Author Topic: China in and versus the World; Chinese political intimidation & penetration  (Read 45749 times)

Crafty_Dog

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WSJ: China's Mega Projects are Falling Apart
« Reply #250 on: January 21, 2023, 08:20:09 PM »
 the Coca Codo Sinclair hydroelectric plant near San Luis, Ecuador.
By Ryan DubeFollow
 and Gabriele SteinhauserFollow
 | Photographs by Isadora Romero for The Wall Street Journal
Jan. 20, 2023 9:45 am ET

SAN LUIS, Ecuador—Built near a spewing volcano, it was the biggest infrastructure project ever in this country, a concrete colossus bankrolled by Chinese cash and so important to Beijing that China’s leader, Xi Jinping, spoke at the 2016 inauguration.

Today, thousands of cracks have emerged in the $2.7 billion Coca Codo Sinclair hydroelectric plant, government engineers said, raising concerns that Ecuador’s biggest source of power could break down. At the same time, the Coca River’s mountainous slopes are eroding, threatening to damage the dam.

“We could lose everything,” said Fabricio Yépez, an engineer at the University of San Francisco in Quito who has closely tracked the project’s problems. “And we don’t know if it could be tomorrow or in six months.”

It is one of many Chinese-financed projects around the world plagued with construction flaws.

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During the past decade, China handed out a trillion dollars in international loans as part of Beijing’s Belt and Road initiative, intended to develop economic trade and expand China’s influence across Asia, Africa and Latin America. Those loans made Beijing the largest government lender to the developing world by far, with its loans totaling nearly as much as those of all other governments combined, according to the World Bank.

Yet China’s lending practices have been criticized by foreign leaders, economists and others, who say the program has contributed to debt crises in places like Sri Lanka and Zambia, and that many countries have limited ways to repay the loans. Some projects have also been called mismatches for a country’s infrastructure needs or damaging to the environment.

Now, low-quality construction on some of the projects risks crippling key infrastructure and saddling nations with even more costs for years to come as they try to remedy problems.

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“We are suffering today because of the bad quality of equipment and parts” in Chinese-built projects, said René Ortiz, Ecuador’s former energy minister and ex-secretary general of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries.

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Government engineers said there are thousands of cracks in the hydroelectric plant, built by Chinese company Sinohydro.
PHOTO: CRISTINA VEGA/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
China’s Embassy in Ecuador didn’t respond to requests for comment on the hydroelectric project. In a recent letter published on the embassy’s Twitter account in response to a report by the Foundation for Citizenship and Development, the local chapter of anticorruption watchdog Transparency International, on China’s lending practices in Ecuador, the embassy said Chinese loans and projects provided “tangible benefits” to Ecuador at a time when the country was in urgent need of financing.

Chinese money has been used to build everything from a port in Pakistan to roads in Ethiopia and a transmission line in Brazil.

Chinese construction companies often bid for government projects or directly approach local officials with projects with a promise that they can easily arrange financing packages from Chinese banks and insurers.

That, developing-country officials say, has given Chinese companies a leg up, because it means governments eager to build a new dam or road don’t have to drum up their own funding. In Africa, more than 60% of the revenue major international contractors collected in 2019 went to Chinese companies, according to a 2021 paper by the China-Africa Research Initiative at Johns Hopkins University.

Critics say the relatively easy availability of Chinese loans for Chinese construction can lead to inflated project costs because there is less pressure on governments to minimize expenses.

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Construction defects
Flaws in some of the Chinese-built projects have come to light.

In Pakistan, officials shut down the Neelum-Jhelum hydroelectric plant last year after detecting cracks in a tunnel that transports water through a mountain to drive a turbine.

The head of the country’s electricity regulator, Tauseef Farooqui, told Pakistan’s senate in November that he was concerned the tunnel could collapse just four years after the 969-megawatt plant became operational. That would be disastrous for a nation that has been battered by rising energy prices, said Mr. Farooqui. The closure of the plant has already cost Pakistan about $44 million a month in higher power costs since July, according to the regulator.

Hydropower plants can have operating lives of up to 100 years, according to the World Bank.

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The Chinese-built Neelum-Jhelum Hydropower Project in Nosari, Pakistan, shown in 2017, has been shut down because officials said they detected cracks.
PHOTO: SAJJAD QAYYUM/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
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Uganda identified defects in the Chinese-built Isimba Hydro Power Plant, shown under construction in 2017.
PHOTO: ZHANG GAIPING/XINHUA/ZUMA PRESS
Uganda’s power generation company said it has identified more than 500 construction defects in a Chinese-built 183-megawatt hydropower plant on the Nile river that has suffered frequent breakdowns since it went into operation in 2019. China International Water & Electric Corp., which led construction of the Isimba Hydro Power Plant, failed to build a floating boom to protect the dam from water weeds and other debris, which has led to clogged turbines and power outages, according to the Uganda Electricity Generation Co., or UEGC. There have also been leaks in the roof of the plant’s power house, where the generators and turbines are located, UEGC said. The plant cost $567.7 million to build and was financed mostly through a $480 million loan from the Export-Import Bank of China.

Completion of another Chinese-built hydropower plant further down the Nile, the 600-megawatt Karuma Hydro Power Project, is three years behind schedule, a delay that Ugandan officials have blamed on various construction defects, including cracked walls. UEGC also said the Chinese contractor, Sinohydro Corp., installed faulty cables, switches and a fire extinguishing system that need to be replaced. Earlier this year, the government had to start paying back the $1.44 billion it borrowed from the Export-Import Bank of China to finance the project, even as the plant remains inoperational.

Sinohydro and China International Water didn’t respond to requests for comment on the Ugandan projects.

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In Angola, 10 years after the first tenants moved into Kilamba Kiaxi, a vast social housing project outside the capital of Luanda, many locals are complaining about cracked walls, moldy ceilings and poor construction.

The project, built by China’s CITIC Group, was initially funded through a $2.5 billion, oil-backed credit line from the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China that was later refinanced by the China Development Bank, according to William & Mary’s Aid Data Research Lab.

“Our building has a lot of cracks,” said Aida Francisco, who lives in a four-bedroom apartment in Kilamba with her husband and three sons. Like many other middle-class families in Kilamba, she is purchasing the apartment through a rent-to-buy program. Humidity collects in the apartment’s walls, causing mold, Ms. Francisco said, and a lot of the building materials, including doors and railings, are of poor quality.

When she first moved to Kilamba in 2016, Ms. Francisco said, Chinese contractors still came to fix problems. But in recent years many buildings, including hers, have fallen into disrepair, especially as many tenants, who are responsible for the upkeep, lost their jobs amid Angola’s economic crisis.

“If you see these buildings, they won’t last long,” said Ms. Francisco. “They’re falling apart bit by bit.”

A spokeswoman for CITIC said humidity issues in a small number of units in Kilamba were due to tenants making improper renovations and that the company had completed required maintenance.

The Chinese government didn’t respond to requests for comment on criticism of Chinese-built infrastructure in Africa and Asia. A spokesman for Angola’s ministry for Construction and Public Works didn’t respond to requests for comment.

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Many Chinese projects fulfill real development needs, especially in countries that struggle to get other financing to build necessary infrastructure. In Argentina’s poor, northern province of Jujuy, PowerChina built the Cauchari solar park, South America’s biggest solar project. At more than 13,000 feet above sea level, it is able to power some 160,000 homes, according to Argentina’s government. In Brazil, China’s State Grid built one of the world’s longest transmission lines, connecting the Belo Monte dam in the northeast to southern cities some 1,550 miles away.

image
Erosion along Ecuador’s Coca River, which some geologists blame on the Coca Codo Sinclair plant, has destroyed stretches of a highway, an oil pipeline and part of a nearby town.
Surge in Ecuador spending
In Latin America, Ecuador was at the forefront of Beijing’s push into the region, with Quito accessing more in loans than any country except two much bigger nations, Venezuela and Brazil, according to the Inter-American Dialogue, a think tank.

After a 2008 sovereign-debt default, then-president Rafael Correa, a leftist who during his tenure from 2007 to 2017 often clashed with the U.S. and railed against multilateral lenders, turned to China to finance a surge in public spending. In total, Chinese banks lent Ecuador $18 billion during Mr. Correa’s term.

Ecuadorean lawmakers, former government ministers and anticorruption activists say the loans lacked transparency, with contracts given to companies without public bids, resulting in shoddy construction, high costs and graft.

In the recent letter published on the Chinese Embassy in Ecuador’s Twitter account, it said the financing was agreed on during friendly negotiations with Ecuador and fully complies with laws and regulations in both countries.

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Current government officials and Ecuadorean economists said some projects made little sense, including the expropriation of thousands of acres of farmland in an Andean valley to build a new metropolis called Yachay City that was supposed to turn Ecuador into a regional tech power. The Export-Import Bank of China provided a $200 million loan for early infrastructure works. Today, the project has been abandoned, with a $6.3 million supercomputer that was supposed to be used by researchers sitting out of doors and unused.

In 2019, the comptroller general’s office reviewed the construction of 200 Chinese-built schools, reporting that some of the buildings had problems with their foundations and others had classrooms with sloping floors and exposed cables. Fifty-seven of the schools were finished behind schedule, the comptroller general’s office said.

“Correa spent on many projects that were not adequate,” said Vicente Albornoz, an economist at the University of Las Americas in Quito. “And China was funding Correa’s spending [on the projects].”

Mr. Correa said in an interview the money boosted Ecuador’s development with new highways, hospitals and schools. Four Chinese-built hydroelectric projects provided clean power and reduced reliance on imported fossil fuels. The Chinese projects also improved a once unreliable power grid that led to regular blackouts in Quito. Today, 90% of Ecuador’s electricity comes from hydro, compared with 55% in 2007, according to the state utility.

“China’s relationship with Ecuador was an example in Latin America,” said Mr. Correa. “We did things that changed the history of the country.”



Sinohydro did the construction and flew in hundreds of Chinese workers to build the Coca Codo Sinclair plant. Detail of a book in Chinese and Spanish with information and photographs about the project.
The former president, who was convicted in 2020 of corruption charges in a case involving payments to his party in exchange for public contracts, is in exile in Belgium. He denies wrongdoing.

China’s most ambitious project in Ecuador was Coca Codo Sinclair, which Ecuadorean engineers first studied for the Coca River in the 1970s. Back then, they considered it a risky venture due to its steep cost and location near an active volcano.

But Ecuador wanted the dam to improve an electrical grid that regularly suffered blackouts and relied on costly energy imports. Today, it supplies about a third of Ecuador’s electricity.

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During Mr. Correa’s term, the China Development Bank agreed to finance 85% of Coca Codo Sinclair’s initial cost, with a 6.9% interest rate. Sinohydro did the construction and flew in hundreds of Chinese workers to build the power plant between 2010 and 2016.

The China Development Bank and Sinohydro didn’t respond to requests for comment.

In September, prosecutors searched the office of Sinohydro over allegations it paid bribes to people close to Mr. Correa’s vice president, Lenin Moreno, when the contract was awarded to the Chinese firm. No one has been charged in that ongoing investigation. Mr. Moreno, who later served as president from 2017 to 2021, has publicly denied wrongdoing.

Larger capacity
Some engineers questioned the project early on, saying that the environmental studies were out of date. The plant’s 1,500-megawatt capacity was much larger than the originally envisioned capacity of about 1,000 megawatts, adding to costs and creating more capacity than the river could power, according to former energy officials and congressional investigators. In 2014, 13 Chinese and Ecuadorean employees were crushed to death in a construction accident.

Since the 2016 opening, officials from the state electricity utility have found more than 17,000 cracks in the power plant’s eight turbines, according to the state utility. It blames the fissures on faulty steel imported from China. In 2021, the utility took Sinohydro to international arbitration in Chile, which is ongoing, over demands to repair the damage.

“No crack is acceptable,” the utility said in response to questions from The Wall Street Journal. “They could result in the equipment losing its structural integrity, causing it to collapse.”

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President Guillermo Lasso’s government has refused to officially take over management of the plant from Sinohydro, as was planned at the completion of construction, until the cracks are repaired. Numerous attempts to fix the cracks have failed, utility officials said.

