'How do I spend the rest of my life without my daughter?'

For more than four months, Ronggao Zhang has walked to his missing daughter's apartment almost every day. At first, he stood outside, hoping she would show up one afternoon. But even after he was told she'd been kidnapped and was presumed dead, he's continued his routine.

"It brings peace and comfort to my heart," Zhang explained in Mandarin, through a translator.

This photo provided by her family shows Yingying Zhang. The 26-year-old visiting scholar at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, disappeared June 9, 2017. A former graduate student has been charged with kidnapping and killing her. Zhang's body has not been found. (Family Photo via AP)

His daughter, Yingying Zhang (ying ying zahng), a 26-year-old visiting scholar at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, disappeared June 9 on her way to sign an apartment lease. A former graduate student has been charged with kidnapping and killing her. Zhang's body has not been found.

A few days ago, Zhang's father made a final visit to the Orchard Downs apartments with his wife, 24-year-old son and daughter's boyfriend as they prepared to return to China. They arrived here after Zhang vanished, hopeful in the beginning that she'd be found alive. After authorities relayed the grim news, they decided to stay until her remains were found so they could take her home for a proper burial, in accordance with Chinese customs.

Now they plan to leave Sunday, reluctantly, without her. Zhang's mother is in fragile health — she broke down at the start of a recent court hearing — and there's no way of knowing when this cruel mystery will be solved. Each day they wait, in agony.

"We don't know where she is, and I don't know how to spend the rest of my life without my daughter," said Lifeng Ye, Zhang's mother, her face tear-stained and voice trembling as she spoke through a translator. "I can't really sleep well at night. ... I often dream of my daughter, and she's right there with me. I want to ask the mother of the suspect, please talk to her son and ask him what he did to my daughter. Where is she now? I want to know the answer."

This 2016 selfie photo provided by her family shows Yingying Zhang in a cap and gown for her graduate degree in environmental engineering from Peking University Shenzhen Graduate School. She chose the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for its highly regarded agriculture program. Zhang had been doing research on crop photosynthesis and was to begin her doctoral work in September 2017. (Family Photo via AP)

Authorities have not said how Zhang died. Brendt Christensen, 28, was charged in July with abduction and then last month accused in a superseding indictment of kidnapping resulting in death "in an especially heinous, cruel or depraved manner, in that it involved torture or serious physical abuse to the victim." That carries the possibility of the death penalty. Christensen's lawyer declined comment.

Federal prosecutors claim that Zhang, who arrived on campus in April, had missed a bus and worried she was late to sign an apartment lease when Christensen lured her into his car. Surveillance video showed her getting into the front seat of a black Saturn Astra the FBI alleges was cleaned in a way to conceal evidence.

Audio surveillance captured Christensen talking about how he abducted Zhang and brought her back to his apartment, where she "fought and resisted" while he held her against her will, according to prosecutors. They contend he also talked about who makes an "ideal victim," but prosecutors would not identify whom Christensen was speaking with or the source of those conversations.

A federal complaint disclosed that Christensen used his phone in April to visit a fetish networking site online, viewing threads titled "perfect abduction fantasy" and "planning a kidnapping." Christensen, who earlier this year earned a master's degree in physics, appeared at a campus vigil for Zhang in June before he was arrested.

Zhang's disappearance has rippled far beyond this quiet central Illinois community, generating headlines and discussion in Chinese newspapers and social media sites about the American justice system, the capabilities of law enforcement, and whether scholars who study in the U.S. are safe.

Ronggao Zhang, left, and Lifeng Ye, display a photo them with their missing daughter, Yingying Zhang, in Urbana, Ind., Wednesday, Nov. 1, 2017. They had hoped to stay in the United States until the remains of their daughter were found. But after months of agony, they are ready to return to China, where they will wait for answers half a world away. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy)

Some 5,600 Chinese students attend the university here — more than any other college in the nation. The Urbana-Champaign area typically has no more than a few homicides a year.

Studying in America was a longtime dream for Zhang and "she loved her stay here," said her boyfriend, Xiaolin Hou, who was in touch with her every day via WeChat, a popular social network in China.

She chose Illinois for its highly regarded agriculture program. Zhang had been doing research on crop photosynthesis. She was to begin her doctoral work in September after having earned a graduate degree in environmental engineering from the prestigious Peking University Shenzhen Graduate School.

"She was very tough, strong, never afraid of hard work," her mother said, recalling how she was at the top of her class ever since she was a little girl. Zhang was a calming influence, too, when her parents expressed concern about her safety in America. "She always told me, 'Mom, don't worry about me. There are Chinese here, Americans here. But everyone is very nice here.'"

