China Wants Total Access To Canada, May Seek To Import Its Own Workers

China Wants Total Access To Canada, Wants To Import Its Own Workers

The Huffington Post Canada  |  By Daniel Tencer

Posted: 03/25/2017 10:42 am EDT

China’s government is seeking full access to Canada’s economy in free trade talks, a move that could result in Chinese state-owned companies bringing their own employees to work on projects in Canada.

China’s ambassador to Canada, Lu Shaye, told the Globe and Mail his government wants to avoid discussions of human rights issues, fearing it could become a “bargaining chip” in negotiations.

Additionally, China would see any attempt to block takeovers of Canadian companies on national security grounds as protectionism, Lu said.

“Investment is investment. We should not take too much political considerations into the investment,” he said. “Just like the negotiations of the (Canada-U.S.) FTA, we should not let political factors into this process. Otherwise, it would be very difficult.”

Canadian and Chinese officials held exploratory talks on a free trade deal earlier this year. Lu told the Globe another meeting will take place in April.

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau stand in the Hall of Honour as they take part in a signing ceremony on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Thursday, September 22, 2016. (Photo: The Canadian Press/Fred Chartrand)

Canada's ambassador to China, John McCallum, told the CBC that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau "is very clear that we want to pursue stronger ties with China. We think that in the medium term this will lead to more Canadian jobs."

Many trade experts point out that the vast majority of China’s largest corporations are state-run enterprises whose executives are often hand-picked by government.

They also note that China’s notion of “full access” to an economy could be very broad. As the foreign policy blog OpenCanada notes, China’s 2015 free trade deal with Australia includes a provision that allows Chinese companies to bring their own employees into the country to work on projects, so long as those projects are worth more than AUD$150 million.

Charles Burton, an associate political science professor at Brock University, says bringing their own workers abroad is “normal practice” for Chinese companies.

“It’s not as if [the Chinese] would be asking something of Canada that they don’t expect from other countries,” he said.

Canada's ambassador to China, John McCallum, says a trade deal with China is a priority for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. (Photo: The Canadian Press)

Though China has been among the most vocal countries in resisting the protectionism of the Trump administration, critics say the country is itself a bastion of protectionism. They note China allows almost no foreign investment in banking and telecommunications.

Many argue the country has not lived up to the commitments it made to open up its economy when it joined the World Trade Organization in 2001.

China’s interest in Canada lies primarily in energy, and in the possibility of exploiting Canada’s oilsands, experts say. The country will push for a reversal of Harper government-era policies that restricted the ability of Chinese state-owned businesses to invest in Canadian energy.

Opinion polls suggest Canadians are split on the issue of free trade with China.

One poll carried out for the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada last August found 46 per cent support for a deal with China, and the same percentage opposed. However, that was a stronger showing than a poll six months earlier, which showed only 36-per-cent support for a China trade deal at that time.

Canadians were much more likely to support free trade deals with more developed economies, such as the European Union, Japan and Australia.

The Hidden Price of Food from China

'You Get What You Pay For'The Hidden Price of Food from China
In recent years, China has become a major food supplier to Europe. But the low-cost goods are grown in an environment rife with pesticides and antibiotics, disproportionately cited for contamination and subject to an inspection regime full of holes. A recent norovirus outbreak in Germany has only heightened worries.

October 17, 2012  

Qufu, the city in China's southwestern Shandong Province where Confucius was born, isn't exactly an attractive place. But its fields are as good as gold. A few weeks ago, a shipment of strawberries left those fields bound for Germany.The air above the cities of the Chinese heartland is blackened with smog, as trucks barrel along freshly paved roads carrying loads of coal from the mines or iron girders from the region's smelters. Fields stretch to the horizon, producing food to feed the world's most populous country.

The chili pepper and cotton harvests have just ended, the rice harvest begins in two weeks, and garlic will be ready in April. Thousands of female farm workers are kneeling in the fields planting the next crop of a particularly profitable plant in the international food business.

"Garlic is eaten everywhere," says Wu Xiuqin, 30, the sales director at an agricultural business called "Success." "We sell garlic all over the world, and increasingly to Germany." The going price of a ton of white garlic is currently $1,200 (€920). The Germans, says Wu, insist on "pure white" product, and they want the garlic individually packaged.

