services by the end of next year.

Trump’s most likely path will be to leave the deal intact, said Chris Rogers, a global trade and logistics analyst at Panjiva. But he wouldn’t rule out “a scorched-earth policy where China is declared to be in violation of its Phase 1 trade deal commitments and there’s a return to tariff escalation. President-elect Biden will be left holding the pieces if the deal is broken,” Rogers said.

And the president shows no signs of backing off a confrontational approach in other areas. On Friday, his administration is expected to begin economic talks with Taiwan that are likely to rankle Beijing. His advisers are considering other measures to punish China in the coming weeks, including sanctions related to China’s security crackdowns in Hong Kong and Xinjiang, where the Chinese government has carried out mass detentions and harsh policing of ethnic minorities.

“We are worried that he’s going to do some rash things that aren’t going to make sense for the future of the country or global stability,” said Rufus Yerxa, the president of the National Foreign Trade Council, which represents major multinational companies. “Given the history of President Trump’s use of executive authority, we’re taking nothing for granted in these next few months.”

Still, “most of what he could do is through executive orders and executive actions, which can be reversed by a Biden administration,” Yerxa added.

Whether Biden opts to roll back Trump’s more punitive measures will depend, at least in part, on China’s future behavior, including whether it pursues more aggressive incursions into the South China Sea, Taiwan and Hong Kong, people close to his campaign say.

Beijing has recently endorsed a policy of greater technological self-reliance and a stronger military to protect itself from a more antagonistic United States, and moved ahead with cementing other economic partnerships. On Sunday, China signed the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, a pan-Asian trade pact that includes Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Thailand, Vietnam and other countries, and will help cement China’s image as the dominant economic power in the region.

Biden’s appointments for trade and foreign policy posts could help determine his approach toward China, though it remains unclear whom he might nominate for such critical jobs as secretaries of state and commerce and the United States trade representative.

Similar to Biden himself, many of Biden’s closest advisers have a moderate track record on trade and China, believing they can work with Chinese leaders on some issues even as they challenge them on others. But several of his national security advisers are more skeptical of China.

No matter the path, business groups, economists and others are hoping for a coherent strategy that does not result in the type of economic brinkmanship Trump appeared to thrive on.

While Democrats and Republicans have credited Trump with drawing attention to China’s security threats, and its unfair economic practices like intellectual property theft, his dealings with China have also been transactional and inconsistent. In an attempt to secure a trade deal, Trump lavished praise on Xi, delayed sanctions against China’s human rights violations for months, and pardoned Chinese company ZTE for running afoul of U.S. law. And he has employed racist and xenophobic rhetoric, like calling the coronavirus the “kung flu,” that has fueled attacks on people of Asian descent around the country.

“The Trump administration never did lay out a coherent, comprehensive, engaged trade strategy,” said Thea M. Lee, an economist and the president of the Economic Policy Institute. “It was much more scattershot: Throw up a tariff here, do a deal with China, disparate elements that didn’t seem to talk to each other.”

“But there are a lot of tools in that toolbox, and I would like to see the Biden administration be thoughtful and strategic about how to use them,” Lee said.

Some experts are urging Biden to take a more nuanced approach. In a report to be published Monday, 29 China specialists and other experts, some with close ties to Biden’s advisers, urge U.S. policymakers to better compete with China by strengthening U.S. research and innovation, preserving the openness of American universities and the economy, and taking a more targeted approach to Chinese security threats.

The working group, organized by the 21st Century China Center at the University of California, San Diego, argues that the United States has allowed its technological leadership over China to erode through a lack of funding in research and development, and overreacted to threats from China in a way that has damaged America’s own economic prospects, including severing economic ties with China, and turning away Chinese students and researchers.

Peter Cowhey, the dean of the School of Global Policy &amp;amp; Strategy at the University of California, San Diego, and chairman of the working group, said its primary takeaway was that the United States “must invest and reorganize the U.S. innovation system across the board, including basic research and development and specialized manufacturing capabilities.”

“It’s a lot easier to manage risks with China if we are in an overall robust period of leadership,” he added.

In addition to a deadly pandemic and a weakened economy, President-elect Joe Biden will inherit one more challenge when he takes office in January: a toxic relationship with the world’s second-largest economy.

In addition to a deadly pandemic and a weakened economy, President-elect Joe Biden will inherit one more challenge when he takes office in January: a toxic relationship with the world’s second-largest economy. President Donald Trump has placed tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars of products from China, imposed sanctions on Chinese companies and restricted Chinese businesses from buying U.S. technology — a multiyear onslaught aimed at forcing Beijing to change its trade practices and as punishment for its authoritarian ways. He shows no sign of letting up in his final days in office: On Thursday, Trump issued an executive order barring investments in Chinese firms with military ties. The hard choices for Biden will include deciding whether to maintain about $360 billion worth of tariffs on Chinese imports that have raised costs for U.S. businesses and consumers, or whether to relax those levies in exchange for concessions on economic issues, or other fronts, like climate change. Biden will need to walk a careful line. He and his advisers view many of Trump’s measures, which were aimed at severing ties between the Chinese and U.S. economies, as clumsy, costly and unstrategic. They say they want to take a smarter approach that combines working with the Chinese on some issues like global warming and the pandemic, while competing with them on technological leadership and confronting them on other issues like military expansionism, human rights violations or unfair trade. But even if it departs from Trump’s punishing approach, the Biden administration will be eager to maintain leverage over China to accomplish its own policy goals. And the new administration will face pressure from lawmakers in both parties who view China as a national security threat and have introduced legislation aimed at penalizing Beijing for its human rights abuses, global influence operations and economic practices. “This is likely going to be a period of continuing uncertainty on the U.S.-China front,” said Myron Brilliant, the executive vice president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. “There is no question that President Trump has adopted a tough stance on China, and this probably doesn’t give President-elect Biden a lot of political flexibility early on, but we expect a significant departure in tone, style and process.” Biden has given few details about his plans for U.S.-China relations, other than saying he wants to recruit U.S. allies such as Europe and Japan to pressure China to make economic reforms, like protecting intellectual property. He has pledged to devote more resources to enhancing American manufacturing capacity, infrastructure and technological development, to ensure the United States retains an edge over China even as it invests huge sums in fields like telecommunications, artificial intelligence and semiconductors. But Biden will face pressure from both parties not to revert to the approach that he and many of his predecessors had earlier embraced in trying to transform China’s economic practices by bringing it into the global economy. Like many Democrats and Republicans in the 1990s and early 2000s, Biden argued that integrating China into the global trading system would force Beijing to play by international rules, to the benefit of U.S. workers. In 2000, he voted to grant China permanent normal trading relations, which paved the way for China’s entry into the World Trade Organization and deeper global economic ties. In 2016, Trump won the presidency in part by loudly rejecting that approach, arguing that the United States needed to isolate, not integrate, Beijing. Biden acknowledges that China exploited the international system, and he has called for a more aggressive approach. Biden has said the United States must get “tough with China,” and referred to Xi Jinping, the Chinese leader, as a “thug.” Congress is also relatively unified on taking a tough stance on China. Hundreds of China-related bills are circulating, including several bipartisan efforts that echo Biden’s emphasis on competing with China by investing in U.S. industries like quantum computing and artificial intelligence. Biden’s first moves on China could also be dictated by Trump’s last months. Many trade experts say they are concerned Trump, who has promised to make China “pay” for not doing enough to contain the coronavirus, could amp up his economic fight. Several of Trump’s aides are bitter at China for its role as the source of the coronavirus, which they see as a major contributor to Trump’s loss, people familiar with their thinking say. One area of focus is the trade deal that Trump signed with Chinese officials in January. While China has largely kept commitments to open up its markets to U.S. companies and Trump’s advisers have continued to defend the pact, Beijing has fallen far behind schedule in its promise to buy an additional $200 billion of goods and services by the end of next year. Trump’s most likely path will be to leave the deal intact, said Chris Rogers, a global trade and logistics analyst at Panjiva. But he wouldn’t rule out “a scorched-earth policy where China is declared to be in violation of its Phase 1 trade deal commitments and there’s a return to tariff escalation. President-elect Biden will be left holding the pieces if the deal is broken,” Rogers said. And the president shows no signs of backing off a confrontational approach in other areas. On Friday, his administration is expected to begin economic talks with Taiwan that are likely to rankle Beijing. His advisers are considering other measures to punish China in the coming weeks, including sanctions related to China’s security crackdowns in Hong Kong and Xinjiang, where the Chinese government has carried out mass detentions and harsh policing of ethnic minorities. “We are worried that he’s going to do some rash things that aren’t going to make sense for the future of the country or global stability,” said Rufus Yerxa, the president of the National Foreign Trade Council, which represents major multinational companies. “Given the history of President Trump’s use of executive authority, we’re taking nothing for granted in these next few months.” Still, “most of what he could do is through executive orders and executive actions, which can be reversed by a Biden administration,” Yerxa added. Whether Biden opts to roll back Trump’s more punitive measures will depend, at least in part, on China’s future behavior, including whether it pursues more aggressive incursions into the South China Sea, Taiwan and Hong Kong, people close to his campaign say. Beijing has recently endorsed a policy of greater technological self-reliance and a stronger military to protect itself from a more antagonistic United States, and moved ahead with cementing other economic partnerships. On Sunday, China signed the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, a pan-Asian trade pact that includes Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Thailand, Vietnam and other countries, and will help cement China’s image as the dominant economic power in the region. Biden’s appointments for trade and foreign policy posts could help determine his approach toward China, though it remains unclear whom he might nominate for such critical jobs as secretaries of state and commerce and the United States trade representative. Similar to Biden himself, many of Biden’s closest advisers have a moderate track record on trade and China, believing they can work with Chinese leaders on some issues even as they challenge them on others. But several of his national security advisers are more skeptical of China. No matter the path, business groups, economists and others are hoping for a coherent strategy that does not result in the type of economic brinkmanship Trump appeared to thrive on. While Democrats and Republicans have credited Trump with drawing attention to China’s security threats, and its unfair economic practices like intellectual property theft, his dealings with China have also been transactional and inconsistent. In an attempt to secure a trade deal, Trump lavished praise on Xi, delayed sanctions against China’s human rights violations for months, and pardoned Chinese company ZTE for running afoul of U.S. law. And he has employed racist and xenophobic rhetoric, like calling the coronavirus the “kung flu,” that has fueled attacks on people of Asian descent around the country. “The Trump administration never did lay out a coherent, comprehensive, engaged trade strategy,” said Thea M. Lee, an economist and the president of the Economic Policy Institute. “It was much more scattershot: Throw up a tariff here, do a deal with China, disparate elements that didn’t seem to talk to each other.” “But there are a lot of tools in that toolbox, and I would like to see the Biden administration be thoughtful and strategic about how to use them,” Lee said. Some experts are urging Biden to take a more nuanced approach. In a report to be published Monday, 29 China specialists and other experts, some with close ties to Biden’s advisers, urge U.S. policymakers to better compete with China by strengthening U.S. research and innovation, preserving the openness of American universities and the economy, and taking a more targeted approach to Chinese security threats. The working group, organized by the 21st Century China Center at the University of California, San Diego, argues that the United States has allowed its technological leadership over China to erode through a lack of funding in research and development, and overreacted to threats from China in a way that has damaged America’s own economic prospects, including severing economic ties with China, and turning away Chinese students and researchers. Peter Cowhey, the dean of the School of Global Policy &amp; Strategy at the University of California, San Diego, and chairman of the working group, said its primary takeaway was that the United States “must invest and reorganize the U.S. innovation system across the board, including basic research and development and specialized manufacturing capabilities.” “It’s a lot easier to manage risks with China if we are in an overall robust period of leadership,” he added.

Biden’s China policy? A balancing act for a toxic relationship

The&nbsp;United States Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Friday said that&nbsp;Taiwan not part of China.

