Hillary Clinton says China's foreign power grab a new global battle

Experts are sounding the alarm in Australia and New Zealand about Chinese efforts to gain political power and influence policy decisions
By Ben Doherty and Eleanor Ainge Roy

Former US secretary of state and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton speaks in Auckland, New Zealand on Monday night.

China’s attempt to gain political power and influence in foreign countries is “a new global battle”, Hillary Clinton has warned.
Speaking to an audience in New Zealand on Monday night, the former US secretary of state and presidential candidate said Chinese interference in domestic policy was apparent in Australia and New Zealand as well as the US.
“In Australia and here in New Zealand experts are sounding the alarm about Chinese efforts to gain political power and influence policy decisions,” Clinton said.
“[Academic] Anne-Marie Brady of the University of Canterbury has rightly called this a new global battle, and it’s just getting started. We need to take it seriously.”
New Zealand’s prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, told reporters Clinton’s statements about China were not new.
Clinton’s comments follow testimony from the Australian academic Clive Hamilton to the US Congressional-Executive Commission on China that Beijing was waging a “campaign of psychological warfare” against Australia, as America’s most significant ally in the region, undermining democracy and cowing free speech.
Hamilton said Australia was being subjected to Chinese Communist party-sponsored operations of “subversion, cyber intrusions and harassment on the high seas”.
“Beijing knows that it cannot bully the United States – in the current environment the consequences would be unpredictable and probably counterproductive – so it is instead pressuring its allies,” Hamilton said.

New Zealand’s foreign minister, Winston Peters, was due to outline the government’s budget plans for foreign affairs on Tuesday, with some tipping greater spending on the Pacific following his announcement of an increased focus on the region earlier this year.
On Tuesday Australia’s Lowy Institute released its Power Index, confirming China’s rising power and influence across the Asia-Pacific.
America remains the Asia-Pacific’s dominant power, but money, influence and might were shifting from west to east, the index found.
And Donald’s Trump’s political power is a liability for the world’s superpower. 

The US ranks 13th on Lowy’s list of political leadership, equal with Cambodia’s authoritarian and controversial prime minister Hun Sen. 

China heads that category: Xi Jinping has recently been been successful in removing term limits for his position, paving the way for him to be dictator for life.
The Asia-Pacific would emerge as the globe’s dominant region in coming years, the Lowy report said. 

Within a decade, two-thirds of the world’s population will live in Asia, just over 10% will live in the West.
“Much of the world’s future economic growth will come from Asia – but so will the world’s future challenges,” the report argued. 

“Asia is already the location of America’s only true peer competitor, China, as well as the world’s most dangerous country, North Korea.”
Lowy’s new analytical tool – the product of two years’ work – measures power across 25 countries in the Asia-Pacific region, stretching west as far as Pakistan, north to Russia, and across the Pacific to the United States. 

Power is assessed across 114 indicators: including military, economic, and natural resources; diplomatic and cultural influence; trading relationships; capacity to deter real or potential threats; and defence networks.
The index produced using the tool found that the US remained the pre-eminent regional power. 

But China was rising rapidly and closing in on American dominance. 

China ranked higher for diplomatic influence and economic relationships in the region, but the US was dominant in defence networks, military capability and cultural influence.
The US and China are currently locked in tense trade talks that -- despite the positive spin being promoted by both countries -- appear locked in several fundamental impasses, especially over tariffs, strategic industry subsidies, and technology exports.
The index ranked Japan and India as major powers in the region, but found they were moving in opposite directions: India’s young, growing workforce contrasted with Japan’s wealthy but ageing population.
Russia, Australia, South Korea and Singapore were the leading “middle powers”.

Iron Lady: Hillary Clinton hits China on human rights and South China Sea

“The path to legitimacy and leadership runs through responsible cooperation, not through secret military build-ups on contested islands or bullying smaller neighbors”
By Jessica Meyers


Hillary Clinton, shown in April at the Women in the World Summit in New York, spoke Tuesday by teleconference to a economics and policy conference in Beijing.

Hillary Clinton spoke to the Chinese audience as if she were giving a presidential address.
The former White House contender delivered a pointed, forceful attack Tuesday aimed at Trump and Xi Jinping, with whom the U.S. leader claims a unique chemistry. 

Her remarks — which ranged from human rights to climate change — were striking in their divergence from Trump’s, who visited China only weeks earlier.
This administration “came in and retreated from diplomacy,” she said via teleconference to a packed economics and policy conference in Beijing. 

While under Xi, “we are seeing an unprecedented consolidation of power. That does trigger anxiety about a more assertive Beijing and worries from your neighbors as well as the United States.”
The former secretary of State’s hour-long appearance included a keynote speech and questions. 

It comes less than a month after Xi feted Trump at the Forbidden City in a “state-visit plus” heavy on pageantry and short on evident breakthroughs.
Trump, who pulled off an upset over Clinton in 2016, has berated the Communist nation for unbalanced trade deals and treating North Korea too gently. 

He promised “tremendous things” for the two nations after the trip, but provided few concrete details. Trump did not call out China for its human rights abuses or extensive claims in the South China Sea.
Clinton, seated in a white armchair with a backdrop of bookshelves, ticked them off like a list.
“The path to legitimacy and leadership runs through responsible cooperation, not through secret military build-ups on contested islands or bullying smaller neighbors,” Clinton said, in reference to China’s efforts to build artificial islands in waters its neighbors also claim.
Clinton has traversed the U.S. in recent months picking apart the presidential race and autographing copies of her third memoir, “What Happened.” 

In it, she faults herself — and a great many other people — for her loss.
In her speech Tuesday, she made multiple mentions of her book and Russia’s attempt to sway the election, although her comments focused most on the precarious nature of Sino-U.S. ties. 

