Red Dragon Menacing III(7)

On CCP’s All-Out Aggression Against Humanity

Table Of Contents

US Government Should Get Tougher on Crimes Against Falun Gong by the CCP

So Many Lies From the CCP

China Destabilizes the World Through Militarized Drone Exports

China Takes Over the Solomon Islands—and the Pacific

Under the Ukraine Cloud, China Makes First Challenge to AUKUS

Chinese and Russian Hackers Could Bring the US to Its Knees

Risk of Nuclear War From China and Russia Increases

Jimmy Lai, Beijing’s Fearless Foe and a Prisoner of Conscience With God on His Side

China Insiders Steal Billions From US Investors

Why Is Taiwan a Mortal Threat to the CCP?

New Hypersonic Missile Versus China

China Plans to Raid the Arctic

CCP Propaganda in Overdrive on COVID-19, South China Sea, Foreign Investment

Why the US Should Ban TikTok

China Is Nearly Done Building a Taiwan Invasion Fleet

China Threatens the Breakup of Europe

Israel Is Mistaken About China

Beijing’s Indo-Pacific Arc of Power Crystallizes

China Gains Access to the Bay of Bengal

China Considers a Rare Earth Gambit

China Deploys New Missiles Against the US Navy

Beijing Increases Blame Campaign Against NATO for Russia-Ukraine Conflict

What to Do About China

China Unveils Global Security Initiative: A Move Toward CCP-Led Globalism

Tension Grows Between the CCP and the Chinese People

Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran Want to Use Nuclear Weapons Offensively

The CCP’s Criminal Intent Revealed

Russia and China: The Worst Moment in History Coming Soon

CCP Aid: A Domination Strategy

Chinese Weaponized Corruption Is a National Security Threat

Portugal Is Being Used by China to Undermine EU’s Human Rights

Guess Who’s the World’s Greatest Colonial Power Now?

Global Week of Prayer, Advocacy for China: Christians Pray for Fellow Believers, Other Persecuted Groups

Fighting the CCP’s Diplomatic Warfare Against Taiwan

Theft of Intellectual Property

China Starting Next Global Crisis by Gobbling Up Sri Lanka

Kazakhstan Is a Prize Coveted by China

China Wants to Control the Cloud

CCP Threatens Quad With Nukes

When China Uses Force: The Danger of ‘Pre-Crisis’ Conflict

China’s Air Force Is Training in South Africa

From Tiananmen in 1989 to Hong Kong’s Ongoing Political Crackdown

Communist China’s Global Plan Emerges

Cancel All Debts to China

‘The Last Generation’ Reflects the Dehumanization of China by the CCP

A War Over Taiwan Raises the Threat of Combined China-Russia Nuclear Operations

Never Forget the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre

The UN Fails Again on Human Rights in China

A New Era of Appeasement Toward the CCP

China Launches Its Third Aircraft Carrier

Has China Already Won?

US Government Should Get Tougher on Crimes Against Falun Gong by the CCP

The pattern of federal law enforcement appears biased against prosecution of hate crimes against Falun Gong

Anders Corr

March 28, 2022

News Analysis

Is the U.S. government revealing bias in the kinds of laws it enforces against the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) violence and hate crimes on American soil?

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) unveiled  three cases involving five alleged Chinese spies on March 16 . The charges include not only spying but the harassment and stalking of democracy advocates in America’s Chinese diaspora. These are all important cases that the DOJ should prosecute to the fullest extent.

But surprisingly, given all the evidence available over the last two decades, according to Washington-based human rights lawyer Terri Marsh, there have been no federal criminal indictments in response to crimes against Falun Gong  on U.S. soil.

Marsh, executive director of the Human Rights Law Foundation, told The Epoch Times that she has personally reached out to federal agencies with evidence of crimes against Falun Gong on multiple occasions. Still, the agencies have never taken the next step of an indictment.

In one of the March 16 cases, a New York man running for Congress was targeted with conspiracies to defame his reputation with manufactured evidence or, if that failed, to attack him physically. There are many cases of Falun Gong adherents being attacked physically, including those with alleged links to Chinese officials. Yet they are not included in these recent indictments.

In another case, an artist was targeted with surveillance, and his art—of Xi Jinping made to look like a coronavirus—was destroyed by vandals. The CCP frequently surveils Falun Gong practitioners in America, yet there is no federal prosecution in these latest cases to protect them.

In a third case, former professor Shujun Wang is alleged to have infiltrated or obtained information about Hong Kong, Taiwan, Tibetan, and Uyghur activists, for delivery to China’s secret police, the Ministry of State Security (MSS). Falun Gong is apparently left out of this list, even though some of its adherents are similarly victimized by such infiltration and targeting.

Two days before the DOJ announcement, the Department of State announced visa restrictions on Chinese officials believed responsible for “transnational repression” in China, the United States, and elsewhere. Yet one official, former Consul General Peng Keyu, for whom there is recorded evidence of such repression against Falun Gong in New York, is not included.

According to a March 21 press statement  by Secretary of State Antony Blinken, “The Department of State is taking action against PRC [People’s Republic of China] officials for their involvement in repressive acts against members of ethnic and religious minority groups and religious and spiritual practitioners inside and outside of China’s borders, including within the United States.”

At least one of the DOJ court documents  in the Shujun Wang case mentions Falun Gong as one of the five kinds of “poisons” targeted by the CCP ’s secret police.

In the document, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Special Agent Garrett Igo noted: “As relevant to this complaint, the MSS uses assets to collect information about, among other things, individuals and groups viewed as potentially adverse to the interests of the PRC, including ethnic Uyghur supporters of the East Turkestan independence movement; Tibetan supporters of the Tibetan independence movement; adherents of the Falun Gong; members of the Chinese democracy movement; and advocates for the Taiwan independence movement, which PRC officials have referred to as ‘the five poisons’ threatening the stability of the PRC and Communist Party rule.”

Yet this is an entirely vague statement that does not clarify that the CCP targets Falun Gong on American soil.

It is still unclear, for example, whether Shujun Wang or any of the other four defendants actually targeted Falun Gong practitioners. Still, there is plenty of evidence of such attacks by other people and their links to the CCP.

Despite such evidence regarding CCP violence, harassment, and stalking against Falun Gong practitioners in the United States, there are no federal indictments, much less successful prosecutions, and convictions. The most recent three federal cases are no different.

Consider the evidence in the following cases, few or none of which have been prosecuted by federal agencies or departments, despite a 2004 U.S. Congressional resolution  to do so.

Attacks on American Falun Gong Practitioners up to 2006

The Congressional resolution  recognized that “the Chinese government has attempted to silence the Falun Gong movement and Chinese pro-democracy groups inside the United States.”

