Some US lawmakers are urging legislation to curb sales of US agricultural land to foreign entities, specifically China. Of more than 100 countries with US land investments, China ranks 18th in holdings. As VOA’s Kane Farabaugh reports, while concerns about China gobbling up US farmland resound in Congress, experts say it’s more a political issue than a practical one.
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Astronomers have created a stunning mosaic of baby star clusters hiding in our galactic backyard.

The montage, published Thursday, reveals five vast stellar nurseries less than 1,500 light-years away. A light-year is nearly 9.7 trillion kilometers.

To come up with their atlas, scientists pieced together more than 1 million images taken over five years by the European Southern Observatory in Chile. The observatory’s infrared survey telescope was able to peer through clouds of dust and discern infant stars.

“We can detect even the faintest sources of light, like stars far less massive than the sun, revealing objects that no one has ever seen before,” University of Vienna’s Stefan Meingast, the lead author, said in a statement.

The observations, conducted from 2017 to 2022, will help researchers better understand how stars evolve from dust, Meingast said.

The findings, appearing in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics, complement observations by the European Space Agency’s star-mapping Gaia spacecraft, orbiting nearly 1.5 million kilometers away.

Gaia focuses on optical light, missing most of the objects obscured by cosmic dust, the researchers said.
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China’s securities watchdog on Thursday said it was willing to work with its counterparts in the United States to promote audit regulatory cooperation and safeguard the rights and interests of global investors. 

The comment from the China Securities Regulatory Commission, or CSRC, came a day after a U.S. accounting watchdog said it had found unacceptable deficiencies in audits of U.S.-listed Chinese companies. 

The CSRC, in a statement made in response to Reuters’ request for comment, said that the watchdog deemed the deficiencies normal and that Beijing would continue to work with the U.S.

Analysts said the deficiencies that the U.S. watchdog found were unlikely to derail an audit deal the two countries struck in September, but it would be challenging to turn around auditing practices quickly amid continued U.S.-China tensions. 

The U.S. Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, or PCAOB, published the findings of its inspections on Wednesday after gaining access to Chinese company auditors’ records for the first time last year. 

The inspections were carried out following more than a decade of negotiations with Chinese authorities. 

That access, gained as a result of the September deal, kept roughly 200 China-based public companies, including Alibaba and JD.com, from potentially being kicked off U.S. stock exchanges. 

“We noticed that the U.S. regulator said the deficiencies they found this time were normal for a first-time inspection,” the CSRC said in its statement, referring to the PCAOB. 

“The inspection report also didn’t conclude that the audit opinions by relevant auditors were inappropriate,” said the CSRC, adding it believed the deficiencies found would help auditing firms rectify their problems and improve quality. 

Auditors of Chinese companies based in the mainland and in Hong Kong will have to do a lot of work to fix the findings, said analysts and former regulators. 

“Generally, the PCAOB expected high rates, and these are not surprising in the short term,” said Jackson Johnson, a former PCAOB inspector and president of Johnson Global Accountancy, an audit advisory firm in Nevada. 

He said that since auditors would need to turn around the results prior to the next inspection, there was a lot of work to be done. 

Law firm Wilson Sonsini’s senior partner Weiheng Chen said that although the deficiency rate in PCAOB findings was much higher than the average of its reviews, the deficiencies would not result in the restatement of a company’s financial statements. 

“So, these deficiencies alone would not cause any stock delisting,” Chen said. 

Reuters reported in March that the PCAOB had started a new round of inspections in Hong Kong as part of the deal, which is a rare bright spot in Sino-U.S. relations at a time when some business leaders have voiced concerns about the decoupling of the world’s two largest economies. 

“We are willing to work with the U.S. regulator and continue to push forward audit cooperation based on experiences, mutual respect and trust, and build a normalized, sustainable cooperation mechanism,” said the CSRC.
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The U.S. on Thursday accused South Africa of supplying arms to Russia for its war in Ukraine in a three-day covert naval operation near Cape Town in early December.

Ambassador Reuben Brigety, the American diplomatic mission chief to South Africa, said in comments carried by multiple South African news outlets that the U.S. was certain that the weapons were loaded onto a Russian-flagged cargo ship, the Lady R, that was secretly docked at the Simon’s Town naval base before departing for Russia.

He characterized South Africa’s alleged arming of Russia during its invasion of Ukraine as “extremely serious” and said it called into question South Africa’s supposed neutral stance in the conflict.

In Parliament, the leader of the South African political opposition, John Steenhuisen, asked President Cyril Ramaphosa if South Africa was “actively arming Russian soldiers who are murdering and maiming innocent people?”

Ramaphosa replied that an investigation was underway. “The matter is being looked into, and in time we will be able to speak about it,” Ramaphosa said, but declined further comment.

Later, in a statement, Ramaphosa said U.S. and South African officials had discussed “the Lady R matter … and there was an agreement that an investigation will be allowed to run its course, and that the U.S. intelligence services will provide whatever evidence [is] in their possession.” 

“It is therefore disappointing,” Ramaphosa said, “that the U.S. ambassador has adopted a counter-productive public posture that undermines the understanding reached on the matter and the very positive and constructive engagements between the two delegations.” 

Brigety told reporters in the capital, Pretoria, “Among the things we [the U.S.] noted was the docking of the cargo ship in the Simon’s Town naval base between the 6th and 8th December 2022, which we are confident uploaded weapons and ammunition onto that vessel in Simon’s Town as it made its way back to Russia.”

Steenhuisen’s party, the Democratic Alliance, had raised questions earlier this year about a “mystery” Russian vessel making a stop at the Simon’s Town base.

At the time, the South African government didn’t comment publicly, saying it needed to gather information. In late December, South African Defense Minister Thandi Modise said the ship appeared to be handling an “old order” for ammunition, and she indicated that arms were offloaded, not loaded onto the ship.

The South African government is allied with the U.S. in Africa but has stated numerous times it is remaining neutral on the war in Ukraine and wants the conflict resolved peacefully. But South Africa has had recent contacts with Russia, raising U.S. concerns about its claims of neutrality.

South Africa hosted Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov for talks in January, about a month after the alleged visit by the Lady R, giving him a platform to blame the West for the war in Ukraine.

Weeks later, South Africa allowed warships from the Russian and Chinese navies to perform drills off its east coast. The Russian navy brought its Admiral Gorshkov frigate, one of its navy’s flagship vessels.

The South African navy also took part in the drills and characterized them as exercises that would “strengthen the already flourishing relations between South Africa, Russia and China.”

Brigety said South Africa’s decision to stage the naval drills in February, which coincided with the first anniversary of the start of the war in Ukraine, raised “serious concerns” for the U.S.

South Africa said the drills were planned years ago before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

South Africa’s ruling African National Congress Party, which is led by Ramaphosa, sent a delegation to Moscow last month and spoke of strengthening its ties with Russia, further complicating the country’s relationship with the U.S.