Well over 80 percent of the garlic sold worldwide comes from China. The "Success" farm produces 10,000 metric tons a year. Based on what she's seen at food conventions in Berlin and elsewhere, no country on Earth can compete with China. Her company supplies peeled, flaked, granulated and pulverized garlic, says Wu, and it has now added ginger, chili peppers, carrots, pears, apples, sweet potatoes and peanuts to its product line.

China, which already sews together our clothes, assembles our smartphones and makes our children's toys, is now becoming an important food supplier for Germany. Since China, as a low-wage country, doesn't exactly have a good reputation among consumers, the food industry usually doesn't mention the origin of the products it sells. Many Germans only realized how much of the food on their plates is harvested and produced in China when thousands of schoolchildren in eastern Germany were afflicted with diarrhea and vomiting two weeks ago in an epidemic thought to have been triggered by Chinese strawberries contaminated with norovirus.

A Growing Global Supplier of Food

There are some bizarre aspects to the global flow of food products. In some parts of China, the population still doesn't have enough to eat. To address the problem, the country is buying up farmland in Africa and importing massive quantities of powdered milk, chicken and pork. EU-based companies sold 393,000 metric tons of pork to China last year, an increase of 85 percent over the previous year. Food companies see China as an attractive growth market.

Conversely, China is also selling far more food products to Europe than it used to, as the world's top exporter recognizes a profitable growth market in Europe. From 2005 to 2010, the value of Chinese food exports worldwide almost doubled, increasing to $41 billion. And Germany, which imported €1.4 billion worth of food from China last year, is becoming an increasingly important customer. Although the country only accounts for about 2 percent of all German food imports, "China has moved into this market with surprising speed and momentum," says a food industry expert.

As always, the country has quickly adapted to the market's needs. While it was mostly Chinese specialties that were sold in German grocery stores in the past, there is now a growing market for cheap staple goods and prepared ingredients, such as the sliced strawberries in 10-kilo (22-pound) buckets that ended up in German school cafeterias.

Two things make China appealing for large companies such as Nestlé, Unilever or Metro: price and volume. "Of course we could buy our onions or mushrooms from 10 different suppliers, but that would entail a huge effort," says a food industry executive. Food companies have to familiarize each supplier with the market and then manage and monitor them.

China's farmland is as vast as its supply of cheap labor. "Picking, washing and cutting up strawberries is labor-intensive because using machines is almost impossible," says Felix Ahlers, the head of Frosta AG, a German frozen food company. This makes it more expensive to buy fruit from Europe, as his company does. But, as Ahlers points out, there are producers that only pay attention to price.

The diversity of products China has to offer also seems to be unlimited. For example, the country has become the world's largest exporter of honey. It is also starting to produce more and more finished products, a market with even bigger profit margins than food commodities. A significant portion of the world's salmon haul is processed in China, into smoked salmon, for example. The country famous for Peking Duck is now making frozen pizzas for the global market -- at a fifth of German prices.

Farmers Who Don't Eat Their Own Food

From an environmental standpoint, the production of pizzas on a global scale isn't all that worrisome. According to calculations by the Institute for Applied Ecology in the southwestern German city of Freiburg, shipping frozen products has only a minor adverse effect on our environmental footprint. Of course, it's "always best to eat regional and seasonal food," says Moritz Mottschall, a researcher at the institute. But if someone has a taste for strawberries in the fall, he adds, transporting 10 tons of product by ship from China generates only 1.3 tons of CO2 emissions. When trucks carry the same amount of product from the Spanish city of Alicante to the northern German city of Hamburg, they emit 1.56 tons of CO2 into the atmosphere.

The biggest problem with Chinese food products is the local production environment, which includes the excessive use of toxic pesticides for crops and of antibiotics for animals, sometimes coupled with a complete lack of scruples. In 2008, some 300,000 infants in China were harmed by milk and baby formula products adulterated with the chemical melamine. Chinese producers had added the substance, which is especially harmful to the kidneys, to powdered milk.

Chinese producers have also sold peas dyed green, which lost their color when cooked, fake pigs' ears and cabbage containing carcinogenic formaldehyde. Then there was the cooking oil that was captured in restaurant drains, reprocessed, rebottled and resold. The government newspaper China Daily has even reported on fake eggs.

Wu Heng has risen to become a prominent food-safety advocate in China. Last spring, Wu read about a strange powder that dealers were adding to pork so that they could sell it as beef, which is more expensive. Wu quickly developed an aversion to noodle dishes listed as containing beef.

