Author Topic: US-China (& Japan, South China Sea-- Taiwan, Vietnam, Philippines, etc)  (Read 331013 times)

Crafty_Dog

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ccp

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Re: US-China (& Japan, South China Sea-- Vietnam, Philippines, etc)
« Reply #1151 on: December 10, 2020, 08:30:48 AM »
A Chinese run seaport on Jamaica ?

Biden ,  we Americans knew JFK, and you sir are NO JFK

we are so screwed

DougMacG

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DougMacG

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Re: Serious Read: China's grey war on Taiwan
« Reply #1155 on: December 12, 2020, 08:40:46 AM »
https://www.reuters.com/article/hongkong-taiwan-military/special-report-china-launches-gray-zone-warfare-to-subdue-taiwan-idUSL4N2IQ1QM

Yes.  Serious, worthwhile read.

Chinas is the world's biggest threat.  Taiwan is China's second target - with Hong Kong conquered.  [Didn't somebody once annex Austria?]

From the article:
"Under President Xi Jinping, China has accelerated the development of forces the PLA would need one day to conquer the island of 23 million - a mission that is the country’s top military priority, according to Chinese and Western analysts."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A first US response to the threat of China is to get Taiwan into the TPP, IMHO.  It is a correct move for so many reasons.  One, if you are Biden, it would prove you are not under their thumb.  If you don't prove that right out of the gate, they will walk all over you.  Nothing is more dangerous in the world than America showing weakness and every new administration has something to prove.  Best to do it without military action.  Two, Taiwan, its people and its economy deserve world recognition.  Three, the world standing up to the regime of China is good for the Chinese people who have no ability to do that on their own.  - Doug

https://www.piie.com/publications/piie-briefings/prospects-taiwans-participation-trans-pacific-partnership

https://asia.nikkei.com/Opinion/How-Biden-can-use-Taiwan-to-rattle-China

G M

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Re: Serious Read: China's grey war on Taiwan
« Reply #1156 on: December 12, 2020, 07:26:51 PM »
The PRC has Senile Joe by Hunter's short and curlies.

Imagine the honey-pot traps they got Hunter into when he was in the PRC.


https://www.reuters.com/article/hongkong-taiwan-military/special-report-china-launches-gray-zone-warfare-to-subdue-taiwan-idUSL4N2IQ1QM

Yes.  Serious, worthwhile read.

Chinas is the world's biggest threat.  Taiwan is China's second target - with Hong Kong conquered.  [Didn't somebody once annex Austria?]

From the article:
"Under President Xi Jinping, China has accelerated the development of forces the PLA would need one day to conquer the island of 23 million - a mission that is the country’s top military priority, according to Chinese and Western analysts."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A first US response to the threat of China is to get Taiwan into the TPP, IMHO.  It is a correct move for so many reasons.  One, if you are Biden, it would prove you are not under their thumb.  If you don't prove that right out of the gate, they will walk all over you.  Nothing is more dangerous in the world than America showing weakness and every new administration has something to prove.  Best to do it without military action.  Two, Taiwan, its people and its economy deserve world recognition.  Three, the world standing up to the regime of China is good for the Chinese people who have no ability to do that on their own.  - Doug

https://www.piie.com/publications/piie-briefings/prospects-taiwans-participation-trans-pacific-partnership

https://asia.nikkei.com/Opinion/How-Biden-can-use-Taiwan-to-rattle-China

DougMacG

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Taiwan buys US Communications security to thwart China cyber attacks
« Reply #1157 on: December 14, 2020, 06:05:57 AM »
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3113692/taiwans-purchase-us-mobile-communication-system-could-help

Taiwan’s purchase of US mobile communication system could help counter Chinese cyberattack
The Field Information Communications System is as significant as other, more high-profile weapons Washington has sold to Taipei


Crafty_Dog

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What Obama-Machurian Joe left President Trump.
« Reply #1159 on: December 15, 2020, 07:29:41 PM »
China Arms Its Great Wall of Sand
New Spratly bases are equipped to take on a superpower adversary.
Dec. 15, 2016 7:28 p.m. ET
14 COMMENTS

For a man who stood at the White House in September 2015 and promised not to militarize the South China Sea, Xi Jinping is sure doing a lot of militarizing. Satellite photos released Thursday indicate China has deployed powerful antiaircraft and antimissile systems to all seven of its new artificial islands in the Spratly archipelago, along shipping lanes that carry $5 trillion in trade a year. This is a “massive military complex,” as Donald Trump noted recently, and it’s worth detailing how massive.

Three years ago these were only specks of land, some submerged at high tide, but China has since built 3,000 acres of territory. (The flight deck of the newest U.S. aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald Ford, is only 4.5 acres.) This is more space, with more potential military value, than China would need simply to face down its smaller neighbors—suggesting that, as U.S. Navy Commander Thomas Shugart wrote recently, “China perhaps has a larger foe in mind.”

In this satellite image released on Dec. 13, CSIS Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative identifies what appear to be antiaircraft guns and what are likely to be close-in weapons systems on the artificial island Johnson Reef in the South China Sea. ENLARGE

In this satellite image released on Dec. 13, CSIS Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative identifies what appear to be antiaircraft guns and what are likely to be close-in weapons systems on the artificial island Johnson Reef in the South China Sea. Photo: CSIS Asia Maritime Transparency

Initiative/DigitalGlobe/Reuters

As Commander Shugart wrote at the website War on the Rocks, three of China’s artificial islands are comparable in size to typical fighter bases in mainland China, with facilities that could be large enough for an entire fighter division of 17,000 personnel. Subi Reef now has a harbor bigger than Hawaii’s Pearl Harbor, and the aptly named Mischief Reef has a land perimeter nearly equal to Washington, D.C.’s.
That’s enough space to deploy, hide and defend mobile missiles that would threaten targets across the South China Sea, the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore and beyond. The boost to China’s already formidable “anti-access/area-denial” capabilities will be substantial. If Beijing also deploys floating nuclear-power plants to the area, as it intends, then its military facilities would be even more likely to become permanent fixtures on the East Asian map.

So it’s significant that, as the Center for Strategic and International Studies said in releasing its satellite images, Beijing has equipped its artificial islands with antiaircraft guns, targeting radar for guiding missiles and other weapons, and close-in weapons systems for defending against cruise-missiles. “We did not know that they had systems this big and this advanced there,” said researcher Greg Poling. “It means that you are prepping for a future conflict.”

The Philippines expressed “serious concern” through a spokesman Thursday, but President Rodrigo Duterte remains in an appeasing mood toward China. Indonesia in a first joined this week with India in urging China to respect the international Law of the Sea. Vietnam has begun to harden its modest defenses on the Spratly features it controls. It deployed mobile rocket launchers in August, an understandable response that nonetheless raises the risk of accident or miscalculation.

All of this means Donald Trump will soon take office facing a daily risk of hostilities over islands that didn’t exist when President Obama was last sworn in. “We will not allow the shared domains to be closed down unilaterally—no matter how many bases are built on artificial features in the South China Sea,” U.S. Pacific Commander Admiral Harry Harris said in Australia on Wednesday.

Nearly two years ago Admiral Harris warned that China was building a “Great Wall of Sand” at sea. Here’s hoping Mr. Trump seeks his good counsel come January.

Crafty_Dog

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Crafty_Dog

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US deploys its export blacklist against China's top chipmaker
« Reply #1161 on: December 18, 2020, 02:07:16 PM »
The U.S. Deploys Its Export Blacklist Against China’s Top Chipmaker
4 MINS READ
Dec 18, 2020 | 21:32 GMT

HIGHLIGHTS

The United States’ move to cut off exports to China’s top chipmaker will impede the company’s manufacturing capabilities, while pushing Beijing to further prop up its domestic semiconductor industry. On Dec. 18, the U.S. Commerce Department announced it was adding over 60 companies, including China’s Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC), to its entity list, which will effectively bar these companies from accessing U.S. technology by increasing export controls. U.S. companies will now need a special license from the Commerce Department before exporting any products, services or technology to SMIC and the other newly blacklisted companies. Requests for such licenses will be subject to the presumption of denial. The jurisdiction of such controls also covers exports by other countries that use U.S. components and technology. ...

The United States’ move to cut off exports to China’s top chipmaker will impede the company’s manufacturing capabilities, while pushing Beijing to further prop up its domestic semiconductor industry. On Dec. 18, the U.S. Commerce Department announced it was adding over 60 companies, including China’s Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC), to its entity list, which will effectively bar these companies from accessing U.S. technology by increasing export controls.

U.S. companies will now need a special license from the Commerce Department before exporting any products, services or technology to SMIC and the other newly blacklisted companies. Requests for such licenses will be subject to the presumption of denial. The jurisdiction of such controls also covers exports by other countries that use U.S. components and technology.

On Dec. 3, the U.S. Pentagon also added SMIC to its list of Chinese military companies, which will restrict U.S. investment into the company beginning in November 2021.

Severe restrictions on Chinese firms like SMIC and Huawei will likely remain in place under U.S. President-elect Joe Biden, who will seek to maintain — and potentially even widen — his predecessor’s politically popular crackdown against Chinese tech. Aggressive action against China’s tech sector has become an increasingly bipartisan issue in recent years. The Biden administration may shift future action to focus less on specific Chinese companies and more on specific sectors or technologies. But it will be under significant political pressure to keep Huawei and SMIC on Washington’s export blacklist.

Huawei’s addition to the Commerce Department’s entity list in April 2019 took an immediate toll on its business, which has since been made worse by Washington’s move to expand the jurisdiction of the export controls earlier this year. 

In August, the Associated Press reported that Huawei would soon lose access to advanced smartphone chips, which only a few companies in the world manufacture.

On Sept. 15, Huawei stopped producing its top-of-the-line Kirin processors and AI chips after new U.S. export restrictions went into effect that barred its key customer, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TMSC), from purchasing Huawei products.

Since being added to Washington’s entity list, Huawei has had to lobby the U.S. government for some older generation chips to be sold for smartphones and other American businesses.

