Free Republic

More than halfway through his five-year term as president of China and general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party—expected to be the first of at least two—Xi Jinping’s widening crackdown on civil society and promotion of a cult of personality have disappointed many observers, both Chinese and foreign, who saw him as destined by family heritage and life experience to be a liberal reformer. Many thought Xi must have come to understand the dangers of Party dictatorship from the experiences of his family under Mao’s rule. His father, Xi Zhongxun (1913–2002), was almost executed in an inner-Party conflict in 1935,...

Chinese archaeologists have discovered an unidentified cluster of tombs on the Pamirs Plateau, unveiling a new mystery on the crossroads of the ancient Silk Road. Eights tombs, each two meters in diameter, were arranged on a 100-meter-long and 50-meter-wide terrace, with lines of black stones and lines of white stones stretching alongside like rays, according to the archaeology team with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences that found the tombs in Xinjiang's Taxkorgan Tajik Autonomous County, a border region neighboring Afghanistan and Pakistan, in October. "The tombs are peculiar. No similar ones had been detected before on the Pamirs Plateau,...

The Cultural Revolution: A People’s History 1962-1976. By Frank Dikötter. Bloomsbury; 382 pages; $32 and £25. The Cowshed. By Ji Xianlin. Introduction by Zha Jianying. New York Review of Books; 188 pages; $24.95 and £14.99. FIFTY years ago the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, as it was officially known, plunged China into Maoist madness. It left well over 1m people dead and wrecked the lives of many millions of others. It was Mao Zedong, then 72, who launched the “red terror”, as young participants proudly called it, partly to purge the party of officials who were sceptical about his radical policies....

BEIJING (AP) -- China features prominently in the rhetoric of presumed Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, who accuses the country of stealing American jobs and cheating at global trade. In China though, he's only just emerging as a public figure, despite fame elsewhere for his voluble utterances, high-profile businesses and reality TV shows. Although the government has denounced Trump's threats of economic retaliation, many Chinese observers see a silver lining in his focus on economic issues instead of human rights and political freedoms. That could make him an attractive alternative to his likely rival, Democrat Hillary Clinton. Trump "could in...

Recently we reported that Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe was under investigation by the FBI and prosecutors from the Justice Department's integrity unit regarding donations to McAuliffe's campaign during his time as a board member of the Clinton Global Initiative. Specifically, investigators were scrutinizing a $120,000 donation McAuliffe received from Wang Wenliang, a Chinese businessman, who was also a donor to the Clinton foundation, pledging $2 million. The Daily Mail has obtained footage that shows the two men entering Hillary Clinton's residence off D.C.'s Embassy row as they attended a fundraiser on September 30, 2013.

Jeff Wise, a private pilot and freelance writer, who has written a book on MH370, was among those to suggest the parts were planted. "There is only one reasonable conclusion to draw from the condition of these pieces. Since natural means could not have delivered them to the locations where they were discovered, they must have been put there deliberately. They were planted," he wrote last month. Photo: Dr Schalk Lückhoff

Despite the denials, South Africa’s banks have had enough. In recent weeks, all four of the biggest banks have severed their links to the Guptas, closing the bank accounts of the Gupta holding company, Oakbay Investments. The Guptas were furious. In newspaper advertisements, they said the banks were jeopardizing the livelihoods of 7,500 of Oakbay’s “employees and dependents.” The Zuma government swiftly responded by delegating three cabinet ministers to meet with the banks to settle the matter. It was an extraordinary state intervention in a private business dispute. And, critics said, it was further proof of the remarkable power of...

A new television commercial has been called “jaw-droppingly racist” for advertising laundry detergent seemingly strong enough to turn a black man Asian. The ad — from China-based laundry detergent company Qiaobi — shows a black man flirting with a seemingly interested Asian woman. The women lures the man closer to a washing machine. She shoves a ball of washing detergent in his mouth before shoving his body into the washing machine. Moments later, the black man emerges from the water as an Asian man.

South Africa’s parliament has approved a bill that would see the government make compulsory land purchases from rich whites and redistribute it more fairly to address racial disparities, two decades after the fall of apartheid. The ruling African National Congress (ANC) has the August elections to consider, and the party has promised to ramp up the series of measures with its Expropriation Bill, South Africa’s Mail & Guardian reports. Having passed the National Assembly, which added changes on Thursday, the bill will now head to President Jacob Zuma’s desk for signing. The bill combines a series of measures that would...

A man who. not too long ago was happy to remain Mayor, has decided to run for the presidency and I have a theory about that ...