Speaking in a US&nbsp;radio interview on Thursday, Pompeo said, ''Taiwan has not been a part of China. That was recognised with the work that the Reagan administration did to lay out the policies that the United States has adhered to now for three-and-a-half decades."&nbsp;

Also read| <a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/china-puts-pressure-on-nations-to-not-recognise-taiwan-as-a-country-foreign-minister-joseph-wu-tells-wion-336966">China puts pressure on nations to not recognise Taiwan as a country: Foreign Minister Joseph Wu tells WION</a>

Pompeo's bold statement,&nbsp;which drew China's ire, goes hand-in-hand with Taiwan's President Tsai Ing-wen, who views&nbsp;Taiwan&nbsp;as a sovereign nation, not part of "one China" policy.&nbsp;Her stance infuriates Beijing, which is now buzzing the island with an unprecedented number of fighter jets and surveillance aircraft.

Thanking&nbsp;Pompeo for his support,&nbsp;Taiwan's foreign ministry spokeswoman, Joanne Ou said&nbsp;"The Republic of China on Taiwan is a sovereign, independent country, and not part of the People's Republic of China. This is a fact and the current situation."&nbsp;

Also read:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/white-house-moves-forward-on-three-arms-sales-to-taiwan-china-says-will-make-necessary-response-334859">White House moves forward on three arms sales to Taiwan; China says will make necessary response</a>

Chinese&nbsp;foreign ministry responded to&nbsp;Pompeo's statement&nbsp;saying it will strike back against any moves that undermine its core interests.

Speaking in Beijing, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said Taiwan was an inalienable part of China and that Pompeo was further damaging Sino-US&nbsp;ties.

"We solemnly tell Pompeo and his ilk, that any behaviour that undermines China's core interests and interferes with China's domestic affairs will be met with a resolute counterattack by China," he said, without elaborating.

China has put sanctions on US&nbsp;companies selling weapons to Taiwan and flew fighter jets near the island when senior U.S. officials visited Taipei this year.

The defeated Republic of China government fled to Taiwan in 1949 after losing a civil war to the communists, who founded the People's Republic of China.

The United States is bound by law to provide Taiwan with the means to defend itself, and officially only acknowledges the Chinese position that Taiwan is part of it, rather than explicitly recognising China's claims.

Relations between Washington and Taipei warmed dramatically under Donald Trump's administration, beginning soon after the votes were counted.

Taiwan officials will travel to Washington next week for economic talks, which have also annoyed Beijing

The United States Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Friday said that Taiwan not part of China. Speaking in a US radio interview on Thursday, Pompeo said, ''Taiwan has not been a part of China.

The United States Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Friday said that Taiwan not part of China. Speaking in a US radio interview on Thursday, Pompeo said, ''Taiwan has not been a part of China. That was recognised with the work that the Reagan administration did to lay out the policies that the United States has adhered to now for three-and-a-half decades." Also read| China puts pressure on nations to not recognise Taiwan as a country: Foreign Minister Joseph Wu tells WION Pompeo's bold statement, which drew China's ire, goes hand-in-hand with Taiwan's President Tsai Ing-wen, who views Taiwan as a sovereign nation, not part of "one China" policy. Her stance infuriates Beijing, which is now buzzing the island with an unprecedented number of fighter jets and surveillance aircraft. Thanking Pompeo for his support, Taiwan's foreign ministry spokeswoman, Joanne Ou said "The Republic of China on Taiwan is a sovereign, independent country, and not part of the People's Republic of China. This is a fact and the current situation." Also read: White House moves forward on three arms sales to Taiwan; China says will make necessary response Chinese foreign ministry responded to Pompeo's statement saying it will strike back against any moves that undermine its core interests. Speaking in Beijing, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said Taiwan was an inalienable part of China and that Pompeo was further damaging Sino-US ties. "We solemnly tell Pompeo and his ilk, that any behaviour that undermines China's core interests and interferes with China's domestic affairs will be met with a resolute counterattack by China," he said, without elaborating. China has put sanctions on US companies selling weapons to Taiwan and flew fighter jets near the island when senior U.S. officials visited Taipei this year. The defeated Republic of China government fled to Taiwan in 1949 after losing a civil war to the communists, who founded the People's Republic of China. The United States is bound by law to provide Taiwan with the means to defend itself, and officially only acknowledges the Chinese position that Taiwan is part of it, rather than explicitly recognising China's claims. Relations between Washington and Taipei warmed dramatically under Donald Trump's administration, beginning soon after the votes were counted. Taiwan officials will travel to Washington next week for economic talks, which have also annoyed Beijing

Taiwan not part of China, says Mike Pompeo; Beijing fumes

President Donald Trump and his allies have tried to paint the Democratic nominee, Joe Biden, as soft on China, in part by pointing to his son’s business dealings there.

Senate Republicans produced a report asserting, among other things, that Biden’s son Hunter “opened a bank account” with a Chinese businessman, part of what it said were his numerous connections to “foreign nationals and foreign governments across the globe.”

But Trump’s own business history is filled with overseas financial deals, and some have involved the Chinese state. He spent a decade unsuccessfully pursuing projects in China, operating an office there during his first run for president and forging a partnership with a major government-controlled company.

And it turns out that China is one of only three foreign nations — the others are Britain and Ireland — where Trump maintains a bank account, according to an analysis of the president’s tax records, which were obtained by The New York Times. The foreign accounts do not show up on Trump’s public financial disclosures, where he must list personal assets, because they are held under corporate names. The identities of the financial institutions are not clear.

The Chinese account is controlled by Trump International Hotels Management LLC, which the tax records show paid $188,561 in taxes in China while pursuing licensing deals there from 2013 to 2015.

The tax records do not include details on how much money may have passed through the overseas accounts, though the Internal Revenue Service does require filers to report the portion of their income derived from other countries. The British and Irish accounts are held by companies that operate Trump’s golf courses in Scotland and Ireland, which regularly report millions of dollars in revenue from those countries. Trump International Hotels Management reported just a few thousand dollars from China.

In response to questions from The Times, Alan Garten, a lawyer for the Trump Organization, said the company had “opened an account with a Chinese bank having offices in the United States in order to pay the local taxes” associated with efforts to do business there. He said the company had opened the account after establishing an office in China “to explore the potential for hotel deals in Asia.”

“No deals, transactions or other business activities ever materialized and, since 2015, the office has remained inactive,” Garten said. “Though the bank account remains open, it has never been used for any other purpose.”

Garten would not identify the bank in China where the account is held. Until last year, China’s biggest state-controlled bank rented three floors in Trump Tower, a lucrative lease that drew accusations of a conflict of interest for the president.

China continues to be an issue in the 2020 presidential campaign, from the president’s trade war to his barbs over the origin of the coronavirus pandemic. His campaign has tried to portray Biden as a “puppet” of China who, as vice president, misread the dangers posed by its growing power. Trump has also sought to tar his opponent with overblown or unsubstantiated assertions about Hunter Biden’s business dealings there while his father was in office.

“He’s like a vacuum cleaner — he follows his father around collecting,” Trump said recently, referring to Biden’s son. “What a disgrace. It’s a crime family.”

In a misleading claim amplified by surrogates like his son Donald Trump Jr. and his lawyer Rudy Giuliani, the president has said the younger Biden “walked out of China” with $1.5 billion after accompanying his father on an official trip in 2013. Numerous news articles and fact-checking sites have explained that the huge figure was actually a fundraising goal set by an investment firm in which Hunter Biden obtained a 10% stake after his father left office. The firm did receive financial backing from a large state-controlled bank, but it is not clear the fundraising target was ever met, and there is no evidence Hunter Biden received a large personal payout.

As for the former vice president, his public financial disclosures, along with the income tax returns he voluntarily released, show no income or business dealings of his own in China. However, there is ample evidence of Trump’s efforts to join the myriad American firms that have long done business there — and the tax records for him and his companies that were obtained by The Times offer new details about them.

As with Russia, where he explored hotel and tower projects in Moscow without success, Trump has long sought a licensing deal in China. His efforts go at least as far back as 2006, when he filed trademark applications in Hong Kong and the mainland. Many Chinese government approvals came after he became president. (The president’s daughter Ivanka Trump also won Chinese trademark approvals for her personal business after she joined the White House staff.)

In 2008, Trump pursued an office tower project in Guangzhou that never got off the ground. But his efforts accelerated in 2012 with the opening of a Shanghai office, and tax records show that one of Trump’s China-related companies, THC China Development LLC, claimed $84,000 in deductions that year for travel costs, legal fees and office expenses.

After effectively planting his flag there, Trump found a partner in the State Grid Corp., one of the nation’s largest government-controlled enterprises. Agence France-Presse reported in 2016 that the partnership would have involved licensing and managing a development in Beijing. Trump was reportedly still pursuing the deal months into his first presidential campaign, but it was abandoned after State Grid became ensnared in a corruption investigation by Chinese authorities.

It is difficult to determine from the tax records precisely how much money Trump has spent trying to land business in China. The records show that he has invested at least $192,000 in five small companies created specifically to pursue projects there over the years. Those companies claimed at least $97,400 in business expenses since 2010, including some minor payments for taxes and accounting fees as recently as 2018.

But Trump’s plans in China have been largely driven by a different company, Trump International Hotels Management — the one with a Chinese bank account.

The company has direct ownership of THC China Development, but is also involved in management of other Trump-branded properties around the world, and it is not possible to discern from its tax records how much of its financial activity is China-related. It normally reports a few million dollars in annual income and deductible expenses.

In 2017, the company reported an unusually large spike in revenue — some $17.5 million, more than the previous five years’ combined. It was accompanied by a $15.1 million withdrawal by Trump from the company’s capital account.

On the president’s public financial disclosures for that year, he reported the large revenue figure, and described it only as “management fees and other contract payments.” One significant event for the company that is known to have occurred in 2017 was the buyout of its management contract for the Soho Hotel in New York, which Bloomberg reported to have cost around $6 million.

Garten would not comment on the specific amount cited by Bloomberg, but said that the contract buyout represented a “significant portion” of the company’s revenue and that the remaining money was not related to China.

Outside of China, Trump has had more success attracting wealthy Chinese buyers for his properties in other countries. His hotels and towers in Las Vegas and Vancouver, British Columbia — locales known for drawing Chinese real estate investors — have found numerous Chinese purchasers, and in at least one instance drew the attention of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

During the 2016 campaign, a shell company controlled by a Chinese couple from Vancouver bought 11 units, for $3.1 million, in the Las Vegas tower Trump co-owns with the casino magnate Phil Ruffin. The owner of a Las Vegas-based financial services firm told The Times he was later visited by two FBI agents asking about the company behind the purchases, which he said had used his office address in incorporation papers without his knowledge. It is not known what became of the inquiry.

Garten said the Trump Organization had “never been contacted by the FBI and has no knowledge of any investigation.”

In Vancouver, numerous Chinese buyers of units in Trump’s hotel and tower helped increase licensing fees from that project to $5.8 million in 2016, the year it was completed, according to tax records. The project was built by a Canadian-based firm controlled by the family of Malaysia’s richest man, Tony Tiah Thee Kian, who operates hotels in China and elsewhere. CNN reported in 2018 that the Vancouver operation was the subject of a counterintelligence review related to Ivanka Trump’s need for a security clearance.

And not long after winning the 2016 election, Trump reported selling a penthouse in one of his Manhattan buildings for $15.8 million to a Chinese-American businesswoman named Xiao Yan Chen, who bought the unit, previously occupied by Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, in an off-market transaction. Chen runs an international consulting firm and reportedly has high-level connections to government and political elites in China.

Trump’s tax records show that he reported a capital gain of at least $5.6 million from the penthouse sale in 2017, his first year as president.

President Donald Trump and his allies have tried to paint the Democratic nominee, Joe Biden, as soft on China, in part by pointing to his son’s business dealings there.

