China Fires 1st Ballistic Missile in 44 Years; Beijing Sides With Lebanon | China in Focus

Welcome to China In Focus. I'm Tiffany Meyer. Our top story. China firing a missile that can fly across continents into the Pacific Ocean as world leaders meet at the United Nations in New York. Capturing the elite. It's a known tactic in Beijing's toolkit for countering the U.S. and sparking division U.S. lawmakers are investigating. From the war to U.S.-China relations, how big of a threat does communism pose to the United States? And how American elites still conceive of China as in some respects wanting to continue the failed engagement policy where the United States trades, cooperates, does not yet confront the Chinese Communist Party. And China's top diplomat making Beijing's Middle East stance clear. The official voice China's backing for Lebanon in its conflict with Israel. We hear from a former Pentagon official for more on why Middle East conflicts matter for the communist regime. Welcome to China In Focus. I'm Tiffany Meyer. A veiled threat from Beijing. China said it launched an intercontinental ballistic missile into the Pacific Ocean Tuesday. The body of water separating China and the U.S. This was Beijing's first such test in The missile carried a dummy warhead, but these types of missiles are designed to carry nuclear warheads and can hit targets across continents. The launch comes amid the annual United Nations General Assembly in New York. It's unclear what type of missile was fired. No, Beijing has missiles capable of reaching California. Beijing did not give details about the missile's flight path or where it landed. China said the launch was part of its annual military training. An American nuclear weapons expert said this was Beijing's first such test in four decades. Tokyo said the missile did not appear to have passed Japan, adding China did not tell the nation about the test in advance. It said growing Chinese military activities have become a serious concern for Japan. Taiwan said its intelligence agency is monitoring the situation closely. Drew Thompson, an expert at a Singaporean think tank, called the launch a powerful signal intended to intimidate everyone. And it comes as China is furthering conflicts with many of its neighbors. Japan protested Chinese aircraft's flight into its airspace. Chinese coast guards rammed Filipino boats, plus Taiwan says China has fired missiles near the island. China has been rapidly expanding its nuclear arsenal. It's estimated to have 500 nuclear warheads. The U.S. has over 3,000 and Russia over 4,000. And last week, the chief of U.S. naval operations, Admiral Lisa Franchetti, set a deadline for the Navy readying for a potential war with China within three years. That's in case Beijing decides to invade Taiwan. Lawmakers are investigating the Chinese Communist Party's political warfare on Tuesday, but they focus on one main tactic, elite capture. And today's Melina Wyskup has the story. Is the average government agency aware of the threat the CCP poses? Not sufficiently, sir. I do not believe they are. Is woefully not commensurate with the current threat. Capturing the elite, a tactic used by the Chinese Communist Party to wage political warfare against the U.S. Lawmakers noting its efforts to stoke division. The CCP and other foreign adversaries seek to keep us fighting. Republicans and Democrats fighting with each other because in that state we are much weaker. Struggle is a fundamental element of communism. One witness noting its true nature and its goal of global domination. The CCP is a product of Soviet imperialism and is not part of Chinese civilization, political culture or political history. But its effect on China has been profound and created a swath of destruction through that country. It has intentionally destroyed the pillars of Chinese culture, society and civilization and scored and killed scores of millions of Chinese. One way the regime is using practical interests to gain control here at home is through its capture of the EV industry. Many lawmakers warning about the implications of a new $2 billion EV lithium battery plant in Illinois. Groschen. Again, this is going on under our noses within our state and I'm gravely concerned. It's next to a military facility and it's right next to Ferris State with NDAs and everything is under the cloak of darkness. Do not be duped by seemingly benign business deals because if you do not follow directives of strict scrutiny, transparency, which NDAs are not, our national security is jeopardized. Another lawmaker noting that China, even as the world's second largest economy, still reaps the benefits of being designated as a developing nation by the UN and World Trade Organization. Presence of both parties for a long, long time, we turned a blind eye to Chinese behavior, especially intellectual theft, which