Some material in this report came from The Associated Press.
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The Biden administration proposed new limits Thursday on greenhouse gas emissions from coal- and gas-fired power plants, its most ambitious effort yet to roll back planet-warming pollution from the nation’s second-largest contributor to climate change.

A rule unveiled by the Environmental Protection Agency could force power plants to capture smokestack emissions using a technology that has long been promised but is not in widespread use in the U.S.

“This administration is committed to meeting the urgency of the climate crisis and taking the necessary actions required,” EPA Administrator Michael Regan said during Thursday’s announcement.

The new rule will “significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel-fired power plants, protecting health and protecting our planet,” Regan said. The plan would not only “improve air quality nationwide, but it will bring substantial health benefits to communities all across the country, especially our frontline communities … that have unjustly borne the burden of pollution for decades,” Regan said in a speech at the University of Maryland.

If finalized, the proposed regulation would mark the first time the federal government has restricted carbon dioxide emissions from existing power plants, which generate about 25% of U.S. greenhouse gas pollution, second only to the transportation sector. The rule also would apply to future electric plants and would avoid up to 617 million metric tons of carbon dioxide through 2042, equivalent to annual emissions of 137 million passenger vehicles, the EPA said.

Almost all the coal plants — along with large, frequently used gas-fired power plants — would have to cut or capture nearly all their carbon dioxide emissions by 2038, the EPA said. Plants that cannot meet the new standards would be forced to retire.

The plan is likely to be challenged by industry groups and Republican-leaning states, which have accused the Democratic administration of overreach on environmental regulations and warn of a pending reliability crisis for the electric grid. The power plant rule is one of at least a half-dozen EPA rules limiting power plant emissions and wastewater treatment.

“It’s truly an onslaught” of government regulation “designed to shut down the coal fleet prematurely,” Rich Nolan, president and CEO of the National Mining Association, said in an interview before the rule was announced.

In a call with reporters on Wednesday, Regan denied that the power plant rule — or any other regulation — was aimed at shutting down the coal fleet even though he acknowledged, “We will see some coal retirements.”

The proposal “relies on proven, readily available technologies to limit carbon pollution” and builds on industry practices already underway to move toward clean energy, he said.

Coal provides about 20% of U.S. electricity, down from about 45% in 2010. Natural gas provides about 40% of U.S. electricity. The remainder comes from nuclear energy and renewables such as wind, solar and hydropower.

Tom Kuhn, president of the Edison Electric Institute, which represents U.S. investor-owned electric companies, said the group will assess whether the EPA’s proposal aligns with its commitment to provide reliable, clean energy.

Carbon emissions from the U.S. power sector are at the same level as in 1984, while electricity use has climbed 73% since then, Kuhn said.

The EPA rule would not mandate use of equipment to capture and store carbon emissions — a technology that is expensive and still being developed — but instead would set caps on carbon dioxide pollution that plant operators would have to meet. Some natural gas plants could start blending gas with another fuel source such as hydrogen, which does not emit carbon, although specific actions would be left to the industry.

Still, the regulation is expected to lead to greater use of carbon capture equipment, a technology that the EPA said has been “adequately demonstrated” to control pollution.

Jay Duffy, a lawyer for the Boston-based Clean Air Task Force, said the EPA rule is likely to “propel deployment of carbon capture” technology far above current usage. “It’s a way for (fossil fuel) plants to operate in a decarbonized world,” he said before the rule was announced.

“Industry innovates and over-complies,” Duffy said, citing a 1970s EPA rule that required power plants to use sulfur dioxide scrubbers. At the time, there were only three commercial scrubber units operating at U.S. power plants and just one vendor. Within a few years, there were 119 sulfur scrubbers installed and 13 vendors, Duffy said in an essay posted on the group’s website.

More recently, the U.S. power industry exceeded emissions goals set by the Obama administration in its Clean Power Plan, even though the plan was blocked by the courts and never implemented.

Still, the scope of the power plant rule is immense. About 60% of the electricity generated in the U.S. last year came from burning fossil fuels at the nation’s 3,400 coal and gas-fired plants, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

“These rules are a big deal,” said David Doniger, senior strategic director for climate and clean energy at the Natural Resources Defense Council. The power plant rules are crucial to meeting President Joe Biden’s goals to cut greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030 and eliminate carbon emissions from the power grid by 2035, he and other advocates said.

“We need to do this to meet the climate crisis,” Doniger said.

The proposal comes weeks after the Biden administration announced strict new tailpipe pollution limits that would require up to two-thirds of new vehicles sold in the U.S. to be electric by 2032 and months after Biden announced rules to curb methane leaks from oil and gas wells.

The rules follow climate action by the 2021 infrastructure law and billions of dollars in tax credits and other incentives from the Inflation Reduction Act, approved last year.

While Biden has made fighting global warming a top priority, he has faced sharp criticism from environmentalists — particularly young climate activists — for a recent decision to approve the contentious Willow oil project in Alaska. The massive drilling plan by oil giant ConocoPhillips could produce up to 180,000 barrels of oil a day on Alaska’s petroleum-rich North Slope. Environmental groups call Willow a “carbon bomb” and have mounted a social media #StopWillow campaign.

The new plan comes 14 years after the EPA declared that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases endanger public health. President Barack Obama tried to set limits on carbon pollution from U.S. power plants, but his 2015 Clean Power Plan was blocked by the Supreme Court and later was rolled back by President Donald Trump.

Last year, the Supreme Court limited how the Clean Air Act can be used to reduce climate-altering emissions from power plants. The 6-3 ruling confirmed the EPA’s authority to regulate carbon emissions from power plants but said it could not force a nationwide transition away from the use of coal to generate electricity.

The EPA said its new rule will give plant operators flexibility to meet the new standards in a method of their choosing. And instead of creating one limit that all power plants must meet, the agency said it will set a range of targets based on the size of the plant, how often it is used and whether it is already scheduled for retirement.
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A new wing of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City officially opened to the public in in early May. The futuristic space features new galleries including an insectarium, butterfly vivarium, floor-to-ceiling collections displays and more. Evgeny Maslov has the story, narrated by Anna Rice. Camera: Vladimir Badikov 
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White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan is meeting with his Chinese counterpart in Europe as the U.S. seeks open lines of communication with China amid a strained relationship.

Sullivan and top Chinese diplomat Wang Yi decided late last week to hold face-to-face talks on Thursday, according to a diplomatic source who is familiar with the plan but asked not to be named when discussing the closed-door talks with VOA.

The White House National Security Council and the State Department did not respond to VOA’s requests for more details on the meeting.

The meeting comes as Washington and Beijing are preparing for more in-person engagements between their senior officials.

