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Several private Chinese companies have begun operations in temporarily occupied areas of Ukraine, supplying essential equipment and helping rebuild destroyed factories, reports the Ukrainian media outlet NV, suggesting that these business activities likely have the backing of the Chinese Communist Party.

Chinese entrepreneurs from varying sectors such as energy, agriculture, and light industry are traveling to these regions to form joint Chinese-Russian companies and are actively seeking local workers.

"Currently, Russians lack the financial resources to develop the captured Ukrainian territories, prompting the Kremlin to seek Chinese investment," stated Pavlo Lysianskyi, Director of the Institute of Strategic Studies and Security.

Since the spring of 2023, companies from the occupied territories of Donetsk and Luhansk have appeared at China's "Canton Fair" in Guangzhou. For instance, Artom Zhykharyev, "advisor to the general director" of the "state company 'Nadra'" from the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic, visited industrial equipment plants in Beijing, Zhengzhou, Jinan, and Taiyuan. By 2024, the Chinese company Liming Heavy Industry Science & Technology is expected to supply various industrial equipment, including stationary crushers and vibrating feeders.

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The media reports that the Chinese are aiding Russians not only in rebuilding the devastated industries of Donbas but also by supplying equipment to mines occupied by Russia in Torez, Snizhne, and Khrestivka. Moreover, Russia is seeking to connect the highway "Rostov-on-Don — Mariupol — Melitopol — Simferopol," which it is actively constructing, to an international transportation corridor "Europe — Western China."

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Archived (available only in Dutch)

Reijer Passchier, Assistant Professor in Constitutional Law, warns against copying the destructive tech-giant model that exists in the US and China. He proposes developing European tech companies to ensure that Europe retains its sovereignty, according to a commentary in the Dutch newspaper 'De Volkskrant' [only in Dutch, but you'll find a useful translation].

To limit the influence of US and Chinese tech giants, Europe will have to try to repel such companies while making plans for its own tech industry. According to Reijer Passchier, big tech in the US has led to unprecedented inequality of wealth and the state has little control over these companies. Tech giants are willing to innovate, but only when this is to their advantage. If not, they will go all out to stop competitors threatening their business model. Elon Musk is an example of their powerful position. At the same time, problems arise from mixing public and private interests and the interests of the companies often take precedence over those of society. In China, the state is able to control the tech giants through its authoritarian political system and strict control over internet access.

'Europe must avoid allowing such fundamental risks to arise.' Passchier says that Europe has the means to develop both technical and institutional opportunities that are both democratic and in line with the rule of law. As an example, Passchier mentions the messaging app Signal – a company that uses technology to serve society, without putting profits first. More information?

UK-based lawyers have spoken out about being targeted by the Chinese state and its supporters in a campaign of intimidation including surveillance, hacking of bank accounts and rape threats.

The barristers, from Doughty Street Chambers in London, say there has been a coordinated and concerted campaign against them since they began acting for the jailed Hong Kong pro-democracy activist and media mogul, Jimmy Lai, three years ago.

Caoilfhionn Gallagher KC said she had received threats via email and social media of dismemberment, rape and death, which have extended to her family in recent months.

“I had a threat to rape one of my children because of my work,” she said. “I don’t know if that’s just an individual or if that’s someone who’s state-linked. What I do know is that if you have a campaign which is led by state authorities to say this lawyer is not to be trusted and they’re undermining the Chinese state by engaging in legal work with the United Nations, it sends a green light to [its supporters] to send material like that.”

As the leader of Lai’s international legal team, Gallagher has been targeted the most, including “hundreds” of attempts to hack her bank account. There has also been so-called “privilege phishing” – attempts to seek to persuade those who are targeted to divulge sensitive information, which the Bar Council has also warned about. Sometimes it is through emails created to appear to have been sent by Gallagher, or her contacts or colleagues.

