Adding to US-China tensions, US officials have arrested Tang Juan, a visiting cancer researcher from China. She is being accused of lying on her visa application and failing to disclose past military ties, images were released of her in a uniform.

Tang Juan came to the US in October, and the FBI started investigating her in June. She spent several days in the Chinese Consulate in San Francisco before charges were filed against her. She is expected in court on Monday.

She was a visiting researcher at the UC Davis Department of Radiation Oncology, and her work was being funded by the Chinese ministry of education as part of an exchange program. US officials say she is not entitled to diplomatic immunity.

Following near daily screeds against China, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is now laying out US hostility, and the goal of “changing” China as part of what is effectively a new Cold War, likening it to Cold War with the Soviet Union.

Saying that the US had changed Soviet behavior, Pompeo expressed confidence that they could change China as well, saying that the nations of the world have a duty to help the US “defend freedom.” He also warned that “our children’s children may be at the mercy of the Communist party.”

This seems to be harkening back to the language of the historic red scares, and the idea that China is a real threat to dominate the future is likely intended to scare Americans into supporting more hostility, as opposed to a serious policy reality.

According to experts interviewed by Sputnik, neutralising China's competitive advantages, curbing the growth of its influence in the world, making concessions in trade negotiations, and tackling the challenges of the presidential election campaign are the main motives for a new round of confrontation with China provoked by the US.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo set a new goal on Thursday for an international coalition to deter China, an initiative he called for on Tuesday in London. Speaking at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum in California, the American top diplomat urged allies to use “more creative and assertive ways” to force China to change its policies.

At the same time, he virtually acknowledged China's growing political and military power in the world, noting that if the "free world" does not change its attitude towards China, then China will change it. He also said that China's Armed Forces have become “stronger and more formidable”.

China has slammed what it says is a violation of international law after on Friday a group of US federal agents were seen forcing open doors at the Chinese consulate in Houston using power tools and crowbars on Friday as consular staff inside prepared to leave after its ordered closure.

The Trump administration had given China until 4pm Friday to vacate the Houston consulate. Mike Pompeo had charged that the consulate was “a hub of spying and intellectual property theft”.

China has shuttered the US consulate in Chengdu in response on Saturday:

Security was tight outside the U.S. consulate in the Chinese city of Chengdu as staff prepared to leave, while U.S. officials took over the closed Chinese consulate in Houston https://reut.rs/2OUcOIj

The Chinese consulate in Houston has been raided by U.S. officials, shortly after it officially closed for business.

The consulate, which Donald Trump forced to close on Wednesday, was reportedly a hot bed of spies and was allegedly being used to steal medical and scientific research.

Beijing was told that the consulate must cease operations by Friday.

My social media notifications have been lighting up over the last few days, with virulent Chinagaters sharing a video which purports to show Uighur Muslims being loaded onto a train to be taken to concentration camps.

It’s actually an old video that had already surfaced last year, but it is magically making the rounds again as a new and shocking revelation in 2020, now that Western China hysteria has been officially kicked into high gear, at exactly the same time the US enacts one of the most dangerous and incendiary escalations of recent years in the South China Sea.

Local residents near the dam, just a bit upstream from Wuhan in the same Hubei Province, have posted comments on Chinese chat boards about cracks being visible on that Great Wall across the Yangtze. This is certainly cause for concern among millions of downstream residents also in the historical capital of Nanjing, a place dear to me personally on many levels due to the 1937 massacres of civilians done by the Japanese imperial army and an urban history that includes its hosting of Bodhidharma, the founder of Zen Buddhism (Chan in Chinese, Thien to the Vietnamese and Daruma for Japanese), whose famously cryptic debate with Emperor Liang Wudi was a philosophical masterpiece of ominous yet profound brevity.

On Friday, the Chinese Foreign Ministry gave the US consulate in Chengdu, Szechuan, 72 hours to shut down in response to a similar notice about China’s consulate in Houston, Texas. However, given Chengdu’s proximity to Tibet and Xinjiang, two areas of China the US has sought to destabilize, the US suffered the greater loss, an expert told Sputnik.

The United States' willingness to reduce or completely cut off China's access to the US dollar system -- Swift -- has sent a sense of uneasiness in Beijing about the potential ramifications of a financial war with Washington, the South China Morning Post reported.

The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (Swift) is a network used by worldwide banks to send and receive information about financial transactions. It is one of the pieces of infrastructure that underpins the anchor role of the US dollar in international trade and investment.

Globally, banks have correspondent relationships with US banks, through which they conduct US dollar transactions. Under this payment system, the White House can order US banks to stop processing transactions with certain individuals, institutions and countries, thus, denying them access to the US dollar payments system.

