China is willing to take extreme measures for its national interests; we must do the same

Official Xinhua news agency says preliminary investigations revealed that scientist had acted on his own and forged review papers

What's unusual isn't the size of the cuts but the timing, Nikkei sources noted. Contracts would normally be renewed every month between August and mid- to late January, so dismissals before the end of the year are "quite different," one source said. Similar layoffs are happening at other companies in the iPhone supply chain, such as at fellow assembler Pegatron, which began terminating monthly contracts in November.

The budding cotton seed hailed as the first plant to ever grow on the Moon, has, erm, died. Xinhua, China’s state owned press agency, announced the unfortunate news merely hours after celebrating the plant’s successful germination. “The experiment has ended,” it said. Maybe it's not that surprising, considering, the picture of the plant tweeted by the People's Daily, the official newspaper of China's Communist Party, was very difficult to spot.

Its execs have been arrested. Its gear is banned in places. And countries are reconsidering relationships with the company. How much trouble is Huawei really in?

The North Korean leader is said to have met with Xi Jinping.

In the 2015 blockbuster The Martian, Matt Damon plays an astronaut who gets stranded on Mars and survives by growing potatoes, producing enough food to last months. China’s lunar mission could bring that piece of science fiction a step closer to reality if it succeeds in growing the first flower on the moon in less than a hundred days’ time, an experiment that the China National Space Administration said it would soon broadcast.

Last winter, after the Chinese Communist Party announced the abolition of presidential term limits, Beijing temporarily moved to censor social-media references to George Orwell’s Animal Farm and 1984. The government’s concern was that activists would use these titles to charge, in not-so-subtle code, that China was moving in a decidedly authoritarian direction. But censors did not bother to ban the sale of these texts either in bookstores or online. It was—and remains—as easy to buy 1984 and Animal Farm in Shenzhen or Shanghai as it is in London or Los Angeles.

The seeds, inside a sealed container, are the first plants ever grown on the Moon's surface.

China’s miniature biosphere experiment has yielded sprouting cotton seeds, and they are the first plants to germinate on the Moon—an important first step in creating a viable, self-sustaining lunar colony. China’s Chang’e 4 lander arrived on the Moon’s far side on January 3, 2018. Among its cargo is a miniature lunar biosphere developed by scientists at Chongqing University. This experiment consists of a 7-inch-long, airtight container filled with soil, air, water, various seeds, yeast, and fruit fly eggs.

For those of us who spent most of our lives painstakingly separating plastic, glass, paper and metal, single-stream recycling is easy to love. No longer must we…

NASA astronaut David Scott, the seventh person to walk on the Moon and, funnily enough, the first to drive around on it, is one of four people still left alive that can describe such an experience. Per BBC, he said that he’s often asked about what it was like. “I describe the majesty of the lunar mountains, the layers of volcanic lava or the beauty of the sparkling crystals in the rocks,” he wrote in his book, Two Sides of the Moon. “Only an artist or poet could convey the true beauty of space.”

Censorship in the country is more complicated than many Westerners imagine.

As legal tensions between Canada and China escalate over the arrest of Huawei's CFO Meng Wanzhou, alarming stories of possible legal retaliation are surfacing, including a death sentence handed down to a Canadian accused of attempting to smuggle drugs out of China. At the same time, Huawei has distanced itself from an executive arrested in Poland last week and accused of spying, saying it fired the employee.

In The Water Margin, first put to paper in the 14th century, local injustice is the rule, and defence against cruel local authority is a matter of vengeance, stratagem, and violence

Polish national is also being held, risking further tension between China and the west

Many thought the internet would bring democracy to China. Instead it empowered rampant government oppression, and now the censors are turning their attention to the rest of the world. Not the confluence the geniuses said it would be.

Making memes of Communist Party leaders, political satire and overly sexual moaning have all been banned on China’s thriving short video app industry. ...

At a press conference held on Dec. 20, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced the prosecution of two hackers from communist China. According to the DOJ, they were members of the hacking unit APT10, which is affiliated with the Chinese regime’s Ministry of State Security (MSS). The MSS is China’s only official intelligence agency, and is relatively new given the long history of communist Chinese espionage.