He put together a website that includes a map pinpointing Chinese food scandals reported in the media. Wu called his website "Throw it Out the Window," an allusion to former US President Theodore Roosevelt, who is said to have thrown his breakfast sausage out the window in disgust after hearing about the appalling conditions in Chicago's slaughterhouses.

Animal products are the most questionable, says Zhou Li, a lecturer at Beijing's Renmin University who studies food safety. Meat is more profitable than vegetables, which only increases the incentive to maximize profits.

Zhou notes that farmers used to eat the same foods they sold. But now that they are aware of the harmful effects of pesticides, fertilizers, hormones and antibiotics, they still produce a portion of their farm products for the market and a portion for their own families. The only difference is that the food for their families is produced using traditional methods. In fact, many wealthy Chinese have bought their own farms so as not to be dependent on what's available in supermarkets. There are also reports of special plots of land used to produce food exclusively for senior government officials.

Top court in Europe rejects Chinese solar industry’s appeal

Top court in Europe rejects Chinese solar industry’s appeal

 2017/3/1 

Trade friction likely to increase amid sluggish global economy

---

A worker assembles photovoltaic panels at a plant in Lianyungang, East China's Jiangsu Province on August 18, 2016. Photo: CFP

A top EU court's rejection of an appeal by 26 Chinese solar panel companies to void anti-dumping and countervailing measures in the EU is groundless and reflects the bloc's rising trade protectionism, experts said on Wednesday.

The Luxembourg-based General Court, the second-highest court in Europe, "rejects all the applications and confirms all the definitive duties set by the council," The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday, citing a statement issued by the court.

In 2013, the European Council member states imposed anti-dumping and countervailing duties averaging 47.7 percent on imports of solar panels from China.

The states claimed that after a two-year investigation, they found that Chinese solar panel prices were below-market and had received illegal subsidies, which was harmful to the interests of EU solar panel makers, according to industry website guangfu.bjx.com

The decision affected 26 domestic solar panel manufacturers in China, including JA Solar Holding Co, who subsequently appealed the case to the General Court in 2014, urging it to "withdraw those measures," guangfu.bjx.com reported. The court dismissed the appeal.

Meanwhile, Chinese solar panel manufacturers can still appeal the decision to EU's highest court, the Court of Justice, The Wall Street Journal said.

The failure of the appeal may lie in the EU's own dumping standards and discriminatory treatment of Chinese companies, said Chen Weidong, an international law professor at the Beijing-based University of International Business and Economics.

As the EU has its own dumping standards, the administrative departments may easily decide that Chinese companies are dumping products if they can't provide solid proof to the contrary, he explained.

Besides, the EU's attitude is still unclear as to the substitute country method, which should have ended in December 2016. Hence, it still adopts price and cost data from an alternative country when investigating China for potential dumping and thus imposes high penalties, according to Chen.

"Chinese government has reduced subsidies to the photovoltaic industry in recent years, so the European Council's claim that the sector is receiving illegal subsidies is not reasonable," Cui Hongjian, director of the China Institute of International Studies' Department of European Studies, told the Global Times on Wednesday.

Cui said that it is normal for the government to provide incentives to stimulate high-tech industries' growth.

Given that free land, low interest rate loans and equity investments may easily be considered subsidies, local governments should adjust the way they provide support for domestic companies, Chen noted.

Small and medium-sized Chinese solar panel manufacturers also adopt the strategy of "slim profits, quick turnover," and that's the reason why such products are sold cheaper in Europe, Cui said.

In February, the European Commission softened its position on Chinese imports, proposing an extension of import duties on solar panels from China by 18 months with a gradual phase-out.

The rapid change in the EU's attitude also highlighted the uncertainties caused by the EU's rising trade protectionism amid sluggish economic growth, experts said.

The bloc's recovery from economic crisis has been slow, Cui pointed out. "So its member states are protecting their industry at the expense of sabotaging their Chinese counterparts."

Such trade friction is likely to increase not only in the photovoltaic industry, but also in other energy and steel sectors, experts warned.

Cui suggested that Chinese enterprises should focus on research and development into critical technologies to improve the competitiveness of products. "Take solar panels as an example. Despite favorable government policies, Chinese companies are still locked in an embarrassing position … they import materials from Europe, do some basic processing, and re-export the products to Europe," Cui said.

