
VOA Mandarin: US lawmaker vows to end China's trade status
The U.S. will have to get more aggressive to make its relationship with China authentic and reciprocal, said Representative John Moolenaar, the Republican chairman of the Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party on Tuesday. He said he and others on the committee have introduced legislation that would revoke China's Permanent Normal Trade Relations and end the de minimis exemption, one that would put tariffs directly China, especially some key sectors at 100% and lesser sectors around 35%.
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Voice of America
14-03-2025
- Voice of America
US government shutdown likely averted; Democrats fracture
The U.S. Senate is set to pass a stopgap spending bill Friday that would avert a partial government shutdown, although many Democrats are expressing anger over plans by their party's leadership to support the measure. The measure cleared its first Senate hurdle early Friday evening, 62-38. The Republican-controlled House of Representatives passed the bill earlier this week to meet a March 14 deadline to keep the government running. Senate Democrats have fractured over whether to support the short-term continuing resolution (CR) that would fund the government for the next six months, reduce total government spending by about $7 billion from last year's levels and shift money to the military and away from non-defense spending. Much of the party's anger Friday was directed at Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer who announced Thursday night that while he disliked the bill, a shutdown was a "far worse option." Speaking on the Senate floor Friday morning, Schumer said not passing the Republican funding bill would give more power to the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) effort led by Elon Musk, including which agencies would be shut down. "A shutdown would allow DOGE to shift into overdrive," he said. Dozens of House Democrats, who opposed the funding measure in the lower chamber, sent a letter to Schumer on Friday, expressing their "strong opposition" to his plan to vote for the bill. Former Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi urged Senate Democrats to go against their leader. In a Friday statement, she wrote, "America has experienced a Trump shutdown before — but this damaging legislation only makes matters worse." Trump has called on Congress to pass the funding bill and on Friday praised Schumer for supporting it. "Congratulations to Chuck Schumer for doing the right thing — Took 'guts' and courage!" he wrote on his Truth Social platform. Appropriations bills require a 60-vote threshold for passage in the Senate, which means Republicans need to secure at least eight Democratic votes. Schumer previously called for the Senate to pass an earlier version of the CR that Democrats were involved in negotiating. "Funding the government should be a bipartisan effort. But Republicans chose a partisan path, drafting their continuing resolution without any input, any input, from congressional Democrats," Schumer said on the Senate floor late Wednesday. The House passed the short-term spending measure Tuesday by a vote of 217-213. One Democrat voted for the bill and one Republican against it. The chamber went out of session for the rest of the week starting Tuesday afternoon, putting pressure on senators to pass its version of the CR. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson quelled dissent from within his Republican Party to pass the spending measure. He told reporters Tuesday the seven-month continuing resolution was an important step toward implementing Trump's agenda of rooting out government waste and abuse through DOGE. "It allows us to move forward with changing the size and scope of the federal government. There is a seismic shift going on in Washington right now. This is a different moment than we have ever been in. The DOGE work is finding massive amounts of fraud, waste and abuse," Johnson said. "We have a White House that is actually dedicated to getting us back onto a fiscally responsible track." Independent watchdogs and analysts, however, say DOGE is using overly broad claims of fraud to generate support for large-scale cuts to federal programs and offices. Representative Thomas Massie was the lone Republican holdout, despite Trump's post Monday night on Truth Social calling for Massie to lose his seat if he voted against the spending measure. The continuing resolution buys lawmakers time to reach a compromise on Senate and House versions of government spending for the next fiscal year, which begins in October, a key tool for implementing Trump's domestic policy agenda. At question is how and when to enact a proposed extension of the 2017 tax cuts and how to pay down the U.S. deficit without cutting key safety net programs that help American voters.