Anew wave of flooding emerged upstream in Yangtze River, China, on Saturday, and is now moving downstream — fast. It’s been raining for almost 50 days straight, often in deluges. There was three solid weeks of rain from Tibet now incoming.

Both Yellow and Yangtze rivers are experiencing extraordinary floods. So far, 44 million people have had to evacuate.

Massive floods are impacting cities. Rain forecast is brutal.

China is preparing to unveil its promised retaliation against the US over the Trump Administration's decision to close China's Houston consulate, a diplomatic mission that Sen. Marco Rubio once described as "a nest of spies".

In keeping with the promise, first published in the Global Times, that Beijing would inflict "real pain" on the US in its response to the closure of the Houston consulate, Editor Hu Xijin warned that China's decision - which would involve the closure of at least one US diplomatic mission (though likely not the one in Wuhan, as Hu dismissed that idea yesterday).

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is about to apply the Syria-Iran-Venezuela model to China.

But unlike these countries, which in recent years have seen US-backed covert proxy war operations attempt to foment 'mass uprisings' leading to regime change, it's likely to produce little effect on the ground, other than further enraging Beijing.

The FBI has alleged that a Chinese scientist accused of visa fraud is apparently taking refuge in China's consulate in San Francisco to avoid arrest.

The revelation comes at the time of increased tensions between China and the U.S., following the forced closure of the Chinese consulate in Houston on Wednesday.

According to the court documents filed July 20, Tang Juan, who was a biology researcher at the University of California, Davis, was issued a non-immigrant visa after she allegedly lied about her connection to the Chinese military.

"(The) investigation revealed photographs of her in the uniform of the Civilian Cadre of the People's Liberation Army (PLA), and that she had been employed as a researcher at the Air Force Military Medical University (FMMU)," the court filings stated.

Following this, Tang was interviewed by the FBI agents on June 20, when she denied serving in the Chinese military.

The U.S. is equipping and positioning its forces across Asia for a possible confrontation with China, Defense Secretary Mark Esper said Tuesday in remarks outlining the military component of the Trump administration’s hardening stance toward Beijing.

Tang Juan was interviewed by the FBI on June 20 about her concealing her ties to the People’s Liberation Army while she was a researcher at the University of California, Davis, and the FBI executed a search of her home and her electronics media showing further evidence she’d hidden her ties to the PLA when applying for a visa. Court documents show that the bureau “assesses that, at some point following the search and interview … Tang went to the Chinese Consulate in San Francisco, where the FBI assesses she has remained.”

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Tuesday that he hopes to build an international coalition to counter recent Chinese actions ranging from the global coronavirus to the country's involvement in the South China Sea.

Speaking from a press conference in London Tuesday, Pompeo said he and British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab discussed the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP's) recent moves to “bully its neighbors, militarize features in the South China Sea, and instigate a deadly confrontation with India.”

The Chinese Foreign Ministry said that the US asked it to close down its consulate in Houston, Texas. Beijing condemned the move, promising retaliation if the decision is not reversed.

The abrupt demand to shut down the consulate is an “unprecedented escalation” of hostilities, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin told reporters. He warned that Beijing will retaliate if the US does not reverse its decision.

Wang Wenbin slammed the order to close the consulate as a “political provocation” and “a serious violation of international law.”

US bombers in Guam have tended to be used to threaten North Korea, and a new deployment this week sees a pair of B-1B Lancer bombers arriving in Guam, after a brief stop-off in Japan to participate in a joint exercise.

Though such bombers tend to be used for operations near North Korean airspace, officials are also emphasizing the US tensions with China in the South China Sea. It’s hard to imagine that, with China’s substantial air defenses, these deployments would be likely to see use against them.

The South China Sea, however, seems like it’s going to be an ongoing issue, as the US insists that they will never accept Chinese claims on islands in the area. The Chinese, however, show no interest in giving up on any of those claims either.

The deployment of these bombers comes as the US has sent more forces into the area, with two carrier strike groups currently in the South China Sea.

As Trump administration officials take fresh aim at China for a list of grievances ranging from intellectual property theft to the coronavirus pandemic, Beijing fired back by saying the U.S. is “possessed by such evil” and is, therefore, to blame for deteriorating relations.

“Some in the U.S., driven by ideological bias, have been sparing no effort to paint China as a rival or even adversary, smear and attack China and encircle and contain its development,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told reporters Friday. “The U.S. is pressing the accelerator to trash China-U.S. relations, while China is putting the brakes on,” she said.

The World Health Organisation announced Monday that it will not be visiting the Wuhan Institute of Virology during its investigation into the origins of the coronavirus, despite the fact that the lab held samples of coronavirus that were almost exactly the same as that which caused a global pandemic.

