标签： Asia

China’s Supreme People’s Procuratorate announced Wednesday that Feng Zhibin, the 62-year-old former deputy general manager of Sinochem Group, has been formally prosecuted on three criminal charges: bribery, influence trading, and abuse of power by a state-owned enterprise personnel.

The corruption case against Feng was first investigated and closed by the National Commission of Supervision, China’s top anti-graft watchdog, before being transferred to prosecutorial authorities for review. Following a designation from the Supreme People’s Procuratorate, the Heilongjiang Provincial People’s Procuratorate approved Feng’s arrest, and the Daqing People’s Procuratorate has now lodged a public indictment with the Daqing Intermediate People’s Court, bringing the high-profile case one step closer to trial.

Prosecutors laid out detailed allegations of Feng’s misconduct spanning his decades-long tenure in senior leadership roles at the major state-owned conglomerate. Over his career, Feng held a string of key positions at Sinochem, including assistant general manager, general manager of the group’s investment department, chairman and general manager of Sinochem Lantian Corporation, general manager of Sinofert Holding Limited, and ultimately deputy general manager of the parent Sinochem Group, before becoming chairman of Sinochem International Corporation in 2016. According to the indictment, Feng abused the authority granted by these posts to secure illicit benefits for third parties in exchange for accepting large sums of money and high-value assets.

Even after stepping down from his official roles, prosecutors say Feng continued to exploit the influence of his former senior positions. He is accused of leveraging his past status to pressure other sitting state functionaries into granting illegal benefits to associates, once again accepting substantial improper payments and valuables in return.

The prosecution adds that as a senior employee of a state-owned enterprise, Feng’s deliberate abuse of power for personal gain has caused severe financial losses to Sinochem Group and inflicted major damage on national interests. Legal officials note that Feng’s actions meet the criteria for criminal liability on all three charges brought against him.

Feng’s career at Sinochem began in 2000, when he joined the group and quickly rose through the corporate ranks. In June 2018, he officially resigned from all his positions at the conglomerate, citing personal reasons. Formal anti-graft investigations into Feng were launched in July 2025, and he was expelled from the Communist Party of China in January 2026 as investigations uncovered evidence of his wrongdoing.

Headquartered in Beijing, Sinochem Group operates as a wholly owned subsidiary of Sinochem Holdings Corporation, one of China’s core centrally administered state-owned enterprises overseen by the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council. A leading market player in China’s energy and chemical sectors, Sinochem also maintains major business footprints in urban infrastructure operations and non-banking financial services.

BEIJING – A senior spokesperson from China’s mainland authorities reaffirmed Wednesday the mainland’s consistent commitment to pursuing peaceful development across the Taiwan Strait, during a press briefing addressing a landmark visit by a delegation from Taiwan’s Kuomintang (KMT) party.

The KMT delegation, headed by party chairwoman Cheng Li-wun, touched down in Shanghai on Tuesday, kicking off a six-day visit that will take the group through Jiangsu Province, Shanghai and Beijing, concluding this coming Sunday. This trip marks the first time in 10 years that a sitting KMT chairperson has led a party delegation to the Chinese mainland, marking an important moment for cross-Strait exchanges after a decade of limited high-level party-to-party contact.

Zhu Fenglian, spokesperson for the State Council Taiwan Affairs Office, laid out the mainland’s stance in response to questions about the visit. “On the shared political foundation of upholding the 1992 Consensus and opposing ‘Taiwan independence,’ we stand ready to work with all political parties, groups and individuals across Taiwan – the Kuomintang included – to advance the steady, peaceful development of cross-Strait relations,” Zhu stated.

Zhu further emphasized that both sides of the Taiwan Strait are part of one indivisible China, and that questions concerning cross-Strait ties are internal matters that must be resolved through dialogue and consultation between Chinese people on both sides. She added that compatriots across the Strait share sufficient wisdom and collective capability to resolve their own issues in a way that serves the common interests of all Chinese people.

The visit comes as cross-Strait relations have faced heightened tensions in recent years, driven by pro-separatist forces on the island and external interference. The high-profile KMT visit is widely seen as an opportunity to restart people-to-people and party-to-party exchanges, opening a new channel for dialogue to reduce misunderstanding and lower regional risks.