This is where the "root problem" lies, Cui stressed. He also urged China to further open up its energy market to private players. "Currently, the market is still dominated by State-owned enterprises like the big three oil companies, and as a result, high-tech private-sector companies have to expand abroad to look for opportunities."

If the domestic market climate improved, these private players would focus on Chinese consumers and wouldn't need to expose themselves to potential foreign trade volatility, experts said.

Call for Stricter Regulations on Chinese Food Imports

Target: U.S. Food and Drug Administration

Goal: Urge the FDA to impose stricter investigations and labeling on imported food from China

A report from the European Nation points out that China has had a long history of importing tainted foods into other countries; in 2012 alone, there were over sixteen foods rejected by the EU, including pumpkin seeds mixed with glass chips, maggot-infested pasta, and noodles containing high levels of aluminum. As large numbers of investigations and reports find malpractice in China’s food production, the FDA must impose more rigid regulations for Chinese imports in order to protect Americans from food contamination.

The United States is a large importer of Chinese food products: 80% of our tilapia, 51% of cod, and 49% of our apple juice is from China.  However, the FDA only inspects 2.3% of all food imports, making Americans extremely vulnerable to food contamination.  Though American consumers may make efforts to be more conscious about their grocery shopping, it is difficult for them to make accurate evaluations because food products from China that are processed in other countries are labeled as processed or packaged in those countries, with no mention that the raw food product is from China.

By signing this petition you will urge the FDA to conduct stricter and more frequent investigations on food imported from China to maintain safety and sanitation for American consumers.

PETITION LETTER:

Dear Food and Drug Administration,

Seeing as the U.S. imports so many food products from China, recent reports of tainted food imports have made me very concerned for the well-being of American consumers.  Though we can hardly stop China from selling tainted food in their country, the FDA should be able to inspection our food imports thoroughly enough to ensure that contaminated products rarely find their way into our homes.

I have been informed, however, that only 2.3% of food imports are inspected by the FDA.  Yes, that is probably a lot of food already, considering how much food we import from other countries, but the problem with China’s food is so severe that we need to direct more attention toward ensuring the safety and sanitation of these products.

In addition, it would be a great help to consumers who want to shop consciously if we could work towards labeling foods that originated from China as such, instead of just under the country that the food was processed in.  Especially for foods like meat and fish paste, which can be easily contaminated in its place of origin before the paste-making process, it is important for consumers to have the right to know where their food originally came from so they can make conscious food choices.

Poor Chinese Building Goes Viral

Poor Chinese Building Goes Viral 



Western governments are mesmerised by Chinese building speed, but the apartment floor shown in this vid proves speed is inversely proportional to quality. Australia is giving tenders to Chinese building companies, this example should cause Australians and other countries to fear.

https://www.facebook.com/peoplearenormal/videos/601049613426402/

Australia shelves China extradition treaty, after opponents raise human rights concerns

PUBLISHED : Tuesday, 28 March, 2017

Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has shelved plans to ratify an extradition treaty with China, after lawmakers raised questions about Beijing’s justice and human rights records.

Foreign Minister Julie Bishop said in a statement on Tuesday that Turnbull withdrew the treaty after Labor opposition leader Bill Shorten said his bloc wouldn’t support ratification this week. Sky News earlier reported the prime minister realised the resolution faced defeat in the Senate.

The move comes days after a state visit to Australia by Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, who said he respected the nation’s choices in foreign policy. Tensions between the trading partners rose when Bishop used a speech in Singapore earlier this month to say democracy was crucial for nations to reach their economic potential, and called on China to be a responsible global player.

In Beijing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told reporters that the treaty would help in the fight against transnational crime and promote judicial and law enforcement cooperation.

“We hope Australia can bear in mind the general picture of bilateral relations and proceed with its relevant domestic procedures so as to make the treaty come into force as soon as possible,” Hua said.

Trapped Australia-based academic fears long forced stay in China

Eric Abetz, a lawmaker with Turnbull’s own Liberal-National coalition, said in a statement that he welcomed the move to withdraw ratification “given China’s poor track record on human rights and natural justice”.

THIS WEEK IN ASIA

Get updates direct to your inbox

E-mail *

By registering you agree to our T&Cs & Privacy Policy

Independent Senator Cory Bernadi said in an Australian Broadcasting Corp interview on Tuesday that he opposed the treaty because China didn’t have “an open and transparent legal system”.

