
'Sever relations': Bioterror arrests spark alarm; US CCP expert warns China planning ‘something worse than Covid'
In light of recent arrests of two alleged "bioterrorists" in Michigan, an expert has advocated for complete disengagement from diplomatic relations with China, warning that they might be hit with 'something worse than Covid'.
"The only way to stop this is to sever relations with China," attorney and Chinese Communist Party expert Gordon Chang told Fox News Digital. "And I know people think that's drastic, but we are being overwhelmed, and we are going to get hit. And we are going to get hit really hard. Not just with Covid, not just with fentanyl, but perhaps with something worse."
Chang addressed the recent case involving Chinese nationals Yunqing Jian, 33, and her partner Zunyong Liu, 34.
The pair allegedly conducted unauthorised research on Fusarium graminearum in American laboratories whilst smuggling it into the country over two years. Jian held a post-doctoral research position at the University of Michigan, with her studies partially supported by funding from the People's Republic of China.
The Department of Justice describes Fusarium graminearum as a harmful fungus causing "head blight" in wheat, barley, maize and rice crops, resulting in annual global economic losses worth billions.
The substance poses risks to human health, potentially causing vomiting, liver damage and reproductive complications in humans and animals.
"This couple should be sent to Guantánamo," Chang said. "This Chinese government has declared a 'People's War' on us."
A "People's War" refers to a military strategy established by former Communist Party Chairman Mao Zedong, who passed away in 1976. His leadership resulted in numerous deaths through famine and political persecution.
This strategy involves sustained military and political pressure designed to wear down opponents.
The authorities have charged Jian and Liu with conspiracy, smuggling, false statements and visa fraud.
"We're Americans, so we think we're entitled to ignore the propaganda of hostile regimes," Chang said. "But for a communist party, [a People's War] has great resonance, and what they're doing with their strident anti-Americanism is creating a justification to strike our country," he added.
"This means, for example, that this couple should be sent to Guantánamo," he added. "This was an attack on the United States at a time when China thought it was at war with us," he further said.
In recent years, several incidents have raised concerns about Chinese espionage in the US. Chinese nationals and students have been caught illegally entering military bases, photographing sensitive sites, and attempting to steal trade secrets.
Cases include breaches at a Key West naval station (2020), spying at Camp Grayling (2024), and drone surveillance of naval bases by a University of Minnesota student (2025).
Separately, Harvard professor Charles Lieber was convicted in 2021 for hiding ties to China's Thousand Talents Program.
Commentator Gordon Chang warned that such actions, including suspicious seed distributions, signal ongoing threats to US security.
Former FBI supervisory special agent, told Fox News Digital, "Imagine walking into your local grocery store and seeing empty shelves where bread, cereal, and even pet food used to be," Jason Pack, "Prices spike. Supply chains slow down. All because a foreign actor deliberately targeted the crops that keep America fed. That may sound far-fetched, but it's exactly the kind of scenario that becomes possible when someone brings a dangerous agricultural pathogen into the United States.
"It doesn't take a bomb to disrupt an economy. It takes a biological agent like Fusarium graminearum introduced into the wrong place at the wrong time. Food prices rise. Livestock suffer. Exports stop. The economic ripple effects are enormous," he said.
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Why the project is raising alarm with its neighbours, and what its construction could mean for China's economy and its green energy it comes to building hydrodams, China's got plenty of experience. It operates two of the world's largest dams. That includes the world's biggest hydrodam – Three Gorges – which opened in central China in 2009. This new mega dam will be built in Tibet, a mountainous region just north of the border with in this bend on the Yarlung Tsangpo River that they call the Mêdog or Motuo Bloomberg energy reporter Dan Murtaugh says the dam is in an area that till recently was very difficult to get is a very, very, very steep drop. The river drops about 2,000 meters over a 50 kilometer stretch as it curves and bends through the mountains of the Himalayas. The county that it's at is up until 2013 didn't even have a highway that connected it. You'd have to walk a day, you know, or, or take a donkey or a horse to get to the river from the closest dams – like the Hoover dam – block the path of a river to create a reservoir. They then release the water, which turns turbines, and generates electricity. This Yarlung Tsangpo dam is they're trying to do here is a little bit more audacious. The idea is to drill a tunnel through the mountains down the steep, steep, steep gradient, and then divert some of the water from going around that big bend and instead go basically just vertically straight down the mountain. That steep gradient that this river moves on really allows you to get that water flowing at high enough speeds to be able to run the turbines to generate the the groundbreaking ceremony earlier this month, Chinese Premier Li Qiang called the Yarlung Tsangpo dam the 'project of the century.' State engineers have said it has the potential to generate as much as 70 gigawatts of electricity. That's enough to power the United three times bigger than the largest power plant in the world right now. It is a national country level type of a generating asset. But China's huge. China has about 4,000 gigawatts of total generating capacity right now. Its peak demand is about 1,450 gigawatts. And so this project isn't going to have a huge world-changing impact on China's power sector. But it does do a couple of different things that are gonna be really beneficial to China's attempt to clean up its energy sector and will help China meet its energy transition goals of peaking emissions by 2030, and then reaching net-zero emissions by still relies on coal-powered plants to back up its more sustainable energy sources like solar and and solar, while cheap and while abundant, only generate when the wind blows and it doesn't really allow them to replace coal plants because at the end of the day you still need, you know, backup generation to make sure that when there's a period where there's no sun out and the wind stops, that people can still turn on their lights. What hydropower does that wind, solar don't do is it's what we call, uh, a dispatchable source. You can use it when it's needed. You can hold it back when it's not. Now hydropower is not perfectly dispatchable. Like if you are using a fossil fuel power plant, a gas or a coal power plant, you can really just sort of turn it off and on as needed. Hydropower, there's still some external things like whether there's a drought, if there's, you know, too much water, there's rain, you know, you have to open the floodgates. It's not perfect, but it is a clean power source that allows the grid to be a little bit more flexible in terms of, you know, generating when it's needed and not just, when the supply's reliability and flexibility are just two of the reasons why building a hydroelectric dam is so expensive. The Yarlung Tsangpo dam will cost $167 billion – more than the International Space Station did. And Dan says, the power it generates will be several times more expensive than any other energy it ends up being about a 70-gigawatt project as we expect it to be, you're talking about $2.4 million per megawatt. 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