President Donald Trump and his allies have tried to paint the Democratic nominee, Joe Biden, as soft on China, in part by pointing to his son’s business dealings there. Senate Republicans produced a report asserting, among other things, that Biden’s son Hunter “opened a bank account” with a Chinese businessman, part of what it said were his numerous connections to “foreign nationals and foreign governments across the globe.” But Trump’s own business history is filled with overseas financial deals, and some have involved the Chinese state. He spent a decade unsuccessfully pursuing projects in China, operating an office there during his first run for president and forging a partnership with a major government-controlled company. And it turns out that China is one of only three foreign nations — the others are Britain and Ireland — where Trump maintains a bank account, according to an analysis of the president’s tax records, which were obtained by The New York Times. The foreign accounts do not show up on Trump’s public financial disclosures, where he must list personal assets, because they are held under corporate names. The identities of the financial institutions are not clear. The Chinese account is controlled by Trump International Hotels Management LLC, which the tax records show paid $188,561 in taxes in China while pursuing licensing deals there from 2013 to 2015. The tax records do not include details on how much money may have passed through the overseas accounts, though the Internal Revenue Service does require filers to report the portion of their income derived from other countries. The British and Irish accounts are held by companies that operate Trump’s golf courses in Scotland and Ireland, which regularly report millions of dollars in revenue from those countries. Trump International Hotels Management reported just a few thousand dollars from China. In response to questions from The Times, Alan Garten, a lawyer for the Trump Organization, said the company had “opened an account with a Chinese bank having offices in the United States in order to pay the local taxes” associated with efforts to do business there. He said the company had opened the account after establishing an office in China “to explore the potential for hotel deals in Asia.” “No deals, transactions or other business activities ever materialized and, since 2015, the office has remained inactive,” Garten said. “Though the bank account remains open, it has never been used for any other purpose.” Garten would not identify the bank in China where the account is held. Until last year, China’s biggest state-controlled bank rented three floors in Trump Tower, a lucrative lease that drew accusations of a conflict of interest for the president. China continues to be an issue in the 2020 presidential campaign, from the president’s trade war to his barbs over the origin of the coronavirus pandemic. His campaign has tried to portray Biden as a “puppet” of China who, as vice president, misread the dangers posed by its growing power. Trump has also sought to tar his opponent with overblown or unsubstantiated assertions about Hunter Biden’s business dealings there while his father was in office. “He’s like a vacuum cleaner — he follows his father around collecting,” Trump said recently, referring to Biden’s son. “What a disgrace. It’s a crime family.” In a misleading claim amplified by surrogates like his son Donald Trump Jr. and his lawyer Rudy Giuliani, the president has said the younger Biden “walked out of China” with $1.5 billion after accompanying his father on an official trip in 2013. Numerous news articles and fact-checking sites have explained that the huge figure was actually a fundraising goal set by an investment firm in which Hunter Biden obtained a 10% stake after his father left office. The firm did receive financial backing from a large state-controlled bank, but it is not clear the fundraising target was ever met, and there is no evidence Hunter Biden received a large personal payout. As for the former vice president, his public financial disclosures, along with the income tax returns he voluntarily released, show no income or business dealings of his own in China. However, there is ample evidence of Trump’s efforts to join the myriad American firms that have long done business there — and the tax records for him and his companies that were obtained by The Times offer new details about them. As with Russia, where he explored hotel and tower projects in Moscow without success, Trump has long sought a licensing deal in China. His efforts go at least as far back as 2006, when he filed trademark applications in Hong Kong and the mainland. Many Chinese government approvals came after he became president. (The president’s daughter Ivanka Trump also won Chinese trademark approvals for her personal business after she joined the White House staff.) In 2008, Trump pursued an office tower project in Guangzhou that never got off the ground. But his efforts accelerated in 2012 with the opening of a Shanghai office, and tax records show that one of Trump’s China-related companies, THC China Development LLC, claimed $84,000 in deductions that year for travel costs, legal fees and office expenses. After effectively planting his flag there, Trump found a partner in the State Grid Corp., one of the nation’s largest government-controlled enterprises. Agence France-Presse reported in 2016 that the partnership would have involved licensing and managing a development in Beijing. Trump was reportedly still pursuing the deal months into his first presidential campaign, but it was abandoned after State Grid became ensnared in a corruption investigation by Chinese authorities. It is difficult to determine from the tax records precisely how much money Trump has spent trying to land business in China. The records show that he has invested at least $192,000 in five small companies created specifically to pursue projects there over the years. Those companies claimed at least $97,400 in business expenses since 2010, including some minor payments for taxes and accounting fees as recently as 2018. But Trump’s plans in China have been largely driven by a different company, Trump International Hotels Management — the one with a Chinese bank account. The company has direct ownership of THC China Development, but is also involved in management of other Trump-branded properties around the world, and it is not possible to discern from its tax records how much of its financial activity is China-related. It normally reports a few million dollars in annual income and deductible expenses. In 2017, the company reported an unusually large spike in revenue — some $17.5 million, more than the previous five years’ combined. It was accompanied by a $15.1 million withdrawal by Trump from the company’s capital account. On the president’s public financial disclosures for that year, he reported the large revenue figure, and described it only as “management fees and other contract payments.” One significant event for the company that is known to have occurred in 2017 was the buyout of its management contract for the Soho Hotel in New York, which Bloomberg reported to have cost around $6 million. Garten would not comment on the specific amount cited by Bloomberg, but said that the contract buyout represented a “significant portion” of the company’s revenue and that the remaining money was not related to China. Outside of China, Trump has had more success attracting wealthy Chinese buyers for his properties in other countries. His hotels and towers in Las Vegas and Vancouver, British Columbia — locales known for drawing Chinese real estate investors — have found numerous Chinese purchasers, and in at least one instance drew the attention of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. During the 2016 campaign, a shell company controlled by a Chinese couple from Vancouver bought 11 units, for $3.1 million, in the Las Vegas tower Trump co-owns with the casino magnate Phil Ruffin. The owner of a Las Vegas-based financial services firm told The Times he was later visited by two FBI agents asking about the company behind the purchases, which he said had used his office address in incorporation papers without his knowledge. It is not known what became of the inquiry. Garten said the Trump Organization had “never been contacted by the FBI and has no knowledge of any investigation.” In Vancouver, numerous Chinese buyers of units in Trump’s hotel and tower helped increase licensing fees from that project to $5.8 million in 2016, the year it was completed, according to tax records. The project was built by a Canadian-based firm controlled by the family of Malaysia’s richest man, Tony Tiah Thee Kian, who operates hotels in China and elsewhere. CNN reported in 2018 that the Vancouver operation was the subject of a counterintelligence review related to Ivanka Trump’s need for a security clearance. And not long after winning the 2016 election, Trump reported selling a penthouse in one of his Manhattan buildings for $15.8 million to a Chinese-American businesswoman named Xiao Yan Chen, who bought the unit, previously occupied by Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, in an off-market transaction. Chen runs an international consulting firm and reportedly has high-level connections to government and political elites in China. Trump’s tax records show that he reported a capital gain of at least $5.6 million from the penthouse sale in 2017, his first year as president.

Trump records shed new light on Chinese business pursuits

US Defense Secretary <a href="https://www.wionews.com/india-news/india-china-standoff-relationship-with-india-important-monitoring-lac-very-closely-us-defense-secretary-mark-esper-314931">Mark Esper</a> on Tuesday called for strengthing relations with "like-minded democracies" to counter Russia and China.

<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/us-and-uae-eye-december-goal-to-agree-on-f-35-deal-sources-329434">Also Read:&nbsp;&nbsp;US and UAE eye December goal to agree on F-35 deal</a>

"America's network of allies and partners provides us an asymmetric advantage our adversaries cannot match," Esper said.

The initiative named the Guidance for Development for Alliances and Partnerships(GDAP) aims to foster relations with partner countries in order to facilitate militaries cooperation and US arms sales. 
&nbsp; 
"China and Russia probably have fewer than 10 allies combined," the defence secretary said, adding,"the smaller the nation and the greater its needs, the heavier the pressure from Beijing."

Esper citing NATO and Malt's example said: "Examples like these illustrate the importance of aligning with like-minded nations, large and small, to maintain the free and open order that has served us all so very well for decades."

The defence secretary also highlighted the need to build closer ties with "like-minded democracies such as <a href="https://www.wionews.com/india-news/rajanth-singh-us-defence-secretary-mark-esper-discuss-china-build-up-301895">India</a> and Indonesia". Esper is due to visit India next week.

"They all recognize what China is doing," he added.

"We must compete with China and Russia whose state-owned industries can fast-track military exports in ways that we cannot, and would never want to, in many cases," the defence secretary added.

US Defense Secretary Mark Esper on Tuesday called for strengthing relations with "like-minded democracies" to counter Russia and China. Also Read: US and UAE eye December goal to agree on F-35 deal "America's network of allies and partners provides us an asymmetric advantage our adversaries cannot match," Esper said.

US Defense Secretary Mark Esper on Tuesday called for strengthing relations with "like-minded democracies" to counter Russia and China. Also Read: US and UAE eye December goal to agree on F-35 deal "America's network of allies and partners provides us an asymmetric advantage our adversaries cannot match," Esper said. The initiative named the Guidance for Development for Alliances and Partnerships(GDAP) aims to foster relations with partner countries in order to facilitate militaries cooperation and US arms sales. "China and Russia probably have fewer than 10 allies combined," the defence secretary said, adding,"the smaller the nation and the greater its needs, the heavier the pressure from Beijing." Esper citing NATO and Malt's example said: "Examples like these illustrate the importance of aligning with like-minded nations, large and small, to maintain the free and open order that has served us all so very well for decades." The defence secretary also highlighted the need to build closer ties with "like-minded democracies such as India and Indonesia". Esper is due to visit India next week. "They all recognize what China is doing," he added. "We must compete with China and Russia whose state-owned industries can fast-track military exports in ways that we cannot, and would never want to, in many cases," the defence secretary added.

US defence secretary Mark Esper stresses on closer ties with 'like-minded democracies such as India' amid China tensions

Chinese officials have told the Trump administration that security officers in China might detain US&nbsp;citizens if the Justice Department proceeds with prosecutions of arrested scholars who are members of the Chinese military, US&nbsp;officials said.

The Chinese officials conveyed the messages starting this summer, when the Justice Department intensified efforts to arrest and charge the scholars, mainly with providing false information on their visa applications, the US&nbsp;officials said. US&nbsp;law enforcement officials say at least five Chinese scholars who have been arrested in recent months did not disclose their military affiliations on visa applications and might have been trying to conduct industrial espionage in research centers.

U.S. officials said they thought the Chinese officials were serious about the threats. The State Department has reiterated travel warnings as a result, they said. Western officials and human rights advocates have said for years that the Chinese police and other security agencies engage in arbitrary detentions.

The threats are another striking escalation in tensions between the United States and China, which have been rising for years and have surged sharply since the coronavirus pandemic began in central China last winter.

But some analysts in Washington and Beijing say the Chinese government is trying to avoid any serious provocations against the United States before the elections in November. And some Chinese officials are aiming to cool the temperature of U.S.-China relations, whether President Donald Trump wins another term or Joe Biden, the Democratic challenger and former vice president, takes over in the White House.

A Justice Department spokesperson declined to comment on whether Chinese officials had delivered warnings about plans to detain U.S. citizens to retaliate for prosecutions of Chinese scholars. The threats were reported earlier by The Wall Street Journal.

“We are aware that the Chinese government has, in other instances, detained American, Canadian and other individuals without legal basis to retaliate against lawful prosecutions and to exert pressure on their governments, with a callous disregard of the individuals involved,” John Demers, head of the Justice Department’s national security division, said in a statement. “If China wants to be seen as one of the world’s leading nations, it should respect the rule of law and stop taking hostages.”

On Sunday, Hu Xijin, chief editor of Global Times, a nationalistic newspaper linked to the Chinese Communist Party, wrote on Twitter that the detentions in the United States of Chinese scholars on spying charges were “not good” for the “safety of some US nationals in China.”