The relationship, she said, “is at a crossroads.”
Clinton echoed several similar themes to Trump’s, including ensuring fair trade practices and doing more to curb North Korea’s nuclear ambitions. 

She urged the U.S. and China to pursue negotiations with the isolated state, instead of resorting to “bluster” and “taunts.” (Trump’s nickname for North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is “Rocket Man.” Kim has labeled Trump a “mentally deranged U.S. dotard.”)
“Beijing should remember that inaction is a choice,” Clinton said.
Trump’s 13-day visit to Asia in early November sought to deepen assistance in dealing with North Korea, while convincing skeptical allies of America’s commitment to the region and reworking trade deals.
“You’re a very special man,” he told Xi at a briefing with reporters, where they did not take questions.
Clinton last visited Beijing officially in 2012 as the Obama administration’s top diplomat. 

But the former New York senator, two-time White House hopeful, and previous first lady has a history with China.
It began in 1995 when, as first lady, she gave a forceful speech at the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing. 

She declared “women’s rights are human rights,” and, without mentioning China, criticized forced abortions, mistreatment towards girls, and females sterilized against their will.
Chinese officials considered it an inappropriate swipe at the country’s treatment of women and its one-child policy. 

Human rights advocates embraced her bluntness. 

A New York Times editorial said it may have been “her finest moment in public life.”
Clinton reminded the audience of those remarks on Tuesday, and called it “one of the most memorable experiences of my life.”
She also referenced her decision to assist Chen Guangcheng, a blind civil rights lawyer who escaped house arrest and fled to the U.S. Embassy in Beijing seeking asylum. 

The move coincided with Clinton’s visit in 2012, sparking a diplomatic crisis. 

Chen was eventually allowed to leave the country.
Clinton helped launch strategic talks between the two countries, but Chinese blamed her for pushing policies in the Asia-Pacific they viewed as an attempt to contain China.
A year after Clinton became secretary of State in 2009, she told a security conference in Hanoi that the U.S. had a vital interest in ensuring ships could sail freely on the South China Sea. 

China’s Foreign Ministry decried her comments as “an attack on China.”
In 2015, Clinton called Xi “shameless” for allowing the imprisonment of five feminists while he hosted a United Nations meeting on women’s rights. 

The Global Times, a state-run newspaper, labeled her a “rabble rouser” and accused her of “ignominious shenanigans.”
The paper compared Clinton to “demagogue Donald Trump.” 

At least some Chinese, it appeared, preferred the bureaucrat they didn’t like to the businessman they couldn’t predict.
But Chinese officials and businesses are now listening to the person who made it into White House, said Wang Huiyao, president of the Center for China and Globalization, a Beijing think tank.
“What she said may not have a big impact in China,” he said. 

“Chinese companies really care what the [current] administration thinks. … The business interest in China and the U.S. is still huge and that, fundamentally, is the biggest common denominator.”
Tuesday’s event was hosted by Caijing, a well-known business magazine that tends to draw big names to its annual conference. 

Former President Bill Clinton gave the keynote three years ago, when his wife was still weighing a second presidential run.
“I was the candidate of reality,” she said, in response to a final question on Tuesday. 

“It just wasn’t as entertaining as the reality TV candidate.”

How China trade has cost Clinton the election

By Ana Swanson

Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and Republican nominee Donald Trump during the second presidential debate Oct. 9 at Washington University in St. Louis, Mo. (Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA)

China’s emergence as one of America’s biggest trading partners over the past 15 years has cost Hillary Clinton the election.
At least those are the findings of a hypothetical exercise by a noted group of economists who have studied how increasing competition from China has changed not just economic realities for Americans, but political life as well.
In a recent note, economists David Autor, David Dorn, Gordon Hanson and Kaveh Majlesi calculated that if Chinese import penetration had been 50 percent lower since 2000, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and North Carolina would have elected the Democratic instead of the Republican candidate.
That would have been enough to put Clinton in the White House instead of President Donald Trump.
The research showed how large the effect of trade and globalization — topics addressed time and time again by Trump during the presidential campaign — may have been on the election.
The economists have done work in the past on what the shock of China’s entrance into the global economy has meant for American workers.
China, a massive country with one-fifth of the world’s population, had been largely closed off from the global economy after Communists took over in 1949, but started to reintegrate beginning in the 1980s and 1990s.
In 2001, with Bill Clinton's support, China joined the World Trade Organization, dismantling many of the country's remaining barriers to trade, and creating a huge new source of competition for American manufacturers.
Much of that effect has now been absorbed, but the political consequences have not.
In a previous paper, Autor, Dorn, Hanson and Majlesi showed that increasing trade with China had contributed to political polarization in the U.S. through the 2000s.
Areas that had been more exposed to trade competition with China ended up less likely to elect pro-China politicians to Congress, on both the right and the left.
“No matter how you sliced it, these trade impacts led to the removal of "moderates". And so we speculated that we might see something similar in the [2016] general election,” Autor said.
In the current paper, Autor and his colleagues compared something called the “two-party vote share” — how many people voted for the Republican candidate, divided by the total number of voters — in the 2016 election and in the election of George W. Bush in 2000, before China’s integration into global trade.
They examined election results for 2,971 counties and compared those with how Chinese imports affected industries and jobs in those areas between 2002 and 2014.
They found that Republicans gained votes in counties that were more exposed to Chinese competition, with a one percentage point increase in average Chinese import penetration in a county leading to a 2.09 percentage point gain in the Republican two-party vote share compared with 2000.
“Areas that were more exposed had a significantly greater increase in the Republican two-party vote share, and because the election was pretty close it seems to have mattered a fair amount,” Autor said.
Autor pointed out that the political changes were probably not “just about trade policy, per se. We think it feeds into a sort of sense of nationalism, the sense that the American way of life is potentially threatened, and that a certain way of a type of employment and a structure that went with that is going extinct,” Autor said.
These political trends are also related to the fact that economic prospects for non-college-educated Americans, especially non-college-educated white men, look dimmer now than they did 30 years ago, Autor said.
The economists also carried out a fascinating exercise looking at how voting might have differed if China hadn’t become such a manufacturing powerhouse.
The table below shows that analysis.
With 10 or 25 percent less Chinese import growth, Michigan and Wisconsin would have voted for the Democratic candidate in the 2016 election, but Trump still would have won the election with more electoral votes than Clinton, the economists found.
But with 50 percent less import growth, they find the effect is strong enough to flip Pennsylvania and North Carolina as well, turning the election in Clinton’s favor.