Hillary Clinton met with the Chinese businessman at the center of a federal investigation into Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D.) during a 2013 fundraiser at her Washington, D.C. home, according to a Time report. Clinton shook hands with Wang Wenliang during the Sept. 30 event. Less than a month later, Wang would donate $500,000 to the Clinton Foundation, ultimately pledging a total of $2 million to the foundation throughout the year. McAuliffe, who was on the board of the Clinton Global Initiative, invited Wang to the fundraiser three weeks after one of the businessman’s companies, West Legend Corp., contributed $60,000...

cjdby.net Type 001A Takes Shape The Type 001A carrier, likely to be named after a Chinese province, already has most of its hangar bay installed, the next major parts are the ski ramp, control tower island, and flight deck. China's first domestically built carrier, "Type 001A", is making brisk progress in its Dalian drydock. Tracing its design to the Soviet Admiral Kuznetsov class of aircraft carriers, the Type 001A will displace around 60,000-70,000 tons, is powered by steam turbines, and will carry between 30 and 40 helicopters and J-15 fighter jets. Type 001A first began construction in late 2014, and...

The Hongdu Aviation Industries Group celebrated its 65th anniversary by unveiling an advanced L-15 Falcon trainer jet equipped with bombs and radar, thought to be a passive electronically scanned array (PSEA), that will help accuracy in airborne combat. The Falcon has not been known to carry weapons, until the Hongdu video was released and made the rounds on Chinese websites earlier this month. In the video, the jet can be seen with a centered-fuselage pod carrying a 23 mm cannon, PL-5II air-to-air missiles, and underwing fuel tanks. Hongdu, a subsidiary of the Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC), had originally...

Circumstantial evidence is when The enemy would have you believe in a lie instead of The Truth in the matter(substance) for truly as you are obedient to follow My Son "THE WORD" it is then My Spirit maintains your walk on the Highway of Holiness free from guile and the lies that distract you from My SON for I am not a man that should sway you from The Truth of My ~ Eternal Kingdom ~ and Glory forever, as you "ARE" My Children. Numbers 23:19 19 God is not a man, that He should tell or act a lie,...

McAuliffe: 'I have never lobbied for a foreign government' BY GRAHAM MOOMAW Richmond Times-Dispatch | Posted: Thursday, May 26, 2016 11:00 am Gov. Terry McAuliffe said Thursday that he has never lobbied in the U.S. on behalf of a foreign government, adding that federal investigators looking into his foreign connections are focused on a "very specific" lobbyist registration issue. "I have never lobbied for a foreign government here. Ever," McAuliffe said during a morning radio appearance on Richmond's WRVA. The Democratic governor's remarks come a day after his attorney said the Department of Justice is looking into a potential violation...

Wang Wenliang, a Chinese national briefly shook Clinton’s hand at a 2013 fund-raiser in her home;a separate Wang company pledged $500,000 to the Clinton Foundation, the first of several totaling $2 million. The Clinton fundraiser was one of at least three interactions between Wang and McAuliffe. McAuliffe initially said he could not remember ever meeting Wang, though he later clarified that his staff had informed him of several likely meetings. Among the donations of DOJ interestwere a total of $120,000 in contributions to McAuliffe from a company controlled by Wang. DOJ told McAuliffe's attorney there were questions over foreign sources...

Apple and Samsung supplier Foxconn has reportedly replaced 60,000 factory workers with robots. One factory has "reduced employee strength from 110,000 to 50,000 thanks to the introduction of robots", a government official told the South China Morning Post. Xu Yulian, head of publicity for the Kunshan region, added: "More companies are likely to follow suit." China is investing heavily in a robot workforce. In a statement to the BBC, Foxconn Technology Group confirmed that it was automating "many of the manufacturing tasks associated with our operations" but denied that it meant long-term job losses. [snip] Since September 2014, 505 factories...

new president is "extreme" in her politics because she's an unmarried woman lacking the emotional balance provided by romantic and family life, a member of China's body for relations with the self-governing island wrote in a newspaper opinion piece. In Beijing's harshest attack on Tsai Ing-wen since her inauguration last week, the new president was denounced as a flawed human being and strident advocate of Taiwan's formal independence from China, something Beijing says it will use military force to prevent. Tsai, Taiwan's first female president, has been criticized by Beijing for refusing to explicitly endorse the "one-China principle" that defines...

Littoral Combat Ships and F-18 Super-Hornet jets will probably top Vietnam’s shopping list for US-made weapons now that President Barack Obama has lifted Washington’s 50-year-old arms embargo on Hanoi, former US diplomat Jim Jatras told Sputnik. WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — Obama announced in Hanoi on Monday the lifting of the US embargo on Vietnam during his three-day visit. "Among the systems Hanoi reportedly is interested in are Lockheed Martin’s F-16 jets, Boeing’s F/A-18 Super Hornet jets, competing littoral combat ship designs from Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics, and precision-guidance munitions from Raytheon and Boeing," Jatras said on Tuesday. Jatras dismissed Obama’s...

Michael Corleone’s words in the make-believe New York mob story “The Godfather: Part III” could’ve been Terry McAuliffe’s in real-life Virginia political drama “Governor II”: “Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.” In his first campaign for governor in 2009 — he was badly defeated in a three-way Democratic primary — McAuliffe had to answer for his image as a Bill-and-Hillary confidant who amassed a fortune at the intersection of campaigns and commerce. There were eyebrow-raising investments: a shaky bank in Washington; an insider deal for shares in a telecom that went spectacularly bust; financing...