Google's VP of public policy, Karan Bhatia, today told the US Senate the company has “terminated” Project Dragonfly, its localized search engine project for China.

“We have terminated Project Dragonfly,” Bhatia said of the search app for people in China that Google was reported to be working on in 2018.

Bhatia was responding to Republican senator Josh Hawley's questions about Google’s business with China.

Davey Alba at BuzzFeed News writes the company didn't rule out the possibilities of doing other projects for China, now or in the future.

China considers Taiwan its sovereign territory, treating it as a breakaway province to be eventually reunited with the mainland.

Its ruling authorities call incursions by US warships in the Taiwan Strait provocative – the 110 mile-wide waterway separating Taiwan from the mainland.

They consider US arms sales to Taiwan a hostile act.

China’s Defense Minister Wei Fenghe earlier was unequivocal, saying the nation’s military will “firmly defend (China’s) national sovereignty, security and developmental interest.”

Beijing expressed outrage over the Trump regime’s approval to sell about $2.2 billion worth weapons to Taiwan, including Abrams tanks, Hercules armored vehicles, heavy equipment transporters, and Stinger anti-aircraft missiles.

Donald Trump has said his administration will probe accusations that Google has been infiltrated after working with China’s military, days after billionaire entrepreneur Peter Thiel called for the tech giant to be investigated.

The US president tweeted on Tuesday that he would “take a look” at Thiel’s assertion that Google was in cahoots with Beijing and should face a federal investigation. During a speech on Sunday, the co-founder of PayPal urged the FBI and CIA to take action, suggesting that Google may be “thoroughly infiltrated” by Chinese intelligence. Thiel failed to provide evidence when pressed further about his incendiary claims, stressing that he was simply “raising questions” about Google’s relationship with Beijing.

China’s military recently carried out air and naval drills along its southeast coast, the Defence Ministry said on Sunday, following the latest arms sales from the United States to self-ruled Taiwan, which China claims as a renegade province.

In a brief statement, and without giving an exact geographical location, the ministry said that the People’s Liberation Army had in “recent days” held the exercises.

“These drills were routine arrangements in accordance with annual plans for the military,” it said, without elaborating.

China’s southeast coast is one of the country’s most sensitive regions as it faces Taiwan across the narrow Taiwan Strait. China deems democratic Taiwan to be a wayward province, to be taken by force if needed.

Following last week's State Department approval of the sale of $2.2 billion in arms to Taiwan, China's Foreign Ministry confirmed Monday that it will follow through on threats first made days ago to impose sanctions on American companies selling arms to Taiwan.

Crucially this confirmation came simultaneous to provocative new military exercises off China's southeast coast, near Taiwan, which involved the People's Liberation Army (PLA) navy and air force. Downplaying the maneuvers, the PLA described the drills as "a routine arrangement according to (our) annual plans."

Former US Ambassador and Netflix board member Susan Rice called a senior Chinese diplomat a "racist disgrace" in a heated Twitter spat on Sunday.

In defending China's mass detention of Muslims via a series of now-deleted tweets, Islamabad-based diplomat Lijian Zhao first noted that "37 countries" have sent a joint letter to the UN supporting China's position, while "22 countries" - none of which are Muslim, are against it.

What steamed Rice, however, was Zhao's assertion that "If you're in Washington, D.C., you know the white never go to the SW area, because it's an area for the black & Latin," adding "There's a saying ‘black in & white out’, which means that as long as a black family enters, white people will quit, & price of the apartment will fall sharply."

Rice snapped back, "You are a racist disgrace. And shockingly ignorant too."

"Ambassador Cui, I expect better of you and your team. Please do the right thing and send him home."

UN ambassadors from 37 countries released a letter Friday defending China's treatment of Uighur and other minorities in the Xinjiang region, in direct response to Western criticism earlier this week.

