This year has had no shortage of alarming Chinese espionage efforts targeting the United States that were uncovered by government officials.

2025 saw the conviction of a former active-duty military member accused of selling Navy secrets to Chinese intelligence, the arrests of Chinese nationals accused of trying to recruit active-duty service members as intelligence assets and smuggle dangerous toxins into the United States, the disruption of a Chinese “Hacker-for-Hire” ecosystem, and more.

“President Trump is not afraid of the Chinese,” Gatestone Institute senior Fellow Gordon Chang said on Fox Business’ “Mornings with Maria” following a new arms sale to Taiwan. However, Chang lamented that Trump was ambivalent to the “information war” with China, noting that “the Chinese are able to tar him and tell the rest of the world that Trump is afraid of the Chinese … but when you look at the reality, President Trump is going after China across the board,” Chang argued.

EX-TRUMP DHS OFFICIAL SOUNDS ALARM OVER NATIONAL SECURITY THREAT WITHIN CRITICAL US INDUSTRY

One of the alarming Chinese espionage headlines to hit the news this year was an effort by several Chinese nationals to smuggle a pathogen described by the government as a “potential agroterrorism weapon” into the United States in 2024. A complaint against the suspects was unsealed by federal officials this year, leading the case to make headlines nationwide. 

One of those individuals complicit in the case, Yunqing Jian, 33, a citizen of the People’s Republic of China and a researcher employed at the University of Michigan, was allegedly receiving money from the Chinese government for her work on the pathogen the suspects were trying to smuggle. Meanwhile, her boyfriend, who worked at a Chinese university conducting research on that same pathogen, initially lied but then admitted to smuggling it through the Detroit airport so it could be taken to the University of Michigan laboratory where his girlfriend worked.

Jian eventually pleaded guilty. She was later sentenced to time served and then deported back to China. Her boyfriend was immediately deported to China when he was caught at the Detroit airport trying to bring the toxin into the United States.  

Just this month, a separate Chinese researcher from Indiana University was also accused by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) of trying to smuggle a dangerous toxin into the country, this time Escherichia coli (E. coli). The FBI identified the smuggling suspect as post-doctoral researcher Youhuang Xiang, who also allegedly made false statements to law enforcement.

FCC, STATE AGS TO JOIN FORCES IN CRACKDOWN ON CHINA-LINKED COMMUNICATIONS TECHNOLOGY

Federal officials have disrupted Chinese intelligence efforts to recruit assets in the United States this year as well, according to Justice Department communications.

In July, federal officials disrupted a “Clandestine PRC Ministry of State Security Intelligence Network” that was operating in the United States and was attempting to bribe active-duty soldiers with thousands in cash to work for them as assets. 

The following month, in a separate case, a federal jury convicted former Navy sailor, Jinchao Wei, also known as Patrick Wei, who was caught trying to sell military secrets to a Chinese intelligence officer for $12,000.

Hacking was a big part of Chinese espionage efforts in 2025 too. 

A major Chinese-linked hacking threat referred to as “Salt Typhoon” was reported this year to have launched an attack compromising at least 200 American companies as part of its broader efforts that have included gaining access to law enforcement wiretapping mechanisms and information on members of Congress, according to the top cyber chief at the FBI. Critical infrastructure manufacturers like AT&T, Verizon, Charter Communications, and others have reportedly been exposed by the group, which was first uncovered publicly in 2024 but whose efforts have dated back several years.

Earlier this year, in March, the Department of Justice also announced that federal officials had disrupted a “Hacker-for-Hire Ecosystem” operating out of China at the direction of Chinese intelligence officers as well. These malicious actors worked for private companies and as contractors in China, which was intended to hack and steal information in a way that would obscure the Chinese government’s involvement, the DOJ said.

China’s increasing acquisition of farmland in the United States has been of growing concern during 2025 as well, with Chinese-linked entities buying up land near military bases, including a trailer park near Missouri’s Whiteman Air Force Base. 

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP

“From smuggling crop-killing pathogens and E. Coli into the United States, to conspicuously purchasing a trailer park that shares a fence with America’s entire B-2 bomber fleet and selling ‘green’ tech devices that spread kill switches across our electrical grid, Communist China seeks to harm the American homeland,” Michael Lucci, a China-hawk and the founder of State Armor Action, a conservative group with a mission to develop and enact state-level solutions to global security threats such as those emanating from China.

“Furthermore, these events are just the tip of the iceberg,” Lucci continued. “Lawmakers across the country must accelerate action to shield Americans from CCP influence, espionage, and sabotage. Communist China treats the United States as an enemy, and it is past time we recognize the CCP party-state always and everywhere chooses conflict with the United States.”

Fox News Digital’s Rachel Wolf contributed to this report.

What comes next is a mystery, but I’d like to share a note of appreciation as 2025 fades into history.

If you came to Greater Los Angeles from Mexico, by way of Calexico, Feliz Navidad.

If you once lived in Syria, and settled in Hesperia, welcome.

If you were born in what once was Bombay, but raised a family in L.A., happy new year.

I’m spreading a bit of holiday cheer because for immigrants, on the whole, this has been a horrible year.

Under federal orders in 2025, Los Angeles and other cities have been invaded and workplaces raided.

Immigrants have been chased, protesters maced.

Livelihoods have been aborted, loved ones deported.

With all the put-downs and name-calling by the man at the top, you’d never guess his mother was an immigrant and his three wives have included two immigrants.

President Trump referred to Somalis as garbage, and he wondered why the U.S. can’t bring in more people from Scandinavia and fewer from “filthy, dirty and disgusting” countries.

Not to be outdone, Homeland Security chief Kristi Noem proposed a travel ban on countries that are “flooding our nation with killers, leeches and entitlement junkies.”

