Tesla Recall for Door Handles in China

It is sad, but Chinese regulations around electric vehicles seem to be much better, when it comes to safety. To be fair, this isn't about EVs; it is about safety. Tesla’s Door Handles Lead to Its Biggest Recall Yet

So Tesla is recalling 2.9 million vehicles in China, and zero in the US.

Government regulators have spent the last year asking serious questions about Tesla’s electronic, retractable door handles, a cool-looking automotive design flourish that has since been imitated by plenty of competitors.

The handles have been blamed, in the US and in China, for making it difficult for passengers to quickly exit vehicles and for impeding rescue efforts. A handful of crash victims’ families have even filed lawsuits against Tesla, alleging the door handle designs played roles in their loved ones’ deaths.

There are manual releases inside the cars. They can be stuidly hard to find, even if you are not unconcious after a crash. There can be - and this not just a Tesla issue - no way for people outside the car to open the door after a crash. Which is why I always carry a glass breaker in my SUV. (Do you want to stand around a car fire, and not be able to do anything?)

Why only in China? This is the StacheD Training video Tesla Recalls 3 Million Cars in China: Why Not the US?

Professional Journalists™ Accepted "Gifts" from the Chinese Government

Is anyone shocked by this? REVEALED: China-Linked Influence Group Paid to Cultivate Dozens of U.S. Journalists and Manufacture “Positive” Coverage of the Chinese Communist Party. Here Are Their Names.

Participants came from The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, NBC News, NPR, and Reuters. And many more.

You only think you hate the media enough. You don't hate the enough.

Beijing-aligned political warfare network sponsored 54 American journalists through a program explicitly designed to “improve” coverage of China and generate “positive stories” about Beijing.

The pay-for-play-style arrangement provided airfare, hotels, meals and privileged access to Chinese ministries, state media, government-selected companies and senior officials inside the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, a central institution in the Chinese Communist foreign influence and espionage apparatus. The objective was not simply to show reporters China. It was to change what they told the American people about it.

Click thru for the names, and what they collected. (Hat tip to MaddMedic at Freedom Is Just Another Word…)

Journalists Or Chinese Apologists?

Natalie Winters brings us a not-to-surprising story of "Professional Journalists." REVEALED: Here Are the Mainstream Journalists on China’s Payroll

I was going to call them agents, and maybe they are, but let's start with "apologists."

Foreign-agent filings reveal that operatives working for a Chinese Communist Party-linked influence organization planned free trips for American journalists based on the potential for “favorable coverage” and sought to “effectively disseminate positive messages” about Beijing.

But the filings did not plainly identify the reporters who received the access.

By cross-referencing the filings with archived newsletters, annual reports and contemporaneous accounts, this investigation has uncovered the names of prominent American journalists who participated in China trips organized or funded by the China-United States Exchange Foundation, or CUSEF.

Trips to China in exchange for favorable treatment of China in the press. Allegedly, anyway.

That is what passes for "Professional Journalistic Ethics." Some would call that quid pro quo.

Hat tip to The Twitchy Team, who called it exactly that.

In a breaking thread that is going viral on X today, White House Correspondent for the Bannon War Room, Natalie Winters, has just exposed a GIGANTIC list of 'journalists' who were treated to CCP-funded trips to China—and more—allegedly in exchange for favorable coverage of the country. The quid pro quo reportedly goes back as far as 2009.

Here is the original post from X.

REVEALED: Here Are the Mainstream Journalists on China’s Payroll 🚨

I exclusively uncovered the identities of prominent U.S. journalists flown to China by a CCP-linked influence operation seeking “favorable coverage” and “positive messages” about Beijing. 🧵

— Natalie Winters (@nataliegwinters) July 27, 2026

Liulan Reservoir Dam Failure in China

China apparently has quite a few dams that were built during the 1950s, that are not up to modern standards. Watch: Typhoon Maysak breaks dam wall in China, kills 2 and forces thousands to evacuate

Tropical Storm Maysak, initially brought days of extreme rainfall across the country's southern Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous region. But now, the typhoon has triggered a massive flood that claimed two lives, affecting about 55,000 people in Nanning and forcing around 48,000 of the city's residents to evacuate

The dam was breached on 6 July.