Envoys from across the EU -- along with Australia, Canada and Japan and New Zealand -- had earlier co-signed a text denouncing China's conduct in Xinjiang, where one million people, mostly ethnic Uighurs, are reportedly being held in internment camps.

On Friday a diverse group of states -- including Russia, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, Algeria and North Korea -- replied on Beijing's behalf.

"We commend China's remarkable achievements in the field of human rights," said the letter, also signed by Myanmar, the Philippines, Zimbabwe and others.

Peter Thiel, billionaire investor and Facebook board member, on Sunday night said that Google should be federally investigated for allegedly aiding the Chinese military.

Why it matters: Thiel is the tech industry's highest-profile Trump supporter, and one of the most powerful players in Silicon Valley.

Thiel spoke at the National Conservatism Conference, a new event that bills itself as being focused on Trump-era nationalism, with part of his speech focusing on "three questions that should be asked" of Google:

Once again, it appears Robert Lighthizer and the Trump Administration's trade hawk faction have won over the more moderate advisors. Only a week ago, reports surfaced claiming the US might exempt China from Iran sanctions, for fear that the US would have no choice but to crack down otherwise (since Beijing has made clear exactly how it feels about Washington dictating which countries it can trade with).

Now, that idea, which was being pushed by senior State Department officials, has been abandoned, according to a Politico report. Instead, senior administration officials believe there's no avoiding the fact that Beijing has repeatedly violated the ban on importing Iranian crude.

The Chinese military has deployed military personnel and armored medical vehicles to Germany for joint drills, a first for the Chinese People's Liberation Army as it attempts to forge closer ties with Europe.

The joint exercise — Combined Aid 2019 — is focused on preparing troops with the medical service units of the Chinese and German armed forces to respond to humanitarian crises, such as mass casualty incidents and serious disease outbreaks, China's Xinhua News Agency reported.

The largest supplier of consumer goods in the world - China's Li & Fung - has said that Chinese factories are becoming "urgent and desperate" as US retailers move out of the country amid the ongoing trade war, according to Bloomberg, and more factory shut downs are likely to follow as the trade war continues.

Companies like Li & Fung Ltd., which designs, sources and transports consumer goods from Asia for some of the world’s biggest retailers, are being pushed by their American clients to shift production out of China.

Spencer Fung, chief executive officer said: “U.S. clients are definitely very, very worried. Everyone is making razor-thin margins already and most people have a huge percentage in China. So if the biggest source increases the price by 25%, they are worried.”

China's next lunar probe, Chang'e 5, scheduled to be launched around the end of this year, will adopt artificial intelligence technologies in the soft landing as well as sample collection process, the former program chief has said.

Ouyang Ziyuan, former chief scientist of China's lunar probe project, made the statement during a conference on satellites and space held in Rizhao, East China's Shandong Province from Friday to Sunday.

According to China National Space Administration, the Chang'e-5 mission, which aims to bring back 2 kilograms of samples from the moon surface, will make China the third country to do so after the US and Russia.

Federal agencies are rushing to meet a deadline to rip out Chinese made surveillance cameras in order to comply with a congressional ban, but as Bloomberg reports, the task isn’t quite as easy as it seems: thousands of the devices are still in place and it’s looking as though most won’t be removed before the August 13 deadline. A complicated supply chain is making it difficult for authorities to understand whether security cameras are actually made in China or contain components that would violate US rules.

SOURCE: TECH DIRT
Recently, the North Carolina State Board of Elections asked suppliers of electronic voting machines a simple question: who owns you? (h/t Annemarie Bridy)
On June 14, 2019, the State Board of Elections requested that your companies disclose any owners or shareholders with a 5% or greater interest or share in each of the vendor’s company, any subsidiary company, of the vendor, and the vendor’s parent company.

This seems like very basic information -- information the Board should know and should be able to pass on to the general public. After all, these are the makers of devices used by the public while electing their representatives. They should know who’s running these companies and who their majority stakeholders are. If something goes wrong (and something always does), they should know who’s ultimately responsible for the latest debacle.

Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has approved the construction of a new tolled motorway across Russia designed to significantly shorten cargo routes, local media reported. The project is expected to cost around $9.5 billion.

The massive infrastructure project, the Meridian highway, has won the support of the Russian government, Vedomosti business daily said, citing government officials. The highway is set to stretch over 2,000km from the Belarus border to the frontier with Kazakhstan, and it is expected to become part of the fastest trucking route between China and Europe.

China’s economic slowdown and heavy debt load is affecting everybody in the country – even it’s "jewelry queen", Zhou Xiaoguang, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Zhou, who went from selling trinkets on city streets to taking a seat in China’s parliament and becoming Ernst & Young‘s "Entrepreneur of the Year" was faced with the reality of being unable to pay her company's billions of dollars in debt while in a bankruptcy court in April.

She is just one example of a massive debt burden taking its toll on China.

China has relied on borrowing to fuel its expansion for at least a generation. In 2018, the country was known for creating four billionaires a week and is number one globally in self-made fortunes. But this quick pace of growth, with many borrowing heavily in the process, also masked companies' strategic mistakes.

Fueled by debt, many over-expanded into crowded sectors and now those mal-investments and mis-allocations of resources are coming back to bite them.

China continued its renewed (public) gold-buying spree in May adding another 10 tons of the precious metal to its reserve - the seventh month of buying in a row.

“It’s a diversification away from the U.S. dollar, particularly given the trade tensions and the potential technology cold war that’s evolving,” said Bart Melek, global head of commodity strategy at TD Securities.

“We have to remember that gold is nobody’s liability.”

A group of seventeen metallic elements whose names most of us have never heard recently came into the spotlight amid the latest trade tension escalation between Beijing and Washington. Rare earths, used in a myriad of products from electronic displays to lasers and electric cars, are currently the dominion of China and there is concern it could decide to weaponize this dominion.

There is precedent.

Back in 2011, as a territorial dispute between China and Japan got rough, Beijing imposed a rare earths export embargo on its neighbor. The result: soaring prices as everyone started stockpiling in case things got even rougher until the World Trade Organization intervened and China lifted the embargo.

It could be as long as a decade before China recovers from its outbreak of African swine fever, the deadly pig disease that’s decimating hog herds in the world’s largest pork consumer.

That’s according to Cargill Inc., one of the world’s largest agricultural commodity traders. The virus, which kills most infected pigs within 10 days, has already spread to most Chinese provinces. Official reports of a 24% decline for the nation’s herd are “conservative,” said John Fering, managing director for Cargill’s premix and nutrition business in the Asian nation.

China’s hog-herd losses are tough to estimate and could be anywhere between 20% and 70%, according to Rabobank.

“This is not a short-term event,” Fering said by phone. “This is going to take several years, if not a decade, to fully achieve structural recovery.”

SOURCE: ZEROHEDGE

A core group of radical protesters who led the violent siege of Hong Kong's legislature on Monday were willing to die for their cause as martyrs, according to SCMP.

Approximately ten 'diehards' with a 'bring it on' attitude had no qualms about facing police batons, rubber bullets or worse, as they broke into and trashed the Legislative Council building.

"The protesters at the front were willing to sacrifice themselves. They turned so violent, hoping police would use aggressive force against them or shoot them with rubber bullets or beanbag rounds," said SCMP's source, adding "If the individuals were badly injured or even killed, all the blame would have been placed on police so as to spark global condemnation, and eventually bring the whole administration down."

SOURCE: NYTIMES.COM
GENEVA — Venezuelan special forces have carried out thousands of extrajudicial killings in the past 18 months and then manipulated crime scenes to make it look as if the victims had been resisting arrest, the United Nations said on Thursday in a report detailing wide-ranging government abuses targeting political opponents.

Special Action Forces described by witnesses as “death squads” killed 5,287 people in 2018 and another 1,569 by mid-May of this year, in what are officially termed by the Venezuelan government “Operations for the Liberation of the People,” United Nations investigators reported.