The economists emphasized that this hypothetical scenario is “extremely restrictive.”
If there had been no trade shock from China, the world would have been quite different, as would the 2016 election, the researchers say.
Yet, Autor said, trade with China did have a big effect on how people voted.
“The places that were trade impacted did swing heavily toward Trump, relative to their votes in previous elections.”

Donald Trump’s Victory Casts Shadow on Hollywood’s China Business

Some financing deals face political pressure that could be amplified by Trump presidency.
By ERICH SCHWARTZEL

Donald Trump, holding a replica of his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, with his wife Melania and their son Barron in Los Angeles, Jan. 16, 2007. 

Donald Trump will be the first U.S. president since Ronald Reagan to have a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, but he didn’t win many friends in show business during the campaign. 

Deep-pocketed celebrities and executives like “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” director J.J. Abrams and mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg repeatedly feted Hillary Clinton during the campaign; a Clinton presidency would have assured Hollywood had a friend in the White House.
Mr. Trump is a different story. 

He received barely any support from Hollywood figures during the campaign, and routinely picked fights with some.
Most relevant to Hollywood’s business is Mr. Trump’s rhetoric on China, which will likely become the nation’s No. 1 box office sometime during his administration. 

Any frayed relations with the country would ripple through Hollywood, which is already greenlighting movies based on their appeal among Chinese moviegoers. 

China’s regulators enforce mandates on movie distribution and marketing that Hollywood hopes to change; negotiating any variation of the terms is already a fraught dance for studios.
There is also a bigger bull’s-eye on the host of investments coming from China to U.S. production companies hungry for financing. 

Some of those deals, including Dalian Wanda Group Co.’s pending acquisition of Carmike Cinemas Inc., are already facing political pressure in Washington that could be amplified by Trump’s presidency, given the candidate’s anti-China rhetoric on the trail. 

Chinese businessmen like Alibaba’s Jack Ma could pull back entertainment deals if they risk angering the party by doing business in the U.S. 

Legislators in Washington have already decried the “soft power” potential that China could wield by completing such deals.
Hollywood will also be leaning on political power early next year, not long after Mr. Trump is inaugurated, to renegotiate China’s quota on the number of foreign films it lets into its theaters. 

The last negotiation, which raised the number of releases to 34 from 20, was led in 2012 by Vice President Joe Biden, in conversations with Xi Jinping, then China’s vice president and now its president. 

Xi has been consolidating power in recent months and could use Hollywood as a punching bag to prove his might and resist any expansion of the quota—a move that could cost studios billions of dollars in revenue.

In Trump Win, China Hopes for U.S. Retreat

Election results mean economic threat, geopolitical opportunity for Beijing.
By ANDREW BROWNE

A woman follows the U.S. election results at an event organized by the American consulate in Shanghai on Wednesday. 

SHANGHAI—The gray, conservative men who run China have no love for Hillary Clinton,but at least she was a known entity. 

In an erratic Donald Trump they now face both an economic threat and geopolitical opportunity if, as seems likely, a distracted America pulls back from Asia.
Beijing may believe that Mr. Trump is bluffing when he threatens sweeping tariffs on Chinese imports; the official media have portrayed him as more of a clown than a menace.
But it had better brace for the consequences of a populist revolt that swept him to victory, fueled by anger at the perception among working-class whites that China has stolen American jobs. 

Mr. Trump’s ascendancy to the White House delivers the sharpest blow yet to the forces of globalization that propelled China’s rise. 

The world’s most consequential bilateral relationship now faces an extended period of uncertainty and tension.
The damage to U.S. democracy from an ugly election campaign underscores the Communist Party’s propaganda message to the masses that it alone stands between order and chaos. 

While American politics are in convulsion, the Chinese leadership projects stability. 

Beijing wants a bigger say in how the world is run. 

Turmoil in Washington serves that purpose well.
Mr. Trump has promised to rip up America’s trade agreements; a video documentary by one of his chief advisers on China, the economist Peter Navarro, opened with a Chinese dagger plunging into America’s heart. 

China is a villain, along with Mexico, responsible for emptying out U.S. manufacturing cities.
It doesn’t matter that manufacturing jobs are now fleeing China for lower-cost countries like Bangladesh and Vietnam, Mr. Trump has promised to bring them home.
If he carries out his threat to slap an across-the-board 45% tariff on Chinese imports, expect retaliation against American investors that will slice into the profits of companies doing well in China, including General Electric, Boeing and Apple.
Note, too, that trade has long held together the U.S.-China relationship that is fraying in so many other areas—from how to deal with the North Korean nuclear threat to China’s aggression in the South China Sea.
On the geopolitical front, Beijing has reason to cheer the election result: Mr. Trump has less regard than Mrs. Clinton for America’s military alliances, which have underpinned U.S. dominance in China’s neighborhood since World War II—a primacy that Beijing is determined to upend.
His election may well kill off Barack Obama’s signature foreign-policy initiative, the “pivot” to Asia, which Beijing views as military containment, an invitation to China to assert more control over what it calls its “near seas.” 