Bishop said the ruling coalition would continue to negotiate with the opposition. While the treaty has been in limbo since being arranged by then-prime minister John Howard in 2007, extraditions between the nations have proceeded since then, Trade Minister Steven Ciobo said in a Sky News interview on Tuesday.

It’s not known if current cases of Australians being held by Chinese authorities will be affected by Turnbull’s decision. A group of Crown Resorts employees – including at least three Australian citizens – have been detained in China since October for alleged gambling-related crimes, while Chinese-born academic Feng Chongyi, a professor at an Australian university who has criticised Beijing’s crackdown on political dissent, has been barred from leaving the city of Guangzhou.

However, Bishop said she would continue to work with Labor to get the China extradition treaty ratified because it is “undoubtedly in Australia’s national interests”.

Asked whether there was a link between the extradition treaty and a prisoner-transfer agreement, Bishop said “yes, they were signed at the same time, in 2007”, and confirmed that the Chinese consider them linked.

It was raised on the recent visit by Li, she said.

Asked about the Crown employees in custody in China, Bishop did not explain if they were directly affected but said Australia would continue to make representations on their behalf.

Bishop said it was “far preferable” to withdraw the treaty and seek to address opponents’ concerns than see it rejected.

China has captured 2,566 fugitives who fled to more than 90 countries and regions – recovering about US$125 million – as part of its “Sky Net” campaign between 2014 and 2016, the official Xinhua News Agency said Saturday.

Zhuang Deshui, an anti-corruption expert at Peking University, said Australia’s shelving of the treaty was a setback for China in its bid to bring back corrupt officials and businessmen hiding overseas.

“But [such setbacks] are to be expected, and it is very hard for the situation to be reversed in a short time period,” he said.

Few Western countries have reached an extradition treaty with China, except France and Spain. China is in talks with Canada and New Zealand for a possible treaty.

Zhuang said most of the returned fugitives were suspected of economic crimes, while those officials suspected of duty-related crimes, such as corruption or abuse of power were more difficult to be brought back.

Culture, free speech and celebrating Mao downunder

August 24, 2016 2.45am ED

Mao Zedong, a master in using culture as a tool of political propaganda, famously declared at the Chinese Communist base camp of Yan’an in May 1942 that:

In the world today, all literature and art belong to definite classes and are geared to definite political lines. There is in fact no such thing as art for art’s sake, art that stands above classes or art that is detached from or independent of politics.

Seven years later, Mao’s Communist Party took power in China by force. Mao ruled China as the paramount leader until his death on September 9 1976. Under his reign, he upheld the notion that all art serves political purposes.

Since the 1980s, China has witnessed a decline of communist ideology and gradual relaxation of absolute political control over society. Still, the anniversary of the “Yan’an Art Forum” is celebrated every year and Mao’s “Yan'an Talks” still resonate loudly in China and among Chinese overseas.

Indeed, in October 2014, Xi Jinping, the newly chosen Communist leader of China, convened a similar art forum in Beijing and declared that art must work for the party’s political and ideological goals. Artworks in every form should “embody socialist core values in a lively and vivid way”, “rally Chinese strength” and “promote positive energy” for the party.

Today, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army still appoints about a dozen singers and dancers as generals. The current first lady of China, Peng Liyuan, a professional singer, became major-general in 2012 when serving as head of the Song and Dance Ensemble of the PLA General Political Department.

Peng Liyuan. Suzanne Plunkett/Reuters

Many performing art groups in the Chinese communities in Australia are part of this Maoist tradition, which has been exported to Australia by Chinese migrants, sometimes in a spectacular way.

Earlier this month, a flyer was circulated in local Chinese communities and Chinese newspapers. It advertised a concert with the title Glory and Dream: In Commemoration of the 40th Anniversary of the Death of Chairman Mao. The concert is scheduled for the Sydney Town Hall on September 6 and Melbourne Town Hall on September 9.

The flyer claims that Mao Zedong led the Chinese “democratic revolution to victory” and is “a national leader forever in the hearts of Chinese people and a hero in the eyes of people all over the world”.

It says the concert’s programs “will interpret the charming personality and heroism of Mao Zedong from a variety of angles”.

This concert serving overt Maoist politics proves to be too much for some Chinese migrants here. They blame Mao for the loss of tens of millions of Chinese lives in the successive political purges he led and the famine caused by his policies.