The resolution called for a U.S. attorney general investigation into “reports that Chinese consular officials in the U.S. have committed illegal acts while attempting to intimidate or inappropriately influence Falun Gong practitioners or local elected officials.”

The U.S. attorney’s office has taken little to no real action over the years, even as evidence has built for such illegal intimidation.

In 2005, according to Forbes , the editor of The Epoch Times, Youzhi Ma, was robbed on multiple occasions, including laptops stolen from his San Francisco home. The focus of the burglary was allegedly on laptops and internet files rather than valuables, according to Zhang Erping, a spokesman of Falun Gong. Zhang said at the time, “It is apparent that the attackers were after Internet antiblockage and encryption information.”

A group of Falun Gong adherents was then involved in breaking through the Great Firewall in which the CCP restricts access of Chinese citizens to the global internet.

The Forbes article, written in 2006, detailed the case of Dr. Haiyan He, a Harvard researcher who was a Falun Gong activist. “He says he has not only been threatened in person in Boston, but that his parents get regular secret police visits at their home in Chongqing City, China,” according to Forbes. “Three months ago, he says, the secret police described his ‘every move’ in the U.S. to his parents.”

Dayong Li, a Falun Gong activist who owned a satellite service company in New Jersey in 2006, told Forbes that his parents received visits from the secret police in Hunan Province. They “terrorize the elderly couple by saying they know ‘everything’ about their son—including where he walks, his salary and his company details.”

Li told Forbes: “They [Chinese authorities] warn me not to be active. They tell my parents if I am, my life is in danger.”

These officials, and others like them who have more recently terrorized Falun Gong practitioners in the United States by targeting their families back home, should be sanctioned with visa restrictions by the State Department, as have other CCP officials engaged in transnational repression.

The 2006 Attack on Peter Yuan Li in Georgia

As Forbes went to press in 2006 about Falun Gong’s work to unblock China’s internet, one of the key figures in this high-tech activism, Peter Yuan Li, “was brutally attacked and beaten in his home in Duluth,” Georgia, according to Forbes.

“At 11:15 A.M. on Feb. 8, according to the Fulton County Police Department Incident Report, Asian men stormed the house of the Princeton-educated information technology technician, bound and gagged and beat him, before fleeing with two 16-inch Sony laptop computers, Li’s wallet and yet unknown material from his files.”

Li told Forbes that the first two assailants spoke Korean and brandished a knife and gun. After taping his eyes and binding him, Li claimed that one or two additional men entered his home, one of which demanded in Mandarin to be told where Li’s locker and documents were hidden.

“The intruders ransacked the house and forced open locked file cabinets,” according to Forbes. “After the men left, Li was able to escape into the street, where a neighbor was able to help him and call the police.”

In addition to the Forbes story, Reporters without Borders  reported on the attack. There appears to have been no real federal response to this heinous attack on a Chinese-American democracy activist who happens to be an adherent of Falun Gong.

In 2008, the Chinese Consul General in New York Admitted on Tape to Inciting Violence

According to the New York Post , a U.S. State Department official in 2008 confirmed the voice of then-Chinese Consul General in New York Peng Keyu, which was secretly taped, admitting to inciting violent counter-protesters against peaceful Falun Gong practitioners in New York who protested against the CCP.

The Post verified a transcript of the call with Peng, shortly after four days of violence against New York Falun Gong members in May 2008 that led to 16 arrests. Peng reportedly said of the CCP protesters, “I have kept a very good relationship with them … but we encouraged them secretly.”

Peng continued, “After they fought with the Falun Gong, I shook hands with them one by one and thanked them.”

He said: “Yet I must not do things like that right in front of the Falun Gong. I parked my car far from the scene because I must avoid being seen by them.”

In the recording, Peng was asked and confirmed that he had given “guidance” to the violent protesters, saying, “Yes, I have done it. I do it frequently, including this time, when I went out to the scene … I have even agitated them.”

Peng apparently paid no legal or diplomatic consequences for this alleged instigation of violence on American soil.

Violence Against Falun Gong in San Francisco From 1999 to 2012

“The majority of the victims of the CCP’s repression of spiritual beliefs in the U.S. are Falun Gong practitioners,” according to an Epoch Times article in Chinese by Li Zhengkuan about the three new DOJ cases, a translation and sources for which were provided to this author.

Li cited the cases above, plus additional violence  in 2012 in San Francisco that was videotaped.

A Falun Gong spokesperson said at the time of the 2012 violence: “Confrontations like this have happened five times in the past seven months. On two previous occasions we had female practitioners struck. We have had materials torn out of our hands and stolen or ripped up. And we have regularly encountered the foul words and the cursing.”

The spokesperson, Dr. Zhang Xuerong, added: “But it is not just these past seven months. The practitioners of Falun Gong in San Francisco have patiently endured treatment like this for 13 years.”

That would put the start of the violence against Falun Gong in the United States at approximately 1999, the same year that the Chinese regime banned Falun Gong.

Zhang said of the violence against American Falun Gong practitioners: “These are hate crimes. The only reason for them is because people influenced by the Chinese Consulate want to attack Falun Gong.”

Is the Federal Government  Biased in Its Enforcement Against Hate Crimes?

Most recently in February, a man with alleged links to a CCP organization attacked  Falun Gong information booths in New York City. The 2012 and 2022 incidents include alleged hate crimes  against the Falun Gong.

Yet there are no federal indictments, much less convictions, and none of the latest federal cases clearly address attacks on Falun Gong in the United States.

A federal bias against protecting Falun Gong practitioners could go deeper than just a lack of enforcement against hate crimes—it points to the to lack of State Department designation of a much more heinous crime, that of genocide  committed in China by the CCP.

According to a former State Department official, Dr. Miles Yu, there is more evidence of genocide  against the Falun Gong than against the Uyghurs. Yet the State Department has recognized the latter genocide, but not the former.

These issues of failure to enforce and designate—that span the federal government from the State Department through the Department of Justice and the U.S. attorney’s office—raise the question that at the very least, Falun Gong practitioners in the United States might reasonably perceive a lack of, or bias, in federal-level enforcement of laws and designations that should protect all Americans equally, including Falun Gong members, and in the case of a genocide designation, their families back in China.