Laying out a detailed description of a lawless system of oppression, the report says the actual number of deaths could be much higher. It cites accounts by independent groups who report more than 9,000 killings for “resistance to authority” over the same period.

According to a special report of the Council on Foreign Relations, US administrations, from Clinton to Obama have misread China’s strategic intentions on several fronts; and made optimistic statements about US-China relations.

The CFR is the preeminent US foreign policy think tank, so what they publish can be taken as the consensus opinion of the American political elite, be they Democrat or Republican, conservative or progressive.

What the “special report” does is outline the BIG LIE about China. Every assertion in the following paragraph is a lie, that has been reinforced time and time again by the corporate media and servile US politicians.

That was truly an extraordinary weekend. Trump vs Xi agreed to resume trade negotiations. No more tariffs, but the old ones still in place. Huawei ban to be reconsidered. Trump also met Kim in the DMZ. It was also the end of H1 2019, with stock markets posting their most impressive gains since 1997 even as bonds proved the top returning assets – which should have everyone wondering and worrying how!

I reckon that puts us in a very interesting position for the next 18 months. Trade wars will remain a major distraction and concern – whatever happened in Osaka over the weekend, about the only thing we can confirm is nothing is really fixed! Instead, the dominant factor in coming months could be the US Federal Reserve – and how it is likely to come under increasing pressure from Trump, who is now in full electioneering mode. That puts a whole new complexion on the Game of Markets.

Update (1205ET): A line of police vehicles with lights flashing moved toward the legislature as midnight approached.

SCMP reports that hundreds of police officers move in from different directions, from Arsenal Street, Queensway, and Fenwick Pier Street.

Agreements worth about $6 billion have been signed between India and China during the launch of a joint IT platform. Indian firms are thus getting access to China’s $144 billion tech market.

India’s IT industry’s trade group NASSCOM on Sunday established a Sino-Indian Digital Collaborative Opportunities Plaza (SIDCOP) in the tech hub of Guiyang in southwest China.

“In this way, we will be marrying the requirements of Chinese companies with the capabilities of Indian IT service providers,” said India's ambassador to China Gautam Bambawale. He told the Times of India: “We visualize that these initiatives will give a big impetus to cooperation between India and China in the IT-enabled services sector.”

Iran has delivered the first crude oil to a Chinese refinery complex since the United States removed as of May all sanction waivers for Iranian oil customers, including its biggest buyer China.

According to TankerTrackers, a medium-sized Suezmax vessel, named SALINA and owned by the National Iranian Tanker Company (NITC), loaded around 1 million barrels of crude oil from Iran and departed on May 28. The tanker arrived on June 20 at Jinxi Refining and Chemical Complex in China in a first independent tanker-tracking confirmation that China is defying the U.S. sanctions on Iran’s oil exports.

The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs of the People's Republic of China published new data Monday that shows agricultural imports from the US have fallen, as Chinese buyers shift supply chains out of the US to other countries because of the deepening trade war.

In the first five months of 2019, imports of agricultural products from the US crashed 55.3% YoY. Much of decline was due to a 70.6% YoY decline of soybeans in the same period.

Chinese importers went to Brazil, Argentina, and ASEN countries (Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines, Vietnam, Brunei, Myanmar (Burma), Cambodia, and Laos). Data showed imports from the EU, Australia, and Canada also jumped in the first five months as Chinese buyers ditched American products.

Warburg Pincus, the private equity fund with over $ 60 billion under management, is doubling down on Asia after it announced a $ 4.25 billion fund dedicated to China and Southeast Asia.

The firm has been present in China for 25 years, and it has invested over $ 11 billion in a portfolio of over 120 startups that includes the likes of Alibaba’s Ant Financial and listed companies NIO (a Tesla rival), ZTO Express (a courier firm)among others. The new fund will work in tandem with the firm’s $ 14.8 billion global growth fund which was finalized at the end of last year.