After the U.S. military shot down a Chinese spy balloon that drifted over the continental United State in February, Secretary of State Antony Blinken postponed his planned trip to Beijing.

Last week, Blinken said he’s hopeful it can be rescheduled this year.

Meanwhile, Chinese Minister of Commerce Wang Wentao plans to hold talks with U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo in Washington next week, according to the diplomatic source.

On Thursday, U.S. Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns met with Wang for the first time.

“We had an open and detailed discussion about the bilateral trade relationship,” Burns said in a tweet. “I stressed the need for fair and equitable treatment of American businesses in China.”

Both U.S. and Chinese officials have said there is a need to stabilize the fraught relationship between the world’s two largest economies, which has been strained over issues including security, trade, technology, Taiwan and the South China Sea.

On Wednesday, Blinken said the United States has “concerns” about the treatment of American companies under China’s new counterespionage law.

Several firms were raided recently by Chinese police in the name of national security, including consulting firm Capvision and corporate due diligence firm Mintz Group.

“It’s something that we talk to the Chinese about,” said Blinken during a joint press conference with Spanish Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares.

“China wants to have a positive business environment that attracts foreign investment” but “the actions that it takes with regard to those businesses will have a big impact,” Blinken added.

Bloomberg has reported that Wang and U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai are likely to meet in person on the sidelines of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation ministerial meeting in Detroit later this month.

In June, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and China’s new Minister of National Defense Li Shangfu are expected to attend the Shangri-La Dialogue — a high-level Asia security summit — in Singapore. Chinese military has not accepted the U.S. proposal for a meeting between their defense chiefs on the margins of this annual gathering.

In a tweet, U.S. envoy to China Burns said he discussed “the necessity of stabilizing ties and expanding high-level communication” in a meeting with Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang on Monday.

VOA’s Patsy Widakuswara contributed to this report.
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An event organized by the Russian Cultural Center in Seattle to celebrate WWII Victory Day May 9 was met with protesters calling glorification of war inappropriate while Russia continues its invasion of Ukraine. Natasha Mozgovaya has our story from Seattle.
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During a tense CNN town hall Wednesday, former President Donald Trump dug in on his lies about the 2020 election, downplayed the violence on Jan. 6, 2021, and repeatedly insulted a woman in response to a civil jury’s finding this week that he was liable in sexually assaulting her.

During the contentious back-and-forth in early voting New Hampshire — where moderator Kaitlan Collins sometimes struggled to fact-check his misstatements in real time — Trump continued to insist the election had been rigged, even though state and federal election officials, his own campaign and White House aides, and numerous courts have rejected his allegations.

Trump also repeatedly minimized the violence caused by a mob of his supporters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 in a bid to halt the certification of President Joe Biden’s win. Instead, he said he was inclined to pardon “a large portion” of Jan. 6 defendants if he wins reelection. He also rejected a suggestion that he apologize to his former vice president, Mike Pence, who was targeted by the mob.

“I don’t feel he was in any danger,” he said. In fact, Trump said, Pence was the one who “did something wrong.”

Throughout, the audience of Republican and unaffiliated voters cheered him on, laughing and applauding.

The prime-time forum in New Hampshire brought together a network and candidate who have long sparred with each other. But the stakes were raised considerably Tuesday after jurors in New York found Trump had sexually abused and defamed advice columnist E. Jean Carroll, though they rejected her claim that he raped her nearly three decades ago.

The jury awarded her $5 million in damages. Trump said the ruling was “a disgrace” and he vowed to appeal.

Trump, at Wednesday’s event, again insisted he didn’t know Carroll, even as he attacked her in deeply personal terms. “She’s a wack job,” he said, drawing laughs from the crowd.

While the civil trial verdict carries no criminal penalties, it nonetheless revives attention on the myriad investigations facing Trump, who was indicted in New York in March over payments made to women to cover up their allegations of extramarital affairs with him. Trump is also facing investigations in Georgia and Washington over his alleged interference in the 2020 election and his handling of classified documents and potential obstruction of justice.

A small group of anti-Trump protesters gathered Wednesday evening outside the site where the town hall was being held at Saint Anselm College in Manchester. Their signs included messages like “Nobody is above the law” and “Elections not insurrection.”

Trump, during the town hall, repeatedly refused to say whether he would sign a federal abortion ban if it landed on his desk, saying he would “negotiate” so “people are happy.”

“I’m looking at a solution that’s going to work,” he said.

Trump has had a much more contentious relationship with CNN than he had with Fox. Trump has called CNN “fake news” and sparred with Collins. She was once barred from a Rose Garden event after Trump’s team became upset with her shouted questions at an earlier Oval Office availability.

Nonetheless, Trump’s team saw the invitation from CNN as an opportunity to connect with a broader swath of voters than those who usually tune into the conservative outlets he favors.

“President Trump has been battle-tested and is a proven winner. He doesn’t shy away from anything and faces them head on,” said Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung.

The appearance also served as another contrast with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is seen as a top rival to Trump for the GOP presidential nomination in 2024 and is expected to launch his campaign in the coming weeks. DeSantis has taken a sheltered media approach, largely eschewing questions from the mainstream press while embracing Fox News, which was once a loyal Trump cheerleader but is now frequently denigrated by the former president.

Trump’s campaign has turned to new channels, including popular conservative podcasts and made-for-social-media videos that often rack up hundreds of thousands of views. His team has also been inviting reporters from a variety of outlets to ride aboard his plane and has been arranging unadvertised stops at local restaurants and other venues to show him interacting with supporters, in contrast to the less charismatic DeSantis.

It remains unclear how or whether Tuesday’s verdict will have any impact on the race. Trump’s indictment in New York on charges he falsified business records only seemed to improve his standing in the GOP primary and his campaign was fundraising off the verdict.

Trump’s rivals weighed in on Tuesday’s verdict, with some hitting him harder than others.

Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson called the accusations “another example of the indefensible behavior of Donald Trump.” Tech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy came to Trump’s defense and said he doubted a case would have even been brought if the defendant had been someone other than Trump.

Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a former ally who is now weighing a run as a Trump antagonist, said Trump’s insistence that he had no idea who Carroll was “ridiculous.”

“This kind of conduct is unacceptable for somebody that we call a leader,” Christie told Brian Kilmeade on Fox News radio. “Do I think this is a silver bullet that ends Donald Trump’s candidacy? No. I just think it’s additional weight of evidence that people are going to look at.”

Former Vice President Mike Pence, who is expected to launch a campaign in the coming weeks, told NBC he doesn’t believe voters will pay much attention to the verdict.

“It’s just one more story, focusing on my former running mate, that I know is a great fascination to members of the national media, but I just don’t think it’s where the American people are focused,” Pence said. He said he had “never heard or witnessed behavior of that nature” while he was serving under Trump.

The CNN town hall, the first major television event of the 2024 presidential campaign, had drawn suspicion from both sides of the political divide.