After 40 days of open conflict that ignited when US and Israeli forces launched strikes on Iranian targets, triggering cross-regional retaliatory missile and drone attacks that pushed the Middle East to the brink of full-scale war, a two-week ceasefire has entered into force, opening a fragile diplomatic window to de-escalate tensions. The outbreak of fighting severely disrupted commercial shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, the world’s most critical chokepoint for global energy supplies, stoking widespread international alarm over the risk of a broader regional conflict that could send shockwaves through the global economy.

The ceasefire agreement, announced by former US President Donald Trump, was brokered through extensive mediation led by the government of Pakistan, and it is conditional on the full reopening of the Strait of Hormuz to commercial traffic, with formal negotiations set to kick off in Islamabad in the coming days. Both Washington and Tehran have claimed victory from the period of open conflict: US officials assert that American forces achieved all core military objectives set out at the start of hostilities, while Iranian authorities frame the ceasefire as a triumph that forced the United States to agree to negotiate based on Tehran’s pre-set 10-point framework of demands.

Key agenda items for the upcoming talks include rules governing maritime transit through the Strait of Hormuz, full relief for Iran from international and US sanctions, and a negotiated settlement over the future presence of US combat forces across the Middle East. Iranian officials have stressed that the opening of negotiations does not mark a permanent end to hostilities, while their US counterparts have described the diplomatic process as a rare opportunity to forge a broader, long-term stability agreement. Most independent observers characterize the ceasefire as a temporary pause to de-escalate, rather than a durable resolution, with the final outcome of talks remaining deeply uncertain.

In a full official statement released by Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, Tehran framed the ceasefire as an undeniable, historic defeat for US and Israeli aggression. The statement credits what it calls the strategic prudence of Iran’s supreme leadership, the bravery of Iranian and Axis of Resistance fighters across the region, and the unified mass support of the Iranian people for forcing the US to accept Tehran’s 10-point terms as a basis for negotiations. The core demands laid out in the Iranian framework include a binding US commitment to refrain from future aggression against Iran, permanent recognition of Iran’s full sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz, international recognition of Iran’s right to nuclear enrichment, full lifting of all primary and secondary sanctions on Iran, termination of all hostile UN Security Council and International Atomic Energy Agency Board of Governors resolutions against the country, full compensation for damages Iran has sustained from decades of US hostilities, complete withdrawal of all US combat forces from the Middle East region, and an end to all US support for military campaigns against the Axis of Resistance, including Hezbollah in Lebanon.

The statement notes that from the opening hours of the conflict, US and Israeli leadership held wildly optimistic assumptions that a rapid military campaign would force Iran into full surrender, partition the country, and seize its natural energy resources. These plans failed entirely, the statement argues, due to coordinated defensive and offensive operations by Iran and its resistance allies that inflicted irreversible damage to US military infrastructure across the region, weakened the Israeli military’s position in occupied territories, and exposed the inability of the US-led coalition to achieve core war aims within the first 10 days of fighting.

According to the Iranian official statement, the United States began reaching out through quiet diplomatic channels to request a ceasefire shortly after that, but Tehran rejected all initial appeals until all of its core preconditions were formally accepted. Tehran also notes that it has repeatedly rejected arbitrary deadlines set by the US, emphasizing that it places no value on timelines imposed by hostile powers. The ceasefire and negotiation process were approved by Iran’s Supreme National Security Council and supreme leadership after the US formally accepted all 10 of Iran’s core principles via Pakistani mediation, with talks set to open in Islamabad on April 10 and allocated a two-week window that can be extended by mutual consent.

The statement stresses that the opening of negotiations does not mean an end to the conflict, and that hostilities will resume if the US fails to follow through on its commitments to finalize the agreement in line with Iran’s 10-point framework. It calls for full national unity across all Iranian political groups and civil society during the negotiation period, noting that the process is an extension of the battlefield fought under the supervision of Iran’s highest leadership. The statement concludes by warning that Iran remains fully militarily prepared to resume hostilities immediately if the US makes any concession or violates the agreed terms, while celebrating what it calls a historic turning point that has established Iranian regional dominance as the basis for any future security order in the Middle East.

For decades, the framing of U.S. military transfers to Israel as “arms sales” has obscured a critical, underreported reality: the vast majority of these transactions are not paid for by the Israeli government, but by American taxpayers. This hidden subsidy is now at the center of a growing congressional pushback, led by progressive lawmakers who are demanding an end to U.S. public funding for what they describe as destructive Israeli military operations.