Maysak has triggered multiple reservoir emergencies, increased river levels above warning levels and flooded several villages across Guangxi.

Some info on the dam. Liulan Reservoir: A medium-sized reservoir located in Hengzhou City, Nanning.

The construction of the Liulan Reservoir hub project began in August 1958 and was largely completed by 1960. A hydropower station was added at the dam's toe in 1974. In August 2024, the Nanning Municipal Government Service Bureau issued an approval regarding the implementation plan for the standardized management creation of Liulan Reservoir in Hengzhou City . In 2025, the Liulan Reservoir Irrigation District Continuation and Modernization Renovation Project was also accelerating its progress, with a total estimated investment of 382.53 million yuan for the project.

Translation: They realized that the dam need improvements, and began work. That work was scheduled to be complete in 2027, but they didn't make it.

I can't find the reference now, but I read somewhere that China has a large number of infrastructure projects done in the early days of communist regieme, that were not really engineered. That process continued for a long time. They are now dealing with infrastructure, in some parts of the country, that are not what we would consider safe.

Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous region is in the south of China, with a coast on the Beibu Gulf (off the South China Sea). It shares a border with Vietnam

NOW: A devastating situation is unfolding as Liulan Reservoir collapses following heavy rainfall from Typhoon Maysak in Hengzhou, Nanning, Guangxi, China. pic.twitter.com/vyuQn5nuyl

— Weather Monitor (@WeatherMonitors) July 6, 2026

Hollywood Embraces Chinese Communist Behavior Change Research

Hollywood isn't abandoning DEI. They are trying to figure out how to slip it in, without you noticing.

Take a look at Disparu's video Hollywood is Hiding a DARK Secret Behind A Smile

... in the field of Social and behavior change communication. This is the group the same group that runs this convention attended by all of the major companies, who is using Chinese research on social and behavior change in order to work out how you can put social engineering into Hollywood movies and make them profitable, attended by some of the biggest and the biggest media and content creation companies in all of Hollywood.

What Happens When the .gov Mandates Security Loopholes?

Hackers take advantage. White House links ninth telecom breach to Chinese hackers

And the .gov isn't saying which carrier was breached, but I can't even think of 9 telcom companies, so I guess all of them have been breached. (OK so I looked - there are more regional telcoms than I remembered, even before you include Verizon and Sprint and the rest.)

The Salt Typhoon Chinese cyber-espionage group who orchestrated these attacks (also tracked as Earth Estries, FamousSparrow, Ghost Emperor, and UNC2286) is known for breaching government entities and telecom companies throughout Southeast Asia and has been active since at least 2019.

The White House's deputy national security adviser for cyber and emerging technologies, Anne Neuberger, told reporters today that this new victim was discovered after the Biden administration released guidance to help defenders spot Chinese hackers' activity in their networks.

"The reality is that China is targeting critical infrastructure in the United States. Those are private sector companies, and we still see companies not doing the basics," Neuberger said, according to Bloomberg. "That's why we're looking forward and saying 'Let's lock down this infrastructure.' And frankly, let's hold the Chinese accountable for this."

So remember when the .gov says "we need to be able to violate your privacy" they are not the only ones who will be violating your privacy.

Do you want privacy? Use Signal.

Hat tip to Pixy Misa at Ambient Irony - Daily News Stuff 28 December 2024: Topological Maps Edition

A 9th US phone company has been hacked by Chinese spies. (AP)

No, you're not allowed to know which one.

The Car as a Weapon

From Clayton Cramer we get the following. Ban Guns to Reduce Mass Murders

A guy in China "upset" over his divorce, drove his vehicle into a crowd of people exercising. He killed 35.