Anders Corr has a bachelor’s/master’s in political science from Yale University (2001) and a doctorate in government from Harvard University (2008). He is a principal at Corr Analytics Inc., publisher of the Journal of Political Risk, and has conducted extensive research in North America, Europe, and Asia. His latest books are “The Concentration of Power: Institutionalization, Hierarchy, and Hegemony” (2021) and “Great Powers, Grand Strategies: the New Game in the South China Sea” (2018).

https://www.theepochtimes.com/the-us-govt-should-get-tougher-on-crimes-against-falun-gong-by-the-ccp_4364753.html

So Many Lies From the CCP

Morgan Deane

March 30, 2022

Commentary

When asked about the lessons of the Russian invasion, China ’s Ministry of Defense put out a bold statement filled with lies  that need to be refuted before they gain currency.

The Chinese Communist Party ( CCP ) is extremely good at manipulating language, using spin, and inducing Western guilt. Its latest attempt is a March 24 statement by Col. Wu Qian speaking for the Ministry of Defense, which includes so much spin in so little time that I need to go line by line.

The example in question is from Western reporters who asked about the lessons learned from the Russian invasion of Ukraine:

“First, if China follows Russia’s example and launches a war against its neighbors, the international community will face tougher sanctions. If an unprovoked attack occurs in the Pacific region, the countries in the region will unite to resist. Third, it will be difficult for China to launch a war against its neighbors due to terrain factors. Any comments on this, please?”

The answer is stunning for its deception and tortured logic:

“As we all know, China has always pursued a defensive national defense policy and a military strategy of active defense, upheld the diplomatic concept of amity, sincerity, mutual benefit, and inclusiveness, and committed to building a community with a shared future for its neighbors. Since the founding of New China, we have never invaded other countries, never engaged in proxy wars, never sought spheres of influence, and never participated in military group confrontations.

On the issue of peace and security, the United States itself has a bad track record. Since the founding of the country, the United States has frequently provoked wars overseas, exported turmoil on a global scale, and caused serious humanitarian disasters.”

The problem is, as Luke Skywalker once said, everything in that statement is wrong . Here’s why:

‘Active Defense’

The first problem is that “active defense” in reality means the Chinese regime pursues preemptive attacks . I don’t know any neighboring countries that even want  to invade mainland China, which undermines their strictly defensive claims. Beijing claims contested islands in the East and South China seas and wants to adjust land borders such as the one with India.

The geography of contested locations suggests a strong China flexing its muscles and expanding—not one willing to retreat into the interior to buy time for a decisive counterattack. This becomes even more apparent when considering the CCP’s strategic signature  since taking power. All of this means that we should interpret the regime’s “active defense” as a preemptive attack.

‘Amity, Sincerity, Mutual Benefit’ Toward Allies

This claim is laughable because the Chinese regime has aggressive relationships with every one of its neighbors. Both Vietnam and the Philippines had active policies that opposed the United States. But Chinese policies are so aggressive that some neighboring countries moved closer to the United States. Australia  might be the prototypical example that undermines this claim.

The Australian turn toward the United States and greater defense spending has been building since 2018. A combination of Chinese  interference in Australian elections, the latter’s support for democracy activists in Hong Kong, and Canberra calling for an independent investigation into the origins of COVID-19 (and the implied allegation of the Wuhan lab leak theory) led to Chinese retaliation.

CCP spokespersons became more belligerent, and Beijing instituted a series of tariffs against Australian products, including coal , beef, barley, wine, cotton, and lobster. Australia exported its goods elsewhere, while Chinese cities suffered fuel shortages.

But this started a tit-for-tat between the two powers. Australia increased its defense budget, and the CCP turned up the volume on supposedly racist Australian attacks or sent warships near Australia. This led to the announcement that Australia would purchase and use nuclear submarines  in a new alliance with the United States and the United Kingdom, but this was years in the making. This is the first time the United States has shared its nuclear submarine technology in 50 years. Some analysts say it is the most important military partnership in the region since World War II.

‘Never Invaded Other Countries’

This is a subtle attack against supposed American warmongering (see below) but uses invented history. Since most Chinese invasions were over disputed territory, they could technically bend the truth and claim they were only settling an internal matter. This is the argument that CCP officials often make regarding Taiwan.

But historically, active defense means preemptive invasions.

The Chinese regime has fought offensive preemptive wars with its neighbors. In 1950, when many analysts believed China needed years of recovery, CCP leader Mao Zedong launched an attack on American forces in Korea near the Chinese border.

A few years later, the communists seized several islands controlled by Taiwan, and Mao signaled his intention to take the rest of the island’s territory. Only the timely intervention of American forces prevented that action. (Of course, the CCP labeled that American intervention to stop an invasion as an “aggressive escalation.”)

The CCP wanted to address the unequal treaties regarding Indian territory in 1962 and Outer Mongolian territory in the Ussuri River skirmish with the Soviet Union in 1969. And it fought an inconclusive border war with Vietnam in 1979 that started with a preemptive seizure of disputed territory.

Some conflicts were longer and more official, but they followed a pattern where the communists would preemptively seize contested territory, defend it against counterattack, and negotiate while holding on to the territory it seized.

‘Never Engaged in Proxy Wars’

This is a blatant lie. China aided the communist Vietnamese forces against America during the Vietnam War.

The CCP tried to deny responsibility for the Korean War by making defeated nationalists lead the attack and labeling them “ volunteers .” This was very much a proxy war .

‘Never Sought Spheres of Influence’

This one might technically be true but is mostly word games. A cursory study of history finds that a new dynasty like the Han, Tang, and Song would try to assert its strength in several areas: Korea, Vietnam, and expanding its power over the steppe peoples.

Unsurprisingly, when the CCP gained power in 1949, it reasserted its authority over those territories. It did so under the guise of adjusting unequal treaties by Western colonialist powers, but the fundamental desire to reassert control over key territories remained the same.

The US ‘Has a Bad Track Record’

This final point pivots from covering up Chinese crimes to highlighting supposed American misdeeds. This is a frequent practice of the CCP because Westerners are so good at complaining about their racist, warmongering, imperialist past.

Without getting into the historical weeds regarding Western and American misdeeds, America can recognize its imperfect pact while retaining moral clarity against the genocide of the Uyghurs and any aggression from the communist regime.

It might seem like a losing effort to combat CCP statements line by line. But misinformation—repeated long enough—has a way of becoming an accepted fact. Americans might think of many political points that become articles of faith. For example, the repeated talking points about police brutality against black people caused the public to overestimate  the number of victims by almost a thousand times.

In the case of Chinese aggression, the CCP’s repeated talking points might undermine the Western will to resist its naked aggression at a time when it is needed most.