“Over my dead body will I accept this poorly built plant,” Energy Minister Fernando Santos told local media in November.

In San Luis, locals like Adriana Carranza got jobs with Sinohydro, which hired her to cook for Chinese workers. The 14-hour days were long, and her Chinese boss didn’t speak Spanish. But the job allowed her to save enough to build a house for her family, she said. At home, she still cooks sweet-and-sour chicken and other Chinese dishes.

But in 2020, the Coca River’s slopes began collapsing, creating thunderous crashes and rattling the ground like an earthquake. The erosion destroyed Ecuador’s biggest waterfall. It took out a stretch of a key road and oil pipeline. The Pink House, a brothel in San Luis that locals say was popular with both Chinese and Ecuadorean workers, tumbled into the river. Ms. Carranza said a neighbor’s home went over the cliff.

image
Adriana Carranza, shown with her daughter, Darina Zambrano, and their dog, had to flee San Luis last year because of dangerous erosion along the Coca River.
Fearing for her family’s safety in her own home, Ms. Carranza fled San Luis in March, salvaging anything she could from her house, taking windows, doors and even the roof. “I became deeply depressed, I couldn’t get out of bed,” Ms. Carranza said. “We’ve lost everything.”

Ecuador’s state utility said the erosion is a natural phenomenon in an area prone to natural disasters. Some geologists agree, but others blamed Coca Codo Sinclair, saying that its concrete structures so disrupted the river’s natural flow and accumulation of sediments that the fast-moving water began to cut into the river banks as it descends from the Andes on its way to the Amazon rainforest.

“The erosion is a process that would normally occur over thousands or millions of years, but the dam has accelerated it in a matter of just five years,” said Carolina Bernal, a geologist at the National Polytechnic School, a public university in Quito.

Ecuador has unsuccessfully tried to stop the erosion as the river nears Coca Codo Sinclair, including by placing shipping containers in the water to slow the current. They were quickly washed away.

Ms. Bernal said the government will likely need to relocate a key part of the plant—the project’s water intake—which would cost millions of dollars, before that structure is destroyed by the erosion.

Nancy Chicaiza, a San Luis resident, has little hope for the survival of her town, which once bustled with Chinese workers who bought drinks and snacks at her bodega. She now expects the erosion will eventually wipe out all of San Luis.

“Coca Codo was initially seen as really good,” said Ms. Chicaiza. “Nobody thought we’d be facing these consequences.”

image
Nancy Chicaiza and others stood on the edge of an eroded area that they blame on faulty construction of the Coca Codo Sinclair plant.
Nicholas Bariyo contributed to this article.

Write to Ryan Dube at ryan.dube@dowjones.com and Gabriele Steinhauser at gabriele.steinhauser@wsj.com

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DougMacG

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Re: China vs. the World; Belt Road Failure
« Reply #251 on: February 25, 2023, 06:37:30 AM »
https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/02/13/china-belt-and-road-initiative-infrastructure-development-geopolitics/

China’s Belt and Road to Nowhere: Xi Jinping’s signature foreign policy is a “shadow of its former self.”

Foreign Policy ^ | 02/13/2023 | Christina Lu
Nearly a decade after its inception, momentum behind China’s sweeping Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) appears to be slowing as lending slumps and projects stall—forcing Chinese President Xi Jinping to again rethink a floundering initiative that he once hailed as his “project of the century.” After doling out hundreds of billions of dollars, experts say China’s lending for BRI projects has plummeted, largely a casualty of the COVID-19 pandemic and the country’s own economic slowdown. Support has also waned as partner countries drown in debt and fractures emerge—literally—in projects, fueling uncertainty about the future of the sprawling initiative.
« Last Edit: February 25, 2023, 07:57:17 AM by DougMacG »

ccp

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Re: China vs. the World; Chinese political intimidation & penetration
« Reply #252 on: February 25, 2023, 07:46:06 AM »
BRI

failing.

Great news !  :-D

G M

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Re: China vs. the World; Chinese political intimidation & penetration
« Reply #253 on: February 25, 2023, 10:01:21 AM »
BRI

failing.

Great news !  :-D

Belt and Loansharking Initiative.

Crafty_Dog

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GPF: China as lender of last resort
« Reply #254 on: March 31, 2023, 12:28:18 PM »
   
China as a Lender of Last Resort
Beijing's high interest loans have been criticized for creating “debt traps” for cash-strapped borrowers.
By: Geopolitical Futures
Chinese Rescue Lending
(click to enlarge)

China has become a major rescue lender for heavily indebted countries. In 2022, loans to countries in debt distress accounted for 60 percent of China’s overseas lending portfolio – up sharply from just 5 percent in 2010.

Over the past two decades, Chinese institutions have provided $240 billion in rescue lending to 22 developing countries. Of that sum, $170 billion was provided through the People’s Bank of China’s swap line network – a system whereby central banks agree to exchange currencies. The rest was offered through other means such as bridge loans or balance of payments support by Chinese state-owned banks and enterprises, including the China Development Bank. They're provided, generally with high interest rates, mostly to middle-income countries, which account for four-fifths of China’s overall lending. Low-income countries are given grace periods and maturity extensions.

However, these loans, often doled out as part of China’s Belt and Road Initiative, have been highly criticized for creating “debt traps” for cash-strapped borrowers. Countries like Sri Lanka, Zambia and Ghana are currently in talks with Beijing to restructure their debt. But as more governments struggle to make payments amid a global downturn, there’s growing concern about China’s ability to refinance the loans and avoid financial problems at home if debtors can’t repay them.



Crafty_Dog

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China busting a move to connect to Indian Ocean
« Reply #257 on: July 04, 2023, 06:04:40 AM »
MYANMAR

With U.S. focused elsewhere, China stokes Asian hot spot in ‘cold war’

BY GUY TAYLOR THE WASHINGTON TIMES

A violent civil war between the Chinabacked military junta ruling Myanmar and a patchwork of pro-democracy rebels in the Southeast Asian nation is not getting much attention in the West, but China’s leadership increasingly views the clash as a strategic front line of a “cold war” in its global competition with the United States.

The Biden administration is slowpedaling in response, say regional analysts, who add that the White House lacks a clear strategy for halting Beijing’s growing influence in Myanmar, a vital land bridge between China and the Indian Ocean.

The lack of attention could lead to a clear strategic loss for the U.S. and its allies in an area of growing interest to China’s communist leadership.

“China has been steadily expanding its influence in Myanmar for a considerable period,” said Ye Myo Hein, a prodemocracy scholar and visiting fellow with the U.S. Institute of Peace and the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington.

He told The Washington Times that China views Myanmar “as a strategic hot spot at the intersection of its borders, South Asia, Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean.”

Beijing’s increased focus contrasts with the Biden administration’s “traditional view of Myanmar as strategically unimportant,” said Ye Myo Hein, who is pressing U.S. officials to “develop a clear strategy to enhance [Washington’s] strategic influence in the country.”

In a geopolitical competition, successive U.S. administrations have scrambled to shore up alliances with countries across the Indo-Pacific to counter China’s economic and diplomatic rise in the region. Beijing’s development model is sharply at odds with U.S. support for free markets and democracy.

Meanwhile, Myanmar’s junta is pulling no punches to crush a prodemocracy insurgency. Ye Myo Hein said the junta has carried out “more than 700 airstrikes, primarily in civilian areas,” since 2021.

“These airstrikes have been largely indiscriminate, resulting in significant casualties to innocent civilians,” he said. He pointed to one strike in April that killed nearly 170 people in central Myanmar.

A recent Peace Research Institute Oslo report said at least 6,000 civilians have been killed and more than 1 million have been internally displaced since 2021.

The conflict has spiraled since a military coup overthrew Myanmar’s elected civilian government led by Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate and head of the country’s largest political party. Despite complaints about the government, U.S. policymakers highly regarded Myanmar under Ms. Suu Kyi. Some refer to the country by its old name, Burma.

Beijing tacitly supported the 2021 junta takeover. Widespread protests sparked a harsh military crackdown, the arrests of Ms. Suu Kyi and top government officials, and a continuing armed resistance to the new military leadership.

Anti-coup militias, known as the People’s Defense Forces, have banded with smaller separatist groups long active in the country to wage a guerrilla war against the junta-controlled army and air force across Myanmar’s seven ethnic states.

The military government has imported more than $1 billion worth of arms and raw materials to manufacture its weapons since 2021, according to the United Nations. The U.N. says China, Russia, Singapore, India and Thailand are the most prominent suppliers.

How the anti-junta rebels acquire arms is less clear.

In a complex twist, Ye Myo Hein said, a key avenue is through the pro-democracy movement’s ties to ethnic armed groups along China’s border, many of which also fall under China’s sway, suggesting that Beijing has been wielding influence on both sides.

The insurgency’s dynamics are murky, particularly with rebel efforts to lure some military sectors to shift their allegiance to the prodemocracy movement.

Units of one ethnic militia in eastern Myanmar that are nominally part of the military switched sides in June. The Associated Press reported that units from the Border Guard Forces were thought to be the first militaryaffi liated militia units to change sides since the junta took power.

Several U.S. lawmakers are pressing the Biden administration to develop a more robust strategy to support the rebels. In April 2022, the Democratic-controlled House passed the Burma Act, calling on the White House to engage with Myanmar’s rebels.

The Senate has yet to take up that bill, but the fiscal 2023 National Defense Authorization Act that President Biden signed in November incorporated language from the Burma Act, including a requirement that the administration clarify its policy and an authorization for expanding U.S. sanctions against the junta.

The language notably authorized funding for “non-lethal assistance” for armed People’s Defense Forces rebels in Myanmar and “technical” support for the militias and the broader pro-democracy movement.

It remains to be seen how the support will be conveyed and how much impact it will have. The administration has expanded sanctions that began after the 2021 military coup.

The Treasury Department sanctioned a group of Myanmar arms dealers in March 2022. A press release did not mention China or other foreign providers of weaponry.

More recently, the Treasury Department sanctioned Myanmar individuals and entities involved in importing jet fuel for the junta and two junta-connected banks. The measures freeze their assets in the United States.

“The United States will not waver in its support for the people of Burma as they seek peace, justice and a genuine democratic future for their country,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said upon targeting the banks on June 21.

Critics are skeptical. The group Justice for Myanmar praised the financial sanctions but said “far more needs to be done to systematically target the junta’s financial and arms procurement networks.”

The group specifically urged sanctions against Myanma Oil and Gas Enterprise, “which continues to bankroll the junta’s ongoing war crimes and crimes against humanity.”

The U.S. administration’s focus on countering Russia in Ukraine has overshadowed its gradual sanctions, and China’s backing for the junta in Myanmar has been quietly expanding.

“With the world distracted by the war in Ukraine, and having little bandwidth to focus on the brutality and bloodshed in Myanmar, China has … dramatically ramped up support for Myanmar, further entrenching a growing split between the world’s autocracies and democracies,” Joshua Kurlantzick, a Southeast Asia fellow with the Council on Foreign Relations, wrote for the think tank’s website last year.

China’s growing influence Identifying the parameters of Chinese support for the junta can be difficult, but Beijing appears to be profiting strategically and economically from business with Myanmar’s hard-line military rulers.

An analysis by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace noted that the Chinese state mining company Wanbao continues to invest in Myanmar. Many multinational corporations withdrew after the 2021 military coup.

An August 2022 report by the London-based Business & Human Rights Resource Center said Wanbao Mining, a subsidiary of Chinese arms manufacturer Norinco, has been operating a controversial copper mine in Myanmar’s Sagaing Region in partnership with the military- owned Myanma Economic Holdings since 2010.

Jason Tower, director of the Burma program at the U.S. Institute of Peace, is among those suggesting that China’s support is conditioned on a junta pledge to support Beijing’s sovereignty claims over disputed islands in the South China Sea. The United States and China’s smaller neighbors throughout the region reject China’s claims.

Mr. Tower tweeted last year that the Chinese government is “propping up” the junta by vowing to work toward implementing the China-Myanmar Economic Corridor and expand cross-border electrification, connectivity and industrial zones. Beijing gave the junta roughly $90 million for the work last year.