Not even a record motor vehicle mass murder. The 2016 Marseilles truck terrorist attack killed 86.

People always say that they want to "feel safe." How do they ignore reality? (Hint: You are not "Perfectly Safe.")

China Running Biolab in California

While the FBI is worried about Trump supporters, this is going on in California. Jim Hoft at The Gateway Pundit - Rep. Gallagher: Illegal Alien Owner of Secret California Chinese Biolab Was Receiving Millions in Secret Payments from Chinese Government (VIDEO)

If they can't keep stuff from escaping from "legit" labs in China, how much care do you think they are taking in California? The stuff they were working with was labeled Ebola and HIV, but the CDC couldn't be bothered to do actual testing because that would be work.

The FBI said, well, we can’t investigate because there’s no ties to WMD, which is absurd, they called the CDC. The CDC hung up on them initially. And it wasn’t until the local congressman got on the case that the CDC was forced to send a team to investigate. And that wasn’t until many, many months later. So this has revealed a huge soft underbelly in our domestic national security. It’s incredibly troubling. We need to do more to prevent this from happening.

And aside from getting money from China...

As we learned earlier, the secret biolab was also subsidized by Gavin Newsom!

I'm no longer shocked by the incompetence of anyone in government.

Click thru for the details of how your tax dollars are not at work.

Chinese Economy Death Spiral?

From Peter St. Onge at Mises Wire we get the following: China Enters the Doom Loop

Debt. Debt. More debt.

China's authoritarian gerontocracy has built a Doom Loop with Chinese characteristics, with over half the economy now crashing.

Chinese exports are now plunging at the fastest pace since the covid lockdowns: Exports fell 14.5% on the year, driven by a 21% drop in exports to Europe and a 23% drop to the US.

Meanwhile, imports to China are also falling -- 12.4% on the year -- as shrinking manufacturing buys fewer inputs and households buy less.

Hat tip to SHTF Plan.

That isn't the only article on this subject. There were plenty Monday morning. China's economy is hitting a wall after years of optimism, former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers says

China's economy is finally hitting a wall after years of optimism about the country's future, former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers said.

"There can now be little doubt that just as the conventional wisdom way overstated the economic prospects of Russia in 1960 and Japan in 1990, so have China's prospects been greatly exaggerated in this decade," Summers said in a Washington Post op-ed.

That doesn't mean that you should discount the threat.

"What does all this mean for the United States? No one should conclude that we can be complacent about the Chinese geopolitical challenge. Indeed, as Russia's behavior in Berlin, Cuba and Eastern Europe during the 1960s illustrates, nations that see the economic route to glory foreclosed can become irrational and dangerous," Summers said.

Apple Helps Communist China Fight Protests

This is the company that thinks Twitter shouldn't be allowed on their application store. Apple helped Chinese Communist Party to suppress protests by restricting crucial iPhone feature - Rebel News

Earlier in November, Apple released an update to iPhone users in China to restrict the use of AirDrop, which protesters used to send messages directly to each other and evade censorship.

So it seems that Apple is all in favor of censorship. Whether in China or on Twitter.

I know you love your iPhone, but how can you support this crap?

The image above is from the 30 November edition of Sinfest by Tatsuya Ishida. You should definitely explore the entire comic.

Taiwan Prepares for Invasion

They seem to have taken a page out of Winston Churchill's and Britain's playbook during WWII. Taiwan Strait tensions: Civilians in Taiwan learning self defence, guerrilla warfare - The Week

KINMEN, A GROUP of islands governed by Taiwan, and Xiamen, a port city in China, are barely 15km apart. These two critical frontiers are the first to feel the impact of cross-strait tensions. It has been no different this time. In the last one month, armies of both countries have propped up their artillery guns, stocked up ammunition and readied defence deployments and positions.[SNIP]

On September 1, the Kinmen defence command spotted a drone in restricted air space just after midday. It was given a warning and when this was disregarded, it was shot down—a first during the ongoing tensions. This action demonstrated the seriousness with which Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen is treating the continued violations of the Taiwan Strait’s median line and Taiwanese airspace by an aggressive China.