Morgan Deane  is a former U.S. Marine, a military historian, and a freelance author. He studied military history at Kings College London and Norwich University. Morgan works as a professor of military history at the American Public University. He is a prolific author whose writings include “Decisive Battles in Chinese History,” “Dragon’s Claws with Feet of Clay: A Primer on Modern Chinese Strategy,” and the forthcoming, “Beyond Sunzi: Classical Chinese Debates on War and Government.” His military analysis has been published in Real Clear Defense and Strategy Bridge, among other publications.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/so-many-lies-from-the-ccp_4370172.html

China Destabilizes the World Through Militarized Drone Exports

Sanction China now for its automated war machines

Anders Corr

March 30, 2022

News Analysis

China ’s drones are militarizing the world. From Ukraine to Burma, they make the battlefield more deadly for democracy. That must be the point.

Beijing ignores calls for limitations on military equipment, even when the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) knows that its drones are used for war crimes against unarmed civilians.

Neither are the most powerful democracies stepping up to the plate and imposing the no-fly zones over conflict areas that alone could protect democracy advocates and civilian populations from what are essentially lethal aerial robots. This must change, as evidenced by the destruction in Ukraine.

China’s DJI drone maker is attracting criticism  for supplying the Russian military with drones used to assist in attacks on Ukrainian civilian targets. Ukraine’s vice prime minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, demanded  on Twitter that DJI block Russia’s use of its drones.

“In 21 days of the war, russian troops has already killed 100 Ukrainian children,” he wrote in understandably distressed English. They “are using DJI products in order to navigate their missile. @DJIGlobal are you sure you want to be a partner in these murders? Block your products that are helping russia to kill the Ukrainians!”

In an attached March 12 letter, Fedorov said that the Ukrainian government has evidence that the Russian military is “using DJI products in Ukraine in order to navigate their missile[s] to kill civilians.”

He added, “We call on your company to stop doing business in the Russian Federation until the Russian aggression in Ukraine is fully stopped and fair order is restored.”

While companies in the West have generally withdrawn products from Russia, especially those with military applications, China’s DJI publicly rebuffed Ukraine’s pleas in what should be seen as a national insult to the Ukrainian people.

The CCP’s insults do not stop in Europe.

In Burma (commonly known as Myanmar), the junta uses China’s military drones against unarmed protesters and a growing armed resistance trying to return the country to democracy after a 2021 coup killed over 700.

“Some witnesses have both seen and photographed Myanmar Army drones in action,” according to an article  in The Diplomat on Feb. 26. “They say that Chinese-made drones have been deployed several times both to monitor the protesters and crack down on the armed resistance groups.”

The drones are not just civilian drones used by the military but specially-designed drones capable of launching highly-accurate missiles.

“While some of the Myanmar Army’s drones, such as the CH-3A, can launch laser-guided air-to-ground missiles, they are primarily used as intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance assets,” according to The Diplomat author, Robert Bociaga.

Saudi Arabia , which is increasingly spurning a historic alliance with the United States in favor of a no-questions-asked friendship with China, has purchased weapons from the totalitarian country for years, including armed Wing Loong II drones that in 2017 were China’s biggest-ever  arms export.

Now the Saudis are buying an entire drone factory as a joint venture in which the Chinese themselves are being invited into the Kingdom.

The agreement with China Electronics Technology Group Corp., reported on March 9, will “establish a research and development center and create a team that would manufacture different types of UAV systems,” including “communications, flight-control, camera, radar and wireless-detection systems. … The new venture will also focus on developing electric-powered vertical-takeoff-and-landing drones, anti-drone solutions, analytics, helicopter products and radar systems.”

Given that the CCP is designing weapons in Saudi Arabia, any export controls that apply to China should now be considered for Saudi Arabia as well. The world’s democracies cannot allow dictatorships to build drone armies together.

The CCP’s bad faith toward democracy and civilian populations is clarified by the fact that it could order DJI and other Chinese drone makers to turn off their drones in war zones like Ukraine and Yemen, where the Saudis are battling, ironically enough, Houthis backed by Iran, China’s ally.

The Ukrainian official, Fedorov, noted in his letter that drones were turned off during Russia’s invasion of Georgia in 2008. The CCP could order this to happen again today, but it would rather watch its drones enable more massacres of Ukrainian civilians.

Autonomous vehicle technology and artificial intelligence , including aerial drones and ground-based unmanned combat systems, are the future of war. Drones  are faster, cheaper, and more lethal. They never have moral qualms when ordered by a totalitarian power to destroy a city, killing all the civilians they can find.

China’s powerful industrial ecosystem and interconnected supply lines are well-placed to pump out military drones at an increasing pace over the coming years. The CCP hopes to use drones for its malign military purposes, for example, an invasion of Taiwan, and export them for the like purposes of others. So Beijing has every incentive to keep its drones in Ukraine flying, to demonstrate their efficacy for yet more exports and profit, despite the death they rain down upon hospitals, schools, and apartment buildings.

The United States could put secondary sanctions on China’s drone makers, which would likely be effective at stopping their use or sale to the Russians. One person close to DJI told the Financial Times, “The company doesn’t want to be involved in politics,” but if the United States sanctioned DJI, limiting access to U.S. components, the company would be forced to “exit the Russian market.”

What a great idea. And if the CCP persists in adding to the death in Ukraine, sanctions on Russia should become—very broadly—secondary sanctions on China’s entire economy.

Democracy advocates around the world who face the threat of death from China’s drones are calling in vain, so far, to convince the West and its allies to impose no-fly zones and trade embargos on China’s deadly drone exports and kill zones.

Inaction, passivity, and silence in the West are culpability in the face of injustice and war crimes, including the deaths of thousands of civilians in Ukraine. If allowed to spread, those war crimes could come to a neighborhood near you in the coming years if our politicians keep taking the easy path that avoids confrontation with Beijing.

It is better to act now against dictators and their drones while we still can. At some point, the power, sophistication, and coordination of China’s growing drone armies could overwhelm Western defenses entirely. Then it will be too late to resist.

Anders Corr has a bachelor’s/master’s in political science from Yale University (2001) and a doctorate in government from Harvard University (2008). He is a principal at Corr Analytics Inc., publisher of the Journal of Political Risk, and has conducted extensive research in North America, Europe, and Asia. His latest books are “The Concentration of Power: Institutionalization, Hierarchy, and Hegemony” (2021) and “Great Powers, Grand Strategies: the New Game in the South China Sea” (2018).

https://www.theepochtimes.com/china-destabilizes-the-world-through-militarized-drone-exports_4361432.html

China Takes Over the Solomon Islands—and the Pacific

Gordon G. Chang

Gatestone Institute

March 31, 2022

Originally published by Gatestone Institute

Commentary

On March 25, the Solomon Islands   announced  it was “expanding” security arrangements, “diversifying the country’s security partnership including with China .”