“Does Washington need to be warned?” he wrote. “It’s common sense. In my view, hegemony has turned some US elites stupid, or they’re pretending to be stupid.”

In recent years, the Justice Department has scrutinized the work of Chinese researchers at U.S. universities and other scientific institutions. U.S. officials have also criticized programs run by the Chinese government to recruit scientific and technical experts. Demers and other U.S. officials have long said that Beijing uses a wide range of tools to gather intelligence at U.S. research centers.

The Trump administration announced in late May that it was barring Chinese students at the graduate level or higher who had ties to some military institutions from entering the United States.

In late July, the State Department ordered China to close its consulate in Houston, saying it was a center of research theft in the United States. Justice Department officials said that Chinese officials in other missions also took part in industrial and scientific espionage and that the closure was meant to deter Beijing from continuing the actions. At that time, U.S. authorities were also seeking to arrest a Chinese student or researcher, Tang Juan, who had gone into hiding in the San Francisco consulate after being questioned by the FBI.

The FBI arrested Tang on July 23 and accused her of hiding her military affiliation. She has pleaded not guilty to charges of visa fraud and making false statements.

The Chinese government has denied accusations that members of its military are in the United States for scientific and industrial espionage.

State Department representatives declined to discuss any recent threats of detentions of Americans made by Chinese officials. But for months, department officials have been stressing harsh actions taken by Chinese security agencies against Americans. On Sept. 14, the department updated travel advisories for mainland China and Hong Kong, saying that Americans should “reconsider travel” because of COVID-19 and risk arising from “arbitrary enforcement of local laws.”

In June, Chinese officials charged two Canadians — Michael Kovrig, a former diplomat, and Michael Spavor, a businessman — with espionage. Security officers had detained the two men 18 months earlier. Canadian and U.S. officials widely believe the men are being held because of a Justice Department case against Meng Wanzhou, a top executive of Chinese technology company Huawei, who was arrested in Canada in December 2018 and might be extradited to the United States.

Last year, Chinese security officers prevented a Koch Industries executive from leaving China for some days. And in a hotel lobby in Beijing, officers tried to take a former U.S. diplomat away for questioning. He was in China to attend a forum on artificial intelligence that he had helped organize. The U.S. Embassy in Beijing intervened, and the Chinese officers backed off.

The State Department has also denounced the practice by Chinese officials of “exit bans,” or refusing to allow foreign citizens to leave the country, often as a means of coercion in legal or business disputes.

Chinese officials have told the Trump administration that security officers in China might detain US citizens if the Justice Department proceeds with prosecutions of arrested scholars who are members of the Chinese military, US officials said.

Chinese officials have told the Trump administration that security officers in China might detain US citizens if the Justice Department proceeds with prosecutions of arrested scholars who are members of the Chinese military, US officials said. The Chinese officials conveyed the messages starting this summer, when the Justice Department intensified efforts to arrest and charge the scholars, mainly with providing false information on their visa applications, the US officials said. US law enforcement officials say at least five Chinese scholars who have been arrested in recent months did not disclose their military affiliations on visa applications and might have been trying to conduct industrial espionage in research centers. U.S. officials said they thought the Chinese officials were serious about the threats. The State Department has reiterated travel warnings as a result, they said. Western officials and human rights advocates have said for years that the Chinese police and other security agencies engage in arbitrary detentions. The threats are another striking escalation in tensions between the United States and China, which have been rising for years and have surged sharply since the coronavirus pandemic began in central China last winter. But some analysts in Washington and Beijing say the Chinese government is trying to avoid any serious provocations against the United States before the elections in November. And some Chinese officials are aiming to cool the temperature of U.S.-China relations, whether President Donald Trump wins another term or Joe Biden, the Democratic challenger and former vice president, takes over in the White House. A Justice Department spokesperson declined to comment on whether Chinese officials had delivered warnings about plans to detain U.S. citizens to retaliate for prosecutions of Chinese scholars. The threats were reported earlier by The Wall Street Journal. “We are aware that the Chinese government has, in other instances, detained American, Canadian and other individuals without legal basis to retaliate against lawful prosecutions and to exert pressure on their governments, with a callous disregard of the individuals involved,” John Demers, head of the Justice Department’s national security division, said in a statement. “If China wants to be seen as one of the world’s leading nations, it should respect the rule of law and stop taking hostages.” On Sunday, Hu Xijin, chief editor of Global Times, a nationalistic newspaper linked to the Chinese Communist Party, wrote on Twitter that the detentions in the United States of Chinese scholars on spying charges were “not good” for the “safety of some US nationals in China.” “Does Washington need to be warned?” he wrote. “It’s common sense. In my view, hegemony has turned some US elites stupid, or they’re pretending to be stupid.” In recent years, the Justice Department has scrutinized the work of Chinese researchers at U.S. universities and other scientific institutions. U.S. officials have also criticized programs run by the Chinese government to recruit scientific and technical experts. Demers and other U.S. officials have long said that Beijing uses a wide range of tools to gather intelligence at U.S. research centers. The Trump administration announced in late May that it was barring Chinese students at the graduate level or higher who had ties to some military institutions from entering the United States. In late July, the State Department ordered China to close its consulate in Houston, saying it was a center of research theft in the United States. Justice Department officials said that Chinese officials in other missions also took part in industrial and scientific espionage and that the closure was meant to deter Beijing from continuing the actions. At that time, U.S. authorities were also seeking to arrest a Chinese student or researcher, Tang Juan, who had gone into hiding in the San Francisco consulate after being questioned by the FBI. The FBI arrested Tang on July 23 and accused her of hiding her military affiliation. She has pleaded not guilty to charges of visa fraud and making false statements. The Chinese government has denied accusations that members of its military are in the United States for scientific and industrial espionage. State Department representatives declined to discuss any recent threats of detentions of Americans made by Chinese officials. But for months, department officials have been stressing harsh actions taken by Chinese security agencies against Americans. On Sept. 14, the department updated travel advisories for mainland China and Hong Kong, saying that Americans should “reconsider travel” because of COVID-19 and risk arising from “arbitrary enforcement of local laws.” In June, Chinese officials charged two Canadians — Michael Kovrig, a former diplomat, and Michael Spavor, a businessman — with espionage. Security officers had detained the two men 18 months earlier. Canadian and U.S. officials widely believe the men are being held because of a Justice Department case against Meng Wanzhou, a top executive of Chinese technology company Huawei, who was arrested in Canada in December 2018 and might be extradited to the United States. Last year, Chinese security officers prevented a Koch Industries executive from leaving China for some days. And in a hotel lobby in Beijing, officers tried to take a former U.S. diplomat away for questioning. He was in China to attend a forum on artificial intelligence that he had helped organize. The U.S. Embassy in Beijing intervened, and the Chinese officers backed off. The State Department has also denounced the practice by Chinese officials of “exit bans,” or refusing to allow foreign citizens to leave the country, often as a means of coercion in legal or business disputes.

China threatens to detain Americans if US prosecutes Chinese scholars

A United States warship sailed through the&nbsp;Taiwan&nbsp;Strait on&nbsp;Thursday&nbsp;enraging China, which claims sovereignty over the island and surrounding seas.

While&nbsp;the American military described it as a "routine" passage, China called it a ''serious attempt to&nbsp;undermine peace and stability''.

Also read:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/us-warns-china-against-any-attempt-to-take-taiwan-by-force-333453">US warns China against any attempt to take Taiwan by force</a>

According to a statement by the US Pacific Fleet, "The ship's transit through the&nbsp;Taiwan&nbsp;Strait demonstrates the US commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific," the statement said.

"The US Navy will continue to fly, sail and operate anywhere international law allows," it added.

Also read:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/set-off-war-china-threatens-retaliation-after-us-diplomats-visit-to-taiwan-329155">'Set off war': China threatens retaliation after US diplomat's visit to Taiwan</a>

Ties between Beijing and Washington have deteriorated in recent months, over issues including trade and Hong Kong, with the self-ruled island of&nbsp;Taiwan&nbsp;a long-running source of tension.

Any US Navy operations in the&nbsp;Taiwan&nbsp;Strait, which separates China from the island, provoke a strong response from Beijing, which considers&nbsp;Taiwan&nbsp;to be an inviolable part of its territory.

In an angry riposte, the Chinese People's Liberation Army said it tracked the USS Barry by sea and air "throughout the entire process."

Beijing has accused Washington and Taipei of "collusion" towards the island declaring formal independence and recently ramped up air force activity near&nbsp;Taiwan&nbsp;in a show of force.

The White House is pushing forward to sell to&nbsp;Taiwan&nbsp;sophisticated military equipment including MQ-9 drones and a coastal defensive missile system, fuelling further tensions in what is already an increasingly adversarial Sino-US&nbsp;relations.

&nbsp;

A United States warship sailed through the Taiwan Strait on Thursday enraging China, which claims sovereignty over the island and surrounding seas. While the American military described it as a "routine" passage, China called it a ''serious attempt to undermine peace and stability''.

A United States warship sailed through the Taiwan Strait on Thursday enraging China, which claims sovereignty over the island and surrounding seas. While the American military described it as a "routine" passage, China called it a ''serious attempt to undermine peace and stability''. Also read: US warns China against any attempt to take Taiwan by force According to a statement by the US Pacific Fleet, "The ship's transit through the Taiwan Strait demonstrates the US commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific," the statement said. "The US Navy will continue to fly, sail and operate anywhere international law allows," it added. Also read: 'Set off war': China threatens retaliation after US diplomat's visit to Taiwan Ties between Beijing and Washington have deteriorated in recent months, over issues including trade and Hong Kong, with the self-ruled island of Taiwan a long-running source of tension. Any US Navy operations in the Taiwan Strait, which separates China from the island, provoke a strong response from Beijing, which considers Taiwan to be an inviolable part of its territory. In an angry riposte, the Chinese People's Liberation Army said it tracked the USS Barry by sea and air "throughout the entire process." Beijing has accused Washington and Taipei of "collusion" towards the island declaring formal independence and recently ramped up air force activity near Taiwan in a show of force. The White House is pushing forward to sell to Taiwan sophisticated military equipment including MQ-9 drones and a coastal defensive missile system, fuelling further tensions in what is already an increasingly adversarial Sino-US relations.

US warship transits Taiwan Strait; China calls it undermining 'peace'

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<article about="/world/in-us-china-tech-feud-taiwan-feels-heat-from-both-sides-331828" class="node node--type-article node--view-mode-full clearfix" role="article" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px !important; display: block;" typeof="schema:Article">
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BC-R-TAIWAN-CHIP-FEUD-ART-(TRIMS)-NYT

Raymond Zhong

c.2020&nbsp;

The New York Times Company<o:p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px !important;"></o:p>

TAINAN, Taiwan — The United States and China are wrestling to lead the world in artificial intelligence, 5G wireless and other cutting-edge technologies. But the real wizardry that makes those advancements possible is being performed on a yam-shaped island that sits between them, geographically and politically.

On Taiwan’s southern rim, inside an arena-size facility stretched out among lush greenery and coconut palms, colossal machines are manipulating matter at unimaginably tiny scale. A powerful laser vaporizes droplets of molten tin, causing them to emit ultraviolet light. Mirrors focus the light into a beam, which draws features into a silicon wafer with the precision, as one researcher put it, “equivalent to shooting an arrow from Earth to hit an apple placed on the moon.”

The high-performance computer chips that emerge from this process go into the brains of the latest tech products from both sides of the Pacific. Or at least they did until last month, when the Trump administration effectively forced leading chipmakers in Taiwan — and elsewhere — to stop taking orders from China’s proudest tech champion, 5G giant Huawei.

The administration’s stranglehold on Huawei shows that for all of China’s economic progress, the United States still has final say over the technologies without which the modern world could not run. Chipmaking relies on U.S. tools and know-how, which gives officials in Washington the power of life and death over semiconductor buyers and suppliers anywhere on the planet.