Ye Myo Hein told The Times that the recent inclusion of Burma Act language in the NDAA was “perceived by Beijing as an increased U.S. involvement in Myanmar and a threat to China’s interests.”

“China responded by actively supporting the junta as a countermeasure to the U.S.’s actions,” he said, and “recent actions by China in Myanmar clearly serve as clear indication that Beijing perceived the crisis in Myanmar through a cold war lens.”

“It appears that U.S. policymakers may not be fully aware of such development, as Washington has not yet recognized Myanmar as a strategically significant hot spot and has yet to formulate a comprehensive policy and strategy in line with the Burma Act,” Ye Myo Hein said.

“The administration has exhibited a clear reluctance to fully and effectively implement the Burma Act, appearing more focused on mitigating the associated risks,” he said. The White House, he said, should “emphasize the shared interest between the United States and China in promoting regional stability” in a way that “implies that the military junta in Myanmar must be removed as it undermines this shared objective.”

The administration should also convey to Beijing that U.S. assistance to the People’s Defense Forces is “not a threat to China, but rather in line with Beijing’s own goals,” as the junta “will only consider a peaceful negotiated settlement if it sees no path to military victory, making U.S. assistance an avenue to support this objective.

Crafty_Dog

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RANE: Germany looking to "de-risk"
« Reply #258 on: July 21, 2023, 06:18:32 AM »
Germany Sets Out on 'De-Risking' Its Relations With China
Jul 20, 2023 | 17:40 GMT



Germany's new push to de-risk its relations with China highlights growing operational, reputational and financial risks for German companies that are particularly exposed to the Asian giant. On July 13, the German government published its long-awaited, first-ever China strategy, which focuses on ''de-risking'' its ties with the Asian superpower (a view that Berlin shares with the broader European Union) through a three-prong approach. The most important element of the strategy is diversifying Berlin's trade and economic ties with other countries as a way to reduce its reliance on the Chinese market as an export and investment destination, as well as its reliance on China for supplies of critical raw materials (such as lithium and rare earth minerals). Secondly, Germany will seek to further reduce the presence of Chinese companies (like Huawei) in the country's critical infrastructure (like its 5G network). And as the final pillar, the strategy document promises to address calls from the European Union to reduce sensitive technology transfers to China that could increase the Asian country's intelligence and military capabilities by, for example, implementing the outbound investment screening and export controls proposed in the European Commission's new Economic Security Strategy.

In its new China strategy, Germany pledges to continue strengthening the country's military presence and cooperation with partners in the Indo-Pacific. When it comes to Taiwan, the document confirms Germany's formal adherence to the ''One China'' policy, but also reiterates Berlin's intent to expand its ties with Taipei and its stance that a change in the island's status quo would be acceptable only through peaceful means and mutual consent.

On June 20, the European Commission presented its first-ever economic security strategy, which stressed the need to ''de-risk'' the bloc's economic relations by restricting EU members' exports to and investments in adversarial countries. While not explicitly called out by name, China was heavily implied as the main target of the strategy, which highlighted the risk of becoming too reliant on ''a single country, especially one with systemically divergent values, models and interests.''

Germany's new China strategy acknowledges that Beijing is increasingly becoming a ''systemic rival'' due to its efforts to change the rules-based international order and to expand its relationship with Russia. This largely echoes the National Security Strategy that Berlin published in June, which described China as a ''partner, competitor and systemic rival'' and noted that Berlin's competition with Beijing had increased in recent years amid the latter's push to ''deliberately exe[rt] its economic power to reach political goals.'' Similarly, the Bundesamt fur Verfassungsschutz (BfV), Germany's domestic intelligence agency, deemed China as ''the greatest threat'' in terms of foreign direct investment and scientific and economic espionage in its annual report published in June.

The three parties in Germany's ruling coalition agreed to formulate a new China strategy as part of government formation talks in late 2021. However, infighting within the fractious coalition government significantly delayed the process.

The strategy confirms Germany's desire to abandon its former policy of pure economic engagement with autocracies (namely, China and Russia), which underpinned its economic success of the past decades but has proven increasingly risky in today's changing geopolitical landscape. Its new China strategy marks a shift from the policy Germany had pursued for almost two decades under the leadership of former Chancellor Angela Merkel, which focused on engagement with China under the guiding principle of ''Change through Trade.'' Through this strategy, Berlin had hoped to influence Beijing (and autocratic regimes in general, including Russia) to become more liberal and democratic in exchange for a mutually beneficial strengthening of trade relations. As a result, China became Germany's largest trading partner, a key source of critical raw materials and technologies for the energy transition, and a crucial market for German industries in the automotive, technology and chemical sectors. However, China's growing authoritarianism, human rights violations, increasingly aggressive posture in the Taiwan Strait and in the South China Sea, and ever-closer ties with Moscow (coupled with long-standing concerns over the lack of protection and unfair conditions for German companies operating in China) have led to a fundamental rethinking of this strategy both in Brussels and Berlin in recent years. On top of this, as Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and the energy and economic crises that followed underscored the risks associated with Germany's deep reliance on Russian natural gas, the need to reduce economic dependence on other non-democratic countries such as China acquired even more urgency. While Germany has been able to wean itself off of Russian energy exports over the past year, its economy is still heavily reliant on China, leaving the European country exposed to risks that its new strategy document seeks to mitigate.

Critics of Germany's strategy of trade and economic engagement with China argue this was a way for Berlin to profit from China's economic rise while ignoring (or at least putting off) difficult conversations about non-economic issues concerning democracy and human rights.

Germany's trade relations with both China and Russia significantly contributed to its economic success and were in fact seen by many as a model of globalization. Access to China's ever-growing market enabled Germany to weather the 2008-09 global financial crisis and the 2010-11 eurozone crisis that followed by providing a vital export destination for German industries. Since then, Germany's economic dependence on China has only grown, with the volume of bilateral trade (imports and exports) reaching a record of nearly 300 billion euros ($337 billion) in 2022.

Prior to the war in Ukraine, Russia served as Germany's largest gas supplier. Now, Russian oil and gas exports to Germany are near zero following cut-offs in supply through the Nord Stream pipeline from Russia and thanks to efforts from the German government to phase out the remaining energy imports from Russia.

But while the document confirms Berlin's intent to recalibrate its relationship with Beijing, Germany will seek not to cut trade and economic ties with China. China remains a vital market and supplier for some of Germany's largest companies, including chemical producer BASF, tech giant Siemens, and carmakers Volkswagen and BMW. Berlin will thus still seek to avoid severing ties with Beijing, which would prove economically catastrophic. This will see the German government largely leave the onus of de-risking its relationship with China to profit-motivated companies and investors. In fact, the strategy urges German companies particularly exposed to China to take geopolitical risks into account in their decision-making ''so that state funds do not have to be tapped into in the event of a geopolitical crisis,'' but it fails to mention any concrete policy measures to ensure such warnings do not fall on deaf ears.

According to the German Council of Economic Experts' most recent annual report, China ranks first among the countries on which Germany is most dependent regarding strategically important imports, with 45.1% of total German imports of products with strong import dependencies coming from China.

A February 2023 report by the Kiel Institute for the World Economy shows how China dominates global and German supplies of rare earths and raw materials needed to produce technology classified as critical by the European Union, as well as supplies of a number of products (mainly electronics) that ''could not be replaced as a supplier in the short term.''

Although Germany's de-risking strategy does not include specific policy measures, future regulations may expose German companies to growing operational, reputational and financial risks. So far, Germany has not enforced its de-risking strategy with any concrete policy measures, enabling German companies to keep investing in China. However, Berlin may eventually adopt foreign trade regulations to block or downsize Chinese acquisitions of German companies in sectors of the economy considered of strategic importance. The government could also prohibit critical infrastructure operators from contracting Chinese vendors and using Chinese equipment, with upcoming measures to ban certain Chinese components in the country's 5G network offering an important indication of how far the government intends to go in pursuing this goal. Finally, Berlin may decide to interrupt or impose caps on investment guarantees (which the government normally offers to German companies in emerging markets to protect their investments from political risk) for German investment in China. As a result, German companies could face increasing pressure to reduce critical dependencies on China, diversify supply chains and export markets, and create contingency plans to decouple from China should a geopolitical crisis arise. German companies that fail to do so risk losing access to investment protection schemes and/or lowering their creditworthiness and company valuations on financial markets due to perceived high levels of geopolitical risk. Moreover, should Germany's de-risking efforts significantly escalate, Beijing may retaliate by more strictly regulating German firms operating in China or by limiting exports of critical raw materials to Germany.

A 2021 study from Germany's Kiel Institute for the World Economy estimates that an abrupt break in Germany-China trade relations would cost Germany about 1.4% of GDP (roughly 48.4 billion euros, or $54.21 billion) in real income. The study also estimates that this decoupling would cost the European Union 1% of GDP.

In a study published earlier in 2023, the Cologne Institute for Economic Research estimated that Germany's exports to China accounted for 2.7% of its total economic added value and 2.4% of employment.

A report in December 2022 from Denmark-based telecommunications consultancy Strand Consult showed that Chinese companies Huawei and ZTE, which the EU considers high-risk vendors, account for about 59% of Germany's 5G infrastructure. In 2021, the German government passed measures allowing it to ban or recall certain components from the country's telecommunications infrastructure in case security risks were identified (pursuant to the 2020 EU toolbox for 5G security) but has yet to apply them.

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WSJ
« Reply #259 on: July 28, 2023, 06:41:15 AM »
Europe Avoids China’s Belt and Road Forum, Keeping a Distance From Xi and Putin
Russia’s president has confirmed his attendance at planned summit, deterring Western countries that Beijing wants to win over
By
Chun Han Wong
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 in Singapore, in Berlin and
Drew Hinshaw
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 in Madrid
July 28, 2023 5:01 am ET




After three years of Covid isolation, Chinese leader Xi Jinping is planning a blowout bash for his signature Belt and Road infrastructure initiative.

The R.S.V.P.s aren’t exactly rolling in.

European countries, in particular, are skipping the festivities, a reflection of souring relations between the continent and China. Beijing had hoped that Europe would plug into its Belt and Road network of global trade and transportation links, but European leaders are backing away, sharing Washington’s wariness about increasing their economic dependence on China.

The one prominent guest who has said he is attending—Russian President Vladimir Putin—has further driven away European leaders, many of whom have hardened their stance toward China because of Beijing’s support for Moscow since the start of the Ukraine war.

Beijing envisioned the Belt and Road Initiative to direct what some experts estimated to be $1 trillion toward Chinese-financed rail, roads, pipelines and ports that would link Asia with Europe, Africa and Latin America.

Just five years ago, China was quickly signing up new members across the developing world and making inroads among rich economies more closely aligned with Washington—including Italy, Greece and the Czech Republic—with goods arriving in European ports and railways financed by Belt and Road.

Now, many of those countries are distancing themselves from the project, as Europe seeks to reduce China’s economic influence in the region. 

French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz currently have no plans to attend this year’s Belt and Road Forum, according to senior government officials. Nor does Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni of Italy, the only Group of Seven country to sign up to the Belt and Road, said a person coordinating her schedule. Historically neutral Switzerland, which sent its president to the past two summits, is reviewing whether it will participate this year, a foreign-ministry spokeswoman said.

Greece, which joined the Belt and Road Initiative in 2018, has already told Beijing its prime minister won’t attend. The Czech Republic, which signed up to the initiative in 2015, doesn’t expect to send its president or senior officials, government spokespeople said. Xi made three-day state visits to each of those countries after they committed to Belt and Road cooperation with Beijing.

Beijing’s pursuit of Belt and Road is one of the signs that “the Chinese Communist Party’s clear goal is a systemic change of the international order with China at its center,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said in March.

The Belt and Road Initiative, which Xi first pitched in 2013 as a broad campaign to boost global development and expand China’s international influence, is the world’s biggest infrastructure program—much larger than Washington’s postwar Marshall Plan—and the U.S. hasn’t been able to field an alternative thus far.


