The Official Chinese 🇨🇳 Espionage & Cold War Thread

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US says Chinese firm is helping Houthis target American warships

Satellite company linked to People’s Liberation Army has supplied images to Iran-backed group in Yemen, say officials

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US says Chinese firm is helping Houthis target American warships
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Satellite company linked to People’s Liberation Army has supplied images to Iran-backed group in Yemen, say officials

Yemen’s Houthi forces ride a vehicle next to a large screen broadcasting an attack of Yemen’s Houthis targeted a US battleship in the Red Sea
Houthi rebels in Yemen say they are attacking shipping in the Red Sea in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza © Mohammed Hamoud/Getty Images
A Chinese satellite company linked to the country’s military is supplying Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen with imagery to target US warships and international vessels in the Red Sea, according to American officials.

The Trump administration has repeatedly warned Beijing that Chang Guang Satellite Technology Co Ltd, a commercial group with ties to the People’s Liberation Army, is providing the Houthis with the intelligence, according to the US officials.

“The United States has raised our concerns privately numerous times to the Chinese government on Chang Guang Satellite Technology Co Ltd’s role in supporting the Houthis in order to get Beijing to take action,” said a senior state department official.

The official added that China had “ignored” the concerns. He also told the Financial Times that CGSTL’s actions and “Beijing’s tacit support” despite Washington’s warnings was “yet another example of China’s empty claims to support peace”.

“We urge our partners to judge the Chinese Communist party and Chinese companies on their actions, not their empty words,” the official said.

The concern about CGSTL comes amid a deepening trade war between the Washington and Beijing after President Donald Trump slapped huge new tariffs on imports from China, which are now subject to a 145 per cent levy.

The Houthis started attacking vessels in the Red Sea, a critical maritime route for global trade and the US navy, after Israel launched a war against Hamas, another Iran-backed group, in 2023, in response to the Palestinian militant group’s October 7 attack.

The US has escalated attacks on the rebel group’s positions in Yemen in recent weeks, including a large military strike that was the subject of the Signalgate leak and signalled an escalation of the campaign.

China has expressed concern about the Houthis’ attacks. The Biden administration urged Beijing to use its leverage with Iran to rein in the Houthis — but his officials saw no evidence that Beijing had done so.

Trump has made tackling Red Sea instability a priority, amid concerns that the Houthis continue to pose a threat to the global economy.

“Beijing should take this priority seriously when considering any future support to CGSTL,” said the US official.

Asked about the US claims about the satellite company, the Chinese embassy in Washington said it was “not aware of the relevant situation”.

CGSTL has previously come under US scrutiny, and was among groups hit by sanctions in 2023 for allegedly providing high-resolution satellite imagery to Wagner Group, the Russian mercenary army that helped President Vladimir Putin prosecute his full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

The Chinese company was established in 2014 as a joint venture between the provincial government in Jilin and a branch of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Changchun, the province’s capital.

“Chang Guang is one of a handful of ‘ostensibly’ commercial Chinese satellite companies that are in fact deeply embedded in the military-civil fusion ecosystem, supplying global surveillance capabilities to both civilian and military customers,” said James Mulvenon, an expert on the Chinese military and intelligence services at Pamir Consulting.

Under China’s military-civil fusion programme, companies must share technology with the PLA when ordered by the government.

Matthew Bruzzese, a China defence expert at BluePath Labs, a consulting firm that works with the US government, last year said CGSTL had 100 satellites in orbit, although it plans to have 300 by the end of 2025 which would enable it to take repeat images of any location in the world every 10 minutes.

Bruzzese said CGSTL had “close connections” to the Chinese government, communist party and military. But he there were fewer public mentions about its PLA ties from 2020, suggesting that it had “become more wary of publicly discussing these connections”.

The US has in recent years imposed sanctions on dozens of Chinese commercial groups with alleged connections to the military.

Bruzzese added that CGSTL had provided briefings to senior Chinese officials about its applications, including those for “military intelligence” and had demonstrated its technology before several top PLA officers, including Zhang Youxia, the top general in the Chinese military who is second-in-command after President Xi Jinping.

US concerns about CGSTL come as the Pentagon increasingly focuses on Chinese military activity in space.

The Pentagon has said China put 200 satellites in orbit in 2023, second only to the US. It added that Beijing was also exporting its satellite technology, including domestically developed remote-sensing satellites — the same kind of technology being deployed by CGSTL.

 

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Opinion | Brace Yourself. Trump’s Trade War With China Will Get Even Uglier.

What happens if we run out of rare-earth metals or bond prices collapse?

www.nytimes.com

Brace Yourself. Trump’s Trade War With China Will Get Even Uglier.
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April 19, 2025, 7:00 a.m. ET
Shipping containers and gantry cranes at night at a port in Shenzhen, China.
Jade Gao/Agence France-Presse
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Voters elected Donald Trump in part because they wanted a fighter. But increasingly it seems that in international trade, he’s good at shaking his fist for the cameras but utterly outclassed when he steps into the boxing ring.

Indeed, Trump may be more dangerous to his own side of a trade war than to the other guy.

Even after Trump’s climb-down — declaring a 90-day pause on many of the “Liberation Day” levies that sent the stock market reeling — America’s tariff rates remain the highest in more than 90 years. They amount to an enormous tax hike on consumers, with researchers previously estimating that they might add something like $1,700 in costs per year to a middle-income American family. They’re a reason many economists fear that the United States is slipping into a recession.