U.S. export controls may have a narrower impact on SMIC, as its business faces less international competition compared with Huawei. But it will still hit the SMIC’s expansion plans and damage China’s overall strategy to develop its indigenous semiconductor industry. SMIC is China’s largest and most capable semiconductor manufacturer. And while it remains behind technology-leading peers like Taiwan’s TSMC and South Korea’s Samsung, SMIC has been gaining ground in recent years. In October, SMIC announced it had taped out its first chip using its new N+1 “7 nm” process, putting it closer to its rivals. But it is unclear how long it will take for SMIC to transition to mass production of these chips, and doing so will likely require the use of imported machinery — specifically deep ultraviolet (DUV) lithography systems — that will now be all the harder to acquire, thanks to Washington’s new restrictions.

SMIC’s current medium- and long-term technology roadmap includes the use of more advanced extreme ultraviolet (EUV) systems, which are manufactured by the Dutch semiconductor company ASML. In 2019, SMIC purchased one of these systems, but its delivery has since been delayed by Dutch authorities and ASML amid U.S. pushback.

As the United States tries to block foreign-produced chips from entering China’s market,  the extent of the impact of U.S. export controls on SMIC’s technology roadmap will also be significant for Chinese consumers by robbing domestic tech companies of one of their only remaining avenues for evading U.S. restrictions.

China already has plenty of incentives to provide as much financial support to its tech companies, particularly in the semiconductor industry. But increasing U.S. pressure and the recent targeting of SMIC will only reinforce that push. China will, in turn, will take broader action regarding increasing funding for its semiconductor companies, while also pushing for them to outbid competitors like TSMC for engineering talent.

G M

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Trump rally in Taiwan
« Reply #1162 on: December 19, 2020, 05:04:57 PM »
https://gab.com/system/media_attachments/files/060/831/722/original/e705aea1af632737.mp4

The ROC (Taiwan) knows what happens if Xi's senile puppet is sworn in.


Crafty_Dog

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WSJ: How US misread Xi-- serious read
« Reply #1164 on: December 27, 2020, 05:19:42 AM »
How the U.S. Misread China’s Xi: Hoping for a Globalist, It Got an Autocrat
Early hopes that Xi Jinping would want closer integration with the U.S.-led global order have become one of the biggest strategic miscalculations of the post-Cold War era
President Xi inspecting troops last year in Beijing.
By Jeremy Page
Dec. 23, 2020 10:06 am ET




BEIJING—In the two years before Xi Jinping became China’s leader in 2012, U.S. officials tried to size him up through a series of face-to-face meetings.

During talks in China in 2011, Mr. Xi, then vice president, asked about civilian control of the U.S. military, shared his thoughts on uprisings in the Middle East and spoke, unprompted, about his father, a renowned revolutionary. When he visited the U.S. in 2012, he was relaxed and affable, chatting with students and posing for pictures with Magic Johnson at a Los Angeles Lakers basketball game.

The U.S. officials’ conclusion: Although Mr. Xi was far more confident and forthright than Hu Jintao, the stiff and scripted leader he would succeed, he likely shared his commitment to stable ties with Washington and closer integration with the U.S.-led global order. Some even hoped Mr. Xi would kick-start stalled economic reforms.

It was one of the biggest strategic miscalculations of the post-Cold War era.

In the eight subsequent years, Mr. Xi has pursued an expansive, hypernationalistic vision of China’s future, displaying a desire for control and a talent for political maneuvering. Drawing comparisons to Mao Zedong, he has crushed critics and potential rivals, revitalized the Communist Party and even scrapped presidential term limits so he can, if he chooses, rule for life.

Promising a “China Dream” of national renewal, he has mobilized China’s military to enforce territorial claims, forced up to a million Chinese Muslims into internment camps and curbed political freedoms in Hong Kong.

Now, with Covid-19 under control in China but still widespread across the U.S., he is promoting his self-styled, tech-enhanced update of Marxism as a superior alternative to free-market democracy—a “China solution” to global problems.

“It was clear he was not going to be a second Hu Jintao,” said Danny Russel, who as a senior Obama administration official attended several meetings with Mr. Xi, including in 2011 and 2012. “What I underestimated about Xi Jinping was his tolerance for risk.”


Mr. Xi’s swift reversal of more than three decades of apparent movement toward collective leadership and a less intrusive party has surprised both U.S. officials and much of the Chinese elite. In hindsight, though, the roots of his approach are visible in key episodes of his life.

They include his father’s purge from the top party leadership, his teenage years in a Chinese village, his induction into the military and his exposure to nationalist and “new left” undercurrents in the party elite.

Mr. Xi’s autocratic turn also was catalyzed by a 2012 political scandal that upset the balance of power among the party elite and emboldened advocates of stronger, centralized leadership. It gave Mr. Xi the justification he needed to sideline rivals, rebuild the party and revamp its ideology.


Today China follows a new political doctrine known as “Xi Jinping Thought,” which combines many attributes of different 20th-century authoritarians. It reasserts the party’s Leninist role as the dominant force in all areas, including private business. It revives Maoist methods of mass mobilization, uses digital surveillance to replicate Stalin’s totalitarian social controls and embraces a more muscular nationalism based on ethnicity that makes fewer allowances for minorities or residents of Taiwan and Hong Kong.

Above all, Xi Jinping Thought aims to grant Mr. Xi the legitimacy to remain in power and continue his quest to make China a rich, truly global power by 2049, the centenary of Mao’s victory.

Mr. Xi has been a popular leader, bolstered in part by positive coverage in state media. Under his leadership, China has posted robust economic growth and eradicated extreme poverty, as well as curbing Covid-19 within its borders. The nation’s growing international stature also has become a source of national pride.


“His goal is to make the whole world see China as a great power, and him as a key figure in making it great,” said Xiao Gongqin, a leading figure among scholars who advocate so-called enlightened autocracy in China. “At heart, he’s a nationalist.”

Mr. Xiao, based in Shanghai, counts himself a supporter. But like many in China’s elite, he said he worries Mr. Xi “lacks a spirit of compromise. That’s his shortcoming….And there is no mechanism to correct him.”

China’s government press office declined to comment, but arranged interviews with two professors at the Central Party School, the party’s top think tank and training academy.

Both said Mr. Xi hadn’t abandoned collective leadership, but declined to predict whether he would retire in 2022, when his current term is scheduled to end. They described Xi Jinping Thought as “21st-Century Marxism,” saying his political thinking was shaped, in part, by his experiences in his youth.

“When he was young, his life was a little tortuous, but these twists and turns made comrade Xi Jinping what he is today,” said Han Qingxiang, one of the professors, who has conducted a study session on Marxism for top leaders. “Only those who have suffered can achieve great things.”

Fall From Grace

Xi Jinping was deeply affected by his austere upbringing and the purge of his revolutionary father, Xi Zhongxun, from the top leadership in 1962.
One mistake many in China and abroad made about the new Chinese leader was hoping he would emulate his father, Xi Zhongxun, as a pioneer of economic reform and opponent of one-man rule after Mao’s death.

People who have spoken with Xi Jinping say he talks with pride about his father, who commanded Communist guerrillas in China’s northwest and became a vice premier after Mao’s 1949 victory.

What instead honed his political instincts, they say, were his austere upbringing and his family’s suffering after his father was purged from the leadership in 1962 and banished to central China for 13 years, mostly to work at a tractor factory, for supporting publication of a controversial book.


That set him apart from other leaders’ offspring, known as princelings, who in most cases endured less hardship. It also left him fearful of disorder, determined to clear his family’s name and distrustful of China’s elite.

Like many other princelings, Xi Jinping, who is now 67 years old, spent his earliest years in exclusive schools and housing compounds, where he was raised to believe he was one of China’s future leaders.

His mother lived and worked at the Party School, so he and three siblings were mostly cared for by their father. Xi Zhongxun was unusually strict and frugal, forcing his two sons to wear their elder sisters’ castoff clothes and shoes, and often lecturing them about his role in the revolution.

The father was prone to depression and bouts of violent rage, according to Joseph Torigian, an American University professor who is writing a book about Xi Zhongxun. “The standout characteristic of this family was a father who was exceptionally disciplinarian and brutal,” Mr. Torigian said.

The Xi family was denounced and shunned by many peers after Xi Zhongxun’s purge from the leadership in 1962. The abuse intensified after Mao launched his Cultural Revolution in 1966, unleashing Red Guard youths who assaulted and often killed teachers and other “class enemies.” Among those who died was Xi Jinping’s half sister.

Many princelings formed their own Red Guard unit. Xi Jinping, too young and tainted by his father to join, spent his time roaming the streets and reading books taken from deserted schools and libraries, including Charles de Gaulle’s memoirs and Richard Nixon’s autobiography, according to a family friend.

He rarely speaks of those years, but in interviews before taking power, he said they hardened his view of politics. He recalled denouncing his father, being jailed three times and having Red Guards threaten him with execution.

“People who have little contact with power, who are far from it, always see these things as mysterious and novel,” he said in 2000. “But what I see is not just the superficial things: the power, the flowers, the glory, the applause. I see the bullpens”—a reference to Red Guard detention houses—”and how people can blow hot and cold. I understand politics on a deeper level.”

Like his father, he maintained faith in the party, blaming his family’s ordeals on Mao’s security chief, according to people who know the family. At the same time, they say, he learned from the misfortunes of his father, who was rehabilitated in 1978 and helped establish China’s first Special Economic Zone to attract foreign investment, then was sidelined again in the late 1980s.


Beijing (1953-68)

Spends early years in exclusive schools

and leadership compounds.

1

Life of Xi Jinping on a map

Liangjiahe, Shaanxi (1968-75)

Does manual labor in the countryside.

2

Beijing (1975-82)

Studies at university and then works

for senior military official.

3

1

3

8

Beijing

Zhengding, Hebei (1982-85)

Begins local government career

in a pig-farming county.

4

Zhengding

4

2

Liangjiahe

Shanghai

7

Fujian (1985-2002)

Works in various government posts, ultimately as provincial governor.

5

CHINA

Zhejiang

6

Fujian

Zhejiang (2002-07)

Serves as provincial party chief.

6

5

Shanghai (2007)

Is briefly appointed as the city's party chief.