As for what the Brits prepared to do when faced with the Third Reich bearing down on them, you can see my post Section D, from 2018, in which I discuss Churchill’s Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare: The Mavericks Who Plotted Hitler’s Defeat. That is a book I can highly recommend.

Chinese Spying in the US Is Rampant

Well you are too busy spying on Presidential candidates and American Citizens, or you are trying to entrap people for various things, stuff like this gets ignored. FBI Director Wray says scale of Chinese spying in the U.S. 'blew me away'

Wray said the FBI is opening a new China related counter-intelligence investigation on average every 12 hours, with over 2,000 such cases currently underway.

Does anyone have any faith in the FBI, and their ability to actually do much about this? I don't.

The FBI has accused Chinese spies of targeting a wide range of U.S. innovations — including Covid vaccines, computer chips, nuclear power plants, wind turbines and smartphones, for example.

The article mentions one (count 'em, 1) conviction. Yeah, that's just great.

And then there are the Chinese efforts around hacking...

Still, step one is to admit you have a problem.

I still believe that they are Funded But Incompetent. Or maybe the Federal Bureau of Incompetence.

I'm Shocked that China's MANDATED Olympic App Is Not Secure

I mean it only contains medical info and passport details. China’s Olympics App Is Horribly Insecure

China is mandating that athletes download and use a health and travel app when they attend the Winter Olympics next month. Citizen Lab examined the app and found it riddled with security holes.

The "key findings" are listed at the link, which I take it means that there are more problems. Here is one of the issues.

MY2022 includes features that allow users to report “politically sensitive” content. The app also includes a censorship keyword list.

Because you're an athlete. You can't talk about Xinjiang or Tibet or anything else that might upset the Chinese masters.

China Tests Nuclear-capable Hypersonic Missile

Are we shocked that US Intelligence was completely surprised? China reportedly tested nuclear-capable hypersonic missile in August.

The U.S., Russia and China have all been working on hypersonic weapons. Russia tested one such missile in July. The US plans to outfit all of the Navy’s destroyers with these missiles, which can travel five times faster than the speed of sound. That makes them slower than some existing ballistic missiles, but unlike the older technology, hypersonic missiles can be controlled after launch, making it easier to evade defense systems.

The original story was in the Financial Times, but they go out their way to make it difficult to refer to their articles, and include short quotes. (And so no link for them.) But they made it clear in the first or second paragraph that the US Intelligence agencies were surprised. Given the number of times that the FBI has been caught being clueless about domestic issues, it is not surprise that the other alphabet agencies aren't any better. ("Everything we've come to expect from years of government training.")

China has been aggressively developing the technology, seeing it as crucial to defend against US gains in hypersonic and other technologies, according to a recent report by the US Congressional Research Service (CRS).

The reported test comes as US-China tensions have mounted and Beijing has stepped up military activity near Taiwan, the self-ruling US-aligned democracy that Beijing considers a province awaiting reunification. [Ref. Philippine Daily Inquirer

The range of the weapon means that it can evade most of our early warning system, which is still focused on the North Pole and the ballistic routes from Russia, and China, and it can be harder to hit once it is detected.

When China invades Taiwan, will the US Intelligence Agencies be surprised? Probably.

China Threatens to Nuke Japan

Clearly China is gearing up to invade Taiwan. Chinese officials repost threat to NUKE Japan amid tensions over Taiwan | Daily Mail Online

And you thought the threat of Nuclear Annialation was over with the Cold War.

Chinese officials have reposted a video calling on Japan to be relentlessly nuked if it intervenes militarily in Taiwan.

The footage - originally created by a military comment channel on Xigua, China's equivalent of YouTube - calls for Japan to be bombed into submission if it sends 'even one troop' into Taiwan.

Here's a question: What happens when the President of the US is viewed by the world as being ineffectual? Looks like we're going to find out.