Mr. Trump rejects the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a massive free-trade deal at the heart of Obama’s plans for a greater U.S. regional engagement.
Yet it is the American security guarantee that has kept the peace in East Asia and allowed the world’s most dynamic region to focus on growth.
If U.S. allies like Japan and South Korea, who Mr. Trump portrays as free riders, start doubting U.S. defense commitments, a regional arms race could ramp up. 

China’s nightmare is a Japan that loses faith in the U.S. nuclear umbrella and decides to build its own weapons.
Already, right-wing politicians in South Korea are advocating an independent nuclear deterrent as Pyongyang accelerates its nuclear and missile testing.
Pax Americana—the U.S.-led global order—is already looking shaky in East Asia, precisely because countries worry about the staying power of country capable of producing this kind of political shock. China’s authoritarianism is at least predictable. 

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has canceled military exercises with the U.S. and is shopping for weapons in China, as is Malaysia’s leader, Najib Razak, who recently announced the purchase of at least four Chinese navy ships.
Mrs. Clinton’s blunt diplomatic style grated on Chinese leaders. 

As first lady, she berated them over human rights, and as secretary of state she irritated them again with her lectures on freedom of navigation in the South China Sea.
Mr. Trump has focused almost exclusively on trade in his hectoring comments on China. 

Still, he prides himself on his deal-making ability. 

China may hold out hope it can outwit him in negotiation—businessmen generally abandon their combativeness and turn meek when they come to Beijing—and that a commercial focus on both sides can produce pragmatic outcomes.
Expect China to watch Mr. Trump very carefully before reaching any conclusions about his intentions.
Beijing has learned to tune out the hostile rhetoric of U.S. presidential candidates. 

Bill Clinton railed against the “Butchers of Beijing,” a reference to the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, before taking office and ushering China into the World Trade Organization, which supercharged its growth. 

George W. Bush called China a “strategic competitor” before embracing the country as an ally in his war on terror.

After U.S. Vote, Expect Hardening on China

Stage is set for more intense rivalry with Beijing no matter who wins on Nov. 8
By ANDREW BROWNE

A Chinese woman watches a televised debate between U.S. presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump at a cafe in Beijing.

SHANGHAI—Chinese leaders have learned to block their ears to China-bashing from U.S. presidential candidates, ignoring it as an ultimately harmless quirk of American election politics. Once voting is over, they figure, it will be business as usual.
They’ve been right time after time; ever since Nixon’s opening to China in 1972, incoming Republican and Democrat administrations have picked up China policy more or less where it left off.
This election, though, promises a different outcome—not a wholesale reworking of Nixon’s policy of engagement, an approach that still commands staunch support in U.S. policy circles and boardrooms, but a recalibration. 

U.S. attitudes toward China are hardening across the political spectrum. 

Whoever wins— Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump—is likely to pursue a tougher line on a mix of issues from trade and investment to the South China Sea.
Meanwhile, ahead of next week’s vote, Xi Jinping, whose administration has revived Mao-era anti-American attitudes and slogans, has enhanced his power. 

At a Communist Party meeting last week, he gained a new title: the leadership’s “core.” 

Nationalism fuels his ambition. 

As China’s economic and military capabilities advance—and America declines against China in relative terms -- the stage is set for a more intense round of strategic rivalry.
To his critics, Obama has been feckless on China, outsmarted and outplayed as a result of his eagerness not to let wrangles over specific issues—cyberattacks, intellectual-property theft, trade deficits—derail efforts to jointly manage global problems like climate change.
Mrs. Clinton has taken a harder line on trade than Mr. Obama and has pledged to take on Beijing over unfair trade practices: “If I’m your president [China’s leaders] are going to have to toe the line,” she said in April.
Mr. Trump told an election rally earlier this year in reference to China, “If Obama’s goal had been to weaken America, he could not have done a better job,” a refrain he’s repeated endlessly.
Inevitably, Mr. Obama’s successor will be forced into new trade-offs. 

Both candidates have indicated the relationship with China is too important to let fail and that it needn’t be adversarial. 

Only the problems are growing more intractable, and America’s choices starker.
Tensions are building in East Asia. 

Chinese intrusions into waters disputed with Japan are getting bolder. 

We don’t know whether Xi’s construction of seven fake islands in the South China Sea, fit for military purpose, has satisfied his revanchist desires or merely whetted his appetite for further adventures.
Some issues, such as North Korea, are building to a crisis.
At some point, U.S. intelligence services are likely to inform the next president that Pyongyang has acquired the ability to strike American cities with nuclear missiles.
When that day arrives, the White House will have to weigh all options, from a more impregnable missile shield on China’s doorstep to the almost unthinkable move of pre-emptive attack.
North Korea is Beijing’s client, a wayward one to be sure, but ultimately enabled by Chinese flows of food and energy.
Unless China has a change of heart and throttles its neighbor with sanctions before it can threaten America with a nuclear doomsday—or, even more unlikely, decides to try to bring down the regime—this nuclear scenario could precipitate a full-blown U.S.-China confrontation.
On trade, the trends are similarly worrying.
American direct investment in China has sputtered amid growing complaints about issues like forced technology transfers, while Chinese companies are marching into the U.S. in record numbers. 