Heads of state posing for a photo at the last Belt and Road forum, in Beijing in 2019. PHOTO: VALERY MELNIKOV/SPUTNIK/KREMLIN/SHUTTERSTOCK
But Belt and Road spending has fallen short on early estimates and Beijing’s ambitions have been dampened by Covid-19, rising borrowing costs and Russia’s war in Ukraine. This year’s Belt and Road Forum—the first since the pandemic and the third since the inaugural edition in 2017—will test the appeal of Xi’s signature platform for economic diplomacy, with Chinese diplomats working to fill guest lists and demonstrate China’s global influence.

“In past years, European countries approached the [Belt and Road Initiative] with an open mind,” said Noah Barkin, who focuses on Europe and China at research firm Rhodium Group. Now, the narrative has shifted and the program is largely seen, Barkin says, as “a vehicle for spreading Chinese influence abroad.”

The lackluster response from Europe so far suggests a more challenging global landscape for Xi’s diplomatic ambitions. If European countries once flirted with joining Belt and Road, they are now competing with it.

In late October, European governments will invite business leaders, officials and heads of state from Africa, Latin America and Asia—but not China—to their own rival forum, promoting Global Gateway, the European Union’s $333 billion infrastructure-building program.

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Chinese officials, meanwhile, are working toward a mid-October time frame for the Beijing forum and have been courting the participation of foreign governments, according to people familiar with the matter.

Xi and Putin: A Friendship Forged Against the West

PHOTO: PAVEL BYRKIN/SPUTNIK/KREMLIN/PRESS POOL
State media has previously reported that Xi, during a state visit to Moscow in March, invited Putin to attend. This week, the Kremlin said Putin would participate.

Putin’s presence has made it all but impossible for China to secure commitments from governments that have condemned Russia’s Ukraine invasion and imposed sanctions on Moscow, people familiar with the matter say.

Low attendance would undercut Beijing’s efforts to project an image of growing global clout. The previous forum in 2019 featured senior leaders from 38 countries, whereas 30 national leaders appeared at the inaugural event in 2017—to which the Trump administration sent a midlevel delegation led by a White House adviser.

Spokespeople for China’s Foreign Ministry didn’t respond to a request for comment.

The Belt and Road program has faced criticism at home and abroad as projects stall, debtors struggle to repay loans and allegations of overspending and misallocation of resources crop up. Western officials have blamed the initiative for heaping onerous debt onto poorer countries—a notion that Beijing rejects. Some private businesses have also lost interest after failing to reap the benefits they hoped for, following an early buzz that prompted many entrepreneurs to find ways to associate themselves with the program.

“‘Belt and Road’ sloganeering is outdated,” said one China-focused business lobbyist in Singapore who works with companies from both countries, adding that many entrepreneurs have moved on to new buzzwords, such as the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, or RCEP—a 15-member Asian trade pact of which China is a member.


The Jakarta-Bandung High-Speed Railway is one of many infrastructure projects under China’s Belt and Road Initiative. PHOTO: REN WEIYUN/ZUMA PRESS
Beijing, for its part, has defended the Belt and Road as beneficial for global trade and development in partner countries, while promising to improve its implementation. At the 2019 forum, Xi pledged to introduce a “debt-sustainability framework” for Belt and Road projects and encourage compliance with international standards in infrastructure contracting. Chinese officials have also set stronger risk controls and become more willing to accept some losses and renegotiate debt.

Europe’s turn away from Belt and Road started before the pandemic, as the continent’s major powers re-evaluated their relationship with China. Since 2019, the EU’s official China policy has labeled Beijing a “systemic rival,” not just a commercial partner. The following year, the EU Chamber of Commerce in China said European companies were only getting “crumbs from the table” from Belt and Road, since most financing is routed through Chinese state-owned entities.

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What does China’s Belt and Road Initiative say about its global standing and ambitions? Join the conversation below.

Diplomatic spats also made closer trade links with China less palatable. In 2020, Chinese diplomats threatened to import fewer pianos from the Czech Republic, whose then-president was a staunch Belt and Road supporter, if a Czech senator flew to Taiwan, a self-governed island that Beijing claims as its territory. The incident sparked a wave of China skepticism that helped elect a new president who is one of Europe’s most outspoken China hawks.

The following year, China curbed imports from Lithuania by 80% after the Baltic country allowed Taiwan to open a local office under a name suggesting the island is an independent state. The EU sued China at the World Trade Organization and intensified efforts to reduce trade dependencies on China.

China’s ambivalent reaction to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine further alienated many European officials, who began working more closely with the U.S. to curb Beijing’s global influence—including the Belt and Road Initiative. At a May summit in Hiroshima, the G-7 advanced democracies established a partnership for global infrastructure in which leaders pledged to raise $600 billion in investments for developing countries. The EU is committed to mobilizing private and public investments worth more than half of that.

Margherita Stancati in Rome contributed to this article.

DougMacG

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Re: WSJ
« Reply #260 on: July 28, 2023, 07:35:44 AM »
John Lennon:
"if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao
You ain't going to make it with anyone anyhow"
---------------------
Odd turn of events, it's Chairman Xi who wants to revolutionize the world and it's Putin's picture he shouldn't be carrying.

These countries (rest of the world) are crazy to 'partner' with either of these sinister crime syndicates, and the US and free world should be offering a better alternative.

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Edward Luttwak on Russia/Ukraine and China
« Reply #261 on: August 05, 2023, 01:02:26 PM »


Crafty_Dog

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Chinese political penetration of Italy
« Reply #263 on: September 05, 2023, 09:00:07 AM »
Meeting in Beijing. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi met in Beijing with his Italian counterpart, Antonio Tajani. Wang praised the recent expansion of bilateral ties, while Tajani said Italy looks forward to working with Beijing to deepen cooperation on trade and investment, science and technology, environmental protection and tourism.

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WSJ: A story of Chinese penetration in GB
« Reply #264 on: September 12, 2023, 10:47:48 AM »
My Encounters With a Suspected Spy
He invited me to join a Westminster panel on China. Later we met for coffee. What did he learn?
By Joseph C. Sternberg
Sept. 12, 2023 12:06 pm ET




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The Palace of Westminster in London, Sept. 11. PHOTO: TAYFUN SALCI/ZUMA PRESS
London

When the email from the alleged spy for China landed in my inbox, it took me a moment to realize I should pay attention to it.

It was a speaking invitation and arrived on the afternoon of Jan. 2. Would I participate in a panel discussion for a forthcoming book about the contest between democracies and autocracies? Such requests cross my transom from time to time, and I admit I don’t always respond quickly. I almost overlooked this one until a few details caught my eye.

The invitation came on behalf of the China Research Group, a caucus of members of the British Parliament with hawkish views on Beijing. I respect one of the CRG’s founders, Tom Tugendhat, who is now security minister. And I’d met the author of the book a few years before and was happy to help him launch his new work even though I suspected I wouldn’t agree with parts of it. I accepted the invitation.

The one thing that didn’t stand out at all about the email was the name of the CRG staffer who had sent it: Chris Cash. I’d never heard of him. Now everyone has, since the Times of London reported this weekend that he was arrested earlier this year on suspicion of spying for Beijing. A law firm on Monday issued a statement on behalf of the person arrested, without naming Mr. Cash, in which its client said he is “completely innocent” of the allegations.

If the allegations are true, this ranks as one of the most serious espionage incidents in the U.K. since the height of the Cold War. As a parliamentary staffer, Mr. Cash would have had access to nonpublic (although apparently not classified) information. His perch at the CRG offered him insight into the thinking of British lawmakers who are most suspicious of the Chinese Communist Party. And he had a window into the activities of other members of society, such as the human-rights activists who interact with those lawmakers—and of journalists.

The main surprise is that it took so long for allegations of this sort to emerge here. Before this weekend, Britain’s Parliament was one of the few major legislatures in the West not to have become embroiled in a Chinese spying scandal of this magnitude. The U.S. Congress has suffered such cases, as have the Canadian and Australian parliaments.

Beijing’s intentions globally appear to stretch beyond information gathering. Influence also is a goal, as the Chinese allegedly plant individuals who can shape attitudes and policies. It’s hard to believe such an effort would have worked in the U.K. given the stature and experience of CRG members.

No matter. If Chinese espionage has happened here, Beijing can claim a win even now if it has been exposed. The mere suggestion of such influence plants seeds of doubt about the integrity of Western democracy. Certainly this episode threatens to embarrass Mr. Tugendhat, one of Beijing’s most vocal British critics—albeit undeservedly and only by distant association through the CRG, since he appears not to have worked closely with Mr. Cash.

As for my bit part: I participated in the panel discussion on Feb. 7 in a meeting room in Westminster Palace, home to Parliament. The audience appeared to be a mix of parliamentary staffers and activists of various sorts. I assumed at least one attendee would be from the Chinese Embassy, there to monitor the event and perhaps intimidate some of the other audience members merely by his or her presence as is Beijing’s standard practice these days.

At the end of the event, the other panelists, Mr. Cash and I posed for a photograph, which the Times republished this weekend.

Mr. Cash and I subsequently met one-on-one in early March at a coffee shop. I don’t remember who first suggested the idea in person during the panel event, but he reached out first via email to schedule the follow-up. Our chat was intended to be off the record, so I won’t share what he said. But under the circumstances I feel at liberty to tell Journal readers about my half of the conversation:

My aim was to determine whether Mr. Cash might be a helpful source, but I concluded he wouldn’t be. He hadn’t told me anything interesting that I couldn’t have inferred from reading a newspaper. I didn’t bother trying to maintain the connection after that meeting, which is why until the Times published its article this weekend I didn’t realize he had become incommunicado following his reported arrest later in March.

What might Mr. Cash have learned from me? As a matter of course, in such meetings I don’t discuss other sources or my private conversations with colleagues on any topic. As I recall, I asked him mostly about Britain’s economic relationship with China. I also asked if he had any insight into Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s dilatory approach to the case of jailed Hong Kong journalist and British citizen Jimmy Lai. But my interest in these matters is well-known because my colleagues and I have published our views on them. The meeting may have been a dud all around.

***
At that panel discussion, I argued that democracies defeat autocracies by being more like ourselves. That means more transparency, more tolerance for free debate, and also more care by each institution to carry out its role diligently within an open society. The new global wave of Chinese spying is so pernicious because it challenges our ability to do that.

Concerning legislatures, those bodies require trust to function on our behalf. In Britain there are already calls to tighten rules on the issuance of parliamentary passes to staffers. Perhaps there’s room for improvement, but such tweaks aren’t necessarily cost-free. They come at the risk of limiting the ability of lawmakers to draw on the expertise of many talented staffers, and such rules risk embedding a broader climate of distrust.

Meanwhile, should citizens be wary of lobbying lawmakers for fear that sensitive information (personal or commercial) could find its way into the wrong hands? This isn’t a trivial concern for human-rights activists, who play a vital role in our democracies by informing and persuading lawmakers about events in China. They already face substantial risks of harassment from the Chinese agents we too often allow to operate unrestrained on our shores, where they intimidate students on campuses, marchers at protests and more. Not even a congressman’s or member of Parliament’s office can be taken for granted as a safe zone.

Inevitably we’ll find there are no easy ways to protect ourselves. But understand that Beijing’s global espionage operations are about more than intelligence gathering. They are attempts to transform our democratic cultures from within, to make us less like ourselves. That may be the most dangerous threat of all.

Mr. Sternberg, a member of the Journal’s editorial board, writes the Political Economics column.

Crafty_Dog

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Chinese penetration of Britain
« Reply #265 on: October 19, 2023, 06:05:34 AM »

Body-by-Guinness

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Stewart Canceled
« Reply #266 on: October 21, 2023, 03:37:17 PM »
Apple cancels John Stewart, citing planned segments about China and AI, among others. It’s difficult not to issue a sardonic grin when a culture warrior is given hoist by the petard he totes, but if does serve to illustrate just how deeply China has its claws sunk into sundry corners of the US. Indeed, while recovering from various surgeries I caught a lot of flicks that not only had Chinese heros inexplicably inserted into them, but likely were then re-edited to make the Chinese character(s) the star(s) of the show in other markets:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/10/report-apple-cancels-the-problem-with-jon-stewart-over-china-ai-topics/

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Re: China vs. the World; Chinese political intimidation & penetration
« Reply #267 on: October 21, 2023, 07:00:23 PM »
Thread nazi here  :-D  That would be Chinese Penetration of America.