has allowed them to leapfrog. America granted China most favored nation status in 2000, aiding its ascension to the WTO and paving the way for its economic gains. Why would it be widely controversial? Who considers China a developing nation like they're still farming with oxen out in the rice paddies or something like that, and they all eat like, you know, four ounces of rice and drink a cup of water a day for sustenance. Is that what people believe, literally? I think there's a lot of people making a lot of money. Reporting from Washington, D.C., Melina Wisecup, NTD News. Author and national security expert Bradley Thayer testified to the House Oversight Committee on Tuesday. After the hearing, he joined Steve Lance with NTD's Capitol Report to discuss the hearing and the Chinese Communist Party's political warfare. He's the founding member on the Committee on the Present Danger of China and co-author of Embracing Communist China. Dr. Bradley Thayer, thank you so much for joining us. Steve, it's my pleasure to be with you again. It's great to have you in studio with us, Dr. Thayer. So in your testimony today before the House Oversight Committee, you talked about the relationship between the U.S. and China and drew parallels to the Cold War against Russia. Talk to us about how this relationship compares. Well, certainly. There are great similarities between the Cold War against the Soviet Union that the United States fought between approximately 1946 and 1991 and the present Cold War against the People's Republic of China. And the source of the confrontation is the same, and that is the hyper-aggressive ideology of communism. The motivation for the conflict is actually driven by our adversaries, not by the United States. Now, as we said, you were testifying on the Hill today in front of the Oversight Committee, taking questions from lawmakers from both sides. In your assessment, what would you say is the, I guess, maybe biggest blind spot that has you most concerned for our elected officials where they may not completely understand the Chinese Communist Party, or thereby putting the United States at risk? We can see in the context of that testimony that there still is a mismatch between reality, the harsh reality that you see that the Chinese people experience every day and that we see in international politics every day, where the PRC is aggressing consistently and without end, and how American elites still conceive of China as, in some respects, wanting to continue the failed engagement policy where the United States trades, cooperates, does not yet confront the Chinese Communist Party. So that mismatch was still present. At the same time, there was reason for optimism because some members on both sides conveyed the bipartisan, or what I would describe as a nonpartisan approach to this effort. The CCP is a threat to all Americans, and the fentanyl that's killing Americans doesn't ask whether they're Democrats or Republicans or Independents or Greens. It kills them nonetheless. We've seen a lot of bipartisanship or nonpartisanship, as you put it, the way it should be in the CCP Select Committee's hearings. With the oversight hearings, I believe this was the third one. The first one sort of devolved into a very partisan, I guess, debate, if you will, Democrats and Republicans. How do you think Beijing views that when they see Americans fighting amongst themselves over China? Well, at one level, they appreciate that and welcome it. At another level, they recognize that's democracy, that's democratic government. That just reinforces their illegitimacy. They cannot do that, right? The closest they came to an open hearing is when Xi Jinping ejected Hu Jintao from the 20th Party Congress in a very powerful statement about who was in charge of the Chinese Communist Party. Xi Jinping has succeeded. As long as he's healthy, which is a question, he has succeeded in controlling and ever tightening his control over the Chinese Communist Party. He's successfully gotten rid of alternative factions. This is an individual who's hyper-aggressive, and he's determined to realize his, in essence, Stalinist ambition for the Chinese Communist Party, which is to defeat the U.S., to conquer Taiwan, and to ensure that China is the dominant force in the 21st century. And that's the dispositive question, Steve. It's whether freedom led by the U.S. and its allies, including allies within China, the Chinese people, are going to be able to sustain freedom into the 21st century, or whether the CCP will be triumphant and the 21st century will be marked by tyranny. Bradley Fair, really appreciate you joining us. Thank you. It's my pleasure. Thank you very much. China taking a side in the ongoing conflict between Israel and Lebanon, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told his Lebanese counterpart on Monday that Beijing