7

Beijing (2007-)

Returns to Beijing to join Politburo

and its Standing Committee.

8

500 miles

500 km

Source: staff reports

One conclusion Xi Jinping reached, these people say, was that politics is a winner-take-all contest. Another was that he should conceal his own views until he had real power.

Once he was in office, his controlling instincts and distrust of peers became clear as he moved away from consensus decision-making and targeted potential rivals in an anticorruption campaign. His desire for control trumped an early pledge to allow the market a “decisive role” in the economy.

“He reached a conclusion that unrestrained markets were in fact going to present a massive problem for long-term party control,” said Kevin Rudd, a former Australian prime minister who has met Mr. Xi several times, most recently in November 2019. “The party’s in his veins. He does not buy any argument, direct or indirect, about any form of peaceful transition to something else.”

Today, his father is lauded primarily for his unwavering loyalty to the party. His grave in northwest China is now part of a “patriotic education base” where officials often gather to renew their oaths to the party and bow before a statue of Xi Zhongxun. Carved in granite in front of the statue is a Mao quote: “The party’s interests come first.”


Resurrecting Mao

Despite his family’s suffering in the 1960s and 70s—including his own seven years of hard labor in a Chinese village—Xi Jinping has resurrected Mao Zedong as a source of legitimacy.

Mr. Xi was expected to have conflicted views of Mao, having learned to revere him but also having suffered because of him. The surprise has been the extent to which he has sought to resurrect Mao as a source of legitimacy for the party and himself.

In 1968, Mao tried to restore order by sending millions of young people into the countryside to be “educated.” That is how Mr. Xi, at age 15, wound up in Liangjiahe, a cluster of about three dozen homes, mostly traditional cave dwellings, 220 miles northeast of his father’s birthplace.

Conditions were brutal. Flea-ridden and often hungry, he spent much of the next seven years building wells, digging fields and herding sheep. There was no school.

Many in his generation had similar experiences and, after Mao’s death in 1976, returned home disillusioned.

Since taking power, Mr. Xi has deliberately cultivated comparisons with Mao, and used his Liangjiahe years as the centerpiece of his political origin story. Today, tour guides in the village depict Mr. Xi being transformed from a weak, confused teenager into a hardy man of the people.

Recently, inside one cave, a guide pointed out the raised brick platform that Mr. Xi and five others used as a bed. The guide gave a selective account of Mr. Xi’s stay: He found it tough at first, but soon won over villagers through his hard work and ended up as local party chief, the guide said.

Local officials tailed a visiting Wall Street Journal reporter and stopped every attempted interview.

People who speak with Mr. Xi or study his record say his time in the village was transformative. They say he developed an affinity and sense of duty to China’s rural poor, and a pragmatism through dealing with village life. Villagers turned to him for advice, feeding his self-image as a born leader.


He brought two suitcases of books with him and borrowed many more, reading them obsessively and absorbing ideas, according to people who have spoken with him. Some of the frayed volumes are displayed in one cave, including “Lenin on War and Peace,” Hemingway’s “The Old Man and the Sea,” two books on foreign policy by Henry Kissinger and the collected writings of Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, who pioneered Nazi Germany’s blitzkrieg tactics.

Years later, he would mention his reading frequently, quoting from foreign or Chinese classical works and boasting that he mastered the core tenets of Marxism in the village.

Some who know him see that as a conscious emulation of Mao, who prided himself on his literary prowess. Others detect a sensitivity about his lack of formal schooling. A former secretary to Mao, after meeting Mr. Xi in the 2000s, described him as having “elementary school level” education.

Mr. Xi won a place to study chemical engineering at a university in Beijing in 1975, but as a “worker-peasant-soldier,” selected before competitive entry exams and regular teaching resumed.

After China’s market-opening reforms began in 1979, most of Mr. Xi’s contemporaries, including his siblings, focused on improving their lives, often going into business. Mr. Xi was one of the few princelings who chose a political career and often complained to friends about the corruption and materialism around him.

Some familiar with those princelings believe they never lost their reverence for Mao. Mr. Xi, as leader, has adopted many of Mao’s titles, rhetorical terms and political techniques, and declared Mao’s achievements to be on par with the reform era that followed.

He had pragmatic reasons as well. In the years before he took power, he came to believe that criticism of Mao was undermining the party’s foundations, just as condemnation of Stalin eroded faith in its Soviet equivalent.

Mr. Xi saw how Bo Xilai, another princeling, became hugely popular as party chief in the city of Chongqing with a campaign to revive strongman rule and egalitarian Maoist ideals.

Liberal-minded Chinese, appalled at the rehabilitation of a man who many historians believe caused the death of more than 40 million people, now warn of a new Cultural Revolution.

Cai Xia, a former Party School professor in exile in the U.S., accuses Mr. Xi of making the party into a “political zombie” and warns of major chaos in the next five years.

Mr. Xi, however, appears to believe he can use digital censorship and surveillance to achieve the political control Mao aspired to, without upending society.

“The legacy I think he is drawing on is not Mao the revolutionary, the radical,” said Jude Blanchette, a Chinese politics expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington and author of a book on China’s neo-Maoist movement. “It’s a nation-building Mao, the Mao who fought the U.S. to a draw in the Korean War.”


Military Transformation

Xi Jinping’s three-year stint as a secretary to Geng Biao, a top military official, helps to explain his skill at political maneuvering and his close ties to the armed forces.
In the spring of 1979, shortly after Mr. Xi graduated from the university, he got a job, with his father’s help, as a secretary to Geng Biao, then a vice premier responsible for national defense. It gave him a three-year crash course in elite politics, international relations and military affairs.

He gained an inside view of U.S.-China relations, learning to see the U.S. as both a partner and a potential threat. He traveled abroad for the first time, visiting Europe with Mr. Geng. He also learned the political importance of the People’s Liberation Army and built a network of military contacts.

“I have an insoluble bond with the army,” Xi Jinping said in a speech last year. “From a young age, I learned a lot about our military history and witnessed the demeanor of many older generation army leaders.”

Mr. Geng was an army veteran who had served with Mr. Xi’s father, been ambassador to six countries and led the International Liaison Department, which managed ties with Communists abroad. When Mr. Xi joined him, he was vice premier and secretary-general of the Central Military Commission, which controls the armed forces. In 1981, he became defense minister.

It was a big change for Mr. Xi. He wore a military uniform, accompanied Mr. Geng to most meetings and handled confidential documents, according to accounts from Mr. Geng’s relatives and biographer. The two men often rode together in Mr. Geng’s Mercedes-Benz—an extraordinary luxury then—and regularly unwound playing Go, a Chinese board game.

Mr. Geng was demanding and security-conscious, insisting that Mr. Xi memorize meetings’ proceedings rather than take notes, according to those accounts. To this day, Mr. Xi memorizes large portions of speeches and rarely uses notes in private meetings.


China had just normalized relations with the U.S. and fought a short war with Vietnam that ended in stalemate, a humiliation that still haunts the PLA. Mr. Geng’s priority was to build military ties with Washington to counterbalance Soviet power, and in 1980 he went to the U.S. to try to negotiate the purchase of American weapons.

The U.S. arranged a display of top-tier weaponry, plus a White House screening of “The Empire Strikes Back.” But it offered to sell only nonlethal equipment, and it pledged to continue arming the island of Taiwan, which Beijing sees as a rebel province.

“In developing China-U.S. relations, we can’t be too excessive or hasty,” Mr. Geng warned in his report on the trip, according to his biography. “On some questions, the U.S. is going to maintain unreasonable positions, and we should conduct necessary and appropriate struggle against it.”

The lesson for Mr. Xi was that while cooperation with the U.S. could potentially benefit both countries, their long-term strategic interests weren’t aligned, people who study that era say.

Through his contact with military officers, he became sensitive to territorial issues, especially Taiwan and the South China Sea, and a mind-set that from the 1990s increasingly viewed the U.S. as China’s adversary.

He also witnessed firsthand how Deng Xiaoping courted support from the military during a power struggle between 1979 and 1981 that resulted in his emergence as China’s top leader.

More than three decades later, Mr. Xi would use similar tactics, first establishing firm control of the military, then consolidating his power elsewhere.

“He saw how central politics really worked: The most important thing is to seize actual power,” said Deng Yuwen, a former editor at a newspaper published by the Party School.

Mr. Geng remained a mentor, and when he died, Mr. Xi helped to collect his ashes, an honor usually reserved for the eldest son.


Guiding Ideology

Once in power, Xi Jinping relied primarily on Wang Huning, a former academic and advocate of enlightened autocracy, to revamp Party ideology.

After leaving Mr. Geng’s office, Mr. Xi went into local government for the next 25 years. Following his promotion in 2007 to the Politburo Standing Committee, the top decision-making body, he was increasingly exposed to a debate between advocates and opponents of liberalization, which intensified after the global financial crisis.

That’s when he got to know Wang Huning, a former academic who became his top political adviser. Mr. Wang, now 65, emerged in the mid-1980s as a leader among “neo-authoritarian” scholars who argued that China needed enlightened autocracy, rather than liberalization, to modernize.

“He believed China needed a leader who is pragmatic and farsighted, who knows the country well, and who has the necessary powers to guide it,” said Ren Xiao, a former student of Mr. Wang at Shanghai’s Fudan University. “He’s been quite consistent in that.”

In 1995, Mr. Wang joined the party’s Central Policy Research Office, which gives advice and writes speeches for top leaders. He became its director in 2002 and, from 2007, worked alongside Mr. Xi, including on a team responsible for party building.


When Mr. Xi took power, he relied primarily on Mr. Wang to revamp party ideology in a way that married Mr. Xi’s instincts with countercurrents that were bursting into view on new social media platforms.

Ultranationalists were calling for a more aggressive stance toward the U.S. Other scholars were calling for a revival of Confucianism, a philosophy that advocates strict obedience to social hierarchy. China’s state-sector reforms and 2001 World Trade Organization entry gave rise to “new left” thinkers who railed against corruption and inequality.

Mr. Xi rarely expressed views on those debates. After the global financial crisis, however, he became less guarded as many in the Chinese elite became convinced that free-market democracy was in decline.