Democrats questioned whether a man who continues to spread lies about his 2020 election loss — lies that sparked the Capitol riot — should be given a prime-time platform. Conservatives wondered why Trump would appear on — and potentially give a ratings bump to — a network that he has continually disparaged.
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In the end, the audacious claims Donald Trump made in 2005 about the way he could treat women might have doomed his chances of defeating a sexual assault lawsuit.

E. Jean Carroll brought the suit, and a federal jury in New York this week awarded $5 million to her on her claim that he sexually assaulted her in the mid-1990s and then defamed her by calling the encounter a hoax.  

Trump never showed up in the courtroom to defend himself against the allegations brought by Carroll, now 79, a former longtime Elle magazine advice columnist, and his lawyers offered no defense witnesses.  

But Carroll’s chief lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, told NBC’s “Today” show on Wednesday that in a videotaped pretrial deposition last October that was shown to the jury in Carroll’s case, “he made admissions where he was basically a witness against himself.” 

‘Access Hollywood’ tape

Kaplan was referring to Trump’s reaction to remarks he made during taping for the celebrity TV show “Access Hollywood” in 2005. During that taping, he said to show host Billy Bush, “You know, I’m automatically attracted to beautiful [women] — I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star they let you do it … You can do anything,” including, he said in a vulgar comment, grab women by their genitals. 

Asked in the deposition about the veracity of his thoughts in the “Access Hollywood” tape, Trump replied, “Well, historically, that’s true with stars.”  

“Well, if you look over the last million years, I guess that’s been largely true,” Trump said. “Not always, but largely true. Unfortunately, or fortunately.”  

“And you consider yourself to be a star?” Trump was asked. 

“I think you can say that, yeah,” he said. 

In the “Today” show interview, Kaplan rhetorically asked, “Who uses the word ‘fortunately’ to talk about sexual assault?”  

The jury on Tuesday decided against Carroll’s claim that Trump had raped her in a dressing room at the upscale Bergdorf Goodman department store in 1996. But it ruled in her favor that he had sexually abused her and then defamed her over several years by saying her claim was a “scam,” a bid for her to make money off the sale of a memoir in which she disclosed her encounter with Trump. He also said the lawsuit was part of the Democrats’ political scheme to undermine his 2024 bid for the Republican presidential nomination. 

Her claim was in a civil lawsuit, not a criminal case, and as a result there was no threat of a conviction or imprisonment for Trump. 

Carroll said of the verdict, “I’m overwhelmed, overwhelmed with joy and happiness and delight for the women in this country.” 

‘Getting my name back’

She said of the damages awarded her, “I didn’t even hear the money. This is not about the money. This is about getting my name back, and that’s what we accomplished.” 

She said that as the trial ended, Trump lawyer Joseph Tacopina “came over to congratulate me. He put out his hand, and I said, ‘He did it and you know it.’ And then we shook hands and I passed by, so I got my chance to say it.” 

Trump assailed the verdict on his Truth Social media outlet and said he would appeal. He continued to claim he did not know Carroll, although a photo introduced at the trial showed them at a New York party several years before Carroll said he assaulted her. 

The photo also undermined Trump’s claim that Carroll was not “my type.” Shown the photo at the October deposition, Trump misidentified Carroll as Marla Maples, his second of three wives, and he acknowledged he was attracted to all his wives.
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The death of a homeless man on a New York City subway train is raising questions about how to deal with mentally ill persons in public places. A former Marine and fellow passenger of the man alleges he felt threatened and inadvertently killed the homeless man while holding him down in a headlock. The incident has split New York public opinion on the way passengers should have responded. Aron Ranen has the story.
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A U.S. accounting watchdog found unacceptable deficiencies in audits of U.S.-listed Chinese companies performed by KPMG in China and PricewaterhouseCoopers in Hong Kong, the government agency said on Wednesday.  

The U.S. Public Company Accounting Oversight Board published the findings of its inspections after gaining access to the records of Chinese company auditors for the first time last year after more than a decade of negotiations with Chinese authorities. That access kept roughly 200 China-based public companies from potentially being kicked off U.S. stock exchanges. 

The deficiencies were so great that auditors failed to obtain enough evidence to substantiate the companies’ financial statements, PCAOB Chair Erica Williams told reporters on Wednesday. The firms, two of the so-called “Big Four” in accounting, represent 40% of the market share of U.S.-listed companies audited by Hong Kong and mainland China firms, she said.  

PricewaterhouseCoopers in Hong Kong said it is working with the PCAOB to address issues raised and noted the inspection report marks an important milestone for U.S. and Chinese cooperation. KPMG’s firm in China said in a statement it has taken steps to address the issues the PCAOB had found.  

While the findings are consistent with what the agency usually discovers when gaining access to a foreign country’s audit records for the first time, they will likely raise worries among global investors over the accuracy of the public financial statements of U.S.-listed Chinese companies. 

“The fact that we found so many deficiencies is really a sign that the inspection process worked, and now we can go about the work of holding firms accountable and driving audit quality,” Williams said. 

The PCAOB will give the two firms a year to remediate deficiencies around quality controls, and the agency will make referrals to the agency’s enforcement team where appropriate, Williams said. Such investigations could ultimately lead to monetary penalties or barring audit firms from doing work for U.S.-listed companies. 

PCAOB officials have begun fieldwork for 2023 inspections. With its 2023 work, the PCAOB expects it will have inspected auditors representing 99% of the work in the region.  

The agency will continue to demand full access to do its work, Williams said. If Chinese authorities begin to limit access for inspections and investigations, a U.S. law agreed to last year sets a two-year clock for compliance or ouster from American exchanges. 
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U.S. Rep. George Santos, the New York Republican infamous for fabricating key parts of his life story, was arrested on federal criminal charges on Wednesday ahead of an expected court appearance.

The indictment says Santos induced supporters to donate to a company under the false pretense that the money would be used to support his campaign. Instead, it says, he used it for personal expenses, including luxury designer clothes and to pay off his credit cards.

U.S. Attorney Breon Peace said the indictment “seeks to hold Santos accountable for various alleged fraudulent schemes and brazen misrepresentations.”

“Taken together, the allegations in the indictment charge Santos with relying on repeated dishonesty and deception to ascend to the halls of Congress and enrich himself,” Peace said.

Santos was expected to make an initial court appearance at a federal courthouse on Long Island later Wednesday, at which time the charges against him would be unsealed.

Reached by the AP on Tuesday, Santos said he was unaware of the charges.

Santos was elected to Congress last fall after a campaign built partly on falsehoods. He told people he was a wealthy Wall Street dealmaker with a substantial real estate portfolio who had been a star volleyball player in college, among other things. In reality, he didn’t work at the big financial firms he claimed had employed him, didn’t go to college and had struggled financially before his run for public office.