Negotiations on a bilateral investment treaty have dragged on for years.
Many American business executives, once optimistic advocates for engagement with China, have turned into skeptics.
Chinese leaders have avoided commenting directly on the election.
Mr. Trump has threatened sweeping trade sanctions against China.
At one point he suggested Japan should acquire nuclear weapons—a Chinese nightmare.
If war between Japan and North Korea broke out, “Good luck,” he said, “enjoy yourselves, folks.” Still, Beijing likely would rather take its chances with an erratic Mr. Trump than Mrs. Clinton, a proven hawk.
As secretary of state, Mrs. Clinton fronted for the U.S. “pivot” to Asia, and early on gave it a military flavor.
She challenged Chinese officials publicly over the South China Sea, infuriating them.
Behind closed doors she warned them to rein in North Korea or else “we’re going to ring China with missile defense,” according to hacked emails released by WikiLeaks.
The Clinton campaign has neither confirmed nor denied the authenticity of the emails.
The nationalist-leaning Global Times called the campaign mudslinging between the two candidates a “race to the bottom.”
The U.S.-China relationship will survive the messy democratic process.
But a remarkable consensus on the need for China policy to stay stable between administrations seems to have been supplanted by an equally broad conviction: It’s time for change.

Clinton aide left classified info behind on 2010 China trip

By Malia Zimmerman, Adam Housley 

May 25, 2010: U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton answers a question at a news conference after the U.S.-China Strategic Economic Dialogue in Beijing.

An unnamed “senior aide” to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton left classified information unsecured and unattended in a hotel room during a 2010 trip to China, one of several overseas lapses by Clinton’s inner circle, Fox News has learned.
Confirmation of the alarming violation comes as Clinton herself is under a renewed FBI probe for mishandling sensitive information on a private server and her longtime senior aide, Huma Abedin, also faces scrutiny as part of the investigation. 

It was not known which of Clinton’s aides left the information exposed.
“In May 2010, Secretary Clinton was on official travel in Beijing, China, accompanied by senior staff. Upon Secretary Clinton’s departure, a routine security sweep by Diplomatic Security agents identified classified documents in a staff member’s suite,” State Department spokesman John Kirby told Fox News in a statement, issued several weeks after a Freedom of Information Act request was filed with the agency.
Diplomatic Security, which protects the Secretary of State in the U.S. and abroad, as well as high-ranking foreign dignitaries and officials visiting the United States, wrote up the incident on a Form 117, while the Marine Security Guards filed a separate formal report, the source said.
The information came to light when the FBI was investigating whether Clinton or her staff violated the US Espionage Act by mishandling classified and top secret information.
House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., citing a whistleblower who separately came to him with an allegation it was Clinton who left the material out, wrote to the FBI director on Monday asking for more information.
“I …understand that former Secretary Clinton left classified documents in her hotel room in China and that U.S. Marine Corps security officials filed a report related to the possible compromise of the documents,” Nunes wrote to FBI director James Comey.
Additionally, Nunes said an email released in response to a FOIA request described Abedin asking another staffer to remove “burnstuff” Abedin had left in a car during a trip to India.
Kirby told Fox News that incident may not have involved classified material.
“This email exchange does not show that classified information was left in a motorcade car,” Kirby said of that incident. 

“Sensitive But Unclassified material is routinely disposed of in burn bags. As the regulations state, Sensitive But Unclassified (SBU) and Personally identifiable information (PII) documents are often burned. So it’s not accurate that any reference to a document going to a burn bag is a document that includes classified material.” 

As for the China incident, Kirby insisted that Clinton had nothing to do with the matter.
“To be clear – this was not Secretary Clinton’s hotel room and no citation whatsoever was given to Secretary Clinton, nor were any reports written about Secretary Clinton’s conduct,” Kirby said in the statement.
At the time of the security sweep, the suite was still inside of a Diplomatic Security-controlled area, Kirby said, and under the direct control of a Diplomatic Security agent posted outside the room.
“Ultimately, Diplomatic Security concluded that classified information had been improperly secured, but that the evidence did not support assigning culpability to any individual. Furthermore, the Diplomatic Security investigation concluded that due to the fact that the documents were found within a Diplomatic Security controlled area, the likelihood that the information was compromised was remote.”
Leaving out classified or top secret information is a serious offense, a former state department staffer told FoxNews.com.
“Diplomatic Security and the Marine Security Guard takes exposure of classified information very seriously,” said Jessica Vaughan, director of policy research at the Center for Immigration Studies. “You can lose your security clearance if you’re caught more than once, and that means you might lose your job. It’s a big deal.”
As FoxNews.com reported Sept. 30, a top aide to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton found herself in hot water in 2013 with the agency’s security and law enforcement arm when she lost classified information while accompanying her boss on a diplomatic trip to Moscow, an incident that the FBI also revisited earlier this year when it probed Clinton’s own problems handling sensitive data.
Monica Hanley, Clinton’s “confidential assistant” at the state department, was reprimanded and given “verbal counseling” by Diplomatic Security after she left classified material behind in the Moscow hotel, FBI documents show. 

The FBI spoke to Hanley, 35, in January as a part of its investigation into Clinton’s handling of top-secret and classified information when she was Secretary of State.
During her trip with Clinton to Russia, Hanley was given a “diplomatic pouch” that held Clinton’s briefing book and schedule for her Russian trip. 

Hanley brought the pouch and its contents into the Russian hotel suite, which she shared with Clinton, but she left behind some of those classified documents, the FBI report revealed.
Diplomatic Security found the classified document in that suite during a routine sweep after Clinton and Hanley left the hotel. 

Agents subsequently informed Hanley “the briefing book and document should never have been in the suite.”

Lenovo, Huawei and other Chinese computer products pose a terrible cyber security threat

“The U.S. must take all reasonable steps to ensure we are not an easy target for our enemies.” -- Rep. Mike Pompeo

By Bill Gertz

U.S. President Barack Obama delivers remarks at the National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center.

The Pentagon’s Joint Staff recently warned against using equipment made by China’s Lenovo computer manufacturer amid concerns about cyber spying against Pentagon networks, according to defense officials.
A recent internal report produced by the J-2 intelligence directorate stated that cyber security officials are concerned that Lenovo computers and handheld devices could introduce compromised hardware into the Defense Department supply chain, posing cyber espionage risks, said officials familiar with the report. 