Zhang was a devoted daughter. At the same time every Saturday, she'd call her parents in Nanping, China. As a graduate research student, she used her meager savings to buy her family a cellphone, an air conditioner and a microwave oven. She planned to become a university professor and help support her father, a factory worker, and mother, a homemaker.

"She never hesitated, even for a moment, when others needed help," said her boyfriend, who put his doctoral studies on hold to join Zhang's family here. He said her selflessness was what attracted him to Zhang when they met in their first year in college. She also knew how to have fun, playing guitar and singing lead in a band called "Cute Horse."

Xiaolin Hou, foreground, the boyfriend Yingying Zhang, a missing University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign student, talks about her disappearance, accompanied by her parents, Lifeng Ye, left, Ronggao Zhang, and her brother, Xinyang Zhang, in Urbana, Ind., Wednesday, Nov. 1, 2017. Studying in America was a longtime dream for Yingying and “she loved her stay here,” said Hou, who was in touch with her every day via WeChat, a popular social network in China. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy)

Hou and family members have met with the FBI, police and prosecutors, but they're frustrated by the slow pace of justice, said Zhidong Wang, a Chicago lawyer who has been helping them. He said he's explained that even though authorities have a suspect, Christensen's constitutional rights protect him from being forced to reveal anything that would hurt his defense.

Christensen's lawyers recently sought a delay in the trial until next October, saying they needed to check into several purported sightings of Zhang and reports of suspicious people around her apartment before she disappeared.

Zhang's father said the loss of his daughter has warped his sense of time: "Every day is like a year."

Hou, Zhang's boyfriend of eight years, has struggled, too. Though they didn't have marriage plans, he said, "In my heart, she is my wife for all time."

When authorities provided scanned pages of Zhang's diary to the family, Hou said it hurt too much to read them thoroughly. She wrote regularly of long-term and short-term goals and meticulously detailed how she organized her day — 20 minutes for breakfast, 20 minutes for jogging.

This photo provided by her family shows Yingying Zhang at the Summer Palace in Beijing. The 26-year-old visiting scholar at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, disappeared June 9, 2017. A former graduate student has been charged with kidnapping and killing her. Zhang's body has not been found. (Family Photo via AP)

On June 1, her last entry, Zhang was a bit more philosophical.

"Life," she wrote, "is too short to be ordinary."

Hou said it will be hard to leave and wait from thousands of miles away to bring Zhang home.

"We don't know how much longer this journey is going to be," he said. "We just feel hopeless."

ZÁRATE, Argentina (AP) — The vast field of over 5,800 electric and hybrid vehicles gleamed on the cargo deck of the BYD Changzhou, an Chinese container vessel unloading Wednesday at a river port in eastern Argentina.

In other places, such a scene would not be noteworthy. Chinese automaker BYD has sped up its exports and undercut rivals the world over, alarming Washington, upsetting Western and Japanese auto giants and unnerving local industries across Southeast Asia, Africa and Latin America.

But the sight of so many new Chinese EVs gliding onto a muddy river bank in Buenos Aires province was unprecedented for Argentina, its crisis-stricken economy dominated for years by a left-wing populist movement that protected local industry with stiff tariffs and import restrictions.

“For decades people in Argentina had this vision that everything here must be manufactured here," said Claudio Damiano, a professor in the Institute of Transportation at Argentina’s National University of San Martin. “The boat has a symbolic value as the first step for BYD. Everyone’s wondering how far it will go.”

The shipment also came in stark contrast to the news in Brussels, where on Wednesday European Union lawmakers voted to delay ratification of a landmark free trade deal with the Mercosur group of South American countries, including Argentina, which promises to tear down trade barriers for European industrial imports and supercharge consumption of German EVs.

“For the Europeans, there's just no possibility of competing with the Chinese,” Damiano said.

Argentina became one of the region’s most closed economies under Kirchnerism — the movement formed by ex-President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and her late husband, former President Néstor Kirchner, which championed the rights of the downtrodden, defaulted on sovereign debt and disdained global trade as a destructive force.

A chronically depreciating peso and sky-high taxes constrained consumer choice, compelling well-heeled Argentines to smuggle iPhones and Zara hauls into the country when returning from vacations abroad.

Fed up with cycles of economic crisis, Argentines vaulted radical libertarian President Javier Milei to power in 2023. He railed against Kirchnerism, vowed to destroy the state and praised U.S. President Donald Trump as an ideological soulmate.