Questions about his finances also surfaced. In regulatory filings, Santos said he loaned his campaign and related political action committees more than $750,000, but it was unclear how he would have come into that kind of wealth so quickly after years in which he struggled to pay his rent and faced multiple eviction proceedings.

In a financial disclosure form, Santos had reporting making $750,000 a year plus dividends from a family company, the Devolder Organization. He later described that business as a broker for sales of luxury items like yachts and aircraft. The business was incorporated in Florida shortly after Santos stopped working as a salesman for a company accused by federal authorities of operating an illegal Ponzi scheme.

Many of Santos’ fellow New York Republicans called on him to resign after his history of fabrications was revealed. Some renewed their criticism of him as news of the criminal case spread.

“Listen, George Santos should have resigned in December. George Santos should have resigned in January. George Santos should have resigned yesterday. And perhaps he’ll resign today. But sooner or later, whether he chooses to or not, both the truth and justice will be delivered to him,” said U.S. Rep. Marc Molinaro, a Republican representing parts of upstate New York.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., was more circumspect, saying “I think in America, you’re innocent till proven guilty.”

Santos has faced criminal investigations before.

When he was 19, he was the subject of a criminal investigation in Brazil over allegations he used stolen checks to buy items at a clothing shop. Brazilian authorities said they have reopened the case.

In 2017, Santos was charged with theft in Pennsylvania after authorities said he used thousands of dollars in fraudulent checks to buy puppies from dog breeders. That case was dismissed after Santos claimed his checkbook had been stolen, and that someone else had taken the dogs.

Federal authorities have separately been looking into complaints about Santos work raising money for a group that purported to help neglected and abused pets. One New Jersey veteran accused Santos of failing to deliver $3,000 he had raised to help his pet dog get a needed surgery.
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The United States returned two looted antiquities to China, the latest in a wave of repatriations of artifacts stolen from more than a dozen countries, New York authorities announced Tuesday.

The two 7th-century stone carvings, currently valued at $3.5 million, had been sawn off a tomb by thieves in the early 1990s and smuggled out of China, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said in a statement.

The carvings were among 89 antiquities from 10 different countries purchased by Shelby White, a private art collector in New York.

From 1998, they were “loaned” to the Metropolitan Museum of Art until they were seized this year by the DA’s office following a criminal investigation.

“It is a shame that these two incredible antiquities were stolen and at least one remained largely hidden from the public view for nearly three decades,” Bragg said.

“While their total value is more than $3 million, the incredible detail and beauty of these pieces can never be truly captured by a price tag.”

Collectively valued at nearly $69 million, they were part of a criminal investigation by the city’s Antiquities Trafficking Unit that tracks and repatriates looted artifacts.

One of the funerary carvings was kept in the museum’s storage room and never displayed, according to the statement by Bragg’s office.

It was never cleaned and caked in dirt, another tell-tale sign of their illicit origin, the statement added.

The carvings were handed over during a repatriation ceremony at the Chinese consulate in New York.

“We regard the crackdown on crimes against cultural property a sacred mission,” Chinese Consul General Huang Ping was quoted as saying in the statement by the DA’s office.

Since January 2022, more than 950 antiquities worth over $165 million have been returned to 19 countries, including Cambodia, India, Pakistan, Egypt, Iraq, Greece, Turkey, and Italy.

In 2021, Michael Steinhardt, a private collector, returned around 180 stolen antiquities worth $70 million following an out-of-court agreement, in one of the most famous cases of art trafficking in New York.
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U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Tuesday that Washington is looking to cooperate with China to “solve big challenges.” His remarks come as China prepares to send an envoy to Ukraine for peace talks. Meanwhile, the U.S. is providing Ukraine with $1.2 billion in military aid ahead of its expected spring offensive against Russia. State Department Bureau Chief Nike Ching has more.
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President Joe Biden and congressional leaders reached no deal during a Tuesday meeting to resolve the impasse on raising the limit the government can borrow to meet its financial obligations. If no agreement is reached in the next few weeks, the U.S. will go into default for the first time in history, sending financial shockwaves around the world. White House Bureau Chief Patsy Widakuswara reports. Anita Powell contributed to this report.
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U.S. President Joe Biden sought to calm global financial market jitters on the looming debt limit weeks before the nation is at risk of defaulting on its financial obligations for the first time in history.

Biden met Tuesday afternoon with Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, as well as Democratic House leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, in a bid to ensure the government can borrow more money to pay for spending it has already incurred.

“We’re going to get started and solve all the world’s problems,” Biden said as the Oval Office meeting began. He and the other leaders declined to take reporters’ questions ahead of the meeting.

Without a deal between the White House and congressional leaders, the country is estimated to be weeks from default. Earlier, the White House warned that the United States defaulting on its debts would be “a gift” to adversaries, including China and Russia, and would lead to a recession that could send shock waves across the global economy.

“We cannot be a deadbeat nation,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said during her press briefing on Tuesday, warning congressional Republicans who are refusing to raise the nation’s debt limit unless it’s paired with spending cuts.

“Default would create global uncertainty about the value of the U.S. dollar and U.S. institutions and leadership, leading to volatility in currency and financial markets and commodity markets that are priced in dollars,” Jean-Pierre said.

Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines previously made a similar point to the Senate Intelligence Committee about the national security consequences of the U.S. teetering on the edge of a fiscal cliff.

But Republicans are urging spending cuts and blame Biden for the impasse.

“The solution is clear. It’s been clear for months,” McConnell said ahead of the meeting. “President Biden needs to negotiate on spending with Speaker McCarthy. The Speaker’s been at the table since February. House Republicans are the only people in town who have passed any bill that prevents default.”

The Treasury debt limit, which caps the amount of outstanding debt the country can have and thus Treasury’s ability to issue securities to fund the government’s obligations, was reached on January 19.

Even with Treasury taking “extraordinary measures” to pay the government’s bills, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told lawmakers last week that the department’s ability to pay the government’s bills could run short as early as June 1 — what’s commonly known as the X-date.

Republicans are insisting that the federal government reduce spending before they will agree to raise the debt ceiling. Meanwhile, Biden is adamant that Congress has a duty to pay its bills and that the two issues should be addressed separately.

Ceiling raised many times before

Lifting the debt ceiling was once a routine vote. Congress has raised it 78 times since 1960, 29 times under Democratic presidents and 49 times under Republican presidents, including three times under former President Donald Trump.

How would a U.S. default affect the world?

The U.S. economy is the largest in the world, and the U.S. dollar is considered the world’s reserve currency, meaning that many countries’ central banks and other monetary authorities hold U.S. dollars as part of their foreign exchange reserves as a backup in case their own currency fails.

A debt event in the United States would have serious consequences not only for the U.S. but also for the global economy and for world financial markets.