Visiting Mexico as vice president in 2009, he took a thinly veiled swipe at the U.S. “Some foreigners, with full bellies, who have nothing better to do, point fingers at our affairs,” he said. China didn’t export revolution, poverty or hunger, he added: “What else is there to say?”

In 2010, he visited Chongqing and endorsed the Maoist revival championed by Mr. Bo, the city’s party chief, which included mass performance of revolutionary songs.


In 2011, he met with then U.S. Vice President Joe Biden in China. Mr. Xi talked at length about the Soviet collapse and how authoritarian leaders in the Middle East were recently overthrown because they lost touch with their people and failed to control corruption, according to people familiar with those conversations.

“He really clearly signaled that the party faced some existential challenges, in his view, and that things had to change,” said Mr. Russel, the former U.S. official. “What I took away was: There were too many power centers, and not only does the country need a strong hand, the party needs a strong hand.”

The following year, the party was thrown into turmoil when a former Chongqing police chief fled to a U.S. consulate in China and alleged that Mr. Bo’s wife had murdered a British businessman. She was convicted and jailed for life. Mr. Bo got a life sentence for graft and abusing power.

The scandal eliminated from contention for the Standing Committee the one person with comparable clout to Mr. Xi’s, and gave him an opening to target other powerful individuals in coming years for allegedly conspiring with Mr. Bo to seize power.

It also brought to a head the internal debate over China’s future. Critics of liberalization, especially among princelings, prevailed, arguing that only a strongman could save the party.

That gave Mr. Wang, who became his top political adviser and joined the 25-member Politburo in 2012, a unique opportunity to influence a leader whose instincts and circumstances aligned with his statist views on how to improve China’s governance.

Chinese Communist Party hierarchy

Politburo

Standing Committee

7-9

Double

promoted

in 2007

24-25

Politburo

193-205 members

Promoted

in 2002

Central

Committee

151-172 alternate members

Xi Jinping

joined in 1997

Source: staff reports
Mr. Wang, who accompanied Mr. Xi to most meetings and on foreign visits in his first term, is widely considered the architect of the “China Dream” concept and Xi Jinping Thought, which was written into the party constitution in 2017, when Mr. Wang joined the Standing Committee.

Party School professor Han Qingxiang described Mr. Wang as a “great theorist” whose policy-making clout “should not be underestimated.”

Mr. Xi “is definitely influenced in some ways by comrade Wang Huning, but Wang Huning is influenced even more by the general secretary,” Mr. Han said.

Mr. Xi and his advisers describe his doctrine primarily in Marxist terms, and, while pledging not to impose it on other countries, portray it as a model for them that proves the superiority of socialism over capitalism.

Xin Ming, a Party School professor, said in an interview arranged by the government press office that Mr. Xi’s Marxism was an updated version that incorporated some Western and traditional Chinese thinking, and considered Communism a distant, yet-to-be-defined ideal that would not be realized even by the centenary of Mao’s victory in 2049.

Other scholars studying Mr. Xi’s doctrine say its Marxist content is limited, noting that he doesn’t advocate class struggle or eliminating private property, and that he has cracked down on both Marxist student activists and liberal voices.

They see it as a fusion of Mr. Wang’s thinking with new left, neo-Confucian and other illiberal ideas in an attempt to unify the party, legitimize Mr. Xi’s concentration of power and forge a new model of authoritarian government.

Some detect the influence of Carl Schmitt, a German legal theorist whose ideas the Nazis used to justify unlimited executive power. Chinese scholars who advise the government have invoked Mr. Schmitt in recent years, including Jiang Shigong, a Peking University law professor who helped devise Beijing’s policy on Hong Kong.


In a recent essay, Mr. Jiang described Xi Jinping Thought as a “new system for comprehensive party leadership of the state,” arguing that the introduction of the rule of law in China after 1979 had undermined the party’s authority.

“This new party-state system is undoubtedly an important organizational part of the China solution” whose ultimate goal was “creating a new order for human civilization,” he wrote.

Mr. Jiang declined to comment.

China’s containment of the Covid-19 pandemic within its own borders has made Mr. Xi more confident in his governance model, people who speak with him say. In November, he pledged to double China’s gross domestic product by 2035. China’s aging society and debt problems will make that challenging.

Mr. Xi faces a mounting backlash abroad, especially from democracies alarmed by his Muslim internments, Hong Kong crackdown and aggressive diplomacy.

Even some in the party think he has overreached and may face resistance to any effort to continue ruling after 2022. Few people, inside or outside the party, would bet against him though.

“There’s something about Xi Jinping’s political schoolcraft which suggests to me that he is capable of navigating what I think will still be a stormy period ahead,” said Mr. Rudd, the former Australian prime minister. “There’s a steeliness to him.”

Write to Jeremy Page at jeremy.page@wsj.com

ccp

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Re: US-China (& Japan, South China Sea-- Vietnam, Philippines, etc)
« Reply #1165 on: December 27, 2020, 07:14:10 AM »
".It was one of the biggest strategic miscalculations of the post-Cold War era"

Well they have been taking advantage of us for decades

and our brave new world globalist leaders

H Bush Clinton W Bush Obama all were duped like fools
while arm chair geo political experts like us and many others who can see the writing on the wall knew better

only till Trump did anyone do shit
no we have Biden with his band of obama era losers
and now the big tech titans and lebron james  selling us out.

I don't ,, therefore , see what will change


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Re: US-China (& Japan, South China Sea-- Vietnam, Philippines, etc)
« Reply #1166 on: December 27, 2020, 07:38:24 AM »
There was once a point to partnering with China to offset the power of the Soviet Union.

There was a gain for humanity when the increasing prosperity of China brought hundreds of millions of people out of poverty.

There was always a contradiction that we dealt with Castro by isolating Cuba and dealt with China with economic engagement. Interestingly,  neither strategy worked.

I believed that increasing prosperity and also the information age would lead to the fall of the communist regime.

Like the frog in boiling water, there was a point where we needed to recognize that the information age had became a powerful weapon of the totalitarian regime that might keep them in power forever.

Then, as explained in the Innovator's Dilemma, only a true outsider could disrupt a co-dependency that now measured in the trillions of dollars.

Enter Donald Trump.


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Stratfor: The Fate of Trump's Tariffs under Biden
« Reply #1168 on: December 28, 2020, 03:25:07 PM »
The Fate of Trump’s China Tariffs Under Biden
5 MINS READ
Dec 28, 2020 | 16:21 GMT
Containers are seen stacked at a port in Qingdao, China, on Jan. 14, 2020.
Containers are seen stacked at a port in Qingdao, China, on Jan. 14, 2020.

(STR/AFP via Getty Images)
HIGHLIGHTS

The Biden administration will probably maintain many of the existing U.S. tariffs on China, ushering in a lengthy period of restrictions that will likely prompt businesses to consider shifting their supply chains and operations outside China. While President-elect Joe Biden says he intends to review the tariffs U.S. President Donald Trump placed on China, he has said he will not make any "immediate moves" regarding them. Nevertheless, as the phase one trade deal between the U.S. and China winds down and concludes in 2021 and China continues to remain far behind committed levels of purchases, the Biden administration is not likely to add significantly more tariffs on China to those already existing....

The Biden administration will probably maintain many of the existing U.S. tariffs on China, ushering in a lengthy period of restrictions that will likely prompt businesses to consider shifting their supply chains and operations outside China. While President-elect Joe Biden says he intends to review the tariffs U.S. President Donald Trump placed on China, he has said he will not make any "immediate moves" regarding them. Nevertheless, as the phase one trade deal between the U.S. and China winds down and concludes in 2021 and China continues to remain far behind committed levels of purchases, the Biden administration is not likely to add significantly more tariffs on China to those already existing.

The United States is likely to shore up its China trade policy by seeking some alignment in trade policy via World Trade Organization reform, partnering with countries including Japan, the European Union, the United Kingdom, South Korea and Australia. But such reforms will take time, and require consensus that China can effectively block. The Biden administration could use existing tariffs as collective leverage against China while encouraging like-minded allies to join a multilateral effort for WTO reforms. A strategy in which both the European Union and the United States advocate changes to both WTO rules for developing countries, as well as some of the rules related to industrial subsidies and state-owned enterprises (SOEs), could blunt Chinese efforts to skirt existing WTO rules. Such a strategy, however, would take time, as WTO reform has become increasingly difficult. The Doha Round of trade negotiations, for example, lasted some 14 years before effectively ending in failure.

WTO reform must be sanctioned through member consensus, effectively giving China veto power. Other mixed economies and developing countries would also oppose many U.S. and European proposals against China.

In 2020, the United States significantly expanded its actions against Chinese tech companies by widening export controls on Huawei and SMIC, China's largest semiconductor manufacturer.

Leaks on China's next Five-Year Plan, which was approved in October, indicate that financial support for chip manufacturers and the tech sector are an integral component of its economic strategy document.
The Biden administration will probably consider direct negotiations with China as the phase one trade deal ends in 2021. Any significant pullback of sanctions is unlikely, as Washington will also be under pressure to address Beijing's failure to honor its phase one commitments relating to increased imports from the United States. The Biden administration will focus on structural reform, such as stripping direct support for Chinese SOEs, which China is likely to continue to reject. If the Biden administration maintains such demands for an extended period, negotiations will stall until the United States focuses on China's commitments to purchase more U.S. goods. Additionally, any trade deal that results in a lower value of committed purchases than the deal that Trump negotiated will be politically unpalatable in the United States. China, however, will be willing to sign a trade deal that includes expanded commitments on purchases as a way to string along negotiations and reduce diplomatic tensions ahead of the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing and the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China. In a best-case scenario, the United States and China could roll over the trade deal and the United States could perhaps slightly relax some of the tariffs on China. But it is unlikely to secure the kinds of reforms necessary to fully lift tariffs.

Under the phase one trade deal, China promised to increase imports of U.S. goods by a combined $200 billion over 2017 levels in 2020 and 2021.

Through October 2020, China imported $75.5 billion worth of U.S. goods this year, less than half of the $173 billion worth of U.S. goods China was expected to import in 2020.