Archived

The constitutional authorities consider the Russian troop presence a grave violation of the country's sovereignty and territorial integrity. The withdrawal of troops has also been urged by the international community, which has recognized the Transnistrian region as part of the Republic of Moldova. However, Russia continues to prop up the separatist regime in the region with military and economic support, while characterizing its troop presence as a "peacekeeping operation."

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The UN General Assembly adopted a resolution in 2018 calling for the unconditional withdrawal of Russian troops from Moldova, supported by 64 member states. Moldova's then Foreign Minister, Tudor Ulianovschi, underscored the incompatibility of the presence of Russian troops with the country's neutrality.

The withdrawal of Russian troops was also demanded in 2020 by President Maia Sandu. The head of state stated that the peacekeeping mission should be replaced by a civilian one, under an international mandate. In response, Russia stated that its presence is a guarantee for maintaining peace in the region.

In the context of the war in Ukraine, requests from Moldovan authorities for the withdrawal of Russian troops have become more insistent. Moldovan Foreign Minister Nicu Popescu has reiterated this request at international meetings, while Prime Minister Dorin Recean has called for the demilitarization of the Transnistrian region.

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In 2024, MEPs adopted a resolution warning against Russia's constant attempts to derail Moldova's European path. The EP [European Parliament] called on Russia to respect Moldova's independence, cease destabilization, and withdraw its military forces from the country's territory.

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Archived

["U.S. shadow president"] Elon Musk has huge and extensive connections to the Chinese dictatorship, both personally and through his businesses, and he has a long history of bending over backwards to appease its desires.

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Musk’s ties to China largely revolve around Tesla. The company’s largest factory is in Shanghai, where it produces half—over 900,000—of its vehicles sold worldwide. One source estimated that nearly 40 percent of Tesla’s battery supply chain relied on Chinese companies, and those relationships are growing. In 2022, Tesla opened a showroom in Xinjiang, where China is conducting a cultural genocide against its Uyghur minority.

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Tesla has also received large government subsidies, both tacit and explicit, from the Chinese state. It was the first and so far only foreign car company allowed to operate by itself in the Chinese market, as opposed to others like Volkswagen that had to form a joint venture with a Chinese company. Tesla has also secured more than half a billion dollars in loans from state-owned banks there, as well as a 10 percentage point break on its corporate tax rate that lasted until 2023.

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It’s not a coincidence that China is also Tesla’s largest market, and indeed has become more important to the company of late. While sales fell in Europe and the U.S. last year, and appear to be falling faster since Trump was elected (which is surely driven in large part by Musk’s Nazi antics), Tesla sold 657,000 cars in China in 2024—an increase of about 9 percent.

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Musk was also seemingly responsible for removing a number of controls on investment in China in the most recent [U.S.] government funding bill. Back in December, he personally blew it up out of nowhere with dozens of frantic posts on Twitter/X, and when a new version came through, wouldn’t you know it, the controls were gone.

It similarly comes as no surprise that Musk has repeatedly praised China, and even offered support for its foreign-policy objectives. He has personally met with top Chinese officials and businessmen on many occasions over the years, including Chinese Premier Li Qiang, who personally gave Musk a Chinese green card at Tesla’s Shanghai factory, and President Xi Jinping. In 2022, Musk said Taiwan should be deemed a Hong Kong–style “special administrative zone” of China, for which he was thanked by the Chinese ambassador. In 2023, he said on CNBC there is a “certain inevitability” about China’s goal of annexing Taiwan, and later that year said on a podcast that the island is an “integral part” of China. In 2024, Vladimir Putin reportedly asked Musk to not activate Starlink internet over Taiwan as a favor to China, and later SpaceX told its Taiwanese suppliers to leave the island.

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It should also be mentioned that Chinese law states that any company operating in China must hand over any data the government wants without question.

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America is getting a painful, bludgeoning lesson in why there are so many federal rules around ethics, foreign associations, and security. The government is supposed to be accountable to the people, not the personal plaything of one ultra-billionaire and whatever dictators might be able to twist his arm.