Next in the firing line is China’s most advanced chip producer, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation. The U.S. Department of Commerce told U.S. companies last week that they needed permission to export to SMIC, saying its chips could be used by China’s military. If the administration blocks SMIC from using U.S. software and equipment entirely, it will sharply set back Beijing’s hopes for meeting more of its own semiconductor needs.

That leaves Taiwanese chip companies — including the industry’s leading light, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., which owns the Tainan plant — in a tough spot.

They are forced to heed the dictates of U.S. tech policy. Yet they can scarcely ignore the fact that so many of their customers and their customers’ customers are in China, where the Communist government is also threatening Taiwan with ever bolder displays of military force. China has for decades claimed the self-governing democracy as part of its territory.

In the high-stakes tech fight, TSMC had been playing Finland: a sometime friend to both feuding giants. But that is not the way the tech world works anymore.

“China has virtually no room for maneuver,” said Pierre Ferragu, the head of technology research at New Street Research. “The U.S. definitely has the upper hand in the struggle.”

Tensions in the Taiwan Strait are rising more broadly this year.

The Trump administration has stepped up official exchanges with Taiwan ever since its president, Tsai Ing-wen, won reelection in January over an opponent who was friendlier to Beijing. In response, Chinese aircraft and warships have menaced the island with growing frequency.

When a State Department representative, Keith Krach, visited Taiwan recently, Tsai feted him at a banquet alongside a bevy of government dignitaries and TSMC’s retired founder, Morris Chang, a nod to the company’s significance to Taiwan’s relations with the United States.

U.S. officials have taken a great interest in TSMC, whose advanced chips are used in fighter jets and other hardware critical to America’s military edge. The company said this year that it would build a new factory in Arizona, responding to U.S. concerns about overreliance on offshore production.

Now, the Trump administration’s campaign against Huawei has forced TSMC to turn against one of its biggest customers. With the two companies unable to work together without licenses, Huawei may find itself unable to make its late-model handsets, an important chunk of its business, once it uses up its chip inventory.

“I don’t think Huawei has much of a future unless they can find some way to get their suppliers to get export licenses,” said Matt Bryson, an analyst with Wedbush Securities.

One of Huawei’s deputy chairmen, Guo Ping, said last week that the company was assessing its options.

“Survival is our main goal,” Guo said in Shanghai. “As Alexandre Dumas once said, all of human wisdom is summed up in two words: wait and hope.”

TSMC executives sound confident that Huawei’s plight will not dent it much. If Huawei cannot order chips from the company, then its rivals will instead.

Mark Liu, TSMC’s chairman, said at an industry conference last week that Taiwan would continue improving its technology so U.S. and Chinese companies had no choice but to keep working with the island.

“We are enjoying the success of the past,” Liu said. But for the future, “we cannot stay where we used to be before.”

TSMC could still get caught in the middle, though, if the U.S. government’s continuing attacks prompt Beijing to strike back.

A full-blown clampdown on sales to SMIC could increase the risk of Chinese retaliation “really significantly,” said Ferragu of New Street Research. Countermeasures that Beijing might once have considered too self-defeating — such as choking off Qualcomm’s or Apple’s sales in China, effectively depriving Chinese citizens of most high-end smartphones — could start to seem more acceptable.

“At this point, it’s really a game of poker,” Ferragu said. Apple and Qualcomm are both TSMC customers.

(BEGIN OPTIONAL TRIM.)

For Taiwan, these are not just business questions. China’s reliance on TSMC’s chips has long made people on the island see the company as a bulwark against Chinese military aggression. At its shareholder meeting this summer, an investor, Huang Hsueh-fen, approached the microphone hugging a giant bouquet.

“No matter how serious the pandemic becomes, I must still come offer flowers to the company that is our sacred mountain, protector of the nation,” Huang said.

Tech workers in Taiwan have a Mandarin rhyme about the young engineers who put in late nights and sacrifice their health for the company: “100,000 youths, 100,000 livers, shift by shift TSMC is saving Taiwan.”

(END OPTIONAL TRIM.)

So what happens if China stops needing TSMC as much as it does now?

This could happen naturally. TSMC is working at the frontiers of physics to continue doubling the number of transistors it can fit onto a piece of silicon. That principle, known as Moore’s Law, has guided semiconductor development for decades.

Not all tech products today need the most advanced chips, though. Some work best by packaging high-end processors with less sophisticated ones. Simple “internet of things” devices do just fine with simpler chips.

“The way we design chips is changing. It just has to,” said Jay Goldberg, a tech industry consultant and former Qualcomm executive. “Moore’s Law is slowing, and we’re just having to design chips in a way to accommodate that.”

A TSMC spokeswoman, Nina Kao, said demand for the company’s latest production processes was “stronger than ever.”

China could also lessen its dependence on Taiwan by getting better at making chips itself.

Beijing last year created a $30 billion fund for investing in chip projects. In recent months, thousands of Chinese companies have said they are getting into the semiconductor business, according to an analysis by the 21st Century Business Herald, a government-owned newspaper.

China is trying to poach more Taiwanese talent for the task. Dozens of former TSMC managers and engineers joined two ambitious Chinese chip projects last year, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.

Kao of TSMC said recent turnover was less than 5%, which the company considered a healthy level.

(STORY CAN END HERE. OPTIONAL MATERIAL FOLLOWS.)

Lin Chih-chieh, a law professor at National Chiao Tung University in Hsinchu, Taiwan, said the island needed stronger laws to keep Taiwanese chipmakers’ trade secrets from being spirited away to China.

Still, Lin said, Taiwan’s chip strengths prevent China from subjugating the island as quickly as it did Hong Kong, where the government has curbed civil liberties.
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BC-R-TAIWAN-CHIP-FEUD-ART-(TRIMS)-NYT Raymond Zhong c.2020 The New York Times Company TAINAN, Taiwan — The United States and China are wrestling to lead the world in artificial intelligence, 5G wireless and other cutting-edge technologies.

BC-R-TAIWAN-CHIP-FEUD-ART-(TRIMS)-NYT Raymond Zhong c.2020 The New York Times Company TAINAN, Taiwan — The United States and China are wrestling to lead the world in artificial intelligence, 5G wireless and other cutting-edge technologies. But the real wizardry that makes those advancements possible is being performed on a yam-shaped island that sits between them, geographically and politically. On Taiwan’s southern rim, inside an arena-size facility stretched out among lush greenery and coconut palms, colossal machines are manipulating matter at unimaginably tiny scale. A powerful laser vaporizes droplets of molten tin, causing them to emit ultraviolet light. Mirrors focus the light into a beam, which draws features into a silicon wafer with the precision, as one researcher put it, “equivalent to shooting an arrow from Earth to hit an apple placed on the moon.” The high-performance computer chips that emerge from this process go into the brains of the latest tech products from both sides of the Pacific. Or at least they did until last month, when the Trump administration effectively forced leading chipmakers in Taiwan — and elsewhere — to stop taking orders from China’s proudest tech champion, 5G giant Huawei. The administration’s stranglehold on Huawei shows that for all of China’s economic progress, the United States still has final say over the technologies without which the modern world could not run. Chipmaking relies on U.S. tools and know-how, which gives officials in Washington the power of life and death over semiconductor buyers and suppliers anywhere on the planet. Next in the firing line is China’s most advanced chip producer, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation. The U.S. Department of Commerce told U.S. companies last week that they needed permission to export to SMIC, saying its chips could be used by China’s military. If the administration blocks SMIC from using U.S. software and equipment entirely, it will sharply set back Beijing’s hopes for meeting more of its own semiconductor needs. That leaves Taiwanese chip companies — including the industry’s leading light, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., which owns the Tainan plant — in a tough spot. They are forced to heed the dictates of U.S. tech policy. Yet they can scarcely ignore the fact that so many of their customers and their customers’ customers are in China, where the Communist government is also threatening Taiwan with ever bolder displays of military force. China has for decades claimed the self-governing democracy as part of its territory. In the high-stakes tech fight, TSMC had been playing Finland: a sometime friend to both feuding giants. But that is not the way the tech world works anymore. “China has virtually no room for maneuver,” said Pierre Ferragu, the head of technology research at New Street Research. “The U.S. definitely has the upper hand in the struggle.” Tensions in the Taiwan Strait are rising more broadly this year. The Trump administration has stepped up official exchanges with Taiwan ever since its president, Tsai Ing-wen, won reelection in January over an opponent who was friendlier to Beijing. In response, Chinese aircraft and warships have menaced the island with growing frequency. When a State Department representative, Keith Krach, visited Taiwan recently, Tsai feted him at a banquet alongside a bevy of government dignitaries and TSMC’s retired founder, Morris Chang, a nod to the company’s significance to Taiwan’s relations with the United States. U.S. officials have taken a great interest in TSMC, whose advanced chips are used in fighter jets and other hardware critical to America’s military edge. The company said this year that it would build a new factory in Arizona, responding to U.S. concerns about overreliance on offshore production. Now, the Trump administration’s campaign against Huawei has forced TSMC to turn against one of its biggest customers. With the two companies unable to work together without licenses, Huawei may find itself unable to make its late-model handsets, an important chunk of its business, once it uses up its chip inventory. “I don’t think Huawei has much of a future unless they can find some way to get their suppliers to get export licenses,” said Matt Bryson, an analyst with Wedbush Securities. One of Huawei’s deputy chairmen, Guo Ping, said last week that the company was assessing its options. “Survival is our main goal,” Guo said in Shanghai. “As Alexandre Dumas once said, all of human wisdom is summed up in two words: wait and hope.” TSMC executives sound confident that Huawei’s plight will not dent it much. If Huawei cannot order chips from the company, then its rivals will instead. Mark Liu, TSMC’s chairman, said at an industry conference last week that Taiwan would continue improving its technology so U.S. and Chinese companies had no choice but to keep working with the island. “We are enjoying the success of the past,” Liu said. But for the future, “we cannot stay where we used to be before.” TSMC could still get caught in the middle, though, if the U.S. government’s continuing attacks prompt Beijing to strike back. A full-blown clampdown on sales to SMIC could increase the risk of Chinese retaliation “really significantly,” said Ferragu of New Street Research. Countermeasures that Beijing might once have considered too self-defeating — such as choking off Qualcomm’s or Apple’s sales in China, effectively depriving Chinese citizens of most high-end smartphones — could start to seem more acceptable. “At this point, it’s really a game of poker,” Ferragu said. Apple and Qualcomm are both TSMC customers. (BEGIN OPTIONAL TRIM.) For Taiwan, these are not just business questions. China’s reliance on TSMC’s chips has long made people on the island see the company as a bulwark against Chinese military aggression. At its shareholder meeting this summer, an investor, Huang Hsueh-fen, approached the microphone hugging a giant bouquet. “No matter how serious the pandemic becomes, I must still come offer flowers to the company that is our sacred mountain, protector of the nation,” Huang said. Tech workers in Taiwan have a Mandarin rhyme about the young engineers who put in late nights and sacrifice their health for the company: “100,000 youths, 100,000 livers, shift by shift TSMC is saving Taiwan.” (END OPTIONAL TRIM.) So what happens if China stops needing TSMC as much as it does now? This could happen naturally. TSMC is working at the frontiers of physics to continue doubling the number of transistors it can fit onto a piece of silicon. That principle, known as Moore’s Law, has guided semiconductor development for decades. Not all tech products today need the most advanced chips, though. Some work best by packaging high-end processors with less sophisticated ones. Simple “internet of things” devices do just fine with simpler chips. “The way we design chips is changing. It just has to,” said Jay Goldberg, a tech industry consultant and former Qualcomm executive. “Moore’s Law is slowing, and we’re just having to design chips in a way to accommodate that.” A TSMC spokeswoman, Nina Kao, said demand for the company’s latest production processes was “stronger than ever.” China could also lessen its dependence on Taiwan by getting better at making chips itself. Beijing last year created a $30 billion fund for investing in chip projects. In recent months, thousands of Chinese companies have said they are getting into the semiconductor business, according to an analysis by the 21st Century Business Herald, a government-owned newspaper. China is trying to poach more Taiwanese talent for the task. Dozens of former TSMC managers and engineers joined two ambitious Chinese chip projects last year, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. Kao of TSMC said recent turnover was less than 5%, which the company considered a healthy level. (STORY CAN END HERE. OPTIONAL MATERIAL FOLLOWS.) Lin Chih-chieh, a law professor at National Chiao Tung University in Hsinchu, Taiwan, said the island needed stronger laws to keep Taiwanese chipmakers’ trade secrets from being spirited away to China. Still, Lin said, Taiwan’s chip strengths prevent China from subjugating the island as quickly as it did Hong Kong, where the government has curbed civil liberties.