The president earlier threatened to slap tariffs on the remaining $300 billion in Chinese goods coming into the United States unless Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed to meet with him at the G20 meeting in Osaka, Japan to hammer out a trade deal favourable to Washington.

President Donald Trump has reiterated his promise to slap additional tariffs on China if a trade deal is not reached, saying that he was "happy" with things as they are and that China needed the deal more than the US did since its economy has been hit hard by the existing restrictions.

"I would do additional tariffs, very substantial additional tariffs, if that doesn't work, if we don't make a deal", Trump said. "China's economy is going down the tubes - they want to make a deal", he stressed, speaking to Fox News Business on Wednesday morning.

SOURCE: NEW EASTERN OUTLOOK

Another pivotal battle is being fought over Hong Kong between Beijing and political forces backed by the special administrative region’s former British colonial masters.

At the heart of the battle is a proposed law that will allow suspects to be extradited to mainland China, Taiwan or Macau.

The BBC in its article, “Hong Kong lawmakers fight over extradition law,” would claim:

Critics believe the proposed switch to the extradition law would erode Hong Kong’s freedoms.

By “critics,” the BBC is referring to US and British-backed opposition, with the article specifically linking recent protests against the proposed law to the US-funded “Umbrella Movement” demonstrations in 2014.

The slow, incremental erosion of Western influence in Hong Kong and elsewhere across Asia-Pacific appears to be ending what has been centuries of European and then American primacy over the region.

SOURCE: GLOBALRESEARCH.CA

The US considers China a strategic adversary. Waging war on the China by other means makes reconciling major bilateral differences all the harder.

According to a US Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) document, 143 tech-related Chinese enterprises have been blacklisted from the US market.

They include companies involved in producing aviation related products, semiconductors, engineering, as well as other high-tech products and components.

Falsely claiming these enterprises act “contrary to the national security or foreign policy interests of the United States” is cover for wanting corporate America to have a leg up on Chinese competition.

On Friday, the BIS added five more Chinese tech enterprises to its blacklist, further heightening bilateral tensions ahead of China’s President Xi Jinping’s scheduled meeting with Trump for talks later this week at the Osaka, Japan G20 summit.

With old trade wars reigniting and new ones being invented, telecommunications is faced with an existential crisis. To survive, it must establish a global standard for a globe that no longer seems to want one.

Iranian troops take part in the "National Persian Gulf day" in the Strait of Hormuz, on April 30, 2019. - The date coincides with the anniversary of a successful military campaign by Shah Abbas the Great of Persia in the 17th century, which drove the Portuguese navy out of the Hormuz Island, after which is named the waterway which separates the Gulf from the Sea of Oman.

In the old days, it would have been absolutely essential for the United States to ensure that the Strait of Hormuz—through which a third of the world’s crude oil passes daily—remained open. It is less essential now, thanks to the oil shale revolution, which has once again made America an oil giant. We now produce more oil than Saudi Arabia and more than the Russians.

It's probably not a coincidence that just days after we reported that China's interbank market was freezing up in the aftermath of the Baoshang Bank collapse and subsequent seizure, which led to a surge in interbank repo rates and a spike in Negotiable Certificates of Deposit (NCD) rates...

Former Interpol chief Meng Hongwei has pleaded guilty to charges of accepting bribes, Chinese state media reported.

Meng - a Chinese citizen - has been under investigation since October 2018. He is accused of taking 14.5 million yuan ($2.1m) in unlawful payments between 2005 and 2017, using his status and positions, including as vice minister of public security and Marine Police Chief to accumulate the money.

He reportedly admitted his guilt during a court hearing on Thursday in the northern city of Tianjin in China, according to the People's Daily, an official newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party's Central Committee.

Interpol, the global police coordination agency based in France, said last October that Meng had resigned as president, days after his wife Grace Meng reported him missing after he travelled back to China.