For them, it violates basic Australian values of multicultural democracy to pay tribute to a brutal tyrant like Mao and promote the violent political extremism represented by Maoism. The Embracing Australian Values Alliance, a loose organisation of Chinese migrants, has organised an online petition calling for the concert to be cancelled.

The concert credits the International Cultural Exchange Association (Australia) as the principal organiser and LB Homes Group as the principal sponsor. The International Cultural Exchange Association is headed by Yuan Ye, who was a musician before migrating to Australia. The boss of LB Homes Group is Peter Zhu, a property developer of Chinese migrant background.

Various organisations within local Chinese communities play a minor role in sponsoring or participating in this concert. Some are media companies, such as Australia Oriental Media Group and Australia China Media Group, which are directly involved in the “grand external propaganda strategy”, a multibillion-dollar global media expansion put into operation by the Chinese government in 2009.

Others are political organisations, such as the Federation of Australian Chinese Associations, which has been very active in supporting the Chinese government.

Purely commercial entities and native place associations are also sponsoring the event, such as Sankofa Funds Management, Shanghai Tiantong Group and the Native Place Association of North-East China.

It must be pointed out that the community of overseas Chinese patriotic leaders and associations in Australia is not free from internal rivalry. Absent from the list of those involved with the concert are the Australian Council for the Promotion of Peaceful Reunification of China (the leading Chinese patriotic association here backed by the Chinese government) and the China Star Troupe, the art and culture agency organised by the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office of the Chinese State Council for the coordination and integration of the overseas Chinese cultural resources in Australia.

Some delegates will also travel from Beijing, Hunan, Guangdong and Shanxi to Sydney and Melbourne to participate in the event. The organisations they represent include the Mao Clan Exchange Association and the Mao Clan Cultural Corporation, which are connected to Mao’s offspring.

Performers will be drawn from local performing arts groups of the Chinese communities, particularly the ICEAAI Art Group, which is an arm of the International Cultural Exchange Association (Australia). Among Chinese migrants here are many professional or amateur performing artists who specialise in Maoist songs and dances learned and practised during their young age.

Participants swim past a portrait of Chairman Mao in the Xiangliang river in 2015. China Stringer Network

Back in China, a Maoist revival is under way. Not only does the current leadership in China make use of Mao to boost its political and ideological legitimacy, but Mao, rather ironically as he was a sworn enemy of capitalism, has also been used by entrepreneurs for commercial purpose. Mao has been deified as a cult object and his image commercialised for profit.

Australia is proud of its commitment to free speech, tolerance and cultural diversity. However, should intolerance be tolerated? Should lies about Mao and promotion of Maoism, which denies freedom of speech, be allowed as a legitimate part of free speech?

Given that to many Australians, Mao or Maoism is a symbol of violence, dictatorship, intolerance, political persecution and cultural repression, it may not be appropriate for the concert to be held in such prime venues in Australia.

Clinton's Spy Ring/

The Arrests Are Now Beginning....Yay! 

State Department Official Supplied Information to Chinese Intelligence for Cash

Office manager who held top secret clearance concealed ties, misled FBI

BY: Bill Gertz  
March 29, 2017 6:25 pm

The FBI has arrested a State Department official who is charged with concealing extensive contacts with China's intelligence service.

Candace Marie Claiborne, an office management specialist who held a top-secret security clearance, faces charges of obstructing an FBI probe and making false statements about years-long contacts with two Chinese intelligence agents.

Claiborne, 60, worked for the State Department since 1999 and was posted at the headquarters in Washington, as well as U.S. diplomatic posts in Beijing and Shanghai, along with posts in Baghdad and Khartoum, Sudan.

A criminal complaint in the case said she conspired with two Chinese intelligence agents working for the Shanghai State Security Bureau. She also worked with a fourth person who is a male U.S. citizen and relative of Claiborne's who was not identified by name but labeled "Co-conspirator A" in court papers.

The case is one of the first Chinese espionage-related operations involving a U.S. citizen to surface in nearly 10 years.

Other recent illegal intelligence activity by the Chinese government mainly has involved illicit acquisition of U.S. technology.

Disclosure of the Chinese intelligence operation targeting a State Department official with access to secrets comes a week before President Trump is set to meet China's leader Xi Jinping in Florida.