Tesla’s fourth-quarter production tally didn’t excite most investors earlier this week, but the electric-car maker’s shares are benefiting on Friday from its confirmation that Model 3 deliveries will soon start in China. Tesla said customers in the world’s largest EV market can begin configuring and ordering Performance and Dual Motor all-wheel-drive versions of the sedan starting today. Initial deliveries should begin in March, according to the company.

U.S. and Chinese officials are set to begin trade negotiations on Monday in the hope of reaching a deal during a 90-day truce between President Donald Trump and his counterpart Xi Jinping. While the mid-level talks probably won’t produce a major breakthrough, the stakes are high as both sides face a resumption of tariffs in March if they don’t strike a deal. More senior-level discussions are expected later this month, with the South China Morning Post reporting that Trump may hold talks with Chinese Vice President Wang Qishan at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

When Dr. He Jiankui announced the birth of CRISPR-edited babies last month, the world grappled with how to handle the aftermath. Should journals overlook his dangerous ethical violations and publish the results? Will he now be barred from conducting clinical trials or obtaining funding? What level of punishment is appropriate for what he did—with absolutely no remorse? China’s answer: extensive, life-consuming penalties that extend far past any scientific career.

China’s landing of a rover on the far side of the moon grabbed headlines around the world this week. Less noticed, the country’s state media reported on progress in another arena: game-changing naval weaponry. The state-run Global Times said on Thursday (Jan. 3) that Chinese warships will soon be equipped with electromagnetic railguns that fire projectiles with “incredibly destructive velocity,” and that the underlying technology was based on ”fully independent intellectual property,” rather than designs copied from other nations. It cited a report that appeared Wednesday on China’s CCTV.

The mass detention of Uighur artists, journalists and scholars has become an alarming symbol of the Communist Party’s most intense social-engineering drive in decades.

12/26/2018 Hong Kong (International Christian Concern) – Hundreds of Hong Kong Christians gathered to pray dressed in black on December 23 to show …

China’s Huawei, the world’s second-largest smartphone maker, announced it sold a record-breaking 200 million units in 2018, despite increasing crackdowns from the US and its allies and a falling smartphone market overall.

China is once again on the threshold of a historic first in its fast-paced exploration of Earth’s moon. Having sent three previous missions moonward since 2007, including one that hosted the nation’s first-ever robotic lander and rover, China’s latest lunar foray began in the early hours of December 8, 2018, when a Long March-3B carrier rocket launched from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in southwest China’s Sichuan Province, carrying the Chang’e-4 spacecraft. Consisting of a lander and a rover, Chang’e-4 is targeting the...

Chinese schools are now tracking the exact location of their students using chip-equipped “smart uniforms” in order to encourage better attendance rates, according to a report from state-run newspaper The Global Times (via The Telegraph). The implementation is just about as unsettling as “using smart technology to track students’ whereabouts” sounds.

Great Wall Motor is launching its new flagship vehicle under its new ‘ORA’ electric car brand: the ORA R1.

The U.S. and Chinese economies each lose about $2.9 billion annually due to Beijing’s tariffs on soybeans, corn, wheat and sorghum alone, said Purdue University agricultural economist Wally Tyner. The losses may give U.S. President Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, motivation to resolve their trade differences before a March 2 deadline, although talks between the economic superpowers could still devolve.

China on Saturday approved the release of 80 online video games after a freeze on such approvals for most of the year. However, the approved titles, listed on the website of the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television, did not include games from industry leader Tencent Holdings Ltd.

The Chinese scientist who shocked the world with claims of creating the first genetically engineered babies is being detained in the Chinese city of Shenzhen, according to a report in The New York Times. 

Authorities have approved 80 games after the lifting of Chinese game freeze just before Christmas. The list doesn't include any Tencent titles.

Twitter says there has been suspicious activity on its platform that may have involved state-sponsored hackers from China and Saudi Arabia seeking information about specific users. The social media company says it detected an “issue” on Nov. 15 related to one of its support forums, where users contact Twitter to report any problems with an account.

Forget Google versus Facebook. Forget Uber versus Lyft. Forget Amazon versus … well, everybody. The technology world’s most bruising battle for supremacy is taking place in China. And it could point to Big Tech’s future everywhere else, too. Tencent Holdings and the Alibaba Group are ratcheting up their no-holds-barred contest to dominate the ways 770 million internet users communicate, shop, get around, entertain themselves and even invest their savings and visit the doctor.