Watch for things like this because these politicians could very well be using predictive programming to get us ready for what they already have planned. One GOP lawmaker has said there could be a violent clash between the United States and China and that “people will die.”

According to a report by the Washington Examiner, a violent confrontation between the United States and China could take place within months, according to an American lawmaker wary of Beijing’s expansionist foreign policy. “I would predict there will be a clash within the next three to six months,” Florida Representative Ted Yoho, the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee for Asia, told the Washington Examiner.

US President Donald Trump signed a bill and an executive order on Tuesday related to Hong Kong in the aftermath of Beijing passing a new national security law. The measures end the city's preferential treatment by Washington and levy sanctions against Chinese individuals responsible for implementing the security law.

Trump told reporters at a Tuesday press conference he had signed the Hong Kong Autonomy Act, a bill passed by Congress earlier this month that allows the sanctioning of Chinese officials responsible for implementing the country's new national security law in Hong Kong.

“Today, I signed legislation and an executive order to hold China accountable for its repressive actions," he said.

A new defense white paper published by the Japanese Ministry of National Defense takes aim at Chinese expansionism and North Korean weapons tests, claiming they pose major threats to Tokyo. The paper claims Beijing is taking advantage of the COVID-19 pandemic to further its regional ambitions.

The annual white paper, which the government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe approved on Tuesday, criticizes Beijing for “relentlessly” challenging Tokyo’s control over the disputed Senkaku Islands, which China claims are its own and calls the Diaoyu Islands.

“Despite protests by our country, Chinese official ships repeatedly intruded into our territorial waters around the Senkaku Islands,” the paper said, according to Kyodo News Agency.

Having alienated the remaining 27 members of the European Union and set Anglo-Russian relations back a century, Boris Johnson has just declared an economic war on China. What could possibly go wrong!

The British economy fell by 20 percent in the last quarter, a bell which tolled on the very day the government announced a raft of moves which can only be described as a declaration of economic war against China, a country of 1.4 billion people and the world’s second biggest economy – certain to be biggest by 2025. The proximate reason – that allowing Huawei into Britain’s 5G roll-out is a “security risk” – is patently false. If that were true for 5G, it would be true of 3 and 4G. If it were true then the company would have to be banished now, not in 2027 (by when, incidentally, 5G will be so last year).

US President Donald Trump has said he was the driving force behind the ultimatum to Washington’s allies: ban China’s telecom company Huawei from their 5G networks or face the prospect of no more business with the US.

“We convinced many countries, and I did this myself for the most part, not to use Huawei,” Trump said in a speech at the Rose Garden on Tuesday.

The Chinese telecommunications giant has vehemently denied Trump’s allegations that it was taking orders from Beijing. In response, the US president doubled down, saying that he sees Huawei as a “big security risk.”

China has hit back at US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who accused it of wanting to create an “empire” in the South China Sea. Washington only disrupts peace in the region, Beijing said.

The US has been “the troublemaker and the disruptor of peace and stability in the region,” China’s Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Zhao Lijian told reporters.

“The international community sees this very clearly,” he said.

Zhao was reacting to remarks by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who earlier accused Beijing of “bullying” its neighbors and trying to create “a maritime empire” in the South China Sea. Numerous countries, including China, have long-standing territorial disputes in the area.

China has reaffirmed its firm support for the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and five other world states, calling on the international community to put pressure on the US — which left the deal in 2018 — to abandon a hostile push to reinstate sanctions against Tehran and deal even more blows to the multilateral accord.

Speaking on the occasion of the fifth anniversary of the conclusion of the deal, named the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Hua Chunying on Monday hailed the accord as an efficient and successful model of multilateral diplomacy in resolving international issues.

“The JCPOA has become a key element of the international nuclear non-proliferation system, an important positive factor in maintaining regional and global peace and stability, and good practice of resolving regional hotspot issues through multilateral approaches,” she said.

In the latest sign the UK is determined to adopt a belligerent approach against China, it is being reported that military chiefs have drawn up plans to deploy one of Britain’s new aircraft carriers to the Far East.

News of the potential deployment comes on the heels of Prime Minister, Boris Johnson’s decision to expel the Chinese technology giant Huawei from the UK by 2027.

Ariana Fajardo Orshan, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida and George L. Piro, Special Agent in Charge, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Miami Field Office announced that three People’s Republic of China (PRC) foreign nationals were sentenced today to prison terms for illegal photography of military installations at the U.S. Naval Air Station in Key West, Florida (NAS Key West).

Lyuyou Liao, 27, was sentenced to the statutory maximum term of 12 months in prison followed by one year of supervised release, after pleading guilty to illegally entering NAS Key West on December 26, 2019, and taking photographs and video footage of property on the Truman Annex of the station. This included taking images of vital military equipment. (Case No. 20-10002-CR-KMM ).

