Starbucks closed two stores in East China on Dec. 13, hours after Chinese state-run media reported the stores were using expired ingredients. Public opinion on Chinese social media platforms quickly criticized Starbucks products, which are more expensive than local Chinese brands but better in quality and taste. According to a China commentator, this is the…

Commentary Beijing has Africa in its sights because the continent has the resources it needs to realize its great power ambitions. Consequently, huge energy has been invested into growing the Belt and Road’s penetration into Africa. The core focus of Belt and Road in Africa has been the building of railways, roads, ports, airports, and…

News Analysis Chinese leader Xi Jinping gave a speech at a conference in China on Oct. 25 to mark the 50th anniversary of the admittance of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to the United Nations. The speech was directed at U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres who attended the conference virtually, as Xi has not…

Commentary Over recent weeks, China’s Communist Party propaganda organs have been touting the massive success of NBCUniversal’s brand-new Beijing theme park. But why? As Xi Jinping continues to turn away from China’s forty-plus year policy of engaging and opening itself with democracies around the world, Hollywood’s esteemed intellectual property is now viewed harshly as propaganda…

News Analysis A new study of China’s global influence operations, produced by the French military, is taking France by storm. Le Monde, Le Parisiene, Le Figaro, L’Express, Libération, the country’s Senate, and others have all covered the 641-page report, most positively and many breathlessly. Breathless is the right reaction to newly-discovering the depths of China’s…

News Analysis The Chinese regime does not recognize dual-citizenship, claiming full sovereignty over anyone holding a Chinese passport. At the same time, much of the rhetoric of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its leader Xi Jinping is about Chinese blood and the blood of the ancestors, which translates to the CCP believing that it controls…

Commentary Chinese “wolf warriors” and their sycophants in China’s state-run media have been crowing for weeks about the strategic defeat suffered by the United States in Afghanistan. During a telephone call on Aug. 16, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi claimed that the U.S. Secretary of State expressed hope that China would help in “stabilizing Afghanistan.” Here…

The release of Meng Wanzhou, the CFO of Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei, to China has been used by the CCP’s media to launch a wave of anti-U.S. propaganda and to promote Meng as a “national hero” against the United States in Chinese schools and kindergartens. After reaching a deferred prosecution agreement with the U.S. Justice…

News Analysis In a recent report on the China threat, the French Military School Strategic Research Institute (IRSEM) identified the Chinese regime’s three-pronged attack consisting of psychological warfare, public opinion warfare, and legal warfare. The attack is all part of a massive propaganda campaign focused on overseas Chinese. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) claims ownership…

Commentary If there’s one thing progressives love doing, it’s apologizing. They apologize for being racist, for white privilege, for polluting the planet; in short, they apologize for anything and everything. The word sorry, like the U.S. dollar, continues to lose its purchasing power. If everyone is sorry, then no one is sorry. Vivek Ramaswamy, the author of…