The announcement was defensive. The day before, opponents of a security pact with China leaked what was labeled a “draft” agreement. Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare’s government did not confirm the authenticity of the leaked document, but observers believe he intends that version to be final. Australia, which expressed “great concern,” confirmed  the draft as authentic.

The pact, titled “Framework Agreement Between the Government of the People’s Republic of China and the Government of Solomon Islands on Security Cooperation,” highlights a disturbing trend: China, after years of persistent commercial, diplomatic, and military efforts, is taking over the Pacific .

Beijing is moving from island group to island group, and soon the People’s Liberation Army will be in striking distance of Hawaii.

Cleo Paskal of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies tells Gatestone the Framework Agreement was a “unilateral decision by Sogavare.” “There has been no public consultation,” she pointed out.

The five-year deal, subject to automatic renewals, will allow Beijing to use the islands to base its military and to do pretty much what Chinese generals and admirals want. “China,” the pact states in Article I, “may, according to its own needs and with the consent of Solomon Islands, make ship visits to, carry out logistical replenishment in, and have stopover and transition in Solomon Islands, and the relevant forces of China can be used to protect the safety of Chinese personnel and major projects in Solomon Islands.”

If implemented to its full extent, the Framework Agreement will give China the ability to sever shipping lanes and air links connecting the United States with its treaty ally Australia and partner New Zealand.

For decades, Washington allowed Canberra and Wellington to manage the Solomons and its region, and both Western powers, through the corrosive combination of neglect and condescension, allowed China to make significant inroads. Beijing, through payoffs  now detailed in public, essentially owns Sogavare’s government.

Sogavare, not surprisingly, is doing Beijing’s bidding. He switched diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing in 2019, and has, at home, opened the door wide to Chinese investment.

The prime minister has also mismanaged the country, for instance marginalizing the country’s most populous island, Malaita, and threatening its premier, Daniel Suidani. Putting his life at risk, Suidani has resolutely opposed the Chinese takeover of the Solomons.

In November, Sogavare’s misrule resulted in deadly riots  in the capital of Honiara, on the island of Guadalcanal, where 1,600 Americans died in 1942 and 1943 freeing the island from Japanese control.

Australia in November sent police and troops  to restore order and thereby saved Sogavare’s government, which then seemed to be on the verge of failure. Canberra’s misguided intervention made it easy for Sogavare then to invite Chinese police  in February. Beijing’s presence solidified his hold on power.

The Framework Agreement also provides, in Article 1, that the “Solomon Islands, may, according to its own needs, request China to send police, armed police, military personnel, and other law enforcement and armed forces to Solomon Islands to assist in maintaining social order, protecting people’s lives and property, providing humanitarian assistance, carrying out disaster response, or providing assistance on other tasks agreed upon by the Parties.”

Honiara on the 25th said  it would keep its 2018 security agreement with Canberra in place, but it is evident that Sogavare is looking only to China for police and military assistance.

Sogavare, backed by Beijing’s military and the Framework Agreement, can effectively end democracy in the Solomons. Paskal, who closely follows the Pacific, reports that the prime minister is trying to postpone elections. “If Sogavare can trigger a domestic security crisis, he will use that as an excuse to keep himself in power,” she notes. “China will help the prime minister provoke a civil war. That war will provide Sogavare an excuse to call in the Chinese military, according to the new agreement.”

As Paskal told Gatestone, Beijing has already exacerbated tensions so that it could come to the “country’s rescue.”

The inter-island tensions that fuel the ongoing crisis are not new. In 2000, similar disputes were ended by the Townsville Peace Agreement , which Sogavare, also then prime minister, did not implement. Paskal suggests the deal could be the basis of another settlement.

The Solomons are not an isolated instance of Chinese penetration of Pacific governments. There is now talk that China will ink a security agreement with Papua New Guinea , just north of Australia.

Moreover, China wants to upgrade an airstrip in Kiribati . Beijing says the improvements are for civilian purposes only, yet the military uses are apparent and no one believes the Chinese assurances.

The facility is just 1,900 miles south of Hawaii. In Pacific terms, Kiribati is America’s next-door neighbor.

Gordon G. Chang is a distinguished senior fellow at the Gatestone Institute, a member of its Advisory Board, and the author of “The Coming Collapse of China.”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/china-takes-over-the-solomon-islands-and-the-pacific_4374163.html

Under the Ukraine Cloud, China Makes First Challenge to AUKUS

Gregory Copley

April 1, 2022

Commentary

AUKUS , the new global strategic alliance, has been issued its first major challenge by Beijing while the world is preoccupied with the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

A proposed strategic accord between the Solomon Islands  and China  has emerged as the first great test of the new Australia -United Kingdom-United States (AUKUS) alliance and how quickly Australia could retrieve the situation within its sphere of responsibility.

The New Zealand government, linked to Australia and the United States through the ANZUS Treaty, shared Canberra’s concern over the Honiara-Beijing security pact. Australia has civil and military options in dealing with the Solomons’ Chinese security linkage.

These could be voiced in the run-up to Australia’s elections to show the firmness of the Liberal-National coalition government of Prime Minister Scott Morrison. The election may be held on May 14. By late March, the opposition Australian Labor Party (ALP) had a 55:45 advantage in opinion polls. Morrison could take steps before the election, and an incoming ALP Government would, if elected, probably retain his regional commitments.

The Beijing-Honiara pact would allow China’s security forces and People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) to utilize the Solomons’ ports and other facilities and permit Beijing to deploy security forces into the Solomons to protect Chinese investments. Some of these “Chinese investments” would be in islands and areas held by opponents of Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare so that, effectively, China’s “security forces” would be used to suppress Sogavare’s opposition.

On June 3, 2019, Morrison visited Honiara on his first overseas visit after winning the election as party leader. It was the first visit to the Solomons by an Australian prime minister in more than a decade. It was to try to stop Sogavare’s government from switching the Solomons’ diplomatic recognition from the Republic of China (ROC: Taiwan) to China.

It did not sway Sogavare; he switched recognition to Beijing.

Australia has been the most significant economic supporter of the Solomons. And while in Honiara, Morrison pledged $170 million in new infrastructure aid.

China extended its foothold in the South Pacific in 2019, also getting neighboring Kiribati to switch its diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to China. By 2021, China offered to upgrade a World War II airfield on Kanton Island in Kiribati, the closest South Pacific nation to Hawaii, 1,864 miles to the northeast.

The Solomons and Kiribati moves place China into the South Pacific, beyond the First Island Chain. This would inhibit AUKUS’ ability to protect Taiwan in the event of war. It would also put China astride the junction of major undersea communications cables near the Solomons.