Should the U.S. fail to pay its debts, in addition to creating havoc in global stock markets and sending the American economy into recession, it would trigger a sell-off in U.S. Treasury bonds, weakening the dollar and raising interest rates. This would affect foreign currency reserves held by other countries and make the costs of borrowing more expensive, potentially leading countries with already high levels of borrowing into a debt crisis.

“If interest rates in the United States go up, it’s going to take all other interest rates up with it. It’s going to make all other risk assets look very shaky,” said Desmond Lachman, former deputy director at the International Monetary Fund and now a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

Lachman agreed with Yellen that a U.S. debt default would be an economic catastrophe that must be avoided.

Lachman told VOA the world can ill-afford such financial turbulence, especially with the regional banking crisis that began with the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank in March, followed by the toppling of two other U.S. banks — Signature Bank and First Republic.

Safest investment

U.S. Treasury bonds are traditionally considered the safest investment that global financial investors turn to in times of distress, said Heidi Crebo-Rediker, former chief economist of the U.S. Department of State and adjunct senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

“It is the deepest, most liquid, solid and reliable market in the world,” she said.

Crebo-Rediker added that countries and investors need not be overly concerned about an actual U.S. default.

“This is a question of willingness to pay, not ability to pay,” she said. “And that is a very big distinction.”
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U.S. President Joe Biden and Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador on Tuesday discussed border security measures as they prepare for a potential migrant wave when a key U.S. border policy ends this week, the White House said.

The Biden administration and Texas state authorities are sending reinforcements to the U.S.-Mexico border to prepare for a possible increase in immigration when COVID-19 restrictions known as Title 42 end on Thursday.

The order, in place since 2020, allows U.S. authorities to quickly expel migrants to Mexico without giving them the chance to seek U.S. asylum. The policy shift is expected to lead to a rise in border arrivals.

In a phone call on Tuesday, Biden and Lopez Obrador “discussed continued close coordination between border authorities and strong enforcement measures,” the White House said in a statement.

They discussed the urgency of reducing crowding in northern Mexico and affirmed their commitment to address the root causes of migration from Central America, the statement said.

Lopez Obrador said on Twitter they had discussed their commitment to work together on migration, as well as on drugs and arms trafficking.

They also discussed “cooperation in caring for the continent’s poorest,” Lopez Obrador added.
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U.S. officials said on Tuesday they’ve taken down a global network of compromised computers that Russian intelligence agents used for nearly 20 years to spy on the United States and its allies.

Officials said a unit within Russia’s Federal Security Service, or FSB, used a malicious software called Snake to steal sensitive documents from hundreds of compromised computer networks in at least 50 countries.

The hacked computers belonged to NATO member governments, journalists and other targets of interest to the Russian government, officials said.

Snake-infected computers in the United States and around the world served as conduits for funneling the stolen data back to Russia.

The Justice Department called Snake the “FSB’s premiere cyberespionage malware implant.”  

“The Justice Department, together with our international partners, has dismantled a global network of malware-infected computers that the Russian government has used for nearly two decades to conduct cyber-espionage, including against our NATO allies,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement. “We will continue to strengthen our collective defenses against the Russian regime’s destabilizing efforts to undermine the security of the United States and our allies.”

The FBI dismantled the Snake network with a court-approved operation dubbed MEDUSA, the Justice Department said.

The operation disabled the Snake malware on compromised computers with an FBI-created tool named PERSEUS.

The bureau is working with authorities in other countries to notify other victims of Snake infections, officials said.

The FBI has been tracking Snake and related malware tools for nearly two decades, developing the ability to decrypt and decode Snake communications.

Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said the takedown “has neutralized one of Russia’s most sophisticated cyber-espionage tools, used for two decades to advance Russia’s authoritarian objectives.”

“By combining this action with the release of the information victims need to protect themselves, the Justice Department continues to put victims at the center of our cybercrime work and take the fight to malicious cyber actors,” Monaco said in a statement. 

Court documents released on Tuesday detailed how the FSB unit, known as Turla, deployed Snake from a known FSB facility in Ryazan, Russia, to conduct daily espionage operations. 

The unit has repeatedly upgraded and revised the malware to ensure it remains “Turla’s most sophisticated long-term cyberespionage malware implant,” the Justice Department said.
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A federal court jury in New York reached a verdict Tuesday on a claim by a one-time magazine advice columnist that Donald Trump, 20 years before he became the U.S. president, raped her in a department store dressing room, and then defamed her by dismissing the encounter as a “hoax.” 

Trump is facing several criminal investigations stemming from his efforts to overturn his 2020 reelection loss and his retention of classified documents from his presidency at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. 

But the allegations made by E. Jean Carroll are being adjudicated in a civil, not criminal case, and carry no threat of a conviction or imprisonment for the 76-year-old Trump. 

Instead, the nine-member jury — six men and three women — had to decide by a unanimous vote whether there is a preponderance of evidence to believe the now 79-year-old Carroll’s contention that after a chance encounter with Trump at the upscale Bergdorf Goodman department store sometime in 1996, he lured her into a dressing room in the lingerie department, quickly pinning her against a wall, pulling down her tights, opening his pants and sexually assaulting her. 

Trump did not appear in the courtroom, nor was he required to, to hear Carroll’s account. Two other women testified on her behalf that Trump unexpectedly assaulted them decades ago in similar fashion: A one-time stock broker said he groped her in the first-class cabin of a New York-bound flight and a journalist alleged that he suddenly started kissing her at Mar-a-Lago while she was there to report a story for People magazine on the first anniversary of his marriage to his third wife, former first lady Melania Trump. 

No defense witnesses called

Trump’s defense attorney, Joseph Tacopina, called no defense witnesses in the case, instead trying to chip away at Carroll’s account of the incident, noting that she could not remember the exact date the attack allegedly occurred, never reported it to police at the time, nor went to a hospital for treatment, and only first made her allegation public in a 2019 memoir. 

“It’s the most ridiculous, disgusting story. It’s just made up,” Tacopina told the jurors in his closing argument on Monday. Earlier, as the case opened two weeks ago, Tacopina said, “There are no witnesses to call to prove a negative” and that jurors would have to “believe the unbelievable” to rule in favor of Carroll, who is seeking a retraction of Trump’s denial of the incident and unspecified monetary damages. 

On the witness stand, Carroll gave a searing account of her claimed encounter with Trump, even as she acknowledged she could not precisely pinpoint the date it occurred, although trial testimony indicated it might have been in the spring of 1996 on an early Thursday evening when the store was open later for shoppers. 

Carroll testified that Trump used his weight to pin her against the dressing room enclosure. “I was pushing him back,” she said. “I was almost too frightened to think.” 

“His fingers went into my vagina, which was extremely painful,” Carroll said. Then, she said, he inserted his penis, before she said she used her knee to push him away and fled. 