firmly supports Lebanon, and criticized Israel for, in his words, indiscriminate attacks against civilians. Something to note, China has not mentioned any of Hezbollah's missile strikes targeting Israel. What message is Beijing sending, and what interest does China have in the ongoing Middle East conflicts? NTD's newsroom co-host Fiona Ji interviewed Brent Sadler, former Pentagon official and research fellow for naval warfare at the Heritage Foundation, for more on the topic. And Brent, I want to zoom out a little to the bigger picture. China has also criticized Israel for these bombings. What interest does Beijing have in this conflict in the Middle East? Well, I think China's biggest interest is making sure that Iranian oil flows, and that it has access to energy resources in the Arabian Gulf. And so I think if China had a quiet hand in trying to temp down Iran's reaction and continuing to attack directly Israel, it certainly would play to China's interest. But at the same time, having Israel and the United States embroiled in a Middle Eastern conflict is also in its interest in keeping the U.S. military preoccupied with the Houthis and the Red Sea, especially at a time when China is ratcheting up its coercive and aggressive posture against countries like the Philippines in the South China Sea. As China condemned Israel for its large-scale airstrikes on Lebanon, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu posted this message for people in Lebanon on his ex-account the same day. Israel's war is not with you. It's with Hezbollah. For too long, Hezbollah has been using you as human shields. It placed rockets in your living rooms and missiles in your garage. Those rockets and missiles are aimed directly at our cities, directly at our citizens. To defend our people against Hezbollah strikes, we must take out those weapons. Zooming in on one of China's key interests in the Middle East, oil is in the spotlight. According to S&P Global, China has more than tripled its trade with the Gulf States in the Middle East in the last 15 years, with oil being the primary driver of that jump. China's largest trading partner in the region is Saudi Arabia, which owns one-sixth of the world's petroleum reserves. Coming up, former President Trump weighing Georgia voters with a new plan how he would bring manufacturing back to the U.S. to better compete with China if he's re-elected. China has pushed its biggest stimulus measures since the pandemic. How are the impacts playing out? And North Korean defectors will have a harder time leaving their country and entering China. That's as Chinese authorities tighten border control. More on that after the break. Here on China In Focus. Welcome back to China In Focus. I'm Tiffany Meyer. A push to bring manufacturing jobs back to the U.S. Former President Trump laying out a plan to encourage factories to move to U.S. soil to better compete with China. NTD's Iris Tao has more from Trump's remarks in Savannah, Georgia on Tuesday. Vowing to create a new American industrialism, former President Trump on Tuesday laid out a new economic plan to incentivize companies, both American and foreign ones alike, to relocate their factories to the U.S. And under my plan, American workers will no longer be worried about losing your jobs to foreign nations. Instead, foreign nations will be worried about losing their jobs to America. I'm going to bring them back. Speaking to battleground state voters in Savannah, Georgia, Trump pitches a reward mechanism in which he promises to slash business tax. To 15 percent, which makes us the most competitive tax anywhere on the planet. Cut regulations. To slash burdens on workers and businesses. Reduce energy costs and provide federal land, but only for companies who would manufacture and hire here in the U.S. If you don't make your product here, then you will have to pay a tariff, a very substantial tariff, when you send your product into the United States. Such policies, Trump says, will make companies pour into the U.S. It comes as Trump is emphasizing the need to compete with China, especially in tech and manufacturing. China is right now building major auto plants in Mexico. Did you know that? They were going to start with me. I said, no, if you do them, I'm putting a 200 percent tariff on every car. Meanwhile, at a Monday event, Trump threatened a 200 percent tariff on John Deere. If the tractor giant proceeds with a plan to lay off workers in the Midwest and move some productions to Mexico. Because it's hurting our farmers, it's hurting our manufacturing. The Harris campaign seizing on that to criticize Trump's tariff policies in a Tuesday press conference. If you put 200 percent tariffs on John Deere, the net result is that you've made it cheaper for Chinese manufacturers to compete with John Deere. On Wednesday, Trump will travel to the battleground