Earlier this year, four U.S. senators — Independent Bernie Sanders of Vermont, Democrats Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, Jeff Merkley of Oregon, and Peter Welch of Vermont — introduced joint resolutions of disapproval to block a $659 million shipment of 22,000 bombs to Israel, a transfer originally approved by the Trump administration. What makes this deal particularly contentious, the lawmakers argue, is that many of the weapons are being drawn directly from active U.S. military stockpiles, and the entire cost will be covered by U.S. taxpayers.

In a public statement announcing the resolutions, Sanders emphasized that in the wake of widespread destruction caused by Israel’s far-right government under Benjamin Netanyahu across Gaza, Lebanon, and regional flashpoints like Iran, providing tens of thousands of new munitions is the last priority American taxpayers should be forced to fund. Van Hollen echoed this position, noting that Congress must use every legislative tool at its disposal to halt what the caucus frames as Trump’s escalation of regional conflict, starting with cutting off taxpayer-funded weapons transfers to the Netanyahu administration.

Policy analyst Stephen Semler, a non-resident senior fellow at the Center for International Policy, recently published an in-depth data investigation that confirms the broad scope of taxpayer funding for U.S. arms transfers to Israel. As Semler explains, the label of “arms sale” is misleading by design. While Israel is officially listed as the purchaser in formal government notifications, the funding source is almost exclusively the U.S. Foreign Military Financing (FMF) program — an annual U.S. military aid package that provides Israel with at least $3.3 billion in public U.S. funds each year, which functions essentially as a taxpayer-funded “gift card” for Israeli weapons purchases.

Semler illustrated this dynamic by examining the four most recent publicly notified arms sales to Israel, published in the Federal Register: a $740 million deal for armored personnel carriers, a $1.98 billion contract for tactical vehicles and accessories, a $3.8 billion transfer for attack helicopters and related weaponry, and a $150 million deal for utility helicopters and replacement parts. In every single listing, the “funding source” field is marked as Foreign Military Financing, meaning U.S. taxpayer money covers the cost. Only one deal included a minor contribution from Israeli national funds, making the overwhelming majority of the $6.7 billion in tested transactions fully U.S.-funded. The 22,000-bomb shipment targeted by the Senate resolutions? Both components of that deal are 100% FMF-funded.

Expanding this analysis to cover the full four-year term of the Biden administration from 2021 to 2024, Semler compiled and cross-checked data from two official U.S. defense sources: the Defense Security Cooperation Agency’s (DSCA) Historical Sales Books for government-brokered Foreign Military Sales, and the Directorate of Defense Trade Controls’ (DDTC) Section 655 Reports for private commercial Direct Commercial Sales. The findings are stark: the Biden administration authorized a total of $22 billion in arms sales to Israel over that period, split between more than $13.2 billion in government-brokered deals and over $8.7 billion in commercial transactions.

DSCA data shows 90% of government-brokered sales are covered by U.S. military aid, and while DDTC does not publicly disclose funding sources for commercial sales, Semler’s estimate based on Israel’s historic average of FMF spending on commercial arms puts that share at 68%. All combined, Semler calculates that U.S. taxpayers covered $17.8 billion of the $22 billion in total Biden-era arms sales to Israel — 81% of the total value, or nearly $18 billion in taxpayer subsidies that have been misrepresented as commercial sales.

This reality undermines the most common policy justifications for continuing large-scale arms transfers to Israel. Proponents of the deals often argue they boost U.S. economic activity and create domestic jobs, but the fact that American taxpayers foot the bill eliminates any claim that the transfers bring meaningful foreign investment into the U.S. economy. Even the job creation argument falls apart under scrutiny: military spending is widely recognized as one of the least efficient ways for the U.S. government to generate new employment.

Historical data backs this up: in 1985, the U.S. military budget stood at $295 billion, equal to $746 billion in 2024 inflation-adjusted dollars, and the U.S. arms industry employed 3 million American workers. By 2021, the inflation-adjusted military budget had grown by $132 billion to $879 billion — an 18% real increase — but arms industry employment plummeted to just 1.1 million workers, a 63% drop in jobs despite massively increased public spending. The reliance on a job creation argument also tacitly reveals the weakness of national security justifications, Semmer argues: a policy that truly served core U.S. national security interests would not need to be defended on the grounds of job growth alone.

As the Senate prepares to consider the resolutions to block the Trump-approved bomb shipment, the analysis makes clear that the debate is not just about Israel’s military actions in the Middle East — it is about the growing burden of U.S. taxpayer funding for foreign military operations. Semler concludes that American taxpayers are owed a refund for decades of hidden subsidies, rather than being asked to cover billions more in weapons costs under new and existing administrations.