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Re: China vs. the World; Chinese political intimidation & penetration
« Reply #268 on: October 21, 2023, 07:03:18 PM »
Thread nazi here  :-D  That would be Chinese Penetration of America.



Hey, I’ve been gone a while and am still wrapping my head around what topics are out there….. :-D


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Re: China vs. the World; Chinese political intimidation & penetration
« Reply #269 on: October 21, 2023, 07:05:33 PM »
No worries, thread nazi is here to help  :-D

ccp

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I presume the CCP position is anti Israel
« Reply #270 on: October 30, 2023, 12:40:49 PM »
since they are allowing these posts
whether they say so publicly or not.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/antisemitic-comments-increase-across-chinese-social-media/ar-AA1j2WE6?ocid=msedgntp&pc=DCTS&cvid=8e924f3652ad4c70a701aa33b501380c&ei=8

I am presuming for influence and oil from Muslim countries

Plus anything to stick a thumb in the eye of the US.

Ironic since they treat their own Muslims as garbage

Crafty_Dog

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China wipes Israel off the map
« Reply #271 on: November 12, 2023, 04:11:05 PM »
https://www.thefp.com/p/a-world-spinning-out-of-control-521

The implications of this act run deep on many levels.

Body-by-Guinness

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China to Iran: Cool it in the Red Sea
« Reply #272 on: January 27, 2024, 07:53:32 PM »
China supplies Iran who supply the Houthis that are interrupting Red Sea trade:

https://weapons.substack.com/p/china-the-red-sea-and-trade?r=1qo1e&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email&fbclid =IwAR1ebiIj1_iEBM9yQkMD6WWE2ljzllb7OU7YYjsvwgYituKtOItbuUCdrFM

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Developed Nations Pay for Chinese “Free” Shipping
« Reply #273 on: January 28, 2024, 12:13:10 PM »
I was unaware that we subsidize China’s shipping rates for the cheap crap they sell consumers online. Indeed, the USPS has to raise its rates & run a deficit in part to cover this:

https://joannenova.com.au/2024/01/how-cheap-postage-from-china-is-another-un-bureaucratic-scam/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=how-cheap-postage-from-china-is-another-un-bureaucratic-scam

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Re: China vs. the World; Chinese political intimidation & penetration
« Reply #274 on: January 28, 2024, 03:54:59 PM »
Did not know this.

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Re: China vs. the World; Chinese political intimidation & penetration
« Reply #275 on: January 28, 2024, 04:29:41 PM »
Did not know this.
Explain's a lot of the "free shipping" found on eBay....

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Putin helps Xi build plutonium reactors
« Reply #276 on: January 31, 2024, 11:15:07 AM »

Body-by-Guinness

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China’s Retribution and Australia’s Amnesia
« Reply #277 on: March 28, 2024, 05:48:54 PM »
I was not aware of this series of related China v. Australia incidents:

Shh! Nobody mention why China launched that trade war on Australia…

China, Lion statue

By Jo Nova

That which must not be spoken
Every news outlet today is saying how good it is that “relations” with China have thawed, like it was just a bad patch of weather, and now the clouds have cleared they’ve allowed us to sell them wine again. But there is a kind of collective amnesia about why relations froze in the first place.

Just to recap, through incompetence or “otherwise” naughty-citizen China leaked a likely lab experiment, lied about it, and destroyed the evidence. They stopped it spreading at home but sent it on planes to infect the rest of the world. Then when Scott Morrison, Australian Prime Minister, dared ask for an investigation in April 2020, within a week China threatened boycotts, and followed up with severe anti-dumping duties on Australian barley. After which the CCP discovered “inconsistencies in labelling” on Australian beef imports, and added bans or tariffs on Australian wine, wheat, wool, sugar, copper, lobsters, timber and grapes. Then they told their importers not to bring in Australian coal, cotton or LNG either. The only industry they didn’t attack was iron ore, probably because they couldn’t get it anywhere else. In toto, the punishment destroyed about $20 billion dollars in trade, and everyone, even CNN, knew this was political retribution and a message to the world.

As Jeffrey Wilson, Foreign Policy, described it in November 2021

“… its massive onslaught against Australia was like nothing before. Whereas China usually sanctions minor products as a warning shot—Norwegian salmon, Taiwanese pineapples—Australia was the first country to be subjected to an economywide assault.”

But perhaps the communist party had nothing to hide?

Not to put a fine point on it, but on January 14th, 2020, China told the world they had “found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission “. A Chinese CDC expert said “If no new patients appear in the next week, it might be over.” They didn’t mention that things were already so bad in Wuhan in December 2019, that even doctors one thousand kilometers away in Taiwan suspected it was spreading human to human. Taiwan demanded answers from the WHO on December 31. The next day, the CCP destroyed all the virus samples, information about them, and related papers.  But perhaps it was just an innocent bat-pangolin thing, yeah?

So after four years of pain in order to stand bravely against the bully, what concessions, exactly, did our current leadership win? There’s no investigation, no answers, no apology, no nothing and no reason to think it won’t happen again.

In fact to smooth the wheels, Australia dropped the WTO cases against China for their bad behaviour with barley and wine. But the negotiation geniuses didn’t insist that China drop its WTO case against us (which was instigated two days after the Australian cases). And so it comes to pass that this week China won the WTO steel case against us.

https://joannenova.com.au/2024/03/shh-nobody-mention-why-china-launched-that-trade-war-on-australia/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=shh-nobody-mention-why-china-launched-that-trade-war-on-australia

Crafty_Dog

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FO: Chinese political intimidation & penetration of Canada
« Reply #278 on: June 13, 2024, 05:20:27 PM »
(8) CANADIAN INTELLIGENCE: PRC OPERATIVES ARE IN CANADA’S GOV’T: The Canadian National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians released its annual report on foreign interference in Canada’s democratic processes throughout 2023.
China and India were the two largest culprits of foreign interference. The report noted that Russia retained its ability to conduct interference but had no will to do so.

The Canadian intelligence services redacted the details but noted that they were aware of a Chinese plot in a specific electoral district and had failed to counter the campaign.

China specifically targets Chinese diaspora Parliamentarians and National Security officials for influence. The report confirms that some Parliamentarians “began wittingly assisting foreign state actors soon after their election.”

Why It Matters: The height of the infiltration likely compromises the Five Eyes security agreement as Canada is one of the U.S.’ most trusted allies. The summaries from the redacted version indicate the classified report either names foreign operatives and entities or provides enough details to identify them. We are likely to see a push for a purge of these people from the more conservative Canadian Parliamentarians. – J.V.

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FO
« Reply #279 on: June 28, 2024, 09:00:43 AM »


(5) GREATER CHINESE INFLUENCE OPS INBOUND: Xi Jinping gave a speech this morning on his vision for how China will influence the world going forward.
Xi’s concrete promises included giving the “global south” 1,000 scholarships, 100,000 training opportunities, a Renminbi investment in foreign agriculture worth $10 million, and importing more than $8 trillion worth of goods from the global south by 2030.
Xi also promised China would continue “opening up” to the world and establish a market economy.
Why It Matters: Deng Xiaoping’s “opening up” established a concern that the world would break China away from the Marxism that helped it end the Century of Humiliation, plunging China back into humiliation. Xi’s promise of an even greater opening shows that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is confident it can continue to export Chinese communism rather than have external ideas infiltrate China. We are likely to see an increase in Chinese influence across the world using low-level officials and “development meetings” with their targets. Historically, the International Liaison Department of the CCP accomplished this with revolutions if they could not peacefully capture institutions. – J.V.


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FO: China dominating world wide ship building
« Reply #281 on: July 19, 2024, 08:33:11 AM »
China reports an 18% increase in shipbuilding tonnage comparing the first halves of 2024 and 2023. China also claims to have 55% of global shipbuilding completions and 74.7% of new global orders in the first half of 2024, and an orderbook accounting for 58.9% of the global total as measured by tonnage.




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GPF: EU & Japan beginning to link up against China
« Reply #285 on: November 05, 2024, 06:42:22 AM »
An unlikely defense partnership. The European Union and Japan recently formalized a strategic defense partnership meant to enhance security cooperation. The partnership was formed in response to shared geopolitical concerns, particularly the growing influence of China, and it marked the first time an Indo-Pacific nation signed a structured security framework with the EU. The plan includes joint military exercises, senior-level dialogues, shared nonproliferation goals and collaboration in maritime security, cyber defense and counterterrorism.



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Deep Read: The Deep Chinese Strategy
« Reply #289 on: December 30, 2024, 03:19:45 PM »


https://jrnyquist.blog/2019/09/11/the-secret-speech-of-general-chi-haotian/   

September 11, 2019
The Secret Speech of General Chi Haotian
In 2005, The Epoch Times acquired a secret speech given by Defense Minister Chi Haotian to high-level Communist Party Cadres sometime before his retirement in 2003. Details given in Chi’s speech coincide with previously unpublished defector testimony on Sino-Russian military plans.

The speech follows:

Comrades,

I’m very excited today, because the large-scale online survey sina.com that was done for us showed that our next generation is quite promising and our party’s cause will be carried on. In answering the question, “Will you shoot at women, children and prisoners of war,” more than 80 percent of the respondents answered in the affirmative, exceeding by far our expectations.

Today I’d like to focus on why we asked sina.com to conduct this online survey among our people. My speech today is a sequel to my speech last time, during which I started with a discussion of the issue of the three islands, [where I] mentioned that 20 years of the idyllic theme of “peace and development” had come to an end, and concluded that modernization under the saber is the only option for China’s next phase. I also mention we have a vital stake overseas. Today, I’ll speak more specifically on these two issues.

The central issue of this survey appears to be whether one should shoot at women, children and prisoners of war, but its real significance goes far beyond that. Ostensibly, our intention is mainly to figure out what the Chinese people’s attitude toward war is: If these future soldiers do not hesitate to kill even non-combatants, they’ll naturally be doubly ready and ruthless in killing combatants. Therefore, the responses to the survey questions may reflect the general attitude people have towards war.

Actually, however, this is not our genuine intention. The purpose of the CCP Central Committee in conducting this survey is to probe people’s minds. We wanted to know: If China’s global development will necessitate massive deaths in enemy countries, will our people endorse that scenario? Will they be for or against it?

As everybody knows, the essence of Comrade Xiaoping’s thinking is “development is the hard truth.” And Comrade Jintao, has also pointed out repeatedly and emphatically that “development is our top priority,” which should not be neglected for even a moment. But many comrades tend to understand “development” in its narrow sense, assuming it to be limited to domestic development. The fact is, our “development” refers to the great revitalization of the Chinese nation, which, of course, is not limited to the land we have now but also includes the whole world.

Why do I put it this way?

Both Comrade Liu Huaquing, one of the leaders of the old generation in our Party, and Comrade He Xin, a young strategist of our Party, have repeatedly stressed the theory regarding the shift of the center of World Civilization. Our slogan of “revitalizing China” has this way of thinking as its basis. You may look into the newspapers and magazines published in recent years or go online to do some research to find out who raised the slogan of national revitalization first. It was Comrade He Xin. Do you know who He Xin is? He may look aggressive and despicable when he speaks in public, with his sleeves and pants all rolled up, but his historical vision is a treasure our Party should cherish.

In discussing this issue, let us start from the beginning.

As everybody knows, according to the views propagated by Western scholars, humanity as a whole originated from one single mother in Africa. Therefore, no race can claim racial superiority. However, according to the research conducted by most Chinese scholars, the Chinese are different from other races on earth. We did not originate in Africa. Instead, we originated independently in the land of China. The Peking Man at Zhoukoudian that we are all familiar with represents a phase of our ancestors’ evolution. “The Project of Searching for the Origins of the Chinese Civilization” currently undertaken in our country is aimed at a more comprehensive and systematic research on the origin, process and development of the ancient Chinese civilization. We use to say, “Chinese civilization has had a history of five thousand years.” But now, many experts engaged in research in varied fields including archeology, ethnic cultures, and regional cultures have reached consensus that the new discoveries such as the Hongshan Culture in the northeast, the Liangahn Cutlure in Zhejiang province, the Jinsha Ruins in Sichuan province, and the Yongzhou Shun Emperor Cultural Site in Hunan province are all compelling evidence of the exitence of China’s early civilizations, and they prove that China’s rice-growing agricultural history alone can be traced back as far as 8,000 to 10,000 years. This refutes the concept of “five thousand years of Chinese civilization.”

