China
November 25, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
I wanted to write a hard-hitting post about Joe Biden’s selections for key foreign policy jobs — Antony Blinken (Secretary of State), Alejandro Mayorkas (Secretary of Homeland Security), and Avril Haines (Director of National Intelligence). Then I found out that three Republican Senators have already done the work. According to the Washington Post, Sen. Tom Cotton called this collection “panda huggers who will only reinforce [Biden’s] instincts to go soft
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November 16, 2020 — John Hinderaker
I’m so old, I can remember when foreign interference in our elections was a vitally important problem. A naive observer might have thought that the issue would still be with us, what with Joe Biden, the Manchurian Candidate, being one of the nominees. But the naive observer would be wrong. Tyler Cowen asks some good questions: What is the current take on foreign interference in the 2020 presidential election? I
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November 4, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
It looks like Joe Biden will be our the next president, but that Republicans will hold the Senate. If so, Senate Republicans will have the power to investigate (but probably not to stop most of Biden’s judicial nominees from being confirmed because Sens. Collins and Murkowski will vote to confirm nearly all of them; Mitch McConnell can gum up the works, though). Senate Republicans should use their investigative power to
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October 27, 2020 — John Hinderaker
The Department of Education has completed an investigation into American universities’ compliance with federal law relating to reporting of foreign gifts and contracts. As you might expect, our universities believe that laws are for the little guys: American Universities failed to report $6.5 billion in foreign gifts and contracts, an investigation by the Department of Education found. Federal law requires schools to disclose substantial foreign gifts and contracts to the
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October 23, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
Kimberley Strassel of the Wall Street Journal provides a summary of what Tony Bobulinski, backed up by documents, has to say about the business dealings of Joe and Hunter Biden. Bobulinski, a former Navy officer and past supporter of Democrats, was Hunter Biden’s business partner. Strassel’s entire article is well worth reading. I want to focus on the portions of it that pertain directly to Joe Biden — aka “the
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October 21, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
In November 2011, an elite group of Chinese Communist Party members and cronies of the Chinese regime secured a meeting in the White House thanks to the efforts of Hunter Biden’s associates. The meeting is said to have been with Vice President Biden and other Obama administration officials. Reports of the meeting come from Peter Schweizer and Seamus Bruner. Andy McCarthy summarizes their findings here. Schweizer and Bruner were able
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October 10, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
The NBA (or should I call it the ChBA) is back on Chinese state television after a one-year absence. The absence occurred because Daryl Morey, general manager of the Houston Rockets, expressed support for protesters in Hong Kong, as they suffered from ramped up oppression by the Red Chinese. The NBA and its players, led by Lebron James, bowed and scraped as best they could, but the Red Chinese weren’t
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August 12, 2020 — Scott Johnson
Jimmy Lai, Hong Kong entrepreneur and pro-democracy activist, has been arrested this week for “violating” new national security laws imposed by the Communist Party of China. The Hoover Institution has posted the brief special edition of Uncommon Knowledge with Mr. Lai below. The special edition is drawn from two Uncommon Knowledge interviews, the first before a live audience this past October (the video is posted here) and the second on
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August 7, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
American intelligence officials “assess” that China and Iran hope that Joe Biden defeats President Trump, but that Russia is trying to undermine Joe Biden. These assessments have generated lots of buzz. Democrats have been unhappy that Bill Evanina, director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, wasn’t more alarmist about alleged Russian plans. Now they are unhappy that he has thrown China and Iran into the mix. I assess that
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July 26, 2020 — John Hinderaker
Revelations of recent years have expanded the range of the thinkable. Four years ago, I would have considered the idea that the Department of Justice, the FBI and the CIA would team up to swing a presidential election to their favored candidate, and failing that, would try to disable the incoming administration, a paranoid fantasy, the stuff of fiction. But it happened. And it was highly successful, due to the
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July 13, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
Adrian Wojnarowski reports on basketball for ESPN. He became a media star by breaking big stories (as NBA news goes), the way Adam Schefter does with the NFL but probably more so. His tweets of major NBA news are called “Woj bombs.” To drop these bombs, Wojnarowski relies on league sources, including players and team executives. His sources could give the information to any of a number of reporters, but
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July 6, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
Niall Ferguson writes about the emerging Cold War between the U.S. and China. Ferguson calls this Cold War both inevitable and desirable. It’s desirable because, among other things, “it has jolted the U.S. out of complacency and into an earnest effort not to be surpassed by China in artificial intelligence, quantum computing and other strategically crucial technologies.” Even Henry Kissinger, architect of the policy of U.S.-Chinese engagement, acknowledges the new
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June 5, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
In response to China’s coming crackdown on Hong Kong, Boris Johnson says he’s prepared to grant British residency and working rights to approximately 3 million Hong Kong residents — about 40 percent of its population. Johnson says he will make this move if China implements its new security laws, which will criminalize conduct deemed sedition and subversion, and enable Chinese security forces to crush dissent in Hong Kong as they
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May 12, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
At yesterday’s White House briefing on the Wuhan coronavirus, Weijia Jiang, CBS News’ White House correspondent, asked President Trump about his frequent statements that the U.S. is doing more testing for the virus than any other nation. Jiang didn’t dispute the claim. Instead, she asked: Why does that matter? Why is this a global competition to you if every day Americans are still losing their lives. . .? The question
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May 9, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
Max Baucus is the former U.S. Senator from Montana. For some reason, the people of that great state repeatedly elected him to the Senate. Less surprisingly, President Obama selected Baucus to be his ambassador to China. He served in this position for almost three clueless years. This week, Baucus told CNN that President Trump’s “over the top rhetoric” and “red baiting” of China reminds him of Joe McCarthy. Baucus also
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April 27, 2020 — Scott Johnson
Having spread the COVID-19 epidemic to the rest of the world, the Chinese Communist Party has put it to its own uses. Reporting from Hong Kong, the Washington Post’s Shibani Mahtani and Timothy McLaughlin noted one such use that has mostly escaped notice. It is cracking down on Hong Kong. The Post’s troubling April 24 story is headlined “One country, one system: The week that China shredded its promise on
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April 23, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
China’s behavior during the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak has been disgraceful — marked by deceit and an unwillingness to cooperate with the rest of the world until it was too late. In addition, there’s reason to believe that the virus originated in a Chinese lab that did not meet safety standards. By contrast, Taiwan’s behavior has been exemplary. According to the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in the U.S., Taiwan
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