Under the deal, China agreed to specific commitments in agricultural, energy and manufactured goods purchases — and it is behind schedule on purchases of all of them.

Because China tariffs are likely to remain politically difficult to remove, businesses in many sectors are beginning to look at long-term strategies to manage their impact, investing outside China while also exploring options to shift production operations outside China. Industries that have relatively low costs of final assembly and packaging and low upfront investment costs in building new manufacturing plants, such as in textiles, would probably be prime candidates to move operations out of China and into neighboring countries like Vietnam. The more apparent it becomes that the tariffs will be long-lasting, the more likely that industries with larger costs of moving production will start to shift business operations.

Southeast Asia continues to be the primary beneficiary of any manufacturers looking to leave or diversify away from China; they do not have to face tariffs that can reach 25 percent on most goods from China.
The textile, automotive, chemicals and machinery industries were the most impacted as the Trump administration’s tariffs focused the most heavily on intermediate goods, not consumer goods.

Consumer goods including electronics are likely to be less affected by the trade war itself, as the Trump administration did not include consumer goods as frequently and electronics were largely spared from tariffs. That said, the electronics industry will be more significantly affected by the tech policy the Biden administration will likely maintain that restricts foreign companies’ ability to sell goods to certain Chinese companies.

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Re: US-China, Fang, Fang, Bang Fang, You only Fang Twice, Mark Steyn
« Reply #1169 on: December 31, 2020, 01:51:58 PM »
Apologies if already posted.  1 minute.28 seconds video, Mark Steyn, recommend watch.
Eric Swalwell questions then FBI Director James Comey on all the ways Communist China may try to penetrate the US.  Irony alert.
https://rumble.com/vcb0wz-you-only-fang-twice-mark-steyn-has-a-take-for-the-ages-on-eric-swalwell.html?mref=23gga&mc=8uxj1

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Jack Ma, "richest man in China", 'under investigation,'
« Reply #1170 on: January 02, 2021, 05:25:40 AM »
I wouldn't want to be tech billionaire Jack Ma right now. Imagine that the federal government is tired of you being rich and free and successful. Now imagine that government is Conmunist China.

Jack Ma owns Alibaba, the Amazon of Asia and he owns the South China Morning Post, a partly free newspaper, worldwide out of Hong Kong, that can't really report news without being sometimes critical of the regime.  It was the first news organization to report coronavirus in Wuhan for example.

Not a good idea. Suddenly he's gone?

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9104507/Chinese-tech-billionaire-Jack-Ma-VANISHES-reality-show.html

"Mystery surrounds the whereabouts of China’s richest man after he criticised the regime."
--------
Not that much mystery. Where are the 4 doctors who first reported coronavirus and went missing?  Where is the UN human rights commission on this?  China, Cuba, Pakistan et al, oh that's right, complicit.

Two systems, communist and economically free?  Don't kid yourself.
« Last Edit: January 02, 2021, 05:45:14 AM by DougMacG »

ccp

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3 telecom chinese companies not to be de listed
« Reply #1171 on: January 05, 2021, 07:23:43 AM »

G M

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The PRC will be PISSED!
« Reply #1172 on: January 09, 2021, 02:34:19 PM »

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Re: The PRC will be PISSED!
« Reply #1174 on: January 09, 2021, 08:02:46 PM »
Either Biden's deep state string pullers immediately walk this back, thus highlighting Beijing's previous purchase of the Biden crime family, or they hold on, and risk a hot war in Asia.


https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/washington-one-china-policy-dead-pompeo-lifts-restrictions-us-taiwan-relations

Will they wait for their puppet to be sworn in?

Mike Pompeo rocks.


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Re: US-China (& Japan, South China Sea-- Vietnam, Philippines, etc)
« Reply #1175 on: January 10, 2021, 03:10:34 AM »
Pompeo has been an outstanding Sec. State.


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GPF: Chinese exports booming
« Reply #1177 on: January 14, 2021, 02:27:51 PM »
Chinese trade. Chinese exports in December jumped a whopping 18.1 percent compared with the same month a year earlier – a month that, looking back, may end up representing the peak of the U.S.-China trade war. China’s trade surplus rose to a record $78.18 billion. The surge in foreign purchases of medical supplies and work-from-home gear, particularly consumer electronics and other home office supplies, during the pandemic is the primary cause. Expect the Biden administration to de-emphasize tariffs as the main U.S. tool with which to pressure China.

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Stratfor: US adds CNOOC to Export Blacklist
« Reply #1178 on: January 14, 2021, 02:29:05 PM »
The U.S. Adds Chinese Oil Giant CNOOC to Its Export Blacklist
4 MINS READ
Jan 14, 2021 | 21:50 GMT

HIGHLIGHTS

The U.S. Commerce Department added the Chinese National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) to its entity list on Jan. 14, effectively cutting off China’s third-largest oil company from U.S. exports. The move highlights the South China Sea’s importance to U.S. strategy, which will likely continue -- though not necessarily expand -- under U.S. President-elect Joe Biden. The Trump administration has significantly increased pressure on CNOOC in recent months, beginning in December when it added CNOOC to a separate U.S. Pentagon list of companies that are either owned by or controlled by the Chinese military, which will force certain U.S. investors to divest from CNOOC’s shares by mid-November. Just hours before the Commerce Department’s announcement, the S&P Dow Jones announced it was removing CNOOC from impacted indices to comply with a Jan. 13 presidential order banning U.S. investment into designated Chinese military-linked companies. As a result, major U.S. exchanges will likely delist...

The U.S. Commerce Department added the Chinese National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) to its entity list on Jan. 14, effectively cutting off China’s third-largest oil company from U.S. exports. The move highlights the South China Sea’s importance to U.S. strategy, which will likely continue — though not necessarily expand — under U.S. President-elect Joe Biden. The Trump administration has significantly increased pressure on CNOOC in recent months, beginning in December when it added CNOOC to a separate U.S. Pentagon list of companies that are either owned by or controlled by the Chinese military, which will force certain U.S. investors to divest from CNOOC’s shares by mid-November. Just hours before the Commerce Department’s announcement, the S&P Dow Jones announced it was removing CNOOC from impacted indices to comply with a Jan. 13 presidential order banning U.S. investment into designated Chinese military-linked companies. As a result, major U.S. exchanges will likely delist the company in the coming days and weeks.

Targeting CNOOC, historically the most technocratic of China’s major state-owned oil companies, indicates the rising U.S. attention on China’s assertive posture in the South China Sea. As China’s main offshore operator, CNOOC has been central to China’s drilling campaign in the region, which has encroached on disputed waters for years. The Commerce Department’s press release specifically cited CNOOC’s role in supporting Beijing’s efforts in the South China Sea, with U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross saying that the company bullied countries like Vietnam on the behalf of China’s People’s Liberation Army.

In 2012, CNOOC kicked off an accelerated drilling campaign in disputed waters claimed by Vietnam and Japan. Since then, the company has been involved in a number of escalations in the South China Sea, with Beijing using the company’s exploration activities as a way to effectively implement control over maritime territory.

The inclusion of CNOOC on the entity list will significantly cut off the company’s access to U.S. technology, which is pervasive throughout the energy sector. It will also damage CNOOC’s reliability as a partner in its overseas operations. The immediate impact of the new designation will be limited to CNOOC itself since none of its subsidiaries were added to the entity list. The biggest implications will be related to the company’s domestic offshore operations, as CNOOC will now have to find alternatives to the U.S. suppliers and technology being used in those operations. Although CNOOC’s overseas subsidiaries will not be directly affected, companies exporting to the subsidiaries and consortiums will now also need to conduct enhanced due diligence in order to ensure that exports – including deemed exports of technology – do not trigger U.S. restrictions by eventually falling into the hands of the parent company. The scaling up of the U.S. pressure campaign against CNOOC will also damage both the company and all of its subsidiaries’ global reputation, meaning international oil companies may be less willing to partner with CNOOC in future projects.

CNOOC claims to be active in over 40 countries, and is particularly active in Africa, Asia and Latin America. CNOOC is also a major partner in burgeoning oil producers Guyana and Uganda. Through a subsidiary, CNOOC also has acreage in the United States as well.
The Biden administration is unlikely to expand the ban to CNOOC’s international subsidiaries for fear of blowback from the company’s global partners, such as U.S.-based ExxonMobil. But a full removal of CNOOC from the list is also unlikely due to the political consequences of appearing weak on China and CNOOC’s expansive actions in the South China Sea.

The ultimate scope of the export ban is unclear as the United States could still approve any export licenses requested by CNOOC. But the impact of Huawei’s inclusion on the entity list has shown just how effective Washington’s export bans can be when U.S. technology is essential to the blacklisted company’s business operations. According to the semiconductor market researcher TrendForce, Huawei’s share of the global smartphone market is expected to shrink to just 4% in 2021. Before the most extensive U.S. restrictions went into place in mid-2020, Huawei was the world's top smartphone maker.

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Re: US-China, MIT, one Commie Prof outed
« Reply #1179 on: January 18, 2021, 11:39:36 AM »
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-china-crime-mit/us-charges-mit-professor-with-grant-fraud-over-hidden-chinese-ties-idUSKBN29J269

BOSTON (Reuters) - A professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who specializes in nanotechnology research was arrested on U.S. charges that he failed to disclose his ties to the Chinese government when seeking federal grant money.
--------------------------------
How many more?  How many students have ties?

Crafty_Dog

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Re: US-China (& Japan, South China Sea-- Vietnam, Philippines, etc)
« Reply #1180 on: January 20, 2021, 01:59:37 PM »
Saw that Blinken said Trump got it right on China.   :-o

And now this:


Daily Memo: US Accuses China of Genocide
If Beijing was hoping that this issue would go away with the Trump administration, it sure looks unlikely.
By: Geopolitical Futures

Genocide. On his last full day as U.S. secretary of state, Mike Pompeo labeled China’s treatment of ethnic Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang as genocide. The declaration isn’t one to be made lightly – the U.S. is the first country to make such a determination – but it’s unclear at this point what action it might compel by Washington. Notably, though, incoming Secretary of State Antony Blinken said during his confirmation hearing on Tuesday that he agreed with the determination, so if Beijing was hoping that this issue would somehow go away with the Trump administration, it sure looks unlikely.