Therefore, we can assert that we are the product of cultural roots of more than a million years, and a single Chinese entity of two thousand years. This is the Chinese entity of two thousand years. This is the Chinese nation that calls itself, “descendants of Yan and Huang,” the Chinese nation that we are so proud of. Hitler’s Germany had once bragged that the German race was the most superior race on earth, but the fact is, our nation is far superior to the Germans.

During our long history, our people have disseminated throughout the Americas and the regions along the Pacific Rim, and they became Indians in the Americas and the East Asian ethnic groups in the South Pacific.

We all know that on account of our national superiority, during the thriving and prosperous Tang Dynasty our civilization was at the peak of the world. We were the center of the world civilization, and no other civilization in the world was comparable to ours. Later on, because of our complacency, narrow-mindedness, and the self-enclosure of our own country, we were surpassed by Western civilization, and the center of the world shifted to the West.

In reviewing history, one may ask: Will the center of the world civilization shift back to China?

Comrade He Xin put it in his report to the Central Committee in 1988: If the fact is that the center of leadership of the world was located in Europe as of the 18th Century, and later shifted to the United States in the mid-20th century the center of leadership of the world will shift to the East of our planet. And, “the East” of course mainly refers to China.

Actually, Comrade Lui Huaquing made similar points in the 1980s. Based on an historical analysis, he pointed out that the center of world civilization is shifting. It shifted from the East to Western Europe and later to the United States; now it is shifting back to the East. Therefore, if we refer to the 19th century as the British century, and the 20th century as the American century, then the 21st century will be the Chinese century.

To understand conscientiously this historical law and to greet the advent of the Chinese Century is the historical mission of our Party. As we all know, at the end of the last century, we built the Altar to the Chinese Century in Beijing.

At the very moment of the arrival of the new millennium, the collective leadership of the Party Central Committee gathered there for a rally, upholding the torches of Zhoukoudian, to pledge themselves to get ready to greet the arrival of the Chinese Century. We were doing this to follow the historical law and setting the realization of the Chinese century as the goal of our Party’s endeavors.

Later, in the political report of our Party’s Sixteenth National Congress, we established that national revitalization should be our great objective and explicitly specified in our new Party Constitution that our Party is the pioneer of the Chinese people. All these steps marked a major development in Marxism, reflecting our Party’s courage and wisdom. As we all know, Marx and his followers have never referred to any communist party as a pioneer of a certain people; neither did they say that national revitalization could be used as a slogan of a communist party. Even Comrade Mao Zedong, a courageous national hero, only raised high the banner of “the global proletarian revolution,” but even he did not have the courage to give the loudest publicity to the slogan of national revitalization.

We must greet the arrival of the Chinese Century by raising high the banner of national revitalization. How should we fight for the realization of the Chinese Century? We must borrow the precious experiences in human history by taking advantage of the outstanding fruition of human civilization and drawing lessons from what happened to other ethnic groups.

The lessons include the collapse of communism in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, as well as the defeats of Germany and Japan in the past. Recently there has been much discussion of the lessons of the collapse of communism in the former Soviet Union and Eastern European countries, so I will not dwell on them here. Today I’d like to talk about the lessons of Germany and Japan.

As we all know, Nazi Germany also placed much emphasis on the education of the people, especially the younger generation. The Nazi Party and government organized and established various propaganda and educational institutions such as the “Guiding Bureau of National Propaganda,” “Department of National Education and Propaganda,” “Supervising Bureau of Worldview Study and Education,” and “Information Office,” all aimed at instilling into the people’s minds, from elementary schools to colleges, the idea that German people are superior, and convincing people that the historical mission of the Aryan people is to become the “lords of the earth” whose right it is to “rule over the world.” Back then the German people were much more united than we are today.

Nonetheless, Germany was defeated in utter shame, along with its ally, Japan. Why? We reached some conclusions at the study meetings of the Politburo, in which we were searching for the laws that governed the vicissitudes of the big powers, and trying to analyze Germany and Japan’s rapid growth. When we decide to revitalize based on the German model, we must not repeat the mistakes they made.

Specifically, the following are the fundamental causes for their defeat: First, they had too many enemies all at once, as they did not adhere to the principle of eliminating enemies one at a time; second, they were too impetuous, lacking the patience and perseverance required for great accomplishments; third, when the time came for them to be ruthless, they turned out to be too soft, therefore leaving troubles that resurfaced later on.

Let’s presume that back then Germany and Japan had been able to keep the United States neutral and had fought a protracted war step by step on the Soviet front. If they had adopted this approach, gained some time to advance their research, eventually succeeded in obtaining the technology of nuclear weapons and missiles, and launched surprise attacks against the United States and the Soviet Union using them, then the United States and the Soviet Union would not have been able to defend themselves and would have had to surrender. Little Japan, in particular, made an egregious mistake in launching the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor. This attack did not hit the vital parts of the United States. Instead, it dragged the United States into the war, into the ranks of the gravediggers that eventually buried the German and Japanese fascists.

Of course, if they had not made these three mistakes and won the war, history would have been written in a different fashion. If that had been the case, China would not be in our hands. Japan might have relocated their capital to China and ruled over China. Afterwards, China and the whole of Asia under Japan’s command would have brought into full play the oriental wisdom, conquered the West ruled by Germany and unified the whole world. This is irrelevant, of course. No more digressions.

So, the fundamental reason for the defeats of Germany and Japan is that history did not arrange them to be the “lords of the earth,” for they are, after all, not the most superior race.

Ostensibly, in comparison, today’s China is alarmingly similar to Germany back then. Both of them regard themselves as the most superior races; both of them have a history of being exploited by foreign powers and are therefore vindictive; both of them have the tradition of worshipping their own authorities; both of them feel that they have seriously insufficient living space; both of them raise high the two banners of nationalism and socialism and label themselves as “national socialism”; both of them worship “one state, one party, one leader, and one doctrine.”

And yet, if we really are to make a comparison between Germany and China, then, as Comrade Jiang Zemin put it, Germany belongs to “pediatrics” – too trivial to be compared. How large is Germany’s population? How big is its territory? And how long is its history? We eliminated eight million nationalist troops in only three years. How many enemies did Germany kill? They were in power for a transient period of little more than a dozen years before they perished, while we are still energetic after being around for more than eighty years. Our theory of the shifting center of civilization is of course more profound than Hitler’s theory of “the lords of the earth.” Our civilization is profound and broad, which has determined that we are so much wiser than they were.

Our Chinese people are wiser than the Germans because, fundamentally, our race is superior to theirs. As a result, we have a longer history, more people, and larger land area. On this basis our ancestors left us with the two most essential heritages, which are atheism and great unity. It was Confucius, the founder of our Chinese culture, who gave us these heritages.

This heritage determined that we have a stronger ability to survive than the West. That is why the Chinese race has been able to prosper for so long. We are destined “not to be buried by either heaven or earth” no matter how severe the natural, man-made, and national disasters. This is our advantage.

Take response to war as an example. The reason that the United States remains today is that it has never seen war on its mainland. Once its enemies aim at the mainland, these enemies would reach Washington before its congress finishes debating and authorizes the president to declare war. But for us, we don’t waste time on these trivial things. Comrade Deng Xiaoping once said, “The Party’s leadership is prompt in making decisions. Once a decision is made, it is immediately implemented. There’s no wasting time on trivial things like in capitalist countries. This is our advantage! Our Party’s democratic centralism is built on the tradition of great unity. Although fascist Germany also stressed high-level centralism, they only focused on power of the top leader, but ignored the collective leadership of the central group. That’s why Hitler was betrayed by many later in his life, which fundamentally depleted the Nazis of their war capacity.

What makes us different from Germany is that we are complete atheists, while Germany was primarily a Catholic and Protestant country. Hitler was only half atheist. Although Hitler also believed that ordinary citizens had low intelligence, and that leaders should therefore make decisions, and although German people worshipped Hitler back then, Germany did not have the tradition of worshipping sages on a broad basis. Our Chinese society has always worshipped sages, and that is because we don’t worship any God. Once you worship a god, you can’t worship a person at the same time, unless you recognize the person as the god’s representative like they do in Middle Eastern countries. On the other hand, once you recognize a person as a sage, of course you will want him to be your leader…. This is the foundation of our democratic centralism.

The bottom line is, only China is a reliable force in resisting the Western parliament-based democratic system. Hitler’s dictatorship in Germany was perhaps but a momentary mistake in history.

Maybe you have now come to understand why we recently decided to further promulgate atheism. If we let theology from the West into China and empty us from the inside, if we let all Chinese people listen to God and follow God, who will obediently listen to us and follow us? If the common people don’t believe Comrade Hu Jintao is a qualified leader, question his authority, and want to monitor him, if the religious followers in our society question why we are leaving God in churches, can our Party continue to rule China?

Germany’s dream to be the “lord of the earth” failed, because ultimately, history did not bestow this great mission upon them. But the three lessons Germany learned from experience are what we ought to remember as we complete our historic mission and revitalize our race. The three lessons are: Firmly grasp the country’s living space; firmly grasp the Party’s control over the nation; and firmly grasp the general direction toward becoming the “lord of the earth.”

Next, I’d like to address these three issues.

The first issue is living space. This is the biggest focus of the revitalization of the Chinese race. In my last speech, I said that the fight over basic living resources (including land and ocean) is the source of the vast majority of wars in history. This may change in the information age, but not fundamentally. Our per capita resources are much less than those of Germany’s back then. In addition, economic development in the last twenty-plus years had a negative impact, and climates are rapidly changing for the worse. Our resources are in very short supply. The environment is severely polluted, especially that of soil, water, and air. Not only our ability to sustain and develop our race, but even its survival is gravely threatened, to a degree much greater than faced by Germany back then.

Anybody who has been to Western countries knows that their living space is much better than ours. They have forests alongside the highways, while we hardly have any trees by our streets. Their sky is often blue with white clouds, while our sky is covered by a layer of dark haze. Their tap water is clean enough for drinking, while even our ground water is so polluted that it can’t be drunk without filtering. They have few people in the streets, and two or three people can occupy a small residential building; in contrast, our streets are always crawling with people, and several people have to share one room.

Many years ago, there was a book titled Yellow Catastrophes. It said that, due to our following the American style of consumption, our limited resources would not long support the population and society would collapse, once our population reaches 1.3 billion. Now our population has already exceeded this limit, and we are now relying on imports to sustain our nation. It’s not that we haven’t paid attention to this issue. The Ministry of Land Resources is specialized in this issue.

But the term ‘living space’ (lebensraum) is too closely related to Nazi Germany. The reason we don’t want to discuss this too openly is to avoid the West’s association of us with Nazi Germany, which could in turn reinforce the view that China is a threat. Therefore, in our emphasis on He Xin’s new theory, “Human rights are just living rights,” we only talk about “living,” but not “space,” so as to avoid using the term “living space.” From the perspective of history, the reason that China is faced with the issue of living space is because Western countries established colonies ahead of Eastern countries. Western countries established colonies all around the world, therefore giving themselves an advantage on the issue of living space. To solve this problem, we must lead the Chinese people outside of China, so that they could develop outside of China.

The second issue is our focus on the leadership capacity of the ruling party. We’ve done better on this than their party. Although the Nazis spread their power to every aspect of the German national government, they did not stress their absolute leadership position like we have. They did not take the issue of managing the power of the party as first priority, which we have. When Comrade Mao Zedong summarized the “three treasures” of our party’s victory in conquering the country, he considered the most important “treasure” to be developing the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and strengthening its leadership position.

We have to focus on two points to fortify our leadership position and improve our leadership capacity.

The first is to promote the “Three Represents” theory, stressing that our Party is the pioneer of the Chinese race, in addition to being the pioneer of the proletariat. Many citizens say in private, “We never voted for you, the Communist Party, to represent us. How can you claim to be our representatives?”