She said that she was so traumatized by the incident that “it left me unable to ever have a romantic life again.” 

During an extensive cross-examination by Tacopina, Carroll acknowledged that she did not scream for help. 

She said rape victims are always asked, “‘Why didn’t you scream?'” 

“He raped me, whether I screamed or not,” she declared. 

In a taped video deposition from last October that Carroll’s.lawyers showed jurors, Trump claimed that he would not have attacked Carroll, once a cheerleader and university beauty queen, because she was not his “type.” But he undercut his own claim when he was shown a picture of himself with Carroll at a New York social event in the 1970s: He misidentified her as his second wife, Marla Maples, while acknowledging all three of his wives were the type of women he was attracted to. 

Carroll’s lawyers also showed jurors the 2005 video from the celebrity TV show “Access Hollywood,” in which Trump claimed that women allowed him to start kissing them and grabbing them by their genitals because he was a star. 

Carroll lawyer Roberta Kaplan said Trump may not have appeared to testify in the case, but contended in her closing statement to the jurors that the videotape showed how he treated women. 

Kaplan told jurors: “What is he doing here? He is telling you in his own words his modus operandi, his M.O. … he kissed them without their consent. The evidence shows overwhelmingly he followed this playbook and in the dressing room there grabbed” Carroll and assaulted her. 
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U.S. President Joe Biden and the top Republican and Democrats in Congress are set to meet Tuesday at the White House amid an impasse about raising the country’s debt limit. 

Republicans House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell will be joined by Democrats House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer as the group discusses the impending deadline to make sure the government can pay for spending it has already incurred. 

Republicans are insisting on spending cuts before they will agree to raise the debt ceiling, while Biden has said Congress has a duty to pay its bills and that the two issues should be addressed separately. 

SEE ALSO: A related video by VOA’s Patsy Widakuswara

U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told lawmakers last week that the Treasury’s ability to pay all of the government’s bills could run short as early as June 1. 

She told CNBC on Monday there was a “very big gap” between the Democratic and Republican positions and warned that not raising the debt limit would bring “economic catastrophe.” 

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters 
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Iranian American Sanaz Toossi won the Pulitzer Prize in drama Monday for her play English. 

The play takes place in 2008 near Tehran, where four Iranian adults prepare for an English proficiency test.  It examines how family separation and travel restrictions push them to learn a new language and how that may change their identity. 

The Pulitzer board called the play “quietly powerful.” 

The award includes a $15,000 prize. 

Toossi is the daughter of Iranian immigrants to the United States and grew up in the western U.S. state of California. 
…

After meeting in Beijing with U.S. Ambassador Nicholas Burns, Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang criticized the U.S. for what he described as an ongoing effort to “suppress” his country, saying that improved communications between the two superpowers will depend on the U.S. changing its policies.

In a readout of the Monday meeting, Qin said that U.S.-China relations have worsened since a meeting between U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping in November, saying “a series of erroneous words and deeds by the U.S. since then have undermined the hard-won positive momentum of Sino-U.S. relations.”

Qin described relations between the two countries as having “hit the ice,” and he criticized U.S. policy toward Taiwan, the self-governing island that China claims as its own.

Burns, for his part, was more reticent about the talks, posting a brief update on his official Twitter account that said, “I met State Councilor and Foreign Minister Qin Gang today. We discussed challenges in the U.S.-China relationship and the necessity of stabilizing ties and expanding high-level communication.”

Possible thaw

Despite the tone of Qin’s comments, some viewed the meeting, one of the first high-level meetings between American and Chinese officials in several months, as a positive step.

Relations have been particularly strained since early February, when the U.S. spotted a Chinese espionage balloon flying over the U.S. mainland. That incident caused U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken to cancel what had been expected to be an in-person visit with Qin earlier this year.

Last week, Burns seemed to signal an interest in greater dialogue between the two countries.

“Our view is we need better channels between the two governments and deeper channels, and we are ready to talk,” he said last week in a virtual appearance at an event hosted by the Stimson Center, a Washington-based think tank.

“We’ve never been shy of talking, and we hope the Chinese will meet us halfway on this,” Burns said.

Critical comments

The Foreign Ministry’s readout of the meeting depicted Qin as sharply critical of the U.S., urging Washington to “correct its understanding of China” and to “return to rationality.”

Appearing to refer to Burns’ comments about being willing to talk, Qin said, “It is not possible to talk about communication on the one hand, but to keep suppressing and containing China on the other hand. You cannot say one thing and do another. We must respect China’s bottom line and red line, and stop undermining China’s sovereignty, security, and development interests.”

He added, “In particular, we must correctly handle the Taiwan issue, stop hollowing out the one-China principle, and stop supporting and condoning ‘Taiwan independence’ separatist forces.”

In what appeared to be a reference to the espionage balloon incident, Qin said, “It is necessary to persist in handling unexpected incidents in the relationship between the two countries in a calm, professional and pragmatic manner, so as to avoid another impact on Sino-U.S. relations.”

He said any future talks should be based on “mutual respect, reciprocity and mutual benefit.”

State Department reacts

In a press conference Monday afternoon, Deputy State Department Spokesperson Vedant Patel commented on the meeting, saying, “Maintaining open lines of communication with the PRC [People’s Republic of China] has been a key tenet of our approach as it relates to this very complicated bilateral relationship.”

Asked whether the U.S. had anything to “correct” in its position on Taiwan, Patel said it did not.

“There has been no change to our policy with China. There has been no change to our ‘One China’ policy, which is guided by more than four decades of the Taiwan Relations Act, the three joint communiqués and the six assurances. We have been very clear-eyed about that. And we’re also going to continue standing with our friends and allies across the Indo-Pacific to advance our shared prosperity and security and values.”

Room for progress

Zuri Linetsky, a research fellow with the Eurasia Group Foundation, told VOA that he saw the dialogue between Qin and Burns as a positive sign, and said that the language in the Chinese Foreign Ministry’s readout was clear about the policy changes Beijing wants the U.S. to make, in particular toward Taiwan and trade.

“One thing that stands out to me is this discussion of ‘security and development interests’ which is, I think, a call out to the restrictions on Chinese access to semiconductors,” Linetsky said.

The Biden administration has pressured countries that use U.S. technology to make semiconductors and the machines that fabricate them to restrict sales to China. Though the U.S. has branded this as a very narrow ban, applying only to military technology or items that could be repurposed for military use, the Chinese appear to view the ban as part of a broader strategy to restrict the country’s overall development.

Linetsky said that the meeting between Qin and Burns appeared to signal that more talks might be on the horizon, though he warned that it would be a mistake to expect progress to be smooth.

“This isn’t going to happen in a straight line,” he said. “It’s going to happen in fits and starts.”

Coming investment guidance

As soon as next week, the Biden administration is expected to release new guidelines that will restrict the investments U.S. firms can make in China, to prevent technology that can be used for military purposes from being transferred to Beijing.