The president’s shtick is to rail mostly against those who are in the country without legal standing and particularly those with criminal records. But his tone and language don’t always make such distinctions.

The point is to divide, lay blame and raise suspicion, which is why legal residents — including Pasadena Mayor Victor Gordo — have told me they carry their passports at all times.

In fact, thousands of people with legal status have been booted out of the country, and millions more are at risk of the same fate.

In a more evolved political culture, it would be simpler to stipulate that there are costs and benefits to immigration, that it’s human nature to flee hardship in pursuit of better opportunities wherever they might be, and that it’s possible to enact laws that serve the needs of immigrants and the industries that rely on them.

But 2025 was the year in which the nation was led in another direction, and it was the year in which it became ever more comforting and even liberating to call California home.

The state is a deeply flawed enterprise, with its staggering gaps in wealth and income, its homelessness catastrophe, housing affordability crisis and racial divides. And California is not politically monolithic, no matter how blue. It’s got millions of Trump supporters, many of whom applauded the roundups.

But there’s an understanding, even in largely conservative regions, that immigrants with papers and without are a crucial part of the muscle and brainpower that help drive the world’s fourth-largest economy.

That’s why some of the state’s Republican lawmakers asked Trump to back off when he first sent masked posses on roundups, stifling the construction, agriculture and hospitality sectors of the economy.

When the raids began, I called a gardener I had written about years ago after he was shot in the chest during a robbery attempt. He had insisted on leaving the hospital emergency room and going back to work immediately, with the bullet still embedded in his chest. A client had hired him to complete a landscaping job by Christmas, as a present to his wife, and the gardener was determined to deliver.

When I checked in with the gardener in June, he told me he was lying low because even though he has a work permit, he didn’t feel safe because Trump had vowed to end temporary protected status for some immigrants.

“People look Latino, and they get arrested,” he told me.

He said his daughter, whom I’d met two decades ago when I delivered $2,000 donated to the family by readers, was going to demonstrate in his name. I met up with her at the “No Kings” rally in El Segundo, where she told me why she wanted to protest:

“To show my face for those who can’t speak and to say we’re not all criminals, we’re all sticking together, we have each other’s backs,” she said.

Mass deportations would rip a $275-million hole in the state’s economy, critically affecting agriculture and healthcare among other industries, according to a report from UC Merced and the Bay Area Council Economic Institute.

“Deportations tend to raise unemployment among U.S.-born and documented workers through reduced consumption and disruptions in complementary occupations,” says a UCLA Anderson report.

Californians understand these realities because they’re not hypothetical or theoretical — they’re a part of daily life and commerce. Nearly three-quarters of the state’s residents believe that immigrants benefit California “because of their hard work and job skills,” says the Public Policy Institute of California.

I’m a California native whose grandparents were from Spain and Italy, but the state has changed dramatically in my lifetime, and I don’t think I ever really saw it clearly or understood it until I was asked in 2009 to address the freshman convocation at Cal State Northridge. The demographics were similar to today’s — more than half Latino, 1 in 5 white, 10% Asian and 5% Black. And roughly two-thirds were first-generation college students.

I looked out on thousands of young people about to find their way and make their mark, and the students were flanked by a sprinkling of proud parents and grandparents, many of whose stories of sacrifice and yearning began in other countries.

That is part of the lifeblood of the state’s culture, cuisine, commerce and sense of possibility, and those students are now our teachers, nurses, physicians, engineers, entrepreneurs and tech whizzes.

If you left Taipei and settled in Monterey, said goodbye to Dubai and packed up for Ojai, traded Havana for Fontana or Morelia for Visalia, thank you.

And happy new year.

steve.lopez@latimes.com

Palau has struck a deal with the U.S. to accept up to 75 deportees from the U.S. in exchange for $7.5 million in foreign aid.

The agreement will allow “third-country nationals” who have never been charged with a crime to live and work in the Pacific nation, which has a population of about 18,000 people, according to announcements Wednesday from President Surangel Whipps Jr.’s office and the U.S. Embassy in Koror.

“The United States deeply appreciates Palau’s cooperation in enforcing U.S. immigration laws, which remains a top priority for the Trump administration,” the U.S. Embassy in Koror said in a statement. “In this regard, the United States granted $7.5 million to address the needs of relevant Palau public services.”

HOW A TINY AFRICAN ABSOLUTE MONARCHY CAN PLAY A ‘VITAL ROLE’ IN US NATIONAL SECURITY: EXPERT

The agreement was formalized through a memorandum of understanding, with Palau citing labor shortages as a key motivation.

“Palau and the United States signed a memorandum of understanding allowing up to 75 third country nationals, who have never been charged with a crime, to live and work in Palau, helping address local labor shortages in needed occupations,” Whipps’ office said in a statement.

EXCLUSIVE: 17,500 ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS ARRESTED UNDER LAKEN RILEY ACT IN TRUMP’S SECOND TERM

The Trump administration will also provide $6 million to support Palau’s struggling civil service pension plan system and $2 million for new law enforcement initiatives, according to Whipps’ office.

Palau, a former filming location for the long-running reality TV series “Survivor,” has long been a recipient of U.S. support and relies heavily on foreign aid, according to the New York Post.

CROCKETT ACCUSES TRUMP ADMINISTRATION OF DISHONESTY OVER BORDER ENCOUNTER NUMBERS

Under a deal brokered during the Biden administration, Washington committed $889 million in aid over 20 years, according to the State Department.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP

As the Trump administration ramps up mass deportations, many countries have agreed to take illegal immigrants, including Uganda, Rwanda, Eswatini, South Sudan, Costa Rica, Panama and El Salvador.

Fox News Digital’s Charles Creitz contributed to this report.