In US-China tech feud, Taiwan feels heat from both sides

TAINAN, Taiwan — The United States and China are wrestling to lead the world in artificial intelligence, 5G wireless and other cutting-edge technologies. But the real wizardry that makes those advancements possible is being performed on a yam-shaped island that sits between them, geographically and politically.

On Taiwan’s southern rim, inside an arena-size facility stretched out among lush greenery and coconut palms, colossal machines are manipulating matter at unimaginably tiny scale. A powerful laser vaporizes droplets of molten tin, causing them to emit ultraviolet light. Mirrors focus the light into a beam, which draws features into a silicon wafer with the precision, as one researcher put it, “equivalent to shooting an arrow from Earth to hit an apple placed on the moon.”

The high-performance computer chips that emerge from this process go into the brains of the latest tech products from both sides of the Pacific. Or at least they did until last month, when the Trump administration effectively forced leading chipmakers in Taiwan — and elsewhere — to stop taking orders from China’s proudest tech champion, 5G giant Huawei.

The administration’s stranglehold on Huawei shows that for all of China’s economic progress, the United States still has final say over the technologies without which the modern world could not run. Chipmaking relies on U.S. tools and know-how, which gives officials in Washington the power of life and death over semiconductor buyers and suppliers anywhere on the planet.

Next in the firing line is China’s most advanced chip producer, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation. The U.S. Department of Commerce told U.S. companies last week that they needed permission to export to SMIC, saying its chips could be used by China’s military. If the administration blocks SMIC from using U.S. software and equipment entirely, it will sharply set back Beijing’s hopes for meeting more of its own semiconductor needs.

That leaves Taiwanese chip companies — including the industry’s leading light, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., which owns the Tainan plant — in a tough spot.

They are forced to heed the dictates of U.S. tech policy. Yet they can scarcely ignore the fact that so many of their customers and their customers’ customers are in China, where the Communist government is also threatening Taiwan with ever bolder displays of military force. China has for decades claimed the self-governing democracy as part of its territory.

In the high-stakes tech fight, TSMC had been playing Finland: a sometime friend to both feuding giants. But that is not the way the tech world works anymore.

“China has virtually no room for maneuver,” said Pierre Ferragu, the head of technology research at New Street Research. “The U.S. definitely has the upper hand in the struggle.”

Tensions in the Taiwan Strait are rising more broadly this year.

The Trump administration has stepped up official exchanges with Taiwan ever since its president, Tsai Ing-wen, won reelection in January over an opponent who was friendlier to Beijing. In response, Chinese aircraft and warships have menaced the island with growing frequency.

When a State Department representative, Keith Krach, visited Taiwan recently, Tsai feted him at a banquet alongside a bevy of government dignitaries and TSMC’s retired founder, Morris Chang, a nod to the company’s significance to Taiwan’s relations with the United States.

U.S. officials have taken a great interest in TSMC, whose advanced chips are used in fighter jets and other hardware critical to America’s military edge. The company said this year that it would build a new factory in Arizona, responding to U.S. concerns about overreliance on offshore production.

Now, the Trump administration’s campaign against Huawei has forced TSMC to turn against one of its biggest customers. With the two companies unable to work together without licenses, Huawei may find itself unable to make its late-model handsets, an important chunk of its business, once it uses up its chip inventory.

“I don’t think Huawei has much of a future unless they can find some way to get their suppliers to get export licenses,” said Matt Bryson, an analyst with Wedbush Securities.

One of Huawei’s deputy chairmen, Guo Ping, said last week that the company was assessing its options.

“Survival is our main goal,” Guo said in Shanghai. “As Alexandre Dumas once said, all of human wisdom is summed up in two words: wait and hope.”

TSMC executives sound confident that Huawei’s plight will not dent it much. If Huawei cannot order chips from the company, then its rivals will instead.

Mark Liu, TSMC’s chairman, said at an industry conference last week that Taiwan would continue improving its technology so U.S. and Chinese companies had no choice but to keep working with the island.

“We are enjoying the success of the past,” Liu said. But for the future, “we cannot stay where we used to be before.”

TSMC could still get caught in the middle, though, if the U.S. government’s continuing attacks prompt Beijing to strike back.

A full-blown clampdown on sales to SMIC could increase the risk of Chinese retaliation “really significantly,” said Ferragu of New Street Research. Countermeasures that Beijing might once have considered too self-defeating — such as choking off Qualcomm’s or Apple’s sales in China, effectively depriving Chinese citizens of most high-end smartphones — could start to seem more acceptable.

“At this point, it’s really a game of poker,” Ferragu said. Apple and Qualcomm are both TSMC customers.

For Taiwan, these are not just business questions. China’s reliance on TSMC’s chips has long made people on the island see the company as a bulwark against Chinese military aggression. At its shareholder meeting this summer, an investor, Huang Hsueh-fen, approached the microphone hugging a giant bouquet.

“No matter how serious the pandemic becomes, I must still come offer flowers to the company that is our sacred mountain, protector of the nation,” Huang said.

Tech workers in Taiwan have a Mandarin rhyme about the young engineers who put in late nights and sacrifice their health for the company: “100,000 youths, 100,000 livers, shift by shift TSMC is saving Taiwan.”

So what happens if China stops needing TSMC as much as it does now?

This could happen naturally. TSMC is working at the frontiers of physics to continue doubling the number of transistors it can fit onto a piece of silicon. That principle, known as Moore’s Law, has guided semiconductor development for decades.

Not all tech products today need the most advanced chips, though. Some work best by packaging high-end processors with less sophisticated ones. Simple “internet of things” devices do just fine with simpler chips.

“The way we design chips is changing. It just has to,” said Jay Goldberg, a tech industry consultant and former Qualcomm executive. “Moore’s Law is slowing, and we’re just having to design chips in a way to accommodate that.”

A TSMC spokeswoman, Nina Kao, said demand for the company’s latest production processes was “stronger than ever.”

China could also lessen its dependence on Taiwan by getting better at making chips itself.

Beijing last year created a $30 billion fund for investing in chip projects. In recent months, thousands of Chinese companies have said they are getting into the semiconductor business, according to an analysis by the 21st Century Business Herald, a government-owned newspaper.

China is trying to poach more Taiwanese talent for the task. Dozens of former TSMC managers and engineers joined two ambitious Chinese chip projects last year, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.

Kao of TSMC said recent turnover was less than 5%, which the company considered a healthy level.

Lin Chih-chieh, a law professor at National Chiao Tung University in Hsinchu, Taiwan, said the island needed stronger laws to keep Taiwanese chipmakers’ trade secrets from being spirited away to China.

Still, Lin said, Taiwan’s chip strengths prevent China from subjugating the island as quickly as it did Hong Kong, where the government has curbed civil liberties.

“At least compared to Hong Kong, we are lucky,” she said. “Hong Kong has no ‘Made in Hong Kong’ products, almost nothing.”

TAINAN, Taiwan — The United States and China are wrestling to lead the world in artificial intelligence, 5G wireless and other cutting-edge technologies. But the real wizardry that makes those advancements possible is being performed on a yam-shaped island that sits between them, geographically and politically.

TAINAN, Taiwan — The United States and China are wrestling to lead the world in artificial intelligence, 5G wireless and other cutting-edge technologies. But the real wizardry that makes those advancements possible is being performed on a yam-shaped island that sits between them, geographically and politically. On Taiwan’s southern rim, inside an arena-size facility stretched out among lush greenery and coconut palms, colossal machines are manipulating matter at unimaginably tiny scale. A powerful laser vaporizes droplets of molten tin, causing them to emit ultraviolet light. Mirrors focus the light into a beam, which draws features into a silicon wafer with the precision, as one researcher put it, “equivalent to shooting an arrow from Earth to hit an apple placed on the moon.” The high-performance computer chips that emerge from this process go into the brains of the latest tech products from both sides of the Pacific. Or at least they did until last month, when the Trump administration effectively forced leading chipmakers in Taiwan — and elsewhere — to stop taking orders from China’s proudest tech champion, 5G giant Huawei. The administration’s stranglehold on Huawei shows that for all of China’s economic progress, the United States still has final say over the technologies without which the modern world could not run. Chipmaking relies on U.S. tools and know-how, which gives officials in Washington the power of life and death over semiconductor buyers and suppliers anywhere on the planet. Next in the firing line is China’s most advanced chip producer, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation. The U.S. Department of Commerce told U.S. companies last week that they needed permission to export to SMIC, saying its chips could be used by China’s military. If the administration blocks SMIC from using U.S. software and equipment entirely, it will sharply set back Beijing’s hopes for meeting more of its own semiconductor needs. That leaves Taiwanese chip companies — including the industry’s leading light, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., which owns the Tainan plant — in a tough spot. They are forced to heed the dictates of U.S. tech policy. Yet they can scarcely ignore the fact that so many of their customers and their customers’ customers are in China, where the Communist government is also threatening Taiwan with ever bolder displays of military force. China has for decades claimed the self-governing democracy as part of its territory. In the high-stakes tech fight, TSMC had been playing Finland: a sometime friend to both feuding giants. But that is not the way the tech world works anymore. “China has virtually no room for maneuver,” said Pierre Ferragu, the head of technology research at New Street Research. “The U.S. definitely has the upper hand in the struggle.” Tensions in the Taiwan Strait are rising more broadly this year. The Trump administration has stepped up official exchanges with Taiwan ever since its president, Tsai Ing-wen, won reelection in January over an opponent who was friendlier to Beijing. In response, Chinese aircraft and warships have menaced the island with growing frequency. When a State Department representative, Keith Krach, visited Taiwan recently, Tsai feted him at a banquet alongside a bevy of government dignitaries and TSMC’s retired founder, Morris Chang, a nod to the company’s significance to Taiwan’s relations with the United States. U.S. officials have taken a great interest in TSMC, whose advanced chips are used in fighter jets and other hardware critical to America’s military edge. The company said this year that it would build a new factory in Arizona, responding to U.S. concerns about overreliance on offshore production. Now, the Trump administration’s campaign against Huawei has forced TSMC to turn against one of its biggest customers. With the two companies unable to work together without licenses, Huawei may find itself unable to make its late-model handsets, an important chunk of its business, once it uses up its chip inventory. “I don’t think Huawei has much of a future unless they can find some way to get their suppliers to get export licenses,” said Matt Bryson, an analyst with Wedbush Securities. One of Huawei’s deputy chairmen, Guo Ping, said last week that the company was assessing its options. “Survival is our main goal,” Guo said in Shanghai. “As Alexandre Dumas once said, all of human wisdom is summed up in two words: wait and hope.” TSMC executives sound confident that Huawei’s plight will not dent it much. If Huawei cannot order chips from the company, then its rivals will instead. Mark Liu, TSMC’s chairman, said at an industry conference last week that Taiwan would continue improving its technology so U.S. and Chinese companies had no choice but to keep working with the island. “We are enjoying the success of the past,” Liu said. But for the future, “we cannot stay where we used to be before.” TSMC could still get caught in the middle, though, if the U.S. government’s continuing attacks prompt Beijing to strike back. A full-blown clampdown on sales to SMIC could increase the risk of Chinese retaliation “really significantly,” said Ferragu of New Street Research. Countermeasures that Beijing might once have considered too self-defeating — such as choking off Qualcomm’s or Apple’s sales in China, effectively depriving Chinese citizens of most high-end smartphones — could start to seem more acceptable. “At this point, it’s really a game of poker,” Ferragu said. Apple and Qualcomm are both TSMC customers. For Taiwan, these are not just business questions. China’s reliance on TSMC’s chips has long made people on the island see the company as a bulwark against Chinese military aggression. At its shareholder meeting this summer, an investor, Huang Hsueh-fen, approached the microphone hugging a giant bouquet. “No matter how serious the pandemic becomes, I must still come offer flowers to the company that is our sacred mountain, protector of the nation,” Huang said. Tech workers in Taiwan have a Mandarin rhyme about the young engineers who put in late nights and sacrifice their health for the company: “100,000 youths, 100,000 livers, shift by shift TSMC is saving Taiwan.” So what happens if China stops needing TSMC as much as it does now? This could happen naturally. TSMC is working at the frontiers of physics to continue doubling the number of transistors it can fit onto a piece of silicon. That principle, known as Moore’s Law, has guided semiconductor development for decades. Not all tech products today need the most advanced chips, though. Some work best by packaging high-end processors with less sophisticated ones. Simple “internet of things” devices do just fine with simpler chips. “The way we design chips is changing. It just has to,” said Jay Goldberg, a tech industry consultant and former Qualcomm executive. “Moore’s Law is slowing, and we’re just having to design chips in a way to accommodate that.” A TSMC spokeswoman, Nina Kao, said demand for the company’s latest production processes was “stronger than ever.” China could also lessen its dependence on Taiwan by getting better at making chips itself. Beijing last year created a $30 billion fund for investing in chip projects. In recent months, thousands of Chinese companies have said they are getting into the semiconductor business, according to an analysis by the 21st Century Business Herald, a government-owned newspaper. China is trying to poach more Taiwanese talent for the task. Dozens of former TSMC managers and engineers joined two ambitious Chinese chip projects last year, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. Kao of TSMC said recent turnover was less than 5%, which the company considered a healthy level. Lin Chih-chieh, a law professor at National Chiao Tung University in Hsinchu, Taiwan, said the island needed stronger laws to keep Taiwanese chipmakers’ trade secrets from being spirited away to China. Still, Lin said, Taiwan’s chip strengths prevent China from subjugating the island as quickly as it did Hong Kong, where the government has curbed civil liberties. “At least compared to Hong Kong, we are lucky,” she said. “Hong Kong has no ‘Made in Hong Kong’ products, almost nothing.”