U.S.-China relations remain strained over Chinese hacking of U.S. government and private sector computers and China's maritime claims to control areas of the South China Sea and East China Sea.

The charges against Claiborne were filed in federal court in Washington, D.C.

Claiborne pleaded not guilty on Wednesday during a hearing before Magistrate Judge Robin M. Meriweather. A preliminary hearing in the case is scheduled for April 18.

If convicted, Claiborne faces a maximum of 20 years in prison for obstruction of justice and five years in prison for making false statements to the FBI.

The FBI counterintelligence investigation revealed that Claiborne was coopted into working with Chinese intelligence beginning around 2010 in exchange for cash and gifts.

Claiborne was first posted to the U.S. Embassy in Beijing in 1999. She remained there until June 2003 when she moved to Shanghai.

The person identified as "Co-conspirator A" lived with Claiborne when she was posted to Shanghai.

After a stint in Baghdad, Claiborne returned to the U.S. Embassy in Beijing in November 2009 and remained there until 2012.

The complaint states that Claiborne received a task from one of the Chinese intelligence agents in May 2011 and failed to report it as required under security rules.

The task came a month after the Chinese spy wired $2,500 to Claiborne's bank account in the United States.

The agent sought information from Claiborne on "internal United States government positions on matters of U.S.-Sino relations," specifically the U.S.-China Strategic Economic Dialogue, high-level U.S.-China talks launched by the Obama administration, the complaint said.

Chinese intelligence also sought information from Claiborne on what pressure the U.S. government planned to put on China and the "internal attitudes" of senior U.S. officials, according to the complaint.

Claiborne held meetings with the Chinese agents and used a Chinese social media application to communicate covertly with the agents.

"Claiborne appeared motivated by the profitable nature of her information-sharing relationship with the [People's Republic of China intelligence service] agents," the complaint says, adding that her journal indicated she could make $20,000 a year working for the spy service.

The FBI alleges Claiborne received gifts and benefits worth tens of thousands of dollars from the Chinese.

Claiborne supported the unidentified co-conspirator by paying college tuition for the person in China.

The complaint quotes Claiborne, apparently from surveillance, as telling Co-conspirator A that she was concerned about the risks of illegally working with Chinese intelligence.

"I really don't want my neck or your neck in a noose regarding another party/person that has made this possible for you," she was quoted as saying, apparently from an intercepted email.

Claiborne did not disclose the contacts with Chinese intelligence during her five-year security clearance renewal and misled State Department security and FBI officials.

Some time around 2014, an FBI undercover agent posing as a Chinese intelligence officer contacted Claiborne and told her that the Ministry of State Security, China's civilian spy service, considered her one of the agency's "highest regarded" friends.

Among the gifts and benefits she received between 2010 and 2014 were thousands of dollars in cash, jewelry, slippers, meals, an Apple computer, and travel expenses.

A search of Claiborne's journal in 2015 revealed the contacts with Chinese intelligence and the payments.

Both Claiborne and Co-conspirator A were questioned and searched by Customs and Border Protection agents after returning from China, searches that raised suspicions they were under surveillance by U.S. authorities.

The FBI questioned Claiborne in August 2016 when she denied having any foreign government contacts while in China and also made other statements that led to the false statement charges.

In January, an ethnically Chinese FBI undercover agent talked to Claiborne while posing as a Chinese spy.

On Tuesday, she returned to the FBI office in Washington and acknowledged the relationship with the two Chinese intelligence officers, the complaint says. "Claiborne admitted to passing information to [the two Chinese agents], both orally and in writing but insisted she always provided unclassified information," the complaint said.

"Candace Claiborne is accused of violating her oath of office as a State Department employee, who was entrusted with Top Secret information when she purposefully misled federal investigators about her significant and repeated interactions with foreign contacts," said Andrew W. Vale, assistant FBI director of the Washington Field Office.

"The FBI will continue to investigate individuals who, though required by law, fail to report foreign contacts, which is a key indicator of potential insider threats posed by those in positions of public trust," he said in a statement.

Added Mary B. McCord, acting assistant attorney general for national security: "Candace Marie Claiborne is a U.S. State Department employee who possesses a Top Secret security clearance and allegedly failed to report her contacts with Chinese foreign intelligence agents who provided her with thousands of dollars of gifts and benefits.

"Claiborne used her position and her access to sensitive diplomatic data for personal profit," she added.