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Re: US-China (& Japan, South China Sea-- Vietnam, Philippines, etc)
« Reply #1181 on: January 21, 2021, 06:36:09 AM »
ccp:  "And China laughs...... "

Talk about an understatement!  This election determined their future more than anything that happens on the inside.  Who holds China accountable now?  India, Australia?  No.  They have specific conflicts and disagreements with China.  No one holds China accountable now.

The free world lost Hong Kong under Trump.  What will we lose under Biden?

War game models show China already defeating the US?  How do they score the conflict without the US?

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Re: US-China (& Japan, South China Sea-- Vietnam, Philippines, etc)
« Reply #1182 on: January 21, 2021, 06:43:26 AM »
Taiwan is next

the island is doomed

no one is going to use military to protect them

just talk bluffs and selling them more arms





Crafty_Dog

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Re: US-China (& Japan, South China Sea-- Vietnam, Philippines, etc)
« Reply #1187 on: January 25, 2021, 10:13:21 AM »
The Chinese begin to test Manchurian Joe,


GPF:  Chinese assertiveness. China sent an unusually large force consisting of at least 15 fighter jets, anti-submarine aircraft and reconnaissance planes into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone on Sunday. A day earlier, China sent at least six bombers flanked by four fighter jets into airspace between mainland Taiwan and the Taiwan-controlled Pratas Islands in the South China Sea. The U.S.,
meanwhile, expressed its “rock-solid” commitment to the self-ruled island and sent a U.S. carrier group to the South China Sea on Sunday.
===================================

https://twitter.com/MoNDefense/status/1353285038859640833

===================================


https://www.reuters.com/article/us-southchinasea-usa/u-s-carrier-group-enters-south-china-sea-amid-taiwan-tensions-idUSKBN29T05J

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Re: US-China (& Japan, South China Sea-- Vietnam, Philippines, etc)
« Reply #1188 on: January 25, 2021, 10:14:28 AM »
Oh, they know...

The Chinese begin to test Manchurian Joe,


GPF:  Chinese assertiveness. China sent an unusually large force consisting of at least 15 fighter jets, anti-submarine aircraft and reconnaissance planes into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone on Sunday. A day earlier, China sent at least six bombers flanked by four fighter jets into airspace between mainland Taiwan and the Taiwan-controlled Pratas Islands in the South China Sea. The U.S.,
meanwhile, expressed its “rock-solid” commitment to the self-ruled island and sent a U.S. carrier group to the South China Sea on Sunday.
===================================

https://twitter.com/MoNDefense/status/1353285038859640833

===================================


https://www.reuters.com/article/us-southchinasea-usa/u-s-carrier-group-enters-south-china-sea-amid-taiwan-tensions-idUSKBN29T05J

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Re: US-China (& Japan, South China Sea-- Vietnam, Philippines, etc)
« Reply #1189 on: January 25, 2021, 01:43:58 PM »
response to that today
is carrier force to South China Sea

China can then test their hypersonic missiles and dispense with them in minutes?

or maybe soon.

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Re: US-China (& Japan, South China Sea-- Vietnam, Philippines, etc)
« Reply #1190 on: January 26, 2021, 08:40:27 AM »
Carrier force right of passage move is something we support, yes?

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Re: US-China (& Japan, South China Sea-- Vietnam, Philippines, etc)
« Reply #1192 on: January 27, 2021, 10:18:10 AM »
Carrier force right of passage move is something we support, yes?

If you make a move, you have to be ready for what may come your way. If China sinks ships, what will Beijing Bai-den do?

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Re: US-China (& Japan, South China Sea-- Vietnam, Philippines, etc)
« Reply #1193 on: January 27, 2021, 01:30:53 PM »
If China sinks ships, what will Beijing Bai-den do?

"talk with our 'allies'

" pretend we can sanction them"

and send bloomberg and his WS cohorts
to threaten to remove  investments

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Stratfor: Vietnam well positioned
« Reply #1194 on: January 29, 2021, 05:36:34 AM »
With Biden in Power, Vietnam Is Set for Success
8 MINS READ
Jan 28, 2021 | 19:54 GMT
Vietnam rings in the new year with a fireworks show in the city center of Hanoi on Jan. 1, 2021.
Vietnam rings in the new year with a fireworks show in the city center of Hanoi on Jan. 1, 2021.

(Linh Pham/Getty Images)
HIGHLIGHTS

Vietnam is well-positioned to reap the economic and political rewards of continued U.S. pressure on China over the next year, as the world gradually emerges from the COVID-19 crisis. The administration of U.S. President Joe Biden’s continued hardline stance toward China will present Vietnam with new opportunities to counterbalance Beijing -- and with fewer pitfalls, as Biden will ease his predecessor’s trade pressure on Hanoi. Supported by this strengthening U.S. relationship and its own domestic political stability, Vietnam will provide an attractive alternative to China for manufacturing supply chains. The Biden administration’s more measured and less overtly confrontational stance toward China will also enable the Vietnamese government to increase outreach to the United States without it being seen as taking an aggressive anti-China stance. ...

Vietnam is well-positioned to reap the economic and political rewards of continued U.S. pressure on China over the next year, as the world gradually emerges from the COVID-19 crisis. The administration of U.S. President Joe Biden’s continued hardline stance toward China will present Vietnam with new opportunities to counterbalance Beijing — and with fewer pitfalls, as Biden will ease his predecessor’s trade pressure on Hanoi. Supported by this strengthening U.S. relationship and its own domestic political stability, Vietnam will provide an attractive alternative to China for manufacturing supply chains. The Biden administration’s more measured and less overtly confrontational stance toward China will also enable the Vietnamese government to increase outreach to the United States without it being seen as taking an aggressive anti-China stance.

The past 15 years have seen deepening U.S.-Vietnam ties under the administrations of both Barack Obama and Donald Trump, which will continue under the Biden administration.

Obama visited Vietnam in May 2016, where he met with top leadership and announced the full lifting of a 1984 embargo on lethal arms sales to Vietnam, although it remains subject to human rights provisions. The Obama administration had partly eased the embargo in 2014.

The Trump administration also engaged in frequent outreach to Vietnam as part of its strategy to counter Chinese influence. Trump visited Vietnam twice — once for the 2017 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation conference and again for the 2019 Hanoi summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un — meeting with Vietnamese top leaders both times.

In March 2018, the USS Carl Vinson made the first carrier visit to Vietnam since the end of the Vietnam war, followed up by the USS Theodore Roosevelt in March 2020. 2018 also saw Vietnam’s first-time participation in the U.S.-led Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) exercises.

Vietnam's trade surplus with the United States and transshipment of Chinese goods will remain under scrutiny, though Biden is unlikely to use tariffs or similar retaliatory measures to address this. The Biden administration will shift away from its predecessor’s unilateral and transactional approach to a refocus on U.S. allies and international institutions. This will see the United States step down from its broad global trade war, which has targeted countries with high trade deficits such as Vietnam.

In 2019, Vietnam’s trade surplus with the United States was $58 billion, the fifth-largest globally. And for the first 11 months of 2020, the U.S. government estimated that this surplus had risen to $63.7 billion.

In March 2018, the United States imposed duties on Vietnamese steel products meant to prevent the rerouting of Chinese steel around anti-dumping rules. In June 2019, the Vietnamese government issued new orders to customs officials to crack down on the re-export of Chinese-made goods to the United States.
The Trump administration’s approach to Vietnam focused on punitive tariffs to try to change the trade balance. In December 2020, Washington labeled Vietnam a currency manipulator, but left it to the Biden administration to decide whether to impose tariffs by releasing the findings of its Section 301 investigation in mid-January 2021. A separate U.S. International Trade Commission decision on whether to impose countervailing duties on Vietnam for causing "material injury" to U.S. industries is due in March 2021.

On the campaign trail, Biden advocated for a multilateral effort to negotiate trade rules to counter China's economic influence, making World Trade Organization reform a likely pursuit. This would allow Washington to leave questions of Vietnam's currency manipulation to be dealt with later in WTO reforms, which could result in Vietnam’s currency practices being deemed an export subsidy. To offset the trade deficit in the meantime, Biden could focus on pressuring Vietnam to increase its purchases of U.S. aircraft, liquified natural gas and agricultural products.

Biden’s maintenance of Trump-era tariffs on China will continue to make Vietnam an attractive destination for manufacturers looking to avoid U.S.-China trade tensions. While it will seek to mitigate trade disputes elsewhere, the Biden administration will find it difficult to unwind the Trump administration’s steep tariffs on China. This will benefit Hanoi by continuing to drive manufacturers to diversify their operations outside China. In addition to its political stability and proximity to China, Vietnam’s adroit handling of its domestic COVID-19 outbreaks and prioritization of manufacturing continuity will allow it to capitalize more easily on more low-end manufacturing operations that can more easily relocate their Chinese operations.

The business reaction to the Trump administration’s rising pressure on China proved to be a boon to Vietnamese exporters, whose shipments to the United States rose by 50 percent% ($88 million) between 2016-2019 compared with the 34 percent% increase ($44.5 million) reported between 2013-2016. In 2019, the Nomura Group projected that Vietnam would see a boost in growth GDP equivalent to 7.9 percent% of GDP.

The Vietnamese government has managed to successfully control the spread of COVID-19 in the country through targeted lockdowns, contact tracing and widespread testing, beating back several waves of the virus. Since the onset of the pandemic in early 2020, Vietnam has reported under 1,600 total COVID-19 cases, with just 35 deaths as of Jan. 28. The country, however, recently reported a fresh wave of local transmissions that potentially includes a new COVID-19 strain, which could make the outbreak more difficult to manage.

Importantly, Vietnam has also managed to largely maintain manufacturing output throughout the pandemic, with 2020 GDP growth estimated at 2.91 percent%, driven by 3.98 percent% growth in manufacturing. The World Bank expects the Vietnamese government to grow by 6.8 percent% in 2021, approaching its pre-pandemic levels of over 7 percent%.