China&nbsp;has lodged "stern representations" with the United States, accusing it of sending a US&nbsp;plane into a no-fly zone over Chinese live-fire military drills,&nbsp;branding it an act of provocation on Tuesday, further ratcheting up tensions between Beijing and Washington.

China&nbsp;has long denounced US&nbsp;surveillance activities, while the United States has complained of "unsafe" intercepts by Chinese aircraft. While such missions happen regularly, for&nbsp;China&nbsp;to talk about them publicly is unusual.

Also read:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/china-jinping-warns-period-of-turbulent-change-as-external-risks-rise-322953" hreflang="en">China: Jinping warns 'period of turbulent change' as external risks rise</a>

The U-2 reconnaissance jet's flight over an area in northern China violated safety rules between the two nations, Xinhua reported, citing Chinese defence ministry spokesman Wu Qian.

"The US action could easily have resulted in misjudgments and even accidents," said the report, adding "that the move was an obvious provocation."

"China firmly opposes such provocative actions and has lodged solemn representations with the US side."

Also see:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/photos/how-us-china-relationship-took-a-turn-for-the-worse-314882">How US-China relationship took a turn for the worse</a>

Beijing's anger comes as US and Chinese relations have deteriorated to historic lows, with confrontations simmering on trade, military and political matters.

On the military front, US naval forces regularly conduct operations near Taiwan and in the South China Sea, effectively challenging China's territorial claims.

In April 2001, an intercept of a US&nbsp;spy plane by a Chinese fighter jet resulted in a collision that killed the Chinese pilot and forced the American plane to make an emergency landing at a base on the southern Chinese island of Hainan.

The 24 US&nbsp;air crew members were held for 11 days until Washington apologised for the incident.

China has lodged "stern representations" with the United States, accusing it of sending a US plane into a no-fly zone over Chinese live-fire military drills, branding it an act of provocation on Tuesday, further ratcheting up tensions between Beijing and Washington.

China has lodged "stern representations" with the United States, accusing it of sending a US plane into a no-fly zone over Chinese live-fire military drills, branding it an act of provocation on Tuesday, further ratcheting up tensions between Beijing and Washington. China has long denounced US surveillance activities, while the United States has complained of "unsafe" intercepts by Chinese aircraft. While such missions happen regularly, for China to talk about them publicly is unusual. Also read: China: Jinping warns 'period of turbulent change' as external risks rise The U-2 reconnaissance jet's flight over an area in northern China violated safety rules between the two nations, Xinhua reported, citing Chinese defence ministry spokesman Wu Qian. "The US action could easily have resulted in misjudgments and even accidents," said the report, adding "that the move was an obvious provocation." "China firmly opposes such provocative actions and has lodged solemn representations with the US side." Also see: How US-China relationship took a turn for the worse Beijing's anger comes as US and Chinese relations have deteriorated to historic lows, with confrontations simmering on trade, military and political matters. On the military front, US naval forces regularly conduct operations near Taiwan and in the South China Sea, effectively challenging China's territorial claims. In April 2001, an intercept of a US spy plane by a Chinese fighter jet resulted in a collision that killed the Chinese pilot and forced the American plane to make an emergency landing at a base on the southern Chinese island of Hainan. The 24 US air crew members were held for 11 days until Washington apologised for the incident.

'Obvious provocation': China accuses US spy plane of entering no-fly zone

On Tuesday, US President Donald Trump continued to attack his rival in the upcoming presidential elections, Joe Biden, by suggesting he was too soft on China.

While addressing himself in the third person, Trump said, “China will own the United States if this election is lost by Donald Trump," in conversation with radio host Hugh Hewitt.

"If I don't win the election, China will own the United States. You're going to have to learn to speak Chinese, you want to know the truth”, the president claimed.

China a contentious issue

China has become a focal point for the upcoming elections, with both candidates trying to sound tough against Chinese influence.

Trump has repeatedly blamed China for failing to contain the spread of COVID-19, and claims that his relationship with Chinese President Jinping has now soured. The US continues to bother China, be it in the form of sanctions against its top politicians like Carrie Lam, or the historic visit to Taiwan, which was the first in decades.

Also read:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/donald-trump-calls-kamala-harris-phony-mean-and-most-disrespectful-senator-319848" hreflang="en">Donald Trump calls Kamala Harris 'phony’, 'mean' and, most disrespectful senator</a>

However, Trump is yet to still refer to the persecution of Uighur muslims in China, and his ex aide John Bolton claimed in a book that he had given his approval for the camps to Jinping.

"Who would ever say a thing like that? He made it up. He made up everything," Trump said, while referring to Bolton. "John Bolton is a sick person. And John, and he's not a smart person”, he added.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had referred to the Chinese action against the Uighurs “the stain of the century”.

Also read:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/us-presidential-candidate-joe-biden-picks-indian-origin-senator-kamala-harris-for-us-vice-presidential-candidate-319835" hreflang="en">Biden picks Indian-origin Kamala Harris for US vice presidential candidate</a>

Trump attacks Harris

US President Donald Trump on Tuesday said that he was "surprised" when Joe Biden picked Kamala Harris as his vice-presidential candidate. He called Kamala Harris, the "most horrible" member of the US Senate.

Trump told reporters at the White House that Harris did not impress him when she was striving for the Democratic nomination in primaries ultimately won by Biden.

In Pics |&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/photos/how-top-politicians-and-celebrities-are-reacting-to-kamala-harris-vp-pick-319853" hreflang="en">How top politicians and celebrities are reacting to Kamala Harris' VP pick</a>

"I was more surprised than anything else because she did so poorly," he said.

Donald Trump added that during his 2018 Senate confirmation hearings of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, Harris was "the meanest, the most horrible, the most disrespectful of anybody in the US Senate."

Trump tweeted out a video calling Harris a "phony"&nbsp;and 'attacking Joe Biden for "racist policies".

On Tuesday, US President Donald Trump continued to attack his rival in the upcoming presidential elections, Joe Biden, by suggesting he was too soft on China. While addressing himself in the third person, Trump said, “China will own the United States if this election is lost by Donald Trump," in conversation with radio host Hugh Hewitt.

On Tuesday, US President Donald Trump continued to attack his rival in the upcoming presidential elections, Joe Biden, by suggesting he was too soft on China. While addressing himself in the third person, Trump said, “China will own the United States if this election is lost by Donald Trump," in conversation with radio host Hugh Hewitt. "If I don't win the election, China will own the United States. You're going to have to learn to speak Chinese, you want to know the truth”, the president claimed. China a contentious issue China has become a focal point for the upcoming elections, with both candidates trying to sound tough against Chinese influence. Trump has repeatedly blamed China for failing to contain the spread of COVID-19, and claims that his relationship with Chinese President Jinping has now soured. The US continues to bother China, be it in the form of sanctions against its top politicians like Carrie Lam, or the historic visit to Taiwan, which was the first in decades. Also read: Donald Trump calls Kamala Harris 'phony’, 'mean' and, most disrespectful senator However, Trump is yet to still refer to the persecution of Uighur muslims in China, and his ex aide John Bolton claimed in a book that he had given his approval for the camps to Jinping. "Who would ever say a thing like that? He made it up. He made up everything," Trump said, while referring to Bolton. "John Bolton is a sick person. And John, and he's not a smart person”, he added. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had referred to the Chinese action against the Uighurs “the stain of the century”. Also read: Biden picks Indian-origin Kamala Harris for US vice presidential candidate Trump attacks Harris US President Donald Trump on Tuesday said that he was "surprised" when Joe Biden picked Kamala Harris as his vice-presidential candidate. He called Kamala Harris, the "most horrible" member of the US Senate. Trump told reporters at the White House that Harris did not impress him when she was striving for the Democratic nomination in primaries ultimately won by Biden. In Pics | How top politicians and celebrities are reacting to Kamala Harris' VP pick "I was more surprised than anything else because she did so poorly," he said. Donald Trump added that during his 2018 Senate confirmation hearings of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, Harris was "the meanest, the most horrible, the most disrespectful of anybody in the US Senate." Trump tweeted out a video calling Harris a "phony" and 'attacking Joe Biden for "racist policies".

Americans will need to learn Chinese if Biden wins, says Trump

China targetted US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo over comments on Chinese tech giants and the Communist Party of China. Chinese state councilor Wang Yi rejected what he described as 'American interventionism' in China. Watch report.

China: US waging a diplomatic war, Chinese apps significant threat to US data

A suspended engineering professor of the University of Arkansas called Simon&nbsp;Saw-Teong&nbsp;Ang has been&nbsp;indicted over China links and is facing&nbsp;44 counts of fraud said the US Department of Justice.

The indictment said&nbsp;Ang&nbsp;was secretly part of the Xi-backed Thousand Talents program, which Washington says China uses to collect research from abroad.

The FBI affidavit says authorities discovered Ang's alleged ties to Chinese interests after a university employee attempted to identify the owner of a hard drive that was placed in lost-and-found at a campus library.

Also read:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/fbi-arrests-nasa-researcher-for-not-disclosing-alleged-ties-with-china-298420">FBI arrests NASA researcher for not 'disclosing' alleged ties with China</a>

While reviewing the contents of the hard drive, which were later turned over to the FBI, the affidavit says, the employee discovered an email exchange between Ang and a visiting researcher from Xidian University in Xi'an, China.