Following an executive order from President Donald Trump barring people from updating the sex designation on their passports, seven people have filed a federal lawsuit challenging the State Department’s refusal to issue passports with accurate sex designations.

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The new lawsuit was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, ACLU of Massachusetts, and law firm Covington & Burling LLP, on behalf of seven people who have not been able to obtain passports that match who they are because of the State Department’s new Passport Policy or are likely to be impacted by the new policy upon their next renewal. The complaint was filed in the federal District Court for the District of Massachusetts.

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On his first day in office, Trump signed an executive order attempting to mandate discrimination against transgender people across the federal government and government programs. This included a directive to the Departments of State and Homeland Security “to require that government-issued identification documents, including passports, visas, and Global Entry cards” reflect their sex “at conception.” Under the ensuing Passport Policy, within 24 hours the State Department began holding some passports and other documents (such as birth certificates and court orders) submitted by transgender, intersex, and nonbinary people who had applied to update the sex designation on their U.S. passports and returning others with their applications rejected and their newly-issued passport marked with their sex assigned at birth.

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[The] lawsuit argues the Passport Policy implemented by the State Department violates the Administrative Procedures Act because it is unconstitutional and arbitrary and capricious, and because it failed to comply with requirements to provide notice and comment for changes to government forms. The lawsuit also asserts that the State Department’s actions violate transgender, intersex, and nonbinary people’s rights under the Due Process Clause of the U.S. Constitution by unlawfully restricting their freedom of movement, as well as their rights under the Equal Protection Clause by unjustifiably discriminating against them on the basis of their sex. The policy also violates the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution by requiring people to have a sex designation on their passport that conflicts with their identity and potentially outs them to others. This violates the First Amendment’s protection against being required to convey governmental ideological messages they disagree with.

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Cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/29237278

Archived

The website of the Chinese artificial intelligence company DeepSeek, whose chatbot became the most downloaded app in the United States, has computer code that could send some user login information to a Chinese state-owned telecommunications company that has been barred from operating in the United States, security researchers say.

The web login page of DeepSeek’s chatbot contains heavily obfuscated computer script that when deciphered shows connections to computer infrastructure owned by China Mobile, a state-owned telecommunications company. The code appears to be part of the account creation and user login process for DeepSeek.

In its privacy policy, DeepSeek acknowledged storing data on servers inside the People’s Republic of China. But its chatbot appears more directly tied to the Chinese state than previously known through the link revealed by researchers to China Mobile. The U.S. has claimed there are close ties between China Mobile and the Chinese military as justification for placing limited sanctions on the company. DeepSeek and China Mobile did not respond to emails seeking comment.

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The code linking DeepSeek to one of China’s leading mobile phone providers was first discovered by Feroot Security, a Canadian cybersecurity company, which shared its findings with The Associated Press. The AP took Feroot’s findings to a second set of computer experts, who independently confirmed that China Mobile code is present. Neither Feroot nor the other researchers observed data transferred to China Mobile when testing logins in North America, but they could not rule out that data for some users was being transferred to the Chinese telecom.

The analysis only applies to the web version of DeepSeek. They did not analyze the mobile version, which remains one of the most downloaded pieces of software on both the Apple and the Google app stores.

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In the European Union (EU), 47% of electricity now comes from renewable sources like wind and solar, a new record according to a report from the think tank Ember. This is a far higher percentage than in other countries, including the United States and China, where about two-thirds of energy comes from fossil fuels such as oil, coal, and gas.

For the first time in 2024, solar energy surpassed coal in generating electricity across all 27 EU member states, while natural gas production of electricity fell for the fifth year running.

Climate change experts are encouraged by Europe’s continued push toward cleaner energy, especially as the new U.S. administration pushes for increased fossil fuel use.