Along with the Philippines, Vietnam will be a primary target for U.S. outreach, given its prominent role within the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), extensive maritime disputes with China and strong imperative to counterbalance its powerful neighbor. To this end, the South China Sea will be a key area of focus, as the United States works to shore up counter-claimants to China.

The Trump administration escalated the number of publicized freedom of navigation operations (FONOPs) in the South China Sea, regularizing the practice initiated under the Obama administration.

In July 2020, the U.S. State Department released a landmark public statement partially rejecting China’s South China Sea claims, dismissing China’s expansive nine-dashed line and specifically rejecting China’s claims around Vanguard Bank near Vietnam.

In August 2020, the U.S. Department of Commerce blacklisted several subsidiaries of state-run China Communications Construction Company (CCCC) for its role in helping Beijing build up islands in the South China Sea. Then, in January 2021, Washington blacklisted the state-run energy giant Chinese National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) for supporting Chinese efforts to block energy exploration by claimants in the South China Sea.

Also in July 2020, the United States signed a memorandum of understanding with Vietnam promising support for Vietnamese fishing vessels facing intimidation by Chinese vessels via enhanced law enforcement and surveillance capabilities. In November 2019, Washington also announced plans to provide Vietnam with a second coast guard cutter.

Vietnam’s early 2021 leadership transition will provide a great deal of domestic political stability through 2026. Hanoi will avoid the major power struggles and shakeups that accompanied the ruling Communist Party’s previous 2016 national congress, providing a contrast to potential political instability in peers such as Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines and Malaysia. This will provide greater policymaking continuity in Vietnam compared with its neighbors — with the Philippines set for a power transition in mid-2022, Malaysia’s government risking collapse after the COVID-19 pandemic, and Thailand’s government beset by a chronic protest movement.

The 13th National Congress of the Communist Party of Vietnam will be held Jan. 25 - Feb. 2. In addition to at least 14 new politburo members, the meeting will see the party select individuals for the top posts in the Vietnamese political system — including party general-secretary, state president, prime minister and national assembly chair — who will then be confirmed in the coming months.

Crucially, the next party congress will also determine whether Vietnam reverts to its longstanding “four-pillar” leadership model, in which all four of these posts are held by different individuals, after the 2018 death of the president led to the consolidation of the presidency and general secretary position under Nguyen Phu Trong.

Leaks from the party’s 15th plenum ahead of the national congress indicate that Trong will remain general-secretary beyond his two-term limit, but will allow Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc to take on the presidency, thus restoring collective leadership. This compromise will enable Trong, who is 76 years old and in poor health, to oversee the continuation of his anti-corruption campaign, as well as facilitate a smooth transition to a chosen successor after his likely step down before 2

Crafty_Dog

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GPF: Reinventing Vietnam
« Reply #1195 on: January 30, 2021, 05:46:28 PM »
January 27, 2021
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Reinventing Vietnam

The ongoing National Congress is uncharacteristically shrouded in palace intrigue.
By: Phillip Orchard

The Vietnamese Communist Party is holding its 13th National Congress this week. These semi-decennial conclaves are typically carefully scripted, spiritless affairs where the party sets forth long-term goals and formally anoints new leaders. But this one is particularly important and, curiously for a party completely obsessed with stability, shrouded in palace intrigue.

All of Vietnam’s top leadership posts appear to be up for grabs, despite typically being decided well in advance. This is, in part, because the generational transition of power scheduled to take place at the last congress in 2016 never did, leaving a major power struggle unresolved and the country in political limbo. (If pre-congress leaks prove true, it looks unlikely to be resolved this go round too.) The political paralysis reflects Vietnam's deep-rooted regional, ideological and generational divides, ones that in recent years have bred an inability to make decisions at inopportune moments in Hanoi.

The VCP traditionally governs by consensus, which it considers sacred. But given the mounting pressures on the country from both inside and out, the inherent problems of this model have become ever more apparent. How forcefully Vietnam resists China over the next decade, and how closely it integrates with the West, will depend on how much it can restore consensus at home – or, taking a page from China’s own playbook for managing socio-economic pressure, whether it abandons the need for consensus for good.

Two Centers of Power

Vietnam's ethnic and geographic fault lines aren't nearly as severe as those of most of its neighbors in Southeast Asia. But the country isn't exactly well-suited for internal unity, particularly when placed under stress by an outside power.

The two historical centers of power of the cobra-shaped country are concentrated in a pair of deltas on its northern and southern ends. Northern society sprouted up in the fertile valleys along the tempestuous Red River, prone to both extreme droughts and floods. The surrounding jungle-coated mountains made the valleys defensible. But the uplands themselves were difficult for northern rulers to subjugate, and they happen to border China, whose various rulers tried to invade Vietnam a dozen-odd times (more often than not ending in disaster for the Chinese). Under perpetual siege from both the environment and hostile outsiders, northern societies developed largely in dense, walled communities, the sort that tend to require rigid hierarchies and traditions to function.

The freewheeling south, by comparison, is a product of the mighty, languid Mekong. The more predictable seasonal variations in the river's ebb and flow, along with the sprawling rice-growing wonderland its abundant silt creates, necessitated decentralized societies marked by impermanence and natural abundance. The river brought empires from the west like the Cham and Khmer, whose rule preceded the southward expansion of the Viet, but also foreign commerce and cultural exchange. This, along with the south's relative proximity to Borneo and Palawan and its position astride dominant oceanic currents bringing merchants from South Asia, also made the south historically a society of outward-looking seafarers and traders.

Vietnam
(click to enlarge)

Traces of these historical contrasts are still imprinted on Vietnamese society. The north around Hanoi is the political capital and proud cradle of Viet civilization. Generally speaking, it's more organized, more ideological and more conservative. It's also more attuned to the nuances and necessities of dealing with its overbearing northern neighbor, China. The general secretary of the VCP, the country's most powerful figure, traditionally comes from the north. The south, around Ho Chi Minh City, is the commercial capital, a more internationalist region less interested in rigid hierarchical forms of governance. Indeed, even after their victory in 1975, the communists made only token efforts at imposing collectivization on the south. (There's also a whole lot of oil off Vietnam's southern coast.) Until recently, Vietnam's prime minister traditionally came from the south.

Estimated Oil and Natural Gas Reserves in the South China Sea
(click to enlarge)

Complicating the north-south balance of power, which the VCP has sought to preserve ensuring balanced geographic distribution of senior leadership posts, has been the rise of the narrow but flourishing center. Historically, the rugged geography of the central regions was ill-suited for large populations but today is home to the country's fastest-growing commercial hubs, such as foreign investor-darling Danang. Current Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc, whose government received high marks for its remarkable management of the pandemic, comes from the middle.

Forks in the Road

Naturally, the two sides don't always see eye to eye on matters like the virtues of capitalism, foreign trade, the division of power between party and state, or the best way to navigate external challenges. (It's been less than half a century since the two were at war, after all.) Every country has regional and generational divides, policy disagreements, and so forth. But for Vietnam, the problem is that the kinds of decisions the government is grappling with are, for the party at least, existential. And there are few easy answers.

Take Vietnam's evolving economic model. Vietnam has a young, rapidly urbanizing population. With this comes rapid increases in social expectations and demands for the party to deliver ever-more prosperity and a higher quality of life. Since an epochal National Congress in 1986, when the party introduced a liberalization policy known as "Doi Moi," it's been gradually opening the economy to foreign investment and trade. This has led to a boom, particularly over the past few years, with Vietnam benefitting perhaps more than any other country from the U.S.-China trade war. But liberalization has also led to booms in pollution, corruption, inequality and other issues associated with breakneck industrialization. It's also required the party to let go of tools it traditionally uses to maintain control and accept much greater Western influence. By signing onto the Trans-Pacific Partnership and its newly inked free-trade pact with the EU, for example, it's required to pare down state-owned enterprises and ease restrictions on labor organizations. Some in Hanoi fear that too much economic liberalization could create competing power centers and thus weaken the party's control of the patronage networks that are indispensable to its monopoly on power.

This ties directly into Vietnam's other great dilemma: what to do about China. To ease its economic dependence on China, continued economic integration with the West is vital, even if risky for the aforementioned reasons. To check Chinese maritime incursions, Vietnam needs to substantially deepen cooperation with China's more powerful foes, particularly the U.S., and find a way to make defending Vietnamese interests worthwhile to them. But this violates Hanoi's sacred "Three Nos" policy: no military alliances, no aligning with one country against another, and no foreign military bases on Vietnamese soil. Vietnam does have enough maritime capabilities (thanks largely to Russia, Vietnam’s most important military patron) to at least create a degree of deterrence against Chinese forces from, say, harassing Vietnamese oil drilling operations and scaring off key foreign partners. But responding too aggressively could invite retaliation from a much more powerful neighbor.

Standing up to China also could cause problems at home. Somewhat counterintuitively, Hanoi fears stoking nationalist fervor among the public. This is partly because it could force Hanoi into a conflict it doesn't want to be in. But it's also because party elders fear the possibility that ascendent cadres would attempt to ride nationalist currents to build an independent base of political power. They also fear a nationalist movement turning into a pro-democracy movement. As a result, clashes with the Chinese in the South China Sea often receive barely a mention in state media.

All this spilled out into the open around the last National Congress, which came on the heels of an incident in which China moved a massive offshore oil rig into Vietnamese waters to assert its sweeping territorial claims. The move sparked massive protests across Vietnam. Demonstrators were supported by then-Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung, a charismatic, pro-Western southerner whose encouragement was seen as a ploy to replace aging General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong at the National Congress. Trong and his backers thwarted Dung's ascent, but they couldn't broker a consensus on an alternative. So Trong ended up sticking around, in violation of party retirement age rules. In 2018, following the death of President Truong Tan Sang, Trong took that post for himself as well. He also launched a massive anti-corruption campaign meant to purge potential challengers and restore order in the gridlocked party leadership. Last week, leaked reports suggested that Trong intends to stick around yet again for an unprecedented third term as party secretary.