The policy will be part of a broader administration plan to insulate the U.S. from China without fully breaking ties, a process that White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan in a recent speech referred to as “de-risking” rather than the more commonly used term “decoupling.”

“De-risking fundamentally means having resilient, effective supply chains and ensuring we cannot be subject to the coercion of any other country,” he said in remarks delivered at the Brookings Institution on April 27.

In that same speech, Sullivan pushed back against Chinese claims that the U.S. was trying to freeze China out of new technologies and to hinder its overall development.

“These are tailored measures,” Sullivan said. “They are not, as Beijing says, a technology blockade. They are not targeting emerging economies.”

VOA State Department Bureau Chief Nike Ching contributed to this article.
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A group of Chinese international students studying in Washington has established an independent student union, hoping to provide a safe space and platform for other Chinese students and scholars at their university to express political dissent without harassment by pro-Beijing students and organizations.

Students from George Washington University (GWU) call the organization Torch on the Potomac.

A statement by the organization on April 25 said, “We want to provide Chinese students and scholars at George Washington University, as well as their peers in the diaspora, with a platform, social support and community independent from the Chinese Communist Party and its puppets. In addition, we welcome students from all backgrounds interested in Chinese culture, politics and identity.”

The organization has more than 12 members. All have chosen to remain anonymous for security reasons, according to Luo Qiu, one of the organizers who uses a pseudonym.

“Before this organization was established, we were sporadic,” said Thomas, who also uses a pseudonym. “Many of our Chinese students had engaged in some resistance activities, including putting up posters or organizing candlelight vigils. But because there is still this kind of fear on campus – that is, fear of C.S.S.A. and of people who are pro-Chinese Communist Party who may report us.”

The Chinese Students and Scholars Association has long been linked to the Chinese government.

“[We want to] let the school, including people outside, know that C.S.S.A. is not the only representative of our Chinese students,” Thomas said. “We also have many Chinese students who oppose the CCP and support democracy. They should also have their own voices.”

The members expressed their disappointment with GWU in their statement, believing that the university has not done enough to protect the freedom of speech of international students who criticize the Chinese government.

The statement reads, “As Chinese students and scholars by the Potomac River, by the Lincoln Memorial, and at the foot of Capitol Hill, we are thousands of miles away from the People’s Republic of China but still under the shadow of fear: we find ourselves facing systemic repression. We and our families have faced intimidation, surveillance, harassment, blackmail, and other forms of coercion. We are denied true academic freedom and civil rights despite studying at a university that claims to promote and defend rights.”

VOA contacted GWU for comment but did not receive a response by the time of publication.

GWU reaction

Axios reported that during the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, some Chinese students put up multiple posters on the school campus criticizing China’s human rights issues. Other Chinese students ripped them down, and some Chinese student organizations who are pro-Chinese-government took the matter to the president of the university, Mark Wrighton, claiming that the posters were racially discriminatory, Axios reported.

At first, Wrighton expressed support in an email for the position of the pro-government Chinese student organizations and promised to investigate the matter, according to Axios.

But after discussing with faculty and staff familiar with human rights issues in China, he pivoted to express his support for the students who put up the posters and promised to protect their freedom of speech, Axios said.

In October, some Chinese students at the university also put up posters on campus opposing Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s re-election. But those posters were also torn up.

Torch on the Potomac said in its statement that not long ago, the “Democracy Wall” on campus, which includes posters put up by students from China, Iran, Russia, Taiwan and Ukraine, was vandalized. The wall is in a hallway on the outside of a school building.

Luo said, “We tried to get the school involved in the investigation before, but the response from the school police and the dean is almost nothing.”

In a screenshot of an email obtained by VOA Mandarin, police told the students who had called them, “Unfortunately, [when] you post a poster you relinquish ownership to the poster and as long as there is zero damage to the building it will not be a destruction of property.”

VOA Mandarin contacted GWU police for specific information on the damage but did not receive a response.

‘Silencing’ of students

Rory O’Connor, president of the U.S. student organization Athenai Institute, told VOA Mandarin the vandalism of the Democracy Wall “amounts to the silencing of students who have few other means to safely speak out.”

The Athenai Institute website says the organization “is a non-partisan, student-founded nonprofit devoted to educating American students, scholars and the public about the dangers posed by the genocidal, anti-democratic Chinese Communist Party’s influence on our college campuses, and about the tools universities can use to financially disentangle themselves from the CCP and its human rights abuses.”

The Athenai Institute supported the establishment of Torch on the Potomac, according to the organizers’ statement.

O’Connor said, “I can think of few, if any, better uses of our time and resources than supporting pro-democracy Chinese students who, simply by trying to authentically express themselves, are now facing down the proxies of a fascist party-state.”

Other student organizations at GWU have also supported Torch on the Potomac, including the campus organizations for the Democratic and Republican parties, GW Chinese Feminists, GW Uyghur Human Rights Initiative and GW Russian Speaking Association, according to the Torch on the Potomac statement.

Sarah McLaughlin, scholar at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, told VOA Mandarin, “Universities can do more, too. They can make an effort to educate international students about their rights in the U.S. and on campus, and what they can do if they’re facing threats to their ability to speak freely on campus.”

Torch on the Potomac said that the school’s C.S.S.A. is behind the suppression of its political demands, and “our top priority remains to protect George Washington University students from being influenced by the C.S.S.A. at the school and the Chinese Communist Party. … For a long time, the C.S.S.A. and similar organizations have maintained a monopoly on Chinese students’ cultural and political representation.”

A report by Foreign Policy in 2018 said that C.S.S.A. organizations across the U.S. had organized international students to welcome visiting Chinese leaders and paid them a fee for being among the gathering of greeters.

The close relationship the C.S.S.A. maintains with the Chinese government is no secret. In 2017, Liu Chen, president of the C.S.S.A. at George Washington University, said in a video that the C.S.S.A. was “the only official Chinese student union. It is directed by the Chinese Embassy and operates in every international university.”

Domination of C.S.S.A.

William, who belongs to Torch on the Potomac and uses a pseudonym, said, “There was no organization like this before. In the past, C.S.S.A. dominated the public domain of Chinese international students.”

Another Torch of the Potomac member, Sally, said, “I think the goal of the organization is to show there are alternative forms of representation and that not all Chinese students are monolith.

“Because right now we see a lot of anti-Chinese sentiment and a lot of people who are talking about how they are spies in U.S. campuses,” she said. “And we realize these discussions are real, and we want to show that most Chinese students are not supporting the government, and most Chinese students are not here to be Chinese spies. But we don’t have an outlet for our voice to be heard, so we were trying to … provide those students with support so that they do not feel alone, and they don’t feel alienated and isolated.”

Adrianna Zhang contributed to this report.
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