“Fossil fuels are losing their grip on EU energy,” said Chris Rosslowe, the lead author of Ember’s ‘European Electricity Review’. “Back in 2019, at the start of the European Green Deal, few believed the energy transition would be where it is today: wind and solar are replacing coal and driving gas into a structural decline.”

The share of electricity produced by renewables jumped to 47% last year compared to 34% in 2019, in large part due to strong growth in solar and wind energy. In 2024, 11% of the EU’s electricity came from solar power, 17% from wind, and 24% from nuclear. The share produced by traditional fossil fuels dropped from 39% in 2019 to 29% in 2024.

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[Edit typo.]

Archived

An Australian economist has argued China has “hoodwinked” the world on net zero in what he acknowledges could be seen as a “controversial” take.

Leith Van Onselen, chief economist at the MB Fund and MB Super and co-founder of MacroBusiness, told 4BC host Mike Jeffreys that while Australia and other countries are making sacrifices for the good of the planet, the world’s biggest greenhouse gas emitter is not, and therefore “we’re basically shooting ourselves in the foot”.

“I’d argue China is the largest beneficiary of the West’s net zero policies,” Mr Van Onselen said on the radio show.

“It’s not abiding by the same rules and what we’re effectively doing is, while we’re reducing our carbon footprints through these sorts of policies and giving us expensive energy and shutting down manufacturing and becoming less diversified economies, China is simply expanding its carbon output and expanding its manufacturing sector at our expense.

“The world’s not getting cleaner. We’re just shifting the pollution away from us, to China, and it’s actually less regulated in China.”

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He referred to a Reuters report from August that found China had boosted domestic coal production and imports to record highs.

It said production from China’s mines hit a seasonal record of 390 million tonnes in July 2024, up from 378 million in the same month a year earlier, and imports surged to a seasonal record of 296 million tonnes in the first seven months from 261 million tonnes in 2023.

Mr Van Onselen concluded: “I think we can all agree we’d like to have a cleaner planet but the whole idea of net zero is completely impossible or ridiculous if China is not involved.

“If we’re going to make sacrifices, China has to make sacrifices.”

Archived

Bitdefender Labs warns of an active cyber-espionage campaign targeting organizations in Central Asia and European countries. The group, tracked as UAC-0063, employs sophisticated tactics to infiltrate high-value targets, including government entities and diplomatic missions, expanding their operations into Europe.

Since the start of the Ukraine war , the geopolitical landscape of Central Asia has undergone significant shifts, impacting the region's relationships with both Russia and China. Russia's influence, once dominant, has noticeably declined due to its actions in Ukraine, which have damaged its reputation as a regional security guarantor, with some Central Asian countries feeling that Russia doesn't respect their sovereignty.

In contrast, China's influence in Central Asia is growing, particularly in the economic sphere, as it seeks access to raw materials and prioritizes economic development as a path to stability. China's approach differs from Russia's; Beijing focuses on economic instruments such as the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) to build infrastructure and trade links, while Moscow historically relied on military presence and formal alliances.

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Based on the analyzed data, the UAC-0063 attacks likely targeted embassies in Germany, the Netherlands, Romania, Georgia, Kazakhstan, and Afghanistan. In some cases, there were attempts to reinfect previously compromised targets using the same known infection vector involving weaponized documents.

Archived

Italy’s data protection authority on Thursday blocked access to the Chinese AI application DeepSeek to protect users’ data and announced an investigation into the companies behind the chatbot.

The authority, called Garante, expressed dissatisfaction with DeepSeek’s response to its initial query about what personal data is collected, where it is stored and how users are notified.

“Contrary to the authority’s findings, the companies declared that they do not operate in Italy, and that European legislation does not apply to them,’’ the statement said, noting that the app had been downloaded by millions of people around the globe in just a few days.

DeepSeek’s new chatbot has raised the stakes in the AI technology race, rattling markets and catching up with American generative AI leaders at a fraction of the cost.