For the last two years, Milei has has done the exact opposite of his most powerful ally in Washington.

While Trump has waged trade wars, Milei has flung open Argentina’s doors to imports, slashed trade barriers, unwound customs red tape and shored up the local currency to make foreign goods more affordable.

Last year Argentina logged a record 30% increase in imports compared to the year before — much of it in the form of $3 milk frothers and $10 dresses piling up on Argentines' doorsteps from Asian online retailers such as Temu and Shein.

Now Chinese automakers — once choked by 35% levies on imports — are seizing on a new measure to allow 50,000 electric and hybrid cars into the country this year tariff-free. The first shipment arrived Monday at Zárate Port after a 23-day voyage from Singapore.

Telling business and political leaders Wednesday at the World Economic Forum in Davos that that his drastic deregulation measures “allow us to have a more dynamically efficient economy,” Milei declared: “This is MAGA, ‘Make Argentina Great Again.

Milei and Trump share a contempt for perceived “wokeness,” a resentment of multilateral institutions like the United Nations, a denial of climate change and a zeal for massive budget cuts.

The ideological bond has paid dividends for Milei: Argentina is a rare place in the region where Trump has wielded the might of the U.S. to help an ally rather than enforce demands with military threats, as he has in Colombia and Mexico. Last year he offered Milei a $20 billion credit swap to boost his friend's chances in a crucial midterm election.

Yet at Davos, the leaders' differences were on display. Milei delivered his anti-interventionist, libertarian interpretation of MAGA shortly after Trump laid out his own vision for making America great: demanding control of Greenland and threatening allies with tariffs and other consequences if they don’t fall in line.

For all of Trump's support, China has perhaps benefited most from Milei's free-market drive.

Chinese imports to Argentina surged over 57% last year compared to the year before. Chinese investment poured into Argentina's energy and mining sectors.

“Argentina has rejoined the world," government spokesperson Javier Lanari said of Monday's Chinese car shipment. “Very soon, the Cuban-made vehicles left to us by Kirchnerism will be part of a sad and dark past.”

BYD and similar Chinese cars have already taken the streets of Latin America by storm, drawing controversy and backlash from Mexico City to Rio de Janeiro.

Now the brands are best positioned to reap the rewards of Milei’s zero-tariff quota for EVs, which applies only to cars under $16,000, experts say.

“Chinese manufacturers have the technology and the ability to meet the price limits set by the government," said Andrés Civetta, an economist specializing in the auto sector at the Argentine consulting firm Abeceb. “China has won the race."

Western car manufacturers in Argentina have raised alarms about unfair competition, and opposition lawmakers have criticized officials on the Chinese EV tariff exemption, with the comptroller general posting on social media, “Trump is right: China must be stopped.”

But Argentina is still far behind its neighbors in developing its EV industry, said Pablo Naya, the creator of Sero Electric, Argentina's only domestic electric car manufacturer.

The country's aging power grid is nowhere near ready for a wave of electric cars to strain it en masse, he said. And if something goes wrong with a Chinese EV on the road, there are currently no dealers' service centers able to undertake internal repairs.

“Honestly, we’re not worried,” Naya said.

But if or when Argentine infrastructure and consumer aspirations catch up to Chinese supply, it will be a different story.

“Then that would get complicated for us,” he said from the Sero Electric factory in the Buenos Aires suburb of Castelar. “We'd have a problem."

Ignacio Palacios works on a Sero Electric microcar at its factory in Castelar, Argentina, Wednesday, Jan. 21, 2026. (AP Photo/Victor R. Caivano)

Hybrid and electric vehicles shipped from China are unloaded from the BYD Changzhou car carrier docked at Terminal Zarate, in Argentina's Buenos Aires province, Tuesday, Jan. 20, 2026. (AP Photo/Victor R. Caivano)

BYD hybrid and electric vehicles shipped from China are parked at Terminal Zarate in Argentina's Buenos Aires province, Tuesday, Jan. 20, 2026. (AP Photo/Victor R. Caivano)

Pablo Naya, the owner of Sero Electric, poses next to one of the company's electric microcars at its factory in Castelar, Argentina, Wednesday, Jan. 21, 2026. (AP Photo/Victor R. Caivano)

The BYD Changzhou car carrier is docked at Terminal Zarate in the Buenos Aires province of Argentina, Tuesday, Jan. 20, 2026, where hybrid and electric vehicles shipped from China are parked next to the ship. (AP Photo/Victor R. Caivano)