There’s no need to worry about this issue. Comrade Mao Zedong said that if we could lead the Chinese people outside of China, resolving the lack of living space in China, the Chinese people will support us. At that time, we don’t’ have to worry about the labels of “totalitarianism” or “dictatorship.” Whether we can forever represent the Chinese people depends on whether we can succeed in leading the Chinese people out of China.

The second point, whether we can lead the Chinese people out of China, is the most important determinant of the CCP’s leadership position.

Why do I say this?

Everyone knows that without the leadership of our Party, China would not exist today. Therefore, our highest principle is to forever protect our Party’s leadership position. Before June 4, we realized vaguely that as long as China’s economy is developed, people would support and love the Communist Party. Therefore we had to use several decades of peacetime to develop China’s economy. No matter what-isms, whether it is a white cat or a black at, it is a good cat if it can develop China’s economy. But at that time, we did not have mature ideas about how China would deal with international disputes after its economy becomes developed.

Comrade Xiaoping said then that the main themes in the world were peace and development. But the June 4 riot gave our Party a warning and gave us a lesson that is still fresh.

The pressure of China’s peaceful evolution makes us reconsider of these two main themes of our time. We see that neither of these two issues, peace and development, have been resolved. The western oppositional forces always change the world according to their own visions; they want to change China and use peaceful evolution to overturn the leadership of our Communist Party. Therefore, if we only develop the economy, we still face the possibility of losing control.

The June 4 riot almost succeeded in bringing a peaceful transition; if it were not for the fact that a large number of veteran comrades were still alive and at a crucial moment they removed Zhao Ziyang and his followers, then we all would have been put in prison. After death we would have been too ashamed to report to Marx. Although we have passed the test of June 4, after our group of senior comrades pass away, without our control, peaceful evolution may still come to China like it did to the former Soviet Union. In 1956, they suppressed the Hungarian incident and defeated the attacks by Tito’s revisionists of Yugoslavia, but they could not withstand Gorbachev thirty some years later. Once those pioneering senior comrades died, the power of the Communist Party was taken away by peaceful evolution.

After the June 4 riot was suppressed, we have been thinking about how to prevent China from peaceful evolution and how to maintain the Communist Party’s leadership. We thought it over and over but did not come up with any good ideas. If we do not have good ideas, China will inevitably change peacefully, and we will all become criminals in history. After some deep pondering, we finally come to this conclusion: Only by turning our developed national strength into the force of a first striking outward – only by leading people to go out – can we win forever the Chinese people’s support and love for the Communist Party. Our party will then stand on invincible ground, and the Chinese people will have to depend on the Communist Party. They will forever follow the Communist Party with their hearts and minds, as was written in a couplet frequently seen in the countryside some years ago: “Listen to Chairman Mao, follow the Communist Party!” Therefore, the June 4 riot made us realize that we must combine economic development with preparation for war and leading the people to go out! Therefore, since then, our national defence policy has taken a 180 degree turn and we have since emphasized more and more “combining peace and war.” Our economic development is all about preparing for the needs of war! Publicly we still emphasize economic development as our center, but in reality, economic development has war as its center! We have made a tremendous effort to construct “The Great Wall Project” to build up, along our coastal and land frontiers as well as around large and medium-sized cities, a solid underground “Great Wall” that can withstand a nuclear war. We are also storing all necessary war materials. Therefore, we will not hesitate to fight a Third World War, so as to lead the people to go out and to ensure the Party’s leadership position. In any event, we, the CCP, will never step down from the stage of history! We’d rather have the whole world, or even the entire globe, share life and death with us than step down from the stage of history! Isn’t there a “nuclear bondage” theory? It means that since nuclear wepaons have bound the security of the entire world, all will die together if death is inevitable. In my view, there is another kind of bondage, and that is, the fate of our Party is tied up with that of the whole world. If we, the CCP, are finished, China will be finished, and the world will be finished.

Our Party’s historical mission is to lead the Chinese people to go out. If we take the long view, we will see that history led us on this path. First, China’s long history has resulted in the world’s largest population, including Chinese in China as well as overseas. Second, once we open our doors, the profit-seeking western capitalists will invest capital and technology in China to assist our development, so that they can occupy the biggest market in the world. Third, our numerous overseas Chinese help us create the most favorable environment for the introduction of foreign capital, foreign technology, and advanced experience into China. Thus, it is guaranteed that our reform and open-door policy will achieve tremendous success. Fourth, China’s great economic expansion will inevitably lead to the shrinkage of per-capita living space for the Chinese people, and this will encourage China to turn outward in search for new living space. Fifth, China’s great economic expansion will inevitably come with significant development in our military forces, creating conditions for our expansion overseas. Ever since Napoleon’s time, the West has been alert for the possible awakening of the sleeping lion that is China. Now, the sleeping lion is standing up and advancing into the world, and has become unstoppable!

What is the third issue we should clinch firmly in order to accomplish our historical mission of national renaissance? It is to hold firmly onto the big “issue of America.”

This appears to be shocking, but the logic is actually very simple.

Comrade He Xin put forward a very fundamental judgment that is very reasonable. He asserted in his report to the Party Central Committee: The renaissance of China is in fundamental conflict with the Western strategic interest, and therefore will inevitably be obstructed by the western countries doing everything they can. So, Only by breaking the blockade formed by the western countries headed by the United States can China grow and move toward the world!

Would the United States allow us to go out to gain new living space? First, if the United States is firm in blocking us, it is hard for us to do anything significant to Taiwan, Vietnam, India, or even Japan, [so] how much more living space can we get? Very trivial! Only countries like the United States, Canada and Australia have the vast land to serve our need for mass colonization.

Therefore, solving the “issue of America” is the key to solving all other issues. First, this makes it possible for us to have many people migrate there and even establish another China under the same leadership of the CCP. America was originally discovered by the ancestors of the yellow race, but Columbus gave credit to the white race. We the descendants of the Chinese nation are entitled to the possession of the land! It is said that the residents of the yellow race have a very low social status in the United States. We need to liberate them. Second, after solving the “issue of America,” the western countries of Europe would bow to us, not to mention Taiwan, Japan and other small countries. Therefore, solving the “issue of America” is the mission assigned to the CCP members by history.

I sometimes think how cruel it is for China and the United States to be enemies that are bound to meet on a narrow road! Do you remember a movie about Liberation Army Troops led by Liu Bocheng and Deng Xiaoping? The title is something like “Decisive Battle on the Central Plains.” There is a famous remark in the movie that is full of power and grandeur: “The enemies are bound to meet on a narrow road, only the brave will win!” It is this kind of fighting to win or die spirit that enabled us to seize power in Mainland China. It is historical destiny that China and the United States will come to unavoidable confrontation on a narrow path and fight each other! The United States, unlike Russia and Japan, has never occupied and hurt China, and also assisted China in its battle against the Japanese. But, it will certainly be an obstruction, and the biggest obstruction! In the long run, the relationship of China and the United States is one of a life-and-death struggle.

One time, some Americans came to visit and tried to convince us that the relationship between China and the United States is one of interdependence. Comrade Xiaoping replied in a polite manner: “Go tell your government, China and the United States do not have such a relationship that is interdependent and mutually reliant.” Actually, Comrade Xiaoping was being too polite, he could have been more frank, “The relationship between China and the United States is one of life-and-death struggle.” Of course, right now it is not the time to openly break up with them yet. Our reform and opening to the outside world still rely on their capital and technology, we still need America. Therefore, we must do everything we can to promote our relationship with America, learn from America in all aspects and use America as an example to reconstruct our country.

How have we managed our foreign affairs in these years? Even if we had to put on a smiling face in order to please them, even if we have to give them the right cheek after they had hit our left cheek, we still must endure in order to further our relationship with the United States. Do you remember the character of Wuxun in the movie the “Story of Wuxun”? In order to accomplish his mission, he endured so much pain and suffered so much beating and kicking! The United States is the most successful country in the world today. Only after we have learned all of its useful experiences can we replace it in the future. Even though we are presently imitating the American tone “China and the United States rely on each other and share honor and disgrace,” we must not forget that the history of our civilization repeatedly has taught us that one mountain does not allow two tigers to live together.

We also must never forget what Comrade Xiaoping emphasized: “Refrain from revealing ambitions and put others off the track.” The hidden message is: we must put up with America; we must conceal our ultimate goals, hide our capabilities, and await the opportunity. In this way, our mind is clear. Why have we not updated our national anthem with something peaceful? Why did we not change the anthem’s theme of war? Instead, when revising the Constitution this time, for the first time we clearly specified “March of the Volunteers” is our national anthem. Thus we will understand why we constantly talk loudly about the “Taiwan issue” but not the “American issue.” We all know the principle of “doing one thing under the cover of another.” If ordinary people can only see the small island of Taiwan in their eyes, then you as the elite of our country should be able to see the whole picture of our cause. Over these years, according to Comrade Xiaoping’s arrangement, a large piece of our territory in the North has been given up to Russia; do you really think our Party Committee is a fool?

To resolve the issue of America we must be able to transcend conventions and restrictions. In history, when a country defeated another country or occupied another country, it could not kill all the people in the conquered land because back then you could not kill people effectively with sabers or long spears, or even with rifles or machine guns. Therefore, it was impossible to gain a stretch of land without keeping the people on that land. However, if we conquered America in this fashion, we would not be able to make many people migrate there.

Only by using special means to “clean up” America will we be able to lead the Chinese people there. This is the only choice left for us. This is not a matter of whether we are willing to do it or not. What kind of special means is there available for us to “clean up America”?

Conventional weapons such as fighters, canons, missiles and battleships won’t do; neither will highly destructive weapons such as nuclear weapons. We are not as foolish as to want to perish together with America by using nuclear weapons, despite the fact that we have been exclaiming that we will have the Taiwan issue resolved at whatever cost. Only by using non-destructive weapons that can kill many people will we be able to reserve America for ourselves. There has been rapid development of modern biological technology, and new bio-weapons have been invented one after another. Of course, we have not been idle, in the past years we have seized the opportunity to master weapons of this kind. We are capable of achieving our purpose of “cleaning up” America all of a sudden. When Comrade Xiaoping was still with us, the Party Central Committee had the perspicacity to make the right decision not to develop aircraft carrier groups and focus instead on developing lethal weapons that can eliminate mass populations of the enemy country.

From a humanitarian perspective, we should issue a warning to the American people and persuade them to leave America and leave the land they have lived in to the Chinese people. Or at least they should leave half of the United States to be China’s colony, because America was first discovered by the Chinese. But would this work? If this strategy does not work, then there is only one choice left to us. That is, use decisive means to “clean up” America and reserve America for our use in a moment. Our historical experience has proven that as long as we make it happen, nobody in the world can do anything about us. Furthermore, if the United States as the leader is gone, then other enemies have to surrender to us.

Biological weapons are unprecedented in their ruthlessness, but if the Americans do not die then the Chinese have to die. If the Chinese people are strapped to the present land, a total societal collapse is bound to take place. According to the computation of the author of Yellow Peril, more than half of the Chinese will die, and that figure would be more than 800 million people! Just after the liberation, our yellow land supported nearly 500 million people, while today the official figure of the population is more than 1.3 billion. This yellow land has reached the limit of its capacity. One day, who knows how soon it will come, the great collapse will occur any time and more than half the population will have to go.

We must prepare ourselves for two scenarios. If our biological weapons succeed in the surprise attack, the Chinese people will be able to keep their losses at a minimum in the fight against the United States. If, however, the attack fails and triggers a nuclear retaliation from the United States, China would perhaps suffer a catastrophe in which more than half of its population would perish. That is why we need to be ready with air defense systems for our big and medium-sized cities. Whatever the case may be, we can only move forward fearlessly, for the sake of our Party and State and our nation’s future, regardless of the hardships we have to face and the sacrifices we have to make. The population, even if more than half dies, can be reproduced. But if the Party falls, everything is gone, and forever gone.