The “supply chain” is how the Pentagon refers to its global network of suppliers that provide key components for weapons and other military systems.
The J-2 report was sent Sept. 28, and also contained a warning that Lenovo was seeking to purchase American information technology companies in a bid to gain access to classified Pentagon and military information networks.
The report warned that use of Lenovo products could facilitate cyber intelligence-gathering against both classified and unclassified—but still sensitive—U.S. military networks.
One official said Lenovo equipment in the past was detected “beaconing”—covertly communicating with remote users in the course of cyber intelligence-gathering.
“There is no way that that company or any Chinese company should be doing business in the United States after all the recent hacking incidents,” the official said.
About 27 percent of Lenovo Group Ltd. is owned by the Chinese Academy of Science, a government research institute. 

In April, a Chinese Academy of Sciences space imagery expert, Zhou Zhixin, was named to a senior post in the Chinese military’s new Strategic Support Force, a unit in charge of space, cyber, and electronic warfare.
An illustration picture shows a projection of binary code on the face of a man in an office in Warsaw June 24, 2013.

China has been linked by the National Security Agency to large-scale cyber spying against both the Pentagon and American and foreign defense contractors.
Joint Staff spokesman Capt. Greg Hicks declined to comment on the J-2 report but said the military is wary of foreign nations’ cyber spying.
“Although we are concerned any time another nation or individual attempts to initiate intelligence collection against the Department of Defense, we do not discuss internal assessments,” Hicks said.
Lenovo spokesman Ray Gorman said he was unaware of the Joint Staff concerns.
On company efforts to acquire American information technology firms, Gorman said “we have stated many times that we continue to look worldwide for opportunities that make sense for our customers and shareholders, add value to our product portfolio, and help keep us on track for continued profitable growth.” 

He declined to comment on specific acquisition talks.
A Pentagon spokesman said the Defense Department has not imposed a “blanket ban” on all Lenovo products and does not blacklist suppliers or individual products.
Pentagon policy for protecting mission critical functions in securing computer systems and networks “requires the department to perform supply chain risk management functions when acquiring products for use in its national security systems,” the spokesman said, adding that the analysis is done on a case-by-case basis.
Rep. Robert Pittenger who has investigated Chinese cyber risks in the past, said he is concerned by the Joint Staff report.

“Chinese cyber security and supply chain concerns remain a significant problem for both the Defense Department and the remainder of the federal government,” Pittenger (R., N.C.) told the Washington Free Beacon.
Pittenger said it is important for Congress to press Pentagon acquisition officials “to act swiftly on perceived cyber-threats and remove IT vendors from our supply chain if evidence exists suggesting a security vulnerability.”
“I would be very disappointed to learn, however, if the Defense Department or the Air Force sought to obfuscate the facts regarding contracts with Lenovo when this issue was brought to my attention back in April,” he added.
On Friday the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee wrote to the FBI warning that secrets stored on former secretary of state Hillary Clinton’s private email server may have been compromised by a Clinton aide’s use of a Lenovo computer.
Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R., Va.) stated in a letter to FBI Director James Comey that Heather Samuelson, former White House liaison to the State Department, used two Lenovo laptops to sort some of the thousands of classified emails from Clinton’s server.
“Lenovo computers, and specifically the models used by Heather Samuelson for reviewing classified emails, have been shown by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to contain software, dating back to 2010, that permits remote hacking attacks,” Goodlatte stated.
Disclosure of the Joint Staff warning comes after a similar warning from the Air Force Cyber Command in April.
An email notice stated that “per AF Cyber Command direction, Lenovo products are being removed from the Approved Products List and should not be purchased for DoD use.”
“Lenovo products currently in use will be removed form the network,” the email stated.
Chinese cyber espionage tools: Photo of Lenovo tablets and mobile phones displayed during a news conference on the company's annual results in Hong Kong.

The Air Force later sought to play down the warning in the email and a spokesman told reporters the email was “coordinated” and should not have been sent.
Lenovo equipment has been a major cyber espionage worry since the company first purchased IBM’s laptop computer business in 2005.
A congressional China commission report produced several years ago revealed that the Army Cyber Directorate in 2007 investigated a Lenovo-brand desktop computer that was engaged in “beaconing activity.” 

The report said the beacon was a “self-initiating attempt to establish a connection to a suspicious foreign entity.”
Rep. Mike Pompeo, a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, said the risks posed by Lenovo technology are serious.
“It is critical that the U.S. government, particularly the Pentagon, use the most secure technology available,” Pompeo (R., Kan.) said.
“The threat from cyber attacks is real and demonstrated, as seen by China’s hack of the Office of Personnel Management, which impacted millions of Americans,” he added. 

“The U.S. must take all reasonable steps to ensure we are not an easy target for our enemies.”
Larry Wortzel, a former military intelligence official and member of the congressional U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, said he helped alert security officials to a plan by the State Department to purchase 900 Lenovo computers in 2006. 

The computers would have been used to handle classified information and the State Department canceled the sale over cyber spying concerns.
“The Chinese government has a major stake in Lenovo,” Wortzel said in an email.
“China is the main threat to U.S. government and corporate information systems,” Wortzel added. 

“One way to keep those systems safe is to ensure you are not getting system updates that may have a back door that can be opened by a Chinese intelligence service.”
A National Security Agency document made public by renegade contractor Edward Snowden revealed that China has stolen sensitive military technology through cyber attacks, including radar designs, engine schematics, and other data through a program code-named Byzantine Hades. 

The program caused “serious damage to DoD interests,” according to a briefing slide.
NSA detected more than 30,000 cyber attacks, including more than 500 significant intrusions into Pentagon systems. 