Consensus Is Overrated

On the surface, at least, there are a lot of parallels between Trong and his counterpart to the north, Xi Jinping. Like the Communist Party of China, the VCP has long cherished its consensus decision-making model. Like China, Vietnam has been reaping the benefits of economic liberalization. But just as Xi and his backers in 2012 concluded that Deng Xiaoping's "reform and opening" policies had gone too far too fast, had bred too much corruption and transferred too much power away from the party – thereby threatening the party itself – Trong and his cadre feel similarly today. Like Xi, Trong may be using anti-corruption to replace the consensus model with one better suited for decisive action in addressing Vietnam's many emerging crises.

But the parallels mostly end there. The 76-year-old Trong, believed to have suffered a stroke last year, is not Xi. There's no attempt to build a personality cult around him, no messaging from state media implying that he alone can restore Vietnam to lost glory. He's still expected to step down once everyone stops squabbling long enough to agree on the best way to replace him and find ways to make gridlock less of a problem. (Watch for Hanoi to eventually make permanent the combined general secretary-president post in order to streamline decision-making.) Nor is there a real effort underway to roll back economic liberalization and international trade, or to curb Vietnam's military cooperation with the U.S. – the same country that nearly wrecked the country just a couple of generations ago. Trong himself made a landmark visit to the U.S. in 2015 and signed off on a raft of military agreements between Hanoi and Washington since then.

Indeed, under Trong, Vietnam has become the most aggressive among the South China Sea’s littoral states about courting outside security assistance and integration into Western-led multilateral trade blocs. The threat from China is immense and here to stay, making ideological alignment with its foreign partners a luxury it can live without. Hanoi would prefer to keep relations with Beijing on an even keel, but Beijing has been making it impossible for Hanoi to do so without sacrificing its sovereignty and its legitimacy with the Vietnamese public. As a result, Hanoi has forged a formal strategic partnership with Australia, invited India to open a satellite maritime surveillance center, cozied up to the Japanese navy, and successfully lobbied Washington to remove its embargo on arms sales. In 2019, Hanoi even welcomed a port visit by a U.S. carrier for the first time since the end of the war. Vietnam, in other words, has gotten a taste of the economic and strategic benefits of continued integration with the West. The more it becomes accustomed to them, the harder it is to imagine Hanoi forsaking them.

All this suggests that something of a consensus in Hanoi on the big issues is, in fact, quietly starting to coalesce. What's truly in question at the National Congress, then, is not Vietnam's broad strategic direction; so long as Chinese power doesn't reach the point of overwhelming the region, Vietnam will remain largely focused on balancing against it. Rather, it's whether the party can reinvent itself in a way that ensures it remains at the helm in the process – and capable of steering the country decisively through the turbulent seas ahead.

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Crafty_Dog

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D1: Two US carriers in the SCS
« Reply #1196 on: February 09, 2021, 11:49:22 AM »
Two U.S. carriers are exercising together in the South China Sea. The Theodore Roosevelt Carrier Strike Group and the Nimitz Carrier Strike Group sailors and aviators "conducted a multitude of exercises aimed at increasing interoperability between assets as well as command and control capabilities," the U.S. Navy said today, adding, "Dual carrier operations, like this one, are not new and are intended to maintain U.S. readiness and combat-credible forces to reassure allies and partners and preserve peace in the region."

Context: "The exercise comes days after China condemned the sailing of [U.S. Navy] destroyer, the USS John S. McCain, near the Chinese-controlled Paracel Islands in what the United States calls a freedom of navigation operation — the first such mission by the U.S. navy since President Joe Biden took office," Reuters reports. More, including three photos, here.

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GPF: Philippines, Cambodia, & China
« Reply #1197 on: February 11, 2021, 03:01:21 PM »
Brief: Philippines and Cambodia Do a Little Balancing
U.S. and Philippine top officials have been in touch, while Cambodia abruptly suspended exercises with China.
By: Geopolitical Futures

Background: Southeast Asia is the fulcrum of U.S. strategy in the Indo-Pacific and the great impediment to Chinese strategic imperatives both in the region and beyond. Thus, China has been attempting to pull regional countries tightly into its orbit through a mix of threats and rewards. The main focus of its efforts have been the Philippines – whose geography and Mutual Defense Treaty with the U.S. make the archipelagic nation the biggest potential problem for Beijing – and Cambodia, which among littoral states in the region has been the most receptive to China's courtship. In response, the U.S., often viewed as powerful but capricious and inattentive to the region's needs, has had to recalibrate its diplomatic approach.

What Happened: On Wednesday, U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and his Philippine counterpart, Delfin Lorenzana, held talks on the two countries’ Visiting Forces Agreement, a critical accord that Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte spent much of 2020 attempting to scrap. Without the agreement, the Mutual Defense Treaty doesn't have much teeth, and a stalled 2014 agreement intended to provide U.S. troops with rotational access to several Philippine bases would remain dead in the water. The call follows a similar one between U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Philippine Foreign Minister Teddy Locsin, in which Blinken reportedly clarified U.S. commitments under the defense treaty. The U.S. prefers to keep its treaty commitments as vague as possible in order to avoid getting pulled into a war not of its choosing. Naturally, though, this makes it hard for allies like the Philippines to put much faith in U.S. commitments.

More curious, it was also reported Wednesday that Cambodia had suspended its big annual Golden Dragon joint military exercises with China. Cambodia is the closest thing China has to a useful ally in Southeast Asia, and presently its best chance at establishing a meaningful military foothold in the region. Indeed, over the past couple of years, China has been not-so-quietly constructing major naval and air force facilities along Cambodia's southwestern coast. It also persuaded Cambodia to scrap the bulk of its military cooperation with the United States. Phnom Penh's official reason for the move is that flooding and the fallout from the COVID-19 crisis have simply put too much on its plate to consider holding the exercises this year. That doesn't really make sense: China reportedly foots most of the bill for the drills, and Cambodia's internal problems aren't the sort that would generally keep militaries from doing what they do. This suggests Cambodia may be trying to get off on the right foot with the new U.S. administration – one that, as demonstrated by its Thursday announcement of sanctions on Myanmar over its recent coup, may be less hesitant to apply pressure over human rights issues – and restore some balance in Cambodia's foreign relationships. Scrapping military exercises with its most important military and economic partner seems like a pretty extreme way to do this, though.

Bottom Line: Few countries in Southeast Asia want to choose between the U.S. and China. All are adept at hedging their bets and playing outside powers off each other. Given the strategic value of their particular place in the world, they'll have plenty of chances to do so as the U.S.-China competition intensifies.


Crafty_Dog

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Re: US-China (& Japan, South China Sea-- Vietnam, Philippines, etc)
« Reply #1199 on: February 25, 2021, 08:46:50 AM »
As always, GF is intelligent and thoughtful, but not sure that I agree with this one.
Not only does he leaves out of his analysis the implications of potential conflict being on China's front porch (e.g. land based missiles) but also the implications of the Maginot Line concept e.g. that China can destroy/blind our comm structures.

   
Know Your Enemy
Thoughts in and around geopolitics.
By: George Friedman

The most important thing in poker is knowing who you are playing against. You need to know his weakness – not all of them, mind you, but an appropriately fatal one. For poker is a complex game, one so requiring a vastness of human talent that you have to assume your opponent’s strengths are many. With one weakness you can own your opponent, and perhaps the night.

The same is true of the game of nations. There is a tendency among people and nations to be exquisitely aware of their own shortcomings and to dismiss the weaknesses of others. The United States has an especially difficult time arriving at a comprehensive evaluation of other nations, particularly their weaknesses. That’s partly because of the sheer number of nations a great power must deal with, and partly because its citizens tend to be hypercritical of their own nation and so overestimate other nations. Or just as often they mistake strengths for weaknesses, or vice versa.

Prior to World War II, the United States vastly underestimated Japan on everything from its ability to produce superior fighter aircraft to its inability to think through a cunning opening gambit. The U.S. also missed its weakness, which was that its army and navy were mortal enemies. In many ways, they were answerable to no one. Washington assumed Japan’s naval forces would collaborate with its army, planning joint operations, sharing facilities and so on. Opportunities were missed accordingly.

During the Cold War, the U.S. regarded the Soviet Union as a mirror image of itself. It counted Moscow’s tanks and was stunned by the number, not grasping that they were in many cases lying in disrepair, or that they would have great trouble maintaining fuel delivery on the offensive. The U.S. came to the conclusion that the Soviets would overrun NATO in short order, and therefore made plans for the use of tactical nuclear weapons. U.S. policymakers never bothered to ask: If the Soviets have us nailed, why don’t they act? This excellent question was rarely discussed. Soviet power was a given, except that the Soviets didn’t attack because they couldn’t. In other words, the U.S. preoccupied itself with the Soviet Union’s strengths rather than its weaknesses.

When the U.S. invaded Iraq, it thought its primary mission was the destruction of Saddam Hussein’s army, and that once that was achieved we could impose our will on them. It did not understand that the regime rested on a society that was armed, violent and capable. Nor did it understand the role the Shiites would play. In this case, the U.S. missed the strength behind Iraq’s apparent weakness. The result was an extended war the U.S. lost by not winning.

China has since become Washington’s primary adversary. As with the Soviets, the U.S. counts military materiel as if that alone tells us China’s power. The Chinese navy has not fought a fleet battle since 1895, when Japan crushed them. In an encounter with the United States, neither the Chinese air force nor the navy has enough battle experience. Nor do they have the institutional memory of war to sustain them. All of the exercises and the shiniest equipment in the world do not prepare untried admirals or petty officers for war.

With Japan, the U.S. failed to recognize that deep defect in the armed forces. In the Cold War, the U.S. overestimated its enemy. In Iraq, the U.S. failed to understand the structure of the resistance it would encounter. And now with China, it fails to recognize a well-trained but untried enemy.

In poker, not understanding the weaknesses of the other players or, worse, not seeing any, is a costly mistake. But it is only money. The U.S. failure to understand Iraq cost it a lot of blood and treasure. In not seeing China’s core military weakness, the U.S. acts with a timidity that is not entirely warranted and misses the opportunity to perhaps restructure its relationship with China peacefully.
« Last Edit: February 25, 2021, 08:49:46 AM by Crafty_Dog »