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UDN: The U.S. Plans to Restrict China’s Use of Chip-Making Equipment

United Daily News (UDN), one of the primary Taiwanese news groups, recently reported that the U.S. Trump administration is considering a new trade restriction. This time it points to banning China from using U.S. chip-making equipment for manufacturing. The U.S. Department of Commerce is planning to amend its policies around Country of Origin, which means if it is national security related, there will be more restrictions on foreign vendors who want to use U.S. technology based equipment. This may result in a requirement to obtain prior U.S. permission for foreign manufacturers to produce chips to supply Huawei. Analysts expressed the belief that the new policy aims to slow down China’s speed of improving its technologies. However, the plan may also bring the risk of disrupting the global supply chain of the U.S. giants in the semiconductor industry. The plan is still under debate within the U.S. federal government.

Source: UDN, February 17, 2020
https://udn.com/news/story/12639/4351556

Beijing Daily: Car Sales in the First Half of February Dropped 92 Percent

Beijing Daily recently reported that the China Passenger Car Association (CPCA) just released data showing that, in the first half of February, Chinese passenger car sales saw a landslide decline. Year-over-year domestic sales recorded a 92 percent decline, which is the sharpest drop in history. Apparently, the spreading coronavirus is having an impact on the economy. Most of the car dealerships across China are still not open for business. Some have initiated online sales but have not received much business. China’s Ministry of Commerce commented that the central government is coming up with a plan to encourage consumers to spend on cars. Some local governments have already announced new government subsidies for new purchases of both commercial and passenger automobiles. According to the CPCA, in January, the Chinese automobile market already saw a year-over-year decline of 21.5 percent.

Source: Beijing Daily, February 21, 2020
http://www.bjd.com.cn/a/202002/21/WS5e4f97abe4b0b1db6f9b8bd3.html

Resuming Production: Hangzhou City Direction: Companies Can Punish Employees Refusing to Return to Work

Hangzhou Daily newspaper, under its Weibo account, reported that the government of Hangzhou City, Zhejiang Province, gave companies directions that they should get employees to return to work and can punish those who refused to come back.

At the city’s coronavirus epidemic control press conference, Liu Zhiyong, a Party member from the Hangzhou Municipal Human Resources and Social Affairs Bureau stated, “For those employees who are concerned with the coronavirus and do not want to return to work, companies and labor unions should tell them the epidemic control requirements and the importance of resuming production, to persuade them to report to work. For those who do not listen or use improper excuses to refuse to return work, companies can handle them according to the law.”

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Military: PLA Biological and Chemical Protection Soldiers Died in Wuhan

Gu Zhuheng, the owner of Sing Pao Daily News, one of the oldest Chinese newspapers in Hong Kong, tweeted on February 23, that soldiers from the Guangdong Army Biological and Chemical Protection Regiment that was recently sent to Wuhan had died three weeks ago. He also posted a picture of himself in military uniform and his ID when he worked with that regiment. Gu was exiled to the U.S. in 2017 after Beijing wanted to arrest him for a financial matter.

Qi Leyi, a host of a military program for Radio Free Asia, talked about the Biological and Chemical Protection troops in the PLA. She said that each army has such a unit at the regiment or battalion level. They participated in the rescue mission during the 2003 SARS outbreak in China.

She also pointed out that three things were needed to develop lethal biological weapon and China had all of them. One was the relevant technology, facility, and raw materials. Two was a laboratory of the highest safety level. Three was access to the original virus. Qiu Xiangguo and Cheng Keding, the couple and expert virologists in Canada had been visiting the Wuhan P4 lab multiple times. Canadian police arrested them  for taking virus samples to China from the Canadian P4 lab that they worked at.

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Military: Wuhan Lab Has Close Ties to the PLA

Radio France International reported that Major General Chen Wei, China’s chief biochemical weapon defense expert, took over the Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory, China’s first Biocontainment Level 4 (BL4) lab (Chinese call it a P4 lab) in Wuhan, after the coronavirus outbreak. A news report on February 7 mentioned that she had been in Wuhan for over ten days, so she probably took over the P4 lab around the same time as Wuhan locked down the city (on January 23, 2020).

Radio France International also reported that China requested France to help it build this lab in 2003. Despite the warning from its Intelligence offices that China could use it to develop biochemical weapons, France still signed the agreement with China on 2004. The agreement stated that Beijing should not apply the technology to activities of an attacking nature.

In 2005, China designated a local company IPPR in Wuhan to manage the project. That company had close ties with some units affiliated with the People’s Liberation Army (PLA); the CIA had been monitoring those units.

It is unclear whether Beijing has honored its promise not to develop biochemical weapons at the lab. A government official in France told news reporters that China has broken its promises several times in the past. For example, China promised to build only one lab, but now it has built several and some labs look suspicious.

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Russia Starts Profiling Chinese in the Fear of Coronavirus

Associated Press reported that Russia has given orders to profile Chinese for coronavirus.

“Moscow officials ordered police raids on hotels, dormitories, apartment buildings and businesses to track down the shrinking number of Chinese people remaining in the city. They also authorized the use of facial recognition technology to find those suspected of evading a 14-day self-quarantine period upon their arrival in Russia.”

“A leaked email that the media reports said that the state-owned transportation company Mosgortrans” sent out “instructed drivers to call a dispatcher if Chinese nationals boarded their buses” and “told the dispatchers who took such calls to notify the police. The email, which the company immediately described on Twitter as fake, carried a one-word subject line: coronavirus.”

“The effort to identify Chinese citizens on public transportation applies not only to buses, but also to underground trains and street trams in Moscow, Russian media reported Wednesday.”

Source: Associated Press, February 22, 2020
https://apnews.com/8a43b0b86b63b1179ccd9a9c1977a339?utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=AP&utm_campaign=SocialFlow[2

Leadership: Chinese Leaders Are Planning Hide-out Place While Fighting the Coronavirus

Yahoo reported that it obtained information from U.S. intelligence that the Chinese leadership is planning “for what is known as a ‘continuity of operations,’ meaning the ability for the government to maintain its basic functions during an unprecedented crisis, such as nuclear war or natural disaster.”

The source stated, “In China, this might involve senior leaders leaving the country or seeking safety in shelters, ‘like U.S. doomsday bunkers.’ The intel community, said the source, is seeing some signs that Chinese officials are making those kinds of contingency plans, indicating the potential level of concern within Beijing.”

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Source: Yahoo, February 21, 2020S
https://news.yahoo.com/with-information-from-china-scarce-us-spies-enlisted-to-track-coronavirus-173612656.html

Leadership: “Turning Point Has Not Come Yet”

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Politburo held a meeting on February 21 to discuss the control and prevention work on the novel coronavirus. The meeting pointed out, “While the wide spread of the epidemic has been initially controlled and the number of new cases nationwide and the suspected cases have been declining, we must understand it clearly. The turning point of the nationwide epidemic’s development has not come yet.”

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