The attacks broke into at least 1,600 network computers and caused more than $100 million in damage.
Data stolen included Pacific Command aerial tanker refueling schedules, Transportation Command logistics information, and Navy nuclear submarine and anti-aircraft missile designs.
In 2014, Lenovo purchased IBM’s BladeCenter line of computer servers for $2.1 billion. 

The sale prompted the Navy to replace the upgraded IBM servers within Aegis battle management systems deployed on guided missile destroyers and cruisers over concerns China could hack the Navy’s most advanced warships through the server.
Specifically, the equipment being replaced is IBM’s x86 BladeCenter HT server, a part of the Aegis Technical Insertion, or “TI,” 12.
The upgrades, first reported last year by USNI News, involve TI-12 hardware upgrades, and the Advanced Capability Build, or “ACB,” 12 software upgrades. 

The components make up the Aegis Baseline 9 combat system upgrade, which combines ballistic missile defense and anti-air warfare upgrades for the warships.
According to the Department of Homeland Security, Lenovo computers since September 2014 were loaded with adware called Superfish that could allow hackers to spoof encrypted security controls in what are called “man-in-the-middle” cyber attacks. 

The attacks allow hackers to take over secure web browsers.
Lenovo purchased Motorola Mobility, the company’s cell phone division in 2014, and has sought to buy the Canadian cell phone maker BlackBerry in the past.
Lenovo in the past has denied its products are engaged in cyber espionage. 

“Lenovo has been a trusted supplier of information technology in the U.S. since 2005 when it bought the IBM ThinkPad PC business,” the company said in a statement. 

“Every single company selling technology to the U.S. government—including HP, Dell, Cisco, Apple, and Lenovo—use foreign components in their products. So it’s critical that the U.S. continue to follow a standards-based process that allows for procurement of technology that is both cutting edge and totally secure.”
U.S. intelligence agencies in August 2015 warned that Lenovo, along with another Chinese-government-linked firm, Huawei Technologies, had shipped some 80,000 computers to several nations in the Caribbean. 

The computers were found to contain spyware that can permit remote intrusions.
The cyber spying concerns are not limited to the Pentagon.
The Australian Financial Review newspaper reported in 2013 that all of the “Five Eyes” intelligence services—those in the United States, Britain, Australia, Canadian, and New Zealand—strictly prohibit the use of Lenovo computers over concerns about the potential for cyber espionage.

Trump thinks China’s leaders are smarter. They didn’t even let their people watch the debate.

By Simon Denyer 

Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton speaks as Republican nominee Donald Trump looks on during the final presidential debate, which was held in Las Vegas. 

It was a familiar theme for Donald Trump. 

China’s leaders are smarter than their American counterparts. 

China’s economy is growing much faster than the U.S. economy, and it is one of those countries “raiding” American jobs.
China was cast as the foil to expose the weaknesses of the Obama administration and, by extension, Hillary Clinton.
Ironically, China’s “smart” leaders didn’t let their people watch the debate.
The third U.S. presidential debate was blocked on Chinese media websites.
Some people managed to find a workaround, using unblocked websites such as Yahoo or virtual private network software to get around China’s system of Internet censorship known as the Great Firewall to watch. 

Some news websites also posted translated transcripts.
But on social media there was a muted reaction, with only a few hundred comments on Sina Weibo, China’s equivalent of Twitter, compared with about 10,000 comments during the first debate.
Instructions from Internet censors to block livestreams of the first debate were leaked to the China Digital Times website, but somehow Sina Weibo managed to show the whole program without incident. 

This time around, no such luck.
China’s leadership presumably isn’t that impressed with Trump’s backhanded compliments.
More to the point: China’s state media might gloat that this presidential race — and in particular the rise of a “racist” demagogue like Trump — shows that democracy is “scary.” 

But there is clearly something unsettling to China’s leaders with the idea of two presidential candidates facing off on live television, being asked searching questions, and presenting a democratic choice to the citizens of their country.
On social media, most people who did watch the debate seemed to find it amusing.
“What a good drama! Americans fight with Americans,” one user commented.
“The most funny talk show in the United States — the presidential election,” another wrote.

During the debate, Trump said China’s economy was growing at 7 percent. 

Official figures show it growing at 6.7 percent, but many economists say that the real number is much lower. 

He also argued that U.S. trade negotiators were “political hacks” who were dealing with Chinese officials who were “much smarter than we are.” 

It was a way to show what he sees as the weakness of the current administration and his strength.
Clinton also used China as a foil, but to expose what she argued was Trump’s hypocrisy, and to highlight her principles.
“One of the biggest problems we have with China is the illegal dumping of steel and aluminum into our market. I’ve fought against it as a senator, stood up against it as the secretary of state,” she said.
“Donald has bought Chinese steel and aluminum. In fact the Trump hotel right here in Las Vegas was built, was made with Chinese steel. So he goes around with crocodile tears about how horrible it is, but he has given jobs to Chinese steelworkers, not American steelworkers.”

Clinton also made reference to a speech she made in China in 1995 as first lady when she declared that “women's rights are human rights,” and to China's one-child policy.
“I’ve been to countries where governments either forced women to have abortions, like they used to do in China, or forced women to bear children, like they used to do in Romania,” she said. 

“And I can tell you the government has no business in the decisions that women make with their families in accordance with their faith, with medical advice.”
Although the reaction on social media was muted, a poll issued this month by the Pew Research Center — and conducted in April and May of this year — showed Clinton significantly more popular here than Trump.
It showed that 37 percent of Chinese people held a favorable view of Hillary Clinton, while only 22 percent saw Trump in a positive light. 

Although Chinese state media have never been fans of Clinton, it could be that her stance on human rights and women's rights has won her some support from ordinary people.

The Pew survey was based on face-to-face interviews with more than 3,100 people between April 6 and May 8, and has a margin of error of 3.7 percentage points.