In the September 2018 email discussion, Ang wrote that things were becoming difficult for him because of the current political climate, according to the affidavit.

According to the FBI, those associated with China's Thousand Talents program are individuals who work or study outside of China in high-priority research fields. While not traditional spies, investigators say they are nevertheless collecting research information sought by Chinese authorities.

Earlier this week,&nbsp;Li Xiaojiang, a former professor at Emory University in Atlanta, admitted tax fraud in a case focused on his hidden earnings from China, also as a participant in the Thousand Talents program.

Senator Marco Rubio, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said such cases combined with the coronavirus are forcing China to change its tactics.

"Beijing has shifted its recruitment efforts for the Thousand Talents Program online, and it has increased efforts to hack US medical research institutes for COVID-19 information," he said.

A suspended engineering professor of the University of Arkansas called Simon Saw-Teong Ang has been indicted over China links and is facing 44 counts of fraud said the US Department of Justice.

A suspended engineering professor of the University of Arkansas called Simon Saw-Teong Ang has been indicted over China links and is facing 44 counts of fraud said the US Department of Justice. The indictment said Ang was secretly part of the Xi-backed Thousand Talents program, which Washington says China uses to collect research from abroad. The FBI affidavit says authorities discovered Ang's alleged ties to Chinese interests after a university employee attempted to identify the owner of a hard drive that was placed in lost-and-found at a campus library. Also read: FBI arrests NASA researcher for not 'disclosing' alleged ties with China While reviewing the contents of the hard drive, which were later turned over to the FBI, the affidavit says, the employee discovered an email exchange between Ang and a visiting researcher from Xidian University in Xi'an, China. In the September 2018 email discussion, Ang wrote that things were becoming difficult for him because of the current political climate, according to the affidavit. According to the FBI, those associated with China's Thousand Talents program are individuals who work or study outside of China in high-priority research fields. While not traditional spies, investigators say they are nevertheless collecting research information sought by Chinese authorities. Earlier this week, Li Xiaojiang, a former professor at Emory University in Atlanta, admitted tax fraud in a case focused on his hidden earnings from China, also as a participant in the Thousand Talents program. Senator Marco Rubio, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said such cases combined with the coronavirus are forcing China to change its tactics. "Beijing has shifted its recruitment efforts for the Thousand Talents Program online, and it has increased efforts to hack US medical research institutes for COVID-19 information," he said.

US professor Simon Ang indicted over China links, faces 44 counts of fraud

After the United States, Canada has also received mysterious packages of seeds&nbsp;that appears to have come&nbsp;from China.

The Canadian food inspection agency is warning Canadians not to plant packages of “unsolicited” seeds.

The agency said in a statement that these seeds can contain invasive species and can be harmful to agricultural and natural areas.

“Do not plant seeds from unknown origins,” the CFIA wrote in the statement. “Unauthorized seeds could be the seeds of invasive plants, or carry plant pests, which can be harmful when introduced into Canada.”

In a tweet, the Ontario provincial police said the foreign seeds are typically sent from China or Taiwan.

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If you receive an unsolicited shipment of foreign seeds in the mail from China or Taiwan DO NOT plant or dispose of them. Call the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) at 519 691-1306 or 1 800 442-2342. Unsolicited seeds could be invasive &amp; threaten our environment. ^kj <a href="https://t.co/n5hvlFS1W8">pic.twitter.com/n5hvlFS1W8</a>
— OPP Central Region (@OPP_CR) <a href="https://twitter.com/OPP_CR/status/1288196183761068033?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 28, 2020</a></blockquote>
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The CFIA is urging anyone who receives these seeds to contact their regional cfia office and keep the package until an inspector contacts you.

The US&nbsp;Department of Agriculture&nbsp; issued a similar warning on Tuesday, stating it’s believed the seeds are part of a “brushing scam,” in which a seller sends someone a cheap product or empty box, then uses that shipment information to create a fake review for the company, which can boost its rating on e-commerce sites.

<img alt="Packages of unidentified seeds which appear to have been mailed from China " data-entity-type="file" data-entity-uuid="bcbca6d3-b78f-41d9-b81c-f1f64458f92d" src="//cdn.wionews.com/sites/default/files/inline-images/Untitled%20design%20%2815%29_21.jpg" />

Packages of unidentified&nbsp;seeds&nbsp;which appear to have been mailed from China to US&nbsp;postal addresses are seen at the Washington State Department of Agriculture (WSDA) in Olympia, Washington/&nbsp;Reuters

USDA&nbsp;said it is collecting the seeds from those who’ve received them for further testing.

Beijing's relations with Canada and Washington have deteriorated this year to what experts say is their lowest level in decades over issues ranging from trade and technology to the coronavirus pandemic.

Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said on Tuesday China's postal service strictly abides by restrictions on sending&nbsp;seeds.

Records on the packages appear to have been falsified, according to checks by China's postal service, which has asked for them to be sent to China for investigation, he said at a daily news briefing.

US&nbsp;states, including Washington and Alabama, labeled the shipments as "agricultural smuggling." Photos distributed by state agriculture departments show&nbsp;seeds&nbsp;of different sizes, shapes and colors in white or yellow envelopes.

State officials said some packages were labeled as jewelry and may have contained Chinese writing. They asked recipients to keep the&nbsp;seeds&nbsp;in sealed plastic bags until authorities collect them.

After the United States, Canada has also received mysterious packages of seeds that appears to have come from China. The Canadian food inspection agency is warning Canadians not to plant packages of “unsolicited” seeds.

After the United States, Canada has also received mysterious packages of seeds that appears to have come from China. The Canadian food inspection agency is warning Canadians not to plant packages of “unsolicited” seeds. The agency said in a statement that these seeds can contain invasive species and can be harmful to agricultural and natural areas. “Do not plant seeds from unknown origins,” the CFIA wrote in the statement. “Unauthorized seeds could be the seeds of invasive plants, or carry plant pests, which can be harmful when introduced into Canada.” In a tweet, the Ontario provincial police said the foreign seeds are typically sent from China or Taiwan. If you receive an unsolicited shipment of foreign seeds in the mail from China or Taiwan DO NOT plant or dispose of them. Call the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) at 519 691-1306 or 1 800 442-2342. Unsolicited seeds could be invasive & threaten our environment. ^kj pic.twitter.com/n5hvlFS1W8 — OPP Central Region (@OPP_CR) July 28, 2020 × The CFIA is urging anyone who receives these seeds to contact their regional cfia office and keep the package until an inspector contacts you. The US Department of Agriculture issued a similar warning on Tuesday, stating it’s believed the seeds are part of a “brushing scam,” in which a seller sends someone a cheap product or empty box, then uses that shipment information to create a fake review for the company, which can boost its rating on e-commerce sites. Packages of unidentified seeds which appear to have been mailed from China to US postal addresses are seen at the Washington State Department of Agriculture (WSDA) in Olympia, Washington/ Reuters USDA said it is collecting the seeds from those who’ve received them for further testing. Beijing's relations with Canada and Washington have deteriorated this year to what experts say is their lowest level in decades over issues ranging from trade and technology to the coronavirus pandemic. Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said on Tuesday China's postal service strictly abides by restrictions on sending seeds. Records on the packages appear to have been falsified, according to checks by China's postal service, which has asked for them to be sent to China for investigation, he said at a daily news briefing. US states, including Washington and Alabama, labeled the shipments as "agricultural smuggling." Photos distributed by state agriculture departments show seeds of different sizes, shapes and colors in white or yellow envelopes. State officials said some packages were labeled as jewelry and may have contained Chinese writing. They asked recipients to keep the seeds in sealed plastic bags until authorities collect them.

After US, Canada receives mysterious packages of seeds from China

China is considering ordering the closure of the US consulate in the central city of Wuhan after Washington told China to shut its consulate in the city of Houston. Watch report.

US orders its Houston mission closure: China may shut US Wuhan consulate

Accuse, evict, repeat: How it has become a commonly used tactic by US

The United States must be willing to live alongside countries with different political systems to its own, said China’s ambassador to the US&nbsp;Cui Tiankai in an interview.

During the interview, Cui analyzed the state of China-US relations, the COVID-19, as well as the Law of the People's Republic of China on Safeguarding National Security in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR).

Also read:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/they-could-have-stopped-the-virus-but-didnt-trump-lashes-out-at-china-again-314740">They could have stopped the virus but didn't: Trump lashes out at China again</a>

"We certainly have the legitimate right to build our country into a modernized, strong, prosperous country, like every other country in the world.''

''I think the fundamental question for the United States is very simple. Is the United States ready or willing to live with another country with very different culture, very different political and economic systems? Is the United States ready to live with it in peace and cooperate on so many and still growing global challenges? I think this is the real choice. This is the fundamental choice people have to make," said Cui.

Also read:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/covid-19-vaccine-who-applauds-oxford-coronavirus-vaccine-data-but-warns-theres-still-a-long-way-to-go-314786" hreflang="en">WHO hails ‘good news’ on COVID-19 vaccines, but warns there’s still a long way</a>

When asked if China lacked transparency over COVID-19, Cui said the virus involved a process of discovery and learning and this needed global cooperation. He said China first communicated with the World Health Organization as early as January 3, and the Chinese CDC and the US&nbsp;CDC had their communication about this new virus as early as January 4.

As for concerns over the law on safeguarding national security in HKSAR, Cui said the legislation would safeguard the "One Country, Two Systems" principle and aid the process of doing business in the region.

Cui added that the targets of the law was clear, and those who avoided certain actions should have no worries.

The statement came after US President Trump attacked China once again over the coronavirus pandemic asserting that it's a “worldwide problem” caused by China.

In recent months, US-China ties have dipped to their lowest ebb in decades, strained over issues ranging from the global coronavirus pandemic and China's massive trade surpluses, to Beijing’s suppression of pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, its military buildup in the South China Sea and treatment of minority Muslims.

The United States must be willing to live alongside countries with different political systems to its own, said China’s ambassador to the US Cui Tiankai in an interview.

The United States must be willing to live alongside countries with different political systems to its own, said China’s ambassador to the US Cui Tiankai in an interview. During the interview, Cui analyzed the state of China-US relations, the COVID-19, as well as the Law of the People's Republic of China on Safeguarding National Security in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR). Also read: They could have stopped the virus but didn't: Trump lashes out at China again "We certainly have the legitimate right to build our country into a modernized, strong, prosperous country, like every other country in the world.'' ''I think the fundamental question for the United States is very simple. Is the United States ready or willing to live with another country with very different culture, very different political and economic systems? Is the United States ready to live with it in peace and cooperate on so many and still growing global challenges? I think this is the real choice. This is the fundamental choice people have to make," said Cui. Also read: WHO hails ‘good news’ on COVID-19 vaccines, but warns there’s still a long way When asked if China lacked transparency over COVID-19, Cui said the virus involved a process of discovery and learning and this needed global cooperation. He said China first communicated with the World Health Organization as early as January 3, and the Chinese CDC and the US CDC had their communication about this new virus as early as January 4. As for concerns over the law on safeguarding national security in HKSAR, Cui said the legislation would safeguard the "One Country, Two Systems" principle and aid the process of doing business in the region. Cui added that the targets of the law was clear, and those who avoided certain actions should have no worries. The statement came after US President Trump attacked China once again over the coronavirus pandemic asserting that it's a “worldwide problem” caused by China. In recent months, US-China ties have dipped to their lowest ebb in decades, strained over issues ranging from the global coronavirus pandemic and China's massive trade surpluses, to Beijing’s suppression of pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, its military buildup in the South China Sea and treatment of minority Muslims.

US must be willing to live alongside countries of different cultures: China

How US-China relationship took a turn for the worse

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After US, Canada receives mysterious packages of seeds from China

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US must be willing to live alongside countries of different cultures: China

How US-China relationship took a turn for the worse