state of Michigan, while Harris will lay out her economic policies in Pittsburgh. Reporting by Iris Tao, NTD News. Global stocks struggled on Wednesday to maintain the momentum they gained the day before. On Tuesday, China's central bank rolled out a raft of stimulus measures to boost its economy, making a splash in the global market. But since then, the positive impacts have all but reverted, and analysts are questioning how effective the measures will prove in the long run, given weak consumer confidence in China. Here's more on what's happening. China has made its boldest move yet, and this is to revive its economy and ailing housing market. The People's Bank of China has cut short-term interest rates and rates on existing mortgages. That is on top of reducing down payment minimums for property purchases. And state-controlled banks can cut their reserve assets to free up money that can be lent out. Many experts said the support measures were welcome, but warned that they will likely not be enough on their own to turn around China's economic slump. Governor of the central bank, Pan Gongsheng, said more easing is planned before the end of the year. Beijing is making it harder for North Korean defectors to escape the country and enter China. Border police in northeastern China have been giving quotas to send back undocumented crossers from the peninsula. Let's dive in. These videos are set to show a North Korean defector's journey across multiple borders. Xin Zhiyue's face and others have been blurred to protect their identities. She described an escape that took her through Vietnam, Laos and Thailand. She first fled North Korea in the 1990s, settling in China. But during the pandemic, Xin said village officials began ordering North Koreans to register their biometric information with police. Those who had registered their fingerprints told me, sister, it was great that we could get the vaccines and get tested for COVID-19. But there's one big disadvantage. Now it's like we're in a fishing net. If North Korea tells China to catch and send us, we will be all sent back together. Xin did not register and instead hatched a plan to leave China. She arrived in South Korea in 2023. Her account comes amid a push for broader surveillance of North Korean defectors in China that is ultimately making it harder for them to evade capture. This is the border between North Korea and China, a frontier that is about 870 miles long. Reuters reviewed more than 100 publicly available government documents that outline spending on border surveillance and infrastructure. They reveal that China has implemented new deportation centers, hundreds of smart facial recognition cameras, and extra boat patrols. And border police in China's northeast have been given quotas That's according to previously undisclosed official documents and a dozen people familiar with the matter. The documents don't explicitly say North Koreans are the targets. But the measures in the documents focus on areas that border North Korea. The foreign ministry said China protected while lawfully maintaining the order of border entries and exits. Ethan Heesok Shin is a legal analyst with a group in Seoul that monitors deportations, called the Transitional Justice Working Group, or TJWG. The Chinese government's official policy is that all North Korean escapees in their country are illegal economic migrants and not refugees or asylum seekers, which should be protected under international law. The group's executive director says China returned at least 60 North Koreans in April. Based on the interviews that TJWG has conducted, we estimate that roughly 7 out of 10 escapees who try to make their way out of the country are arrested and repatriated back to North Korea by the Chinese authorities. One human rights specialist said Beijing is worried that if too many North Koreans find refuge in China, it could in time destabilize the North, spark reunification under the South, and ultimately hand the United States extra influence on the peninsula. At the same time, the defectors also give China leverage over the North, which has been getting increasingly close to Russia. Li Dongyu is a China expert at the Asan Institute for Policy Studies. Since China is controlling defectors from North Korea in such a manner, China can demand something from North Korea that is beneficial to China. In a statement, South Korea's foreign ministry said Seoul is making quote all-out efforts to prevent China from forcibly repatriating North Korean defectors. That's all for today's China In Focus. I'm Tiffany Meyer. If you have any feedback on the show or have something you'd like to see us cover, send us an email at ChinaInFocus and td.com. We'd love to hear from you. For around the clock original news coverage, visit us at ntd.com or download our NTD app. Thanks for watching. See you tomorrow.