America’s top diplomat is dashing around Asia to tackle hot issues in the region, and sharing an important message from his travels. How strong is the China threat that’s unnerving U.S. allies there? NTD White House correspondent Iris Tao gets a reply from the State Department after asking about China’s efforts to block an American company from performing in South Korea. A tug of war is taking place between world powers over ports in South Asia sitting on crucial trade routes that supply the world’s oil. A congressional investigation looks into whether American retirement funds are helping a top adversary....Read more https://www.theepochtimes.com/epochtv/blinken-visits-asia-amid-growing-tensions-with-china-5526004
China is setting out to mass produce human-like robots in two years, an ambitious plan that it hopes to put Beijing as the leader of the field. In a blueprint issued to local authorities across China, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology announced the goal to establish an innovation framework for humanoid robots and ensure that the country can make core parts of the robots on its own. The products, under the plan, will reach advanced international standards in quality. They will see applications in harsh environments, manufacturing, as well as service sectors, according to the directive. Like smartphones, computers, and new energy vehicles, humanoid robots have the “disruptive” potential to “revolutionize” people’s lives, the document said....
NR | 3h 32m | Documentary | 2023 At least these cramped garment factories do not use Uyghur slave labor. Nevertheless, their employment practices would trouble many Americans. The young workers, largely in their late teens are only paid pennies according to the factories’ piecemeal terms. Yet, they rarely consider themselves victims, because such work represents the best available option for China’s young and unemployed rural poor. From 2014 to 2019, independent Chinese documentarian Wang Bing followed a large group of these college-aged factory workers for a prospective trilogy, the first of which, “Youth (Spring).” Zhili is about 100 miles from Shanghai, but most of the youthful factory workers hail from rural Anhui and Henan provinces. Most of them are illegal migrant workers in their own country, because of China’s strict work-residency regulations. Of course, that makes the young workers easy to exploit. Never in the film (recorded over a five-year span) does a government inspector darken any of the factories’ doors, so it is likely safe to assume the authorities are looking the other way....
A Senate committee has approved a bill that would further regulate foreign financial gifts to American universities and levy hefty fines against those who fail to comply. A bipartisan majority of the Senate Committee on Education and the Workforce voted on Nov. 7 to approve the Defending Education Transparency and Ending Rogue Regimes Engaging in Nefarious Transactions (DETERRENT) Act. Committee chairwoman Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) said that the bill was necessary to counter the increasing malign influence of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and other adversarial powers. “What we know is happening in institutions all around the country is that countries like China, Qatar, maybe even Iran … give money to the universities,” Ms. Foxx told NTD, a sister media outlet of The Epoch Times....