The most heated trade war is with China, and it’s there that I fear Trump has particularly miscalculated. He seems to be waiting for President Xi Jinping to cry uncle and demand relief, but that’s unlikely; instead, it may be the United States that will be most desperate to end the trade conflict.

China does have serious internal economic challenges, including widespread underemployment and a deflationary loop with no end in sight. The trade war could cost China millions of jobs, and that raises some risks of political instability.

Yet it’s also true that China has prepared for this trade war. I’m guessing some Chinese factories are already printing “Made in Vietnam” labels and preparing to ship goods through third countries. And China will fight with weapons that go far beyond tariffs.

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China buys agricultural products and airplanes from America, and it can almost certainly get what it needs elsewhere. But where is the United States going to get rare-earth minerals, essential for American industry and the military-industrial base?

These days we rely on China for 72 percent of the 17 metals known as rare earths, used in everything from glass to ceramics to catalytic converters. And in the subcategory of heavy rare earths, China is the sole world producer of six.

China has already announced that it will limit the export of those six heavy-rare-earth minerals, as well as rare-earth magnets, of which it controls 90 percent of the world supply. In effect, China is the OPEC of rare earths, which are essential for American industry and for military production. Without them, we’d struggle to produce drones, cars, planes, wind turbines and more. A single F-35 fighter plane contains some 900 pounds of rare earths, and a submarine may use more than four tons of them.

In 2010, when China and Japan were caught in a maritime dispute after a boat collision in contested waters, Beijing halted rare-earth exports to Japan. The result was a mad scramble in Japan to find sufficient rare earths to keep factories open, and Japan hurriedly became conciliatory and pleaded for a resumption in the trade.

Perhaps Trump thinks he’ll find alternative sources of rare earths. We should. But because rare earths are polluting to mine and process, it can take nearly three decades to get permission to open and operate a rare-earth mine in America, so finding substitutes won’t be easy.

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Rare earths aren’t all that rare in nature, despite their name, and they offer a window into the vulnerability of the West’s military-industrial base and our dependence on China. Until 1995, they were produced mostly in the United States. But then China began refining them inexpensively, and the United States couldn’t compete (and didn’t seriously try to).

Trump’s concerns about China are in many ways legitimate: It has manipulated trade. He’s right that our weakness in manufacturing and supply lines is a critical security deficiency, especially given China’s strengths in areas like drones and batteries. I’d be delighted if Trump tackled these issues seriously with targeted tariffs, a crackdown on transshipments to evade tariffs, subsidies for critical industries at home and cooperation with allies abroad. Instead, it’s not quite clear what his aim is, and the United States has gone out of its way to antagonize allies.

One alarming sign: Even before the latest tariffs, a poll in Southeast Asia found that for the first time, a majority of people there would choose China over the United States if forced to align with one side or the other.

China has other tools available in this trade war with America beyond stopping most exports of rare earths. It could stop its limited cooperation on narcotics and turn a blind eye to its greedy private companies that would like to export fentanyl to America or fentanyl precursor chemicals to Mexico. Conversely, it could tighten shipments to the United States of cardiovascular or cancer medicines that Americans rely on.

China could also dump U.S. Treasuries for a few days, panicking the bond market and weakening the dollar. I doubt China would do this for long, because it would lose as well, but it might be satisfying for the Politburo to remind Trump who he’s messing with.

While all that’s going on, the People’s Liberation Army might cut multiple undersea internet cables leading to Taiwan. It could hold more military drills off Taiwan, the Philippines or the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands. It has already burrowed into American infrastructure as part of its Volt Typhoon cyberespionage campaign and could try turning the lights off in a small American city or creating havoc for a day in the banking system.

A trade war may well be devastating for China as well as for America. But economic forecasters think a recession is far more likely in the United States than in China. And Xi may now have a scapegoat for his economic underperformance, calling on his citizens to resist what he will portray as one more chapter in a two-century history of Western bullying. All in all, Xi may be better positioned to ride out a downturn than Trump.

There’s nothing wrong with picking the right fight and taking a stand, and China’s trade policies are a legitimate target. But Trump’s campaign seems destined to fracture our alliances and magnify American weakness. He is taking a tariff to a gunfight.

A version of this article appears in print on April 20, 2025, Section SR, Page 2 of the New York edition with the headline: The Trade War With China Will Get Uglier. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper |

 

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China's Giant Land-Based Carrier Mockup Grows In Size, Now Resembles Ford Class

The full-size aircraft carrier test facility in Wuhan is now a better approximation of China’s latest and future flattop designs. The modified land-based aircraft carrier test facility should be a better approximation of China’s latest and future flattop designs.

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Cambodia welcomes Japanese navy ships to naval base that US suspects is for China's special use

Two Japanese naval ships have docked at Cambodia’s Ream Naval Base, whose recently completed Chinese-funded upgrade has heightened U.S. concerns that it will be used as a strategic outpost for China’s navy in the Gulf of Thailand.

apnews.com

Cambodia: 2 Japanese warships dock at Chinese-renovated base

The Japanese embassy in Phnom Penh said that the visit is ‘a historically significant event’ that would ‘enhance trust and confidence’.

www.scmp.com