Two US senators on Tuesday accused China of hampering a congressional probe into how counterfeit electronics end up in the US military supply chain by denying entry visas to investigators.
“I can’t say that I’m surprised, but I surely am disappointed and it’s not in their interest,” Democratic Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin told reporters. “I am disappointed that they don’t see that.”
“The United States and China are not destined to be adversaries. We have overlapping interests and this is actually one of them,” said Senator John McCain, the top Republican on Levin’s panel.
The senators also said China had required that government minders attend any interviews conducted in China as part of the investigation, which was announced in March, but agreed that request was a “non-starter.”
Levin and McCain said that they had worked for weeks to get entry visas for staff to visit Shenzhen, Guangdong Province, which they described as the epicenter of the fake parts trade based on US government reports.
“We are not confirming guilt or innocence, but there are sufficient allegations,” said McCain, who warned that what was at stake was “the ability of this country to defend itself with weapons systems that it can rely on.”
US defense contractors and component distributors “almost totally and exclusively point to China, specifically the city of Shenzhen in Guangdong Province, as a source of counterfeit electronic parts,” Levin said.
The Democrat said the investigators would meet with the US consul general in Hong Kong early yesterday as part of a last-ditch attempt to secure the necessary visas for what he said would be a one or two-day visit.
“Our staff has been told that the trade in counterfeit electronic parts takes place openly in that city and in that province, and they plan to travel to that city to make a firsthand assessment,” Levin said.
Wang Baodong (王寶東), a spokesman for the Chinese embassy in Washington, said the issue “involves law enforcement and China’s judicial sovereignty, which should be respected.”
“We’ve been telling the congressmen’s offices that such issues are supposed to be raised through the normal channel of China-US law enforcement cooperation and we’re ready to stay in touch with the US side,” Wang said.
McCain, asked what would happen if Beijing continues to block the trip, said: “I would guess that we will then complain about it, but then also we’ll seek further investigation on this issue.”
He noted that a report last year by the Government Accountability Office — the US Congress’ investigative arm — on the issue “didn’t get Chinese cooperation.”
Levin said that report found that counterfeit electronics had “infiltrated” the Pentagon’s supply chain, including microprocessors for the F-15 fighter jet and microcircuits for US Missile Defense Agency hardware.
Levin also pointed to a US Department of Commerce report in January last year that surveyed 400 companies that “overwhelmingly cited China” as the source for counterfeit electronics.
“It should be in China’s interest not to have counterfeiting of these electronic parts going on, because it would harm legitimate Chinese companies as well,” McCain said.
“So I hope that the Chinese will recognize that this is in both countries’ interests to track down allegations that have been made,” he added.
Right-wing political scientist Laura Fernandez on Sunday won Costa Rica’s presidential election by a landslide, after promising to crack down on rising violence linked to the cocaine trade. Fernandez’s nearest rival, economist Alvaro Ramos, conceded defeat as results showed the ruling party far exceeding the threshold of 40 percent needed to avoid a runoff. With 94 percent of polling stations counted, the political heir of outgoing Costa Rican President Rodrigo Chaves had captured 48.3 percent of the vote compared with Ramos’ 33.4 percent, the Supreme Electoral Tribunal said. As soon as the first results were announced, members of Fernandez’s Sovereign People’s Party
MORE RESPONSIBILITY: Draftees would be expected to fight alongside professional soldiers, likely requiring the transformation of some training brigades into combat units The armed forces are to start incorporating new conscripts into combined arms brigades this year to enhance combat readiness, the Executive Yuan’s latest policy report said. The new policy would affect Taiwanese men entering the military for their compulsory service, which was extended to one year under reforms by then-president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) in 2022. The conscripts would be trained to operate machine guns, uncrewed aerial vehicles, anti-tank guided missile launchers and Stinger air defense systems, the report said, adding that the basic training would be lengthened to eight weeks. After basic training, conscripts would be sorted into infantry battalions that would take
GROWING AMBITIONS: The scale and tempo of the operations show that the Strait has become the core theater for China to expand its security interests, the report said Chinese military aircraft incursions around Taiwan have surged nearly 15-fold over the past five years, according to a report released yesterday by the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) Department of China Affairs. Sorties in the Taiwan Strait were previously irregular, totaling 380 in 2020, but have since evolved into routine operations, the report showed. “This demonstrates that the Taiwan Strait has become both the starting point and testing ground for Beijing’s expansionist ambitions,” it said. Driven by military expansionism, China is systematically pursuing actions aimed at altering the regional “status quo,” the department said, adding that Taiwan represents the most critical link in China’s
EMERGING FIELDS: The Chinese president said that the two countries would explore cooperation in green technology, the digital economy and artificial intelligence Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) yesterday called for an “equal and orderly multipolar world” in the face of “unilateral bullying,” in an apparent jab at the US. Xi was speaking during talks in Beijing with Uruguayan President Yamandu Orsi, the first South American leader to visit China since US special forces captured then-Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro last month — an operation that Beijing condemned as a violation of sovereignty. Orsi follows a slew of leaders to have visited China seeking to boost ties with the world’s second-largest economy to hedge against US President Donald Trump’s increasingly unpredictable administration. “The international situation is fraught
RSS