Clinton Says US Could 'Ring China With Missile Defense'

By NOMAAN MERCHANT

Hillary Clinton privately said the U.S. would "ring China with missile defense" if the Chinese government failed to curb North Korea's nuclear program, a potential hint at how the former secretary of state would act if elected president.
Clinton's remarks were revealed by WikiLeaks in a hack of the Clinton campaign chairman's personal account. 

The emails include a document excerpting Clinton's private speech transcripts, which she has refused to release.
A section on China features several issues in which Clinton said she confronted the Chinese while leading the U.S. State Department.
China has harshly criticized the U.S. and South Korea's planned deployment of a missile-defense system against North Korea, which conducted its fifth nuclear test this year. 

But Clinton said she told Chinese officials that the U.S. might deploy additional ships to the region to contain the North Korean missile threat.
If North Korea successfully obtains a ballistic missile, it could threaten not just American allies in the Pacific, "but they could actually reach Hawaii and the west coast," Clinton said.
"We're going to ring China with missile defense. We're going to put more of our fleet in the area," Clinton said in a 2013 speech. 

"So China, come on. You either control them or we're going to have to defend against them."
China is North Korea's economic lifeline and the closest thing it has to a diplomatic ally, and is not doing enough to rein in Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions. 

Chinese officials and state media have responded by saying North Korea is not solely China's responsibility and say Beijing's has limited influence with secretive leader Kim Jong Un's hardline communist regime.
Clinton also privately criticized China's position on another sensitive issue, the South China Sea. China claims almost the entirety of the strategically vital waterbody and has lashed out at an international tribunal's rejection of its claims in a July ruling.
By China's logic, Clinton told a different audience in 2013, the U.S. after World War II could have labeled the Pacific Ocean the "American Sea."
"My counterpart sat up very straight and goes, 'Well, you can't do that,'" she said. 

"And I said, 'Well, we have as much right to claim that as you do. I mean, you claim (the South China Sea) based on pottery shards from, you know, some fishing vessel that ran aground in an atoll somewhere."
In another remark revealed in the Wikileaks hack, Clinton called Xi "a more sophisticated, more effective public leader" than his predecessor, Hu Jintao. 

She noted Xi's plans for economic and social reforms, but blamed a resurgence of nationalism on the Chinese government.
China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not immediately respond Friday to faxed questions about Clinton's remarks.
As secretary of state, Clinton visited China seven times and engineered Washington's "pivot" to Asia, which has long been viewed with suspicion by Beijing. 

The policy shift has seen a tighter focus on the region along with an increased military presence and fortified alliances with allies such as Australia and the Philippines, although the latter has been cast in doubt with the election of pro-China President Rodrigo Duterte.
She also drew condemnation from Chinese state media last year after describing Xi as shameless as he prepared to speak on women's rights at the United Nations, shortly after China detained five young feminists who'd campaigned against domestic violence.

How a Trump or Clinton presidency could hurt China's economy

By Holly Ellyatt

Whether Democrat presidential candidate Hillary Clinton or her Republican rival, Donald Trump, wins the U.S. election next month, the next inhabitant of the White House's approach to China is likely to take a more realistic view towards the world's second largest economy, analysts believe.
"Relative to Barack Obama, both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton have a more practical view on a wide range of China issues," analysts Kevin Lai and Olivia Xia from Daiwa Capital Markets said in a note Thursday.
"Clinton is considered a China hawk, especially on a range of issues outside of trade," the analysts noted. 

"On U.S.-China trade, she is also more confrontational than Obama but comparatively more moderate than Trump."
With just over a month to go till American voters go to the polls, the race to the White House is too close to call.
Trump has a large and loyal following and his populist views have chimed among disaffected U.S. voters but he is seen as a renegade. 

Clinton, meanwhile, has suffered from a lack of personal popularity although she is seen as far more experienced and as having "sounder" government policies.

Daiwa's analysts said that either way, the U.S. government's attitude towards China was going to change.
"The U.S. government under Obama and Bush has tried to make things work with China… (but) we believe debate over currency manipulation, loss of American jobs, intellectual property rights theft and an uneven playing field will continue to attract intense discussion inside and outside Washington. Whoever wins the election will come under greater pressure to address these issues more convincingly."

But Daiwa's analysts said that whoever becomes president, the U.S.' attitude towards superpower China -- arguably its biggest economic and political rival – is likely to change, especially if import tariffs are raised. 

They warned that this could be to China's economic detriment, potentially causing a decline in the country's gross domestic product of up to 1.75 percent.
"Even if Clinton wins, we do not think it will be just another status-quo extension (of the current trade policy towards China). From a scale of 1 to 10, Obama being 1 and Trump 10, we would rate Clinton, and her views on U.S.-China trade policy as a 4."
Trump has pledged to impose a 45 percent tariff on imports from China if he wins the election, a move that Daiwa said would be "profound," although the analysts noted that even Clinton was likely to be tough when it comes to trade issues with China.
"The impact of a 45 percent tariff, as suggested by Trump, would be profound. China would likely retaliate by levying similar tariffs on the U.S. But U.S. exports to China are about a quarter of the size of China's exports to the U.S., while the U.S. economy is almost twice as large as China's. The damage on the U.S. would be far less," they noted, adding that Clinton was unlikely to pursue such a policy.
"We cannot rule out the possibility of similar countervailing measures under a Clinton presidency. But a 30-45 percent tariff is highly unlikely and a watered-down version would be more realistic, in our view, if Clinton toughens her stance on China."
Daiwa noted that even if import tariffs were raised to 15 percent from the current rate of 4.2 percent, the impact on China's economy "would be significant."
"We expect exports from China to the U.S. to decline by 31 percent (and) China's gross domestic product (GDP) could see an initial 0.95 percent decline and a 1.75 percent loss over time," Lai and Xia noted.