In Chinese history, in the replacement of dynasties, the ruthless have always won and the benevolent have always failed. The most typical example involved Xiang Yu the King of Chu, who, after defeating Liu Bang, failed to continue to chase after him and eliminate his forces, and his leniency resulted in Xiang Yu’s death and Liu’s victory …. Therefore, we must emphasize the importance of adopting resolute measures. In the future, the two rivals, China and the United States, will eventually meet each other in a narrow road, and our leniency to the Americans will mean cruelty toward the Chinese people. Here some people may want to ask me: What about the several millions of our compatriots in the United States? They may ask: aren’t we against Chinese killing other Chinese?

These comrades are too pedantic; they are not pragmatic enough. If we had insisted on the principle that the Chinese should not kill other Chinese, would we have liberated China? As for the several million Chinese living in the United States, this is of course a big issue. Therefore, in recent years, we have been conducting research on genetic weapons, i.e., those weapons that do not kill yellow people. But producing a result with this kind of research is extremely difficult.

Of the research done on genetic weapons throughout the world, Israel is the most advanced. Their genetic weapons are designed to target Arabs and protect the Israelis. But even they have not reached the stage of actual deployment. We have cooperated with Israel on some research. Perhaps we can introduce some of the technologies used to protect Israelis and remold these technologies to protect the yellow people. But their technologies are not mature yet, and it is difficult for us to surpass them in a few years. If it has to be five or ten years before some breakthrough can be achieved in genetic weapons, we cannot afford to wait any longer.

Old comrades like us cannot afford to wait that long, for we don’t have that much time to live. Old soldiers of my age may be able to wait for five or ten more years, but those from the period of the anti-Japanese War or the few old Red Army soldiers cannot wait any longer.

Therefore, we have to give up our expectations about genetic weapons. Of course, from another perspective, the majority of those Chinese living in the United States have become our burden, because they have been corrupted by the bourgeois liberal values for a long time and it would be difficult for them to accept our Party’s leadership. If they survived the war, we would have to launch campaigns in the future to deal with them, to reform them. Do you still remember that when we had just defeated the Koumintang (KMT) and liberated Mainland China, so many people from the bourgeois class and intellectuals welcomed us so very warmly, but later we had to launch campaigns such as the “suppression of the reactionaries” and “Anti-Rightist Movement” to clean them up and reform them? Some of them were in hiding for a long time and were not exposed until the Cultural Revolution. History has proved that any social turmoil is likely to involve many deaths.

Maybe we can put it this way: death is the engine that moves history forward. During the period of the three kingdoms, how many people died? When Genghis Khan conquered Eurasia, how many people died? When Manchu invaded the interior of China, how many people died? Not many people died during the 1911 Revolution, but when we overthrew the Three Great Mountains, and during the political campaigns such as “suppression of the reactionaries,” “Three-Anti-Campaign,” and “Five-Anti-Campaign,” at least 20 million people died. We were apprehensive that some young people today would be trembling with fear when they hear about wars and people dying.

During wartime, we were used to seeing dead people. Blood and flesh were flying everywhere, corpses were lying in heaps on the fields, and blood ran like rivers. We saw it all. On the battlefields, everybody’s eyes turned red with killing because it was a life-and-death struggle and only the brave would survive.

It is indeed brutal to kill one or two hundred million Americans. But that is the only path that will secure a Chinese century in which the CCP leads the world. We, as revolutionary humanitarians, do not want deaths. But if history confronts us with a choice between deaths of Chinese and those of Americans, we’d have to pick the latter, as, for us, it is more important to safeguard the lives of the Chinese people and the life of our Party. That is because, after all, we are Chinese and members of the CCP. Since the day we joined the CCP, the Party, life has always been above all else! History will prove that we made the right choice.

Now, when I am about to finish my speech, you probably understand why we wanted to know, whether the people would rise against us if one day we secretly adopt resolute means to “clean up” America. For over twenty years, China has been enjoying peace, and a whole generation has not been tested by war. In particular, since the end of World War II, there have been many changes in the formats of war, the concept of war and the ethics of war. Especially since the collapse of the former Soviet Union and Eastern European Communist states, the ideology of the West has come to dominate the world as a whole, and the Western theory of human nature and western view of human rights have increasingly been disseminated among the young people in China. Therefore, we were not very sure about the people’s attitude. If our people are fundamentally opposed to “cleaning up” America, we will, of course, have to adopt corresponding measures.

Why didn’t we conduct the survey through administrative means instead of through the web? We did what we did for a good reason.

First of all, we did it to reduce artificial inference and to make sure that we got the true thoughts of the people. In addition, it is more confidential and won’t reveal the true purpose of our survey. But what is most important is the fact that most of the people who are able to respond to the questions online are from social groups that are relatively well-educated and intelligent. They are the hard-core and leading groups that play a decisive role among our people. If they support us, then the people as a whole will follow us. If they oppose us, they will play the dangerous role of inciting people and creating social disturbance.

What turned out to be very comforting is they did not turn in a blank test paper. In fact, they turned in a test paper with a score of over 80. This is the excellent fruition of our Party’s work in propaganda and education over the past few decades.

Of course, a few people under western influence have objected to shooting at prisoners of war and women and children. Is everybody crazy? Some others said, “The Chinese love to label themselves as a peace-loving people, but actually they are the most ruthless people. The comments are resonant of killing and murdering, sending chills to my heart.”

Although there are not too many people holding this kind of viewpoint and they will not affect the overall situation in any significant way, but we still need to strengthen the propaganda to respond to this kind of argument.

That is to vigorously propagate Comrade He Xin’s latest article, which has already been reported to the central government. You may look it up on the website.

If you get on the website using key words to search, you will find out that a while ago comrade He Xin pointed out to the Hong Kong Business News during an interview that: “The U.S. has a shocking conspiracy.” According to what he had in hand, from September 27 to October 1, 1995, the Mikhail Sergeevich Gorbachev Foundation, funded by the United States, gathered 500 of the world’s most important statesmen, economic leaders and scientists, including George W. Bush (he was not the U.S. president at the time), the Baroness Thatcher, Tony Blair, Zbigniew Brzezinski, as well as George Soros, Bill Gates, futurist John Naisbitt, etc., all of the world’s most popular characters, in the San Francisco Fairmont hotel for a high-level roundtable conference, discussing problems about globalization and how to guide humanity to move forward into the 21st century. According to what He Xin had in hand, the outstanding people of the world in attendance thought that in the 21st century a mere 20 percent of the world’s population will be sufficient to maintain the world’s economy and prosperity, the other 80 percent or 4/5ths of the world’s population will be human garbage unable to produce new values. The people in attendance thought that this excess 80 percent population would be a trash population and “high-tech” means should be used to eliminate them gradually.

Since the enemies are secretly planning to eliminate our population, we certainly cannot be infinitely merciful and compassionate to them. Comrade He Xin’s article came out at the right time, it has proven the correctness of our tit for tat battle approach … [and] Comrade Deng Xiaoping’s great foresight to deploy against the United States military strategy.

Certainly, in spreading Comrade He Xin’s views, we cannot publish the article in the Party newspapers, in order to avoid raising the enemy’s vigilance. He Xin’s conversation may remind the enemy that we have grasped the modern science and technology, including “clean” nuclear technology as well as biological weapons technology, and we can use powerful measures to eliminate their population on a large scale.

The last problem I want to talk about is of firmly seizing the preparations for military battle.

Currently, we are at the crossroad of moving forward or backward. Some comrades saw problems flooding everywhere in our country – the corruption problem, the state-owned enterprise problem, the bank’s bad accounts problem, environmental problems, society security problems, education problems, the AIDS problem, various appeals problems, even the riots problem. These comrades vacillated in the determination to prepare for military battles. They thought: they should first grab the political reform problem, that is, our own political reform comes first. After resolving the domestic problems, we can then deal with the foreign military battle problem.

This reminds me of the crucial period in 1948 in the Chinese Revolution. At that time the People’s Liberation Army’s “horses were drinking water” in the Yangtze River, but they faced extremely complex situations and difficult problems everywhere in the liberated areas, and the central authority received emergency reports daily. What to do? Should we stop to manage rear areas and internal matters first before moving forward, or press on to pass the Yangtze River with one vigorous effort? Chairman Mao, with his extraordinary wisdom and mettle gave the marching order “Carry on the revolution to the end,” and liberated all of China. The previously thought “serious” conflicting problems were all resolved in this great forward moving revolutionary wave.

Now, it seems like we are in the same critical period as the “horses were drinking water” in the Yangtze River days in the revolutionary era, as long as we resolve the United States problem at one blow, our domestic problems will all be readily solved. Therefore, our military battle preparation appears to aim at Taiwan but in fact is aimed at the United States, and the preparation is far beyond the scope of attacking aircraft carriers or satellites.

Marxism pointed out that violence is the midwife for the birth of China’s century. As war approaches, I am full of hope for our next generation.


END


ccp

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137 Billion dollar dam poses threat to neighbors
« Reply #290 on: January 16, 2025, 02:47:25 PM »
This is what happens when every single aspect of a society is linked to military purpose:

https://www.yahoo.com/news/opinion-china-latest-massive-dam-153000966.html

no one trusts you as far as they can spit.
the only hope is they can keep bribing for cooperation when everyone else knows they are scoundrals.

Crafty_Dog

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Re: China in and versus the World; Chinese political intimidation & penetration
« Reply #291 on: January 17, 2025, 05:42:58 AM »
In conversation yesterday regarding China vs. Taiwan, I was reminded of the notion that Taiwan could take out the existing big dam and by so doing create death and devastation.

ccp

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Re: China in and versus the World; Chinese political intimidation & penetration
« Reply #292 on: January 17, 2025, 05:57:43 AM »
"I was reminded of the notion that Taiwan could take out the existing big dam and by so doing create death and devastation"

oh, and how?

China is doing to our supply lines what Israelis did with Hezbollah cell phones except on a grandeur more massive scale.

ccp

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Biden passes on Tiktok
« Reply #293 on: January 17, 2025, 06:01:06 AM »
and Trump has already said he would not sign a bill that stops an app that makes him look so good.

The CCPs have played him like a fool. 

And our security is worse now and our children a addicted to a Chinese app.

https://www.newsmax.com/finance/streettalk/tiktok-ceo-trump/2025/01/16/id/1195277/

« Last Edit: January 17, 2025, 06:02:58 AM by ccp »

Crafty_Dog

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Re: China in and versus the World; Chinese political intimidation & penetration
« Reply #294 on: January 17, 2025, 06:14:12 AM »
Not that I disagree with you (indeed TT has not been taking offers, so "extensions to allow for divestiture" are Kabuki theater) but as best as I can tell, it is more complicated than that.

My wife, for whom TT is a source of endless interest and self-education (e.g. about taking care of our chickens) is quite emphatic against the forced divestiture law (misnamed "ban"), calling it censorship by our government and that shutting it down will hurt a lot of small entrepeneurs who make money through it.  She points out the massive numbers of people now running to alternate Chinese apps (Rednote?  L_____8?) which have zero data protection.

The WSJ calls the law "security theater" under the notion that the same data is readily acquired via private sector secondary markets.

For me, more than data acquisition, the issue is Chinese algorithms guiding American political opinion re Taiwan, Gaza, Ukraine, Philippines, etc and this should be the front and center point being made.

ccp

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SCOTUS upholds TikTok ban
« Reply #295 on: January 17, 2025, 08:53:41 AM »
Unanimous decision:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/01/17/titktok-ban-supreme-court-decision-ruling/

But we all know it won't be enforced due to politics.

Crafty_Dog

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DougMacG

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Chinese Penetration, US Reciprocity
« Reply #297 on: January 17, 2025, 11:27:42 AM »
"Chinese algorithms guiding American political opinion re Taiwan, Gaza, Ukraine, Philippines, etc and this should be the front and center point being made."

   - This!  And data acquisition.

And it goes up against the liberty of letting people make their own choice on that. I don't like having to choose, national security or freedom. Or the politics of it, do what needs to be done, but piss off all the young people, even if they are in the wrong.

Another aspect of this:  Allow a wide open US presence on the Chinese internet if they want unrestricted access to our market.  Funny THAT never comes up.  Why can't we track, reach and manipulate all of their people in the settlement to this?

« Last Edit: January 17, 2025, 11:43:05 AM by DougMacG »