Do I need to post the links on how to build your own fallout shelter?

Hugo Boss and Slave Labor

Saying one thing in Chinese and another in English and German... Hugo Boss statement saying it will 'purchase and support' Xinjiang cotton was 'unauthorised,' brand says | Hong Kong Free Press HKFP

And no, this is not an April Fool's prank.

German clothing brand Hugo Boss has told HKFP that an official statement on its verified Weibo account saying it will continue to “purchase and support” Xinjiang cotton was “unauthorised.”

I'm guessing that “unauthorised” is the current bureaucratic-speak for "we didn't think we would get caught out, saying different things in different languages."

Xinjiang cotton is apparently being picked by slave labor of Uighur Muslims.

A 2020 report by Washington-based think tank the Center for Global Policy — which referenced Chinese government documents — said that in 2018 three regions within Xinjiang sent at least 570,000 people to pick cotton under a state-backed coercive labour transfer programme.

And "coercive labour transfer programme." Really? That is the best description you can come up with.

HKFP is kinder than I would be to the Corporate Idiots at Hugo Boss.

It is unclear why and how an unauthorised message appeared on the [Hugo Boss] Weibo account. By Friday, it had been removed and replaced with a link to the fashion house’s website statement.

So are they lying to you, or are they lying to the Chinese government? Because they are lying to someone.

US Finally Calls China on Genocide of Uighur Muslims

Not that Sleepy Joe will actually do anything about it. US accuses China of 'genocide' of Uyghurs and minority groups in Xinjiang

The US has officially determined that China is committing genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghur Muslims and ethnic and religious minority groups who live in the northwestern region of Xinjiang.

It's a little late in the day, considering that this has been going on for a long time. I first wrote about the situation in November of 2019. But the Democrats and the media (but I repeat myself) were more focused on impeachment at the time. "Orange Man Bad" was clearly more important than minorities being herded into concentration camps.

Did Slaves Make Your Solar Panels?

There seems to be a pretty good chance the answer is, "Yes." Chinese Solar Companies Tied to Use of Forced Labor - The New York Times

The propaganda says that the Uighur minority Muslims from Xinjiang were happy to go to work for the world’s second-largest manufacturer of polysilicon, a key component of solar panels.

But researchers and human rights experts say those positive images may conceal a more troubling reality — the persecution of one of China’s most vulnerable ethnic groups. According to a report by the consultancy Horizon Advisory, Xinjiang’s rising solar energy technology sector is connected to a broad program of assigned labor in China, including methods that fit well-documented patterns of forced labor.

Forced Labor is New York Times speak for, "It's really slavery, but we don't want to insult our Chinese masters." Or something. (Hat tip.)

I'm Sure There Is a Logical Explanation

Nothing to see here. Covid cover-up fears as China deletes 300 Wuhan lab studies including all carried out by 'Batwoman' virologist

CRUCIAL online data related to the laboratory suspected of being the source of coronavirus has been deleted - sparking fresh accusations of a cover-up by the Chinese government.

Hundreds of pages of information connected to studies carried out by the top-secret Wuhan Institute of Virology have been wiped alongside key data from a top virologist nicknamed "Batwoman".

I'm sure it isn't because COVID-19 was a biological agent under development at that lab. Well, maybe not that sure.

NBA: Uighur Lives Don't Matter

The NBA has made a whole bunch of money in China. NBA Stays Quiet on Chinese Slave Labor - Washington Free Beacon

Some 85 percent of China's cotton exports come from Xinjiang, where at least one million Uighurs are currently detained in camps, an action that some Republicans say is tantamount to genocide. [SNIP]

The NBA reaped more than $500 million in Chinese revenue in 2019 and inked a $1 billion deal with Beijing tech giant Tencent to exclusively stream games in China. NBA China, a separate entertainment arm of the league, was valued at more than $5 billion by one sports consulting firm in 2019.

Can't upset the balance sheet. Nothing is more important than that. Not even genocide.