Voice of America
13-03-2025
- Voice of America
Foreign bloggers help China spread propaganda, analysis finds
Foreign bloggers who praise China rapidly gain popularity and millions of followers on Chinese social media platforms. VOA examined the facts and spoke with experts to shed light on the government's efforts behind the phenomenon. "It is a long-standing tradition of the Chinese Communist Party to use foreigners to voice its propaganda for added credibility," said Mareike Ohlberg, a senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund. Foreign influencers cooperate with the Chinese government, the media and third parties to create and boost content that supports government narratives, Ohlberg said. One of the most common topics that foreign influencers focus on is whitewashing human rights abuses in Xinjiang. The U.N. Human Rights Office and groups like Amnesty International estimate that more than 1 million people – mostly Uyghurs – have been confined in internment camps in Xinjiang. One of the most recent and maybe most popular foreign characters in China is a French national, Marcus Detrez, who became a media sensation in 2024. Japanese occupation photos Last year, Detrez posted a series of historic photographs on the Chinese social media platform Douyin that depicted life under the Japanese occupation in the early 20th century. He claimed the images were taken by his grandfather and said he wanted to donate them to China. Detrez enjoyed a year of celebrity treatment from Chinese authorities, including touring across China, while state media outlets profiled him as a hero. In February, however, historians exposed Detrez as a fraud. The photographs he claimed were unique family heirlooms turned out to be publicly available online in various museums around the world. But the thread of glorified foreign bloggers started much earlier. One of the pioneers on Chinese social media is a Russian internet celebrity, Vladislav Kokolevskiy, known in China as Fulafu. He amassed 12.89 million followers on Douyin, where he posts short video clips praising life in China. In November 2023, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute wrote that in China, Fulafu has 'become a household name through his ostentatious displays of affection for China,' identifying him as a Chinese government propagandist. Kokolevskiy does not make commercial ad disclaimers. However, CMGM, an outlet covering China news, reported in January 2021 that he received advertisement contracts within 15 days for NetEase's "Heavenly Oracle" mobile game and online retailers Pinduoduo and Tmall. The companies paid about $11,000 for each ad, bringing Fulafu's advertising revenue up to about $33,000 for January 2021 alone, according to the report. Like Fulafu, dozens of foreigners grew to stardom on the Chinese internet during the last decade, Ohlberg said. Among them is Gerald Kowal, known also as Jerry Guo, an American who has risen to popularity in China after an interview with state-owned CCTV in 2020. At the time, Kowal had been posting series of short videos critical of New York City authorities' handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. He also repeated debunked conspiracy theories, claiming, for example, that the U.S. military brought the coronavirus to China. CCTV broadcasted his interview from New York live. The China Newsweek magazine profiled Kowal in May 2020 as 'one of the most influential internet celebrities,' calling him a 'war correspondent' for his videos from pandemic-stricken New York. Third-party promoters The success of a large number of foreign influencers is closely tied to multichannel networks or MCNs, which are third-party organizations that promote the growth of certain content creators, operating behind the scenes. One of the MCN industry leaders is YChina, founded in 2016 by Israeli businessman Amir Gal-Or and his Chinese partner and former classmate, Fang Yedun, as part of Gal-Or's 'Crooked Nuts Research Institute,' which focuses on documenting the lives of foreigners in China. YChina started with the cross-platform sharing of short video interviews with Western expats living in China. It initially focused on cultural topics and soon accumulated more than 100 million followers among its internet influencers from over 30 countries, including Israel, the United States, Australia, Spain, Argentina, Japan and Thailand. Chinese democracy activists in exile have accused YChina of supporting Chinese government propaganda about Xinjiang and Hong Kong. In July 2024, the China Public Diplomacy Association, which is under the supervision of China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, gathered more than 30 foreign influencers from 25 countries to participate in a training camp and visit various cities in China. The bloggers were asked to record their experiences on video and share them online. China's state-controlled media outlets boost such bloggers, presenting them to domestic audiences within the narrative of a prosperous nation under the Communist Party. For example, the Xinhua News Agency's series in 2024 on foreign internet celebrities in China showed videos of influencers from all over the world walking the streets of China's major cities praising their 'cleanest streets in the world" and "efficient garbage disposal system." In using these foreign bloggers, the Chinese Communist Party wants to show that life in China is not what rights groups and China's critics abroad say it is. The government exploits the idea that unless 'you come and see, you have no right to judge,' the German Marshall Fund's Ohlberg said. 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Voice of America
13-03-2025
- Voice of America
Trump asks Supreme Court to intervene in bid to curb birthright citizenship
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