The State Department has confirmed the policy change in a press release attributed to Sec Pompeo. Read the whole statement below:

The United States champions a free and open Indo-Pacific. Today we are strengthening U.S. policy in a vital, contentious part of that region - the South China Sea. We are making clear: Beijing’s claims to offshore resources across most of the South China Sea are completely unlawful, as is its campaign of bullying to control them.

In the South China Sea, we seek to preserve peace and stability, uphold freedom of the seas in a manner consistent with international law, maintain the unimpeded flow of commerce, and oppose any attempt to use coercion or force to settle disputes. We share these deep and abiding interests with our many allies and partners who have long endorsed a rules-based international order.

Earlier, the US Secretary of State labeled Beijing's territorial claims to the waters and an exclusive economic zone beyond the 12-nautical mile (22 kilometres) around the Spratly Islands group in the South China Sea as "unlawful", outlining that the United States does not accept the terms.

The former US national security adviser, John Bolton, praised in a tweet Washington's move to decline Beijing's maritime claims in the South China Sea, urging to "move beyond freedom of navigation exercises to oppose China’s coercive behavior in the region". The former Trump appointee stressed that "this is not a Chinese provence and will not be".

His comments come after US State Secretary Mike Pompeo slammed China's claims as "unlawful", even as the territory around the Spratly Islands group in the South China Sea remains contested territory by several other nations.

The world’s third operational fifth-generation aircraft, the Chengdu J-20 “Weilong,” has entered mass production, according to insider reports. The Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Air Force has reportedly placed a large order, now that many of the jet’s early problems have been sorted out.

According to PLA insider reports, a new version of the J-20, the J-20B, is ready to be fielded by the Chinese military.

Russian energy giant Gazprom Neft has started supplying crude from its Novy Port Arctic oil field to China. The first batch amounting to 144,000 tons of crude was delivered to Yantai port, the company announced.
The tanker route from Murmansk to Yantai crosses the Arctic seas and three oceans, and takes 47 days.

“Successful experience in the sale of Arctic oil in the European market and in-depth insight of Asia-Pacific markets allow Gazprom Neft to offer Novy Port oil with a unique year-round logistics scheme to Asian partners,” said Deputy Director General of Gazprom Neft for Logistics, Processing and Sales Anatoly Cherner.

An advisor to Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei says a pending roadmap for strategic partnership between Iran and China is to help ditch the dollar in bilateral trade and bypass illegal and unilateral US sanctions.

Ali Aqa-Mohammadi said the 25-year document is more than an “agreement” which usually encompass just a certain issue.

The official said the partnership roadmap solidifies the two countries’ economic and defensive cooperation by protecting their dealings from “third-party intervention.”

It would “close up and eliminate the key spots,” where sanctions, including those targeting defense cooperation between the two countries, could be implemented, he noted.

The exact terms haven’t been announced, but Iranian officials are reporting that they are close to finalizing a major deal with China that would expand security ties, and greatly expand economic ties, including in the all-important banking sector.

This stands to benefit both China and Iran considerably, but runs counter to US interests in isolating both of them internationally, leading the State Department to oppose the deal and threaten to impose more costs on Iran and China if they try to make the deal.

Despite US anger, Iran keeps looking to make deals with other nations the US is hostile toward. Recent trade with Venezuela has been met with a furious US backlash. Similar anger can be expected with this new deal with China.

Things are going so splendidly with China right now, the U.S. has officially come out and warned citizens that there is a heightened risk of arbitrary law enforcement - and detention - for visitors to the Asian country.

The State Department is telling Americans to “exercise increased caution” in China, noting that there is a chance they could be banned from exiting the country, according to Reuters.

The U.S. State Department told citizens in China last week: "U.S. citizens may be detained without access to U.S. consular services or information about their alleged crime. U.S. citizens may face prolonged interrogations and extended detention for reasons related to state security."

The warning continued: “U.S. citizens may be detained without access to U.S. consular services or information about their alleged crime.”

China, which actively promotes economic globalization, will further develop friendly relations with Panama and use the Panama Canal to encourage global trade, the office of the Chinese Foreign Ministry's spokesperson said ahead of the centenary anniversary since the canal's official opening to commerce, marked on 12 July.

"China, as an active protagonist in protecting and promoting economic globalization, will continue to deepen friendly relations with Panama and use the Panama Canal to fulfill the important role of stimulating global trade," the office said.

When asked about the canal's significance to China, the spokesperson's office said that it connects the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, the East and the West, and thus is of great importance for water transport and the economy, adding that the Chinese people have longstanding ties with the Panama Canal, as many ethnic Chinese people participated in its construction, expansion and administration.