Ironically, Australia sent troops to the Solomons in November 2021 to save Sogavare after protestors stormed the parliament to remove him. Sogavare, who had taken substantial secret funding from Beijing, had called for Australia (not China) to save him—under the 2017 Australia-Solomons Security Pact—when the protests became violent. That pact allows Australian forces to be deployed to the Solomon Islands in times of emergency.

Significantly, the Australian deployment of 2021 caused Sogavare to bring in Chinese “advisers”; perhaps he sensed that Canberra would not tolerate much more.

By 2017, Australia had spent $3 billion and 14 years in peacekeeping in the Solomons.

Australia, some 2,000 miles from the Solomons, has legitimate cause to pressure the Honiara government as a result of the Oct. 15, 2000, “Townsville Agreement,” which ended hostilities between the Malaita Eagle Force (Malaita Province), the Isatabu Freedom Movement (Guadalcanal), and the government.

The Solomons government never implemented its commitments in Part Four of that peace accord to stop the civil war. But the Australian government, in particular, funded the Solomons government based on that peace agreement.

Canberra could now threaten a range of sanctions against Solomons’ politicians, including withdrawal of aid and a ban on Solomons officials transiting Australia or holding their assets in Australia (the closest haven for many Solomon politicians).

Fiji Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama may emerge to spearhead mediation. Like New Zealand and Australia, Fiji has deployed peacekeeping forces to the Solomons in recent years.

Meanwhile, the United States announced plans in February to reopen its embassy in the Solomons.

Gregory Copley is president of the International Strategic Studies Association based in Washington. Born in Australia, Copley is a Member of the Order of Australia, entrepreneur, writer, government adviser, and defense publication editor. His latest book is The New Total War of the 21st Century and the Trigger of the Fear Pandemic.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/under-the-ukraine-cloud-china-makes-first-challenge-to-aukus_4374099.html

Chinese and Russian Hackers Could Bring the US to Its Knees

John Mac Ghlionn

April 5, 2022

Commentary

One phrase that has stood the test of time is “don’t poke the bear”—a warning used to dissuade others from doing something that will likely provoke an unwanted response.

Of course, one cannot discuss poking large, carnivorous mammals without discussing Russia , a country synonymous with bears . Shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine, the United States imposed sanctions on hundreds of Russian  individuals and entities. In short, it poked the bear.

Will the United States pay the price for angering Russia? The answer appears to be yes; Russia plans to hit the United States with a wave of cyberattacks . These attacks could cripple the country. Worse still, the Russians may have assistance from their allies in China .

According to credible reports, shortly before the Russian invasion, China hit Ukraine’s military and nuclear facilities with several cyberattacks . China and Russia are united by their disdain for the United States. Arguably, they have never been closer.

A recent Foreign Policy article warned the United States to brace itself  for attacks in the near future. Vladimir Putin wants payback. And what Vladimir wants, Vladimir often gets .

According to the Foreign Policy piece, a number of U.S. companies are preparing themselves for a variety of attacks, “including denial of service attacks” (DDoS). These occur when hackers prevent legitimate use of a service until the victim or victims pay a considerable sum of money.

Two years ago, Amazon Web Services (AWS) was hit by a DDoS ransom attack. For the uninitiated, AWS is a subsidiary of Amazon. AWS controls more than one-third of the cloud market, providing on-demand cloud computing platforms. There are 195 countries in the world; AWS has customers in 190 of them .

DDoS ransom attacks are incredibly difficult  to defend against. Worryingly, they are becoming more prolific and potent  in nature.

Last year, the DarkSide hacking  group, a ransomware gang believed to be based in Russia, attacked the Colonial Pipeline . Originating in Houston, Texas, the pipeline carries gasoline and jet fuel to several U.S. states. The group demanded to be paid in bitcoin– 75, to be exact —roughly $5 million. The attack had serious consequences for the country. The Colonial Pipeline was out of action for close to a week.

The Foreign Policy piece noted that Russia had learned valuable lessons from the Colonial pipeline attack. For example, the Russians know they “could cause chaos by simply hacking into the enterprise software that underlies energy companies, instead of taking more destructive and sophisticated cyberattacks that render equipment inoperable.”

Moreover, there are reasons to believe “that Russian hackers could put U.S. energy companies in the crosshairs,” according to the report.

Will Moscow have assistance from Beijing?

There’s every reason to think so. Last year, Putin announced that Russia and China intended to strengthen  their cyber partnership. More recently, Putin and Xi announced the creation of a new world order , spearheaded by Beijing and Moscow.

When it comes to cyberattacks, Russia and China are the two most potent forces on the planet. Chinese state-sponsored hacking is at an all-time high . The United States is the number one target for both Moscow and Beijing.

In a piece for The American Conservative , published last month, I outlined the many ways in which China is winning the cyberwar  with the United States. As I said, “It’s difficult to feel confident when one sees stories of Chinese state-sponsored hacking groups successfully infiltrating U.S. government agencies.”

Chinese hackers have already stolen the data of more than 200 million American adults . According to Glenn S. Gerstell , a former National Security Agency operative, the United States is simply not ready  for the cyber horrors. Close to 90 percent of Americans are worried  about the threats posed by elite hackers. Their worries are both understandable and warranted.

Fail to Prepare, Prepare to Fail

Russia and China have been “cyber buddies” for more than a decade . The United States is ill-prepared for the threats posed by Russian hackers, never mind a combination of Russian and Chinese hackers.

According to a recent report published by The International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), a research institute that analyzes global security threats, the United States’ cyber capabilities pale in comparison  to Russia and China’s.

One-third of Russia’s military cyber forces are focused on what the researchers call “cyber effects.” This involves the ability to identify vulnerabilities at home and exploit vulnerabilities abroad. Close to 20 percent of Chinese military forces are focused on “cyber effects.”

What about the United States? Less than 3 percent. This is simply not good enough.

As the aforementioned Foreign Policy piece warned, “the Kremlin’s well-honed capability and determination to render U.S. networks inoperable could make it a formidable adversary, even for the best-defended firms.”

One expert quoted in the piece had an ominous message for Americans: “If the Russians focus their efforts on a target and they want to compromise that target and destroy it, they’ll be able to do so.”

The United States has left itself vulnerable to potentially devastating cyberattacks for far too long. Sooner or later, one imagines, these vulnerabilities will be exploited. There’s a high chance that Russia or China, or a combination of both, will be the exploiters.

John Mac Ghlionn is a researcher and essayist. His work has been published by the New York Post, The Sydney Morning Herald, Newsweek, National Review, and The Spectator US, among others. He covers psychology and social relations, and has a keen interest in social dysfunction and media manipulation.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/chinese-and-russian-hackers-could-bring-the-us-to-its-knees_4379042.html

Risk of Nuclear War From China and Russia Increases

China’s hypersonic missile test flew 25,000 miles—the furthest ever

Anders Corr

April 6, 2022

News Analysis

With rising global instability, caused primarily by the belligerence of the new China – Russia  axis, these and other countries keep surprising America with their quest for new nuclear weapons and delivery systems, including the hypersonic variety.

The chief of U.S. Strategic Command, Adm. Charles Richard, believes  that China’s “breathtaking expansion” of its nuclear arsenal leads the United States in hypersonics and already escalates the risk for America, according to his April 5 congressional testimony.

In July, China launched its first test of a hypersonic glide vehicle, which was launched  from an intercontinental ballistic missile  (ICBM).

According to Richard, the test was a “technological achievement with serious implications for strategic stability.”

The hypersonic reentry vehicle flew 25,000 miles in one hour and 40 minutes—“the greatest distance and longest flight time of any land attack weapon system of any nation to date,” he wrote in his testimony, which was delivered to the House Defense Appropriations subcommittee on April 5.

One of the greatest dangers of this high-speed nuclear-capable delivery vehicle is that it could destroy American defenses, including in space, before we had time to react adequately. That puts all major American weapons systems, which tend to be thoroughly technological and interdependent upon each other, at high risk of defeat at their weakest link.

According to Richard, all Pentagon operational plans and “every other capability we have, rests on the assumption that strategic deterrence, and in particular nuclear deterrence, will hold.”

Now that Beijing and Moscow have broken our assumption with their hypersonic capabilities, American nuclear deterrence may already have been defeated. We’re just waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Moscow and Beijing no longer seem scared of the United States, judging by China and Russia’s apparently coordinated belligerence in Ukraine and Asia, including alleged Chinese cyberattacks on Ukraine just before the invasion. They now feel confident in jointly violating international law by committing war crimes and genocide , including at the Bucha massacre .

This muscular disregard for international law, backed by a nuclear deterrent held by Moscow and Beijing, is fueling a global nuclear arms race  on a global level. The good guys want to defend themselves with nuclear weapons—and they should. The bad guys want to acquire more nuclear weapons so they can continue their dictatorial rule over their own populations and their territorial theft from neighbors, abetted they hope by terrorizing nuclear threats.

It’s not a spiral of insecurity, but the dictators are backing the democracies up a spiral staircase to choose between the suicide of their sovereignty or a catastrophic war they do not want to fight.

According to an April 4 report , spending on nuclear weapons, including bombs and delivery systems such as missiles, will surpass $126 billion over the next 10 years, an increase of 73 percent since 2020. Much of this will be small nuclear warheads for tactical use and submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs). Nuclear growth will be strong in China, India, and Pakistan, according to the report.

Yet the Biden administration is canceling American development of the tactical nuclear weapons necessary, according to one defense analyst, for deterring Russia and China at the regional level.

Nikkei  reported on April 4 that the Biden administration decided to discontinue a new sea-launched nuclear-capable cruise missile (SLCM-N) championed by the Trump administration. By doing so, the administration reportedly hopes to “add momentum to the flagging nuclear disarmament movement.”

Richard Fisher, a senior fellow at the International Assessment and Strategy Center in Washington, wrote in an email that canceling the SLCM-N “is a serious mistake that will only serve to increase the chances of aggression against the United States and its allies.”

Fisher said that SLCM-N would have given “the United States a near-term survivable tactical nuclear deterrent–that does not require the often difficult approval of allies for basing—with which it can help convince Russia and China not to initiate the use of tactical nuclear weapons.”

Without a robust tactical nuclear option, the United States would be forced to back down given Russian or Chinese use of tactical nuclear weapons or escalate to the strategic level and risk retaliation against U.S. cities.

“Today Russia has 2,000 or many more theater nuclear weapons and China likely has more than 1,000 whereas the United States reportedly only has about 500 tactical nuclear bombs and only deploys 100 of these in Europe and none in Asia,” wrote Fisher.

The Biden administration is doing something to improve America’s nuclear arsenal, though not enough. It requested a record $813 billion in defense spending for 2023, which eclipses the former president’s. Some of this will be spent on modernizing the nuclear triad, which is composed of America’s nuclear weapons deployed on bombers, submarines, and land-based missiles, but not for the SLCM-N.

President Joe Biden is apparently attempting to return  to the Barack Obama era of nuclear strategy, which sought a “world without nuclear weapons” through gradual acts of unilateral peacemaking at the expense of relative American power and the ultimate strategy of peace through strength.

In 2010, then-President Obama preceded Biden in scrapping the nuclear cruise missile, only briefly revived by President Donald Trump.

However nice a concept, the pacifist approach to nuclear strategy didn’t work. Instead, it gave Russia and China a head-start on hypersonic missile development and the rapid buildup of their conventional military and nuclear forces, much of which is meant for offense rather than defense.

If America did ever fully disarm its nuclear arsenal, there is no guarantee that Moscow and Beijing would do the same, even if they promised otherwise. If they did, their larger conventional military power and China’s massive population could then overwhelm American military forces, with no American nuclear deterrent available.

There is no risk-free solution to the threats above. Risks and costs abound whatever path is chosen because those risks and costs are imposed on America by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its allies, who respond to the olive branches of democracy with daggers hidden behind dictatorial backs. Appearing soft may be riskier than getting tougher.

America should beware of thinking that by being nicer, the CCP will somehow back off. It won’t. It will take niceness as a sign of weakness and advance on our positions globally, starting with the weakest of democracies, like Ukraine and Taiwan, that we left out in the cold from our alliances.

Beijing has a goal of global hegemony and a set of sophisticated strategies to achieve this, including using tactical nuclear weapons to scare us into a fatal paralysis when we should be ever more active in our defense. Biden needs to return America to its only successful strategy against the world’s most ruthless dictators: peace through strength.

Anders Corr has a bachelor’s/master’s in political science from Yale University (2001) and a doctorate in government from Harvard University (2008). He is a principal at Corr Analytics Inc., publisher of the Journal of Political Risk, and has conducted extensive research in North America, Europe, and Asia. His latest books are “The Concentration of Power: Institutionalization, Hierarchy, and Hegemony” (2021) and “Great Powers, Grand Strategies: the New Game in the South China Sea” (2018).

https://www.theepochtimes.com/risk-of-nuclear-war-from-china-and-russia-increases_4383745.html

Jimmy Lai, Beijing’s Fearless Foe and a Prisoner of Conscience With God on His Side

Nie Law

April 8, 2022

Index on Censorship, a global magazine campaigning for freedom of expression, recently released six letters written by Jimmy Lai  in prison. Lai is the founder of the now-defunct Apple Daily , an outspoken Hong Kong newspaper critical of Beijing.

He was arrested on Aug. 10, 2020, after being accused of “collusion with foreign forces” following the Chinese regime’s imposition of the National Security Law in Hong Kong, and he was later released on bail. He was arrested again in December on additional accusations and is currently serving a 20-month prison term.

In its article  titled, “Beijing’s fearless foe with God on his side,” Index of Censorship revealed that Lai’s wife Teresa is a devout Catholic. Under her influence, Lai converted to Catholicism when Hong Kong came under Chinese rule. He has been a brave prisoner of conscience because of his dedication to his faith.

Apple Daily published its last edition of one million copies on June 24, 2021. Lai’s first letter from prison expressed his anger over the closure of the newspaper.

“Yes, this barbaric suppression intimidation works. Hong Kong people are all quieted down. But the muted anger they have is not going away. … The vicious circle of suppression-anger-and-distrust eventually will turn Hong Kong into a prison, a cage, like Xinjiang. World, cry for Hong Kong people,” he wrote.

‘If You Are Worry[ing] About Me, Please Don’t’

Lai wrote his second letter in July 2021, to a Canadian hotel employee named Bob. Lai consoled him for having to endure a lot of hardship during the pandemic. He told Bob not to worry about him, because he is keeping himself “busy reading the scriptures, gospels, theology, and books of the saints and their lives.”

He described his life as “peaceful and edifying.”

“There is always a price to pay when you put truth, justice, and goodness ahead of your own comfort, safety, and physical wellbeing, or your life becomes a lie. I choose truth instead of a lie and pay the price. Luckily God has made this price a grace in disguise. I am so grateful,” Lai wrote in his letter.

In another letter, Lai wrote to a friend James. Lai said his life in prison is “full and at peace.” However, he was worried about his wife Teresa.

“She has lost a lot of weight under the grief of my situation. Lucky she has God [to] abide [with] her,” he wrote.

In October 2021, Lai wrote to his former business associate, sharing his joy of a recent family visit and his busy life in prison.

“I am doing fine here. Happy to see Teresa, Claire, Tim and Ian, and my brother. … Teresa looks weak and weighed down by grief. But with her prayers, she will slug it through.

“I am keeping myself busy here. Spiritual study, drawing, and trying to improve my English writing skill. Take care!

“So sweet of you to write me. Please keep writing. May God be with you all!”

In a November 2021 letter to a friend, Lai quoted the 15th-century German priest Thomas a Kempis, author of The Imitation of Christ.

“If thou willingly bear the Cross, it will bear thee, and will bring thee to the end which thou seekest, even where there shall be the end of suffering; though it shall not be here.

“If thou bear it unwillingly, thou makest a burden for thyself and greatly increaseth thy load, and yet thou must bear it.”

At the end of this letter, Lai wrote, ‘Lord, remember those who shed their blood in Tiananmen Square.”

According to Index of Censorship, 74-year-old Lai was born in Guangzhou. He escaped communist rule at the age of 12 by stealing his way into Hong Kong, hidden in the bottom of a small fishing boat. He later became a self-made business tycoon in Hong Kong.

Awakened by Beijing’s crushing of the 1989 pro-democracy movement, he decided to start his publishing business to continue the students’ campaign to advocate democracy.

After the Chinese Communist Party tightened its grip on Hong Kong in 2020, Lai had the chance to flee to safety, but he chose to stay in Hong Kong to fight for freedom.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/jimmy-lai-beijings-fearless-foe-and-a-prisoner-of-conscience-with-god-on-his-side_4391202.html

China Insiders Steal Billions From US Investors

The US government, beholden to big banks, fails to protect small American investors

Anders Corr

April 8, 2022

News Analysis

China’s corporate insiders are cheating small American investors of billions of dollars through advance information that enables lucrative trades just before the stock price falls.

The total losses that insiders of Chinese companies listed on American exchanges have avoided by selling prior to price drops are at least $10 billion between 2016 and the middle of 2021, according to a new study of their security filings.

Chinese company shares fell an average of 21 percent a year after the Chinese company insiders sold large quantities of stock, compared to a 2 percent rise after insiders from American companies sold. Given inflation, that American number zeros out. Not so, China’s 21 percent.

The Alibaba Case

The Wall Street Journal covered  the study and used Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. as an example. In October 2020, “Alibaba’s payments affiliate, Ant Group Co., was preparing for its initial public offering, a move that would have likely increased the value of Alibaba’s one-third stake,” according to the Journal.

But Alibaba’s founder and CEO, Jack Ma, publicly criticized China’s financial regulators, who canceled the listing. Instead of rising, which the market predicted, Alibaba shares fell 8 percent on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE).

One day prior to Ma’s announcement, Sky Scraper Enterprises Ltd. sold approximately $150 million worth of Alibaba stock. An Alibaba insider controls Sky Scraper, but nobody knows his or her identity.

Whoever controls Sky Scraper, according to the Journal, which cited the Financial Times, “was one of the company’s best-paid executives in recent years and had been granted huge swaths of stock as compensation.”

This unknown Alibaba executive avoided losses totaling hundreds of millions of dollars through what appears to be insider trading. American and other investors who got caught on their back feet—because they couldn’t know the inside information no matter how much research they did—apparently got cheated.

The SEC, Big Banks, and China Collude Against Small Investors

The researchers—Robert Jackson, Bradford Lynch, and Daniel Taylor—point out that U.S. securities law actually advantages and enables China’s insiders relative to those in the United States.

“Executives and other major shareholders at American companies have to disclose their trades within two days in a filing that is posted on the Securities and Exchange Commission’s website and freely available to investors,” according to the Journal.

That deters bad behavior because American insiders do not want to appear to have acted on inside information. They don’t want to signal other market participants to sell the stock and, thus, decrease its value.

China’s insiders don’t have the same problem because U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) regulators treat them with kid gloves. To encourage China’s companies to list on NYSE and other U.S. exchanges in the early 1990s, regulators gave China’s companies several key preferences relative to U.S. companies.

For example, unlike American insiders, China’s insiders don’t have to report their trades in a timely and highly public manner electronically but instead can mail paper disclosures. The paper reporting may, by law, be thrown out after three months.

That preference gives China’s insiders weeks before their trades are discovered and a window of just three months for investors with a lot of time on their hands to visit the SEC offices and discover the trades. Traders typically don’t have that time, so China’s insider trades are rarely discovered and seldom signal the market in the timely manner required to shield American investors from unfair losses.

As Western institutional investors increasingly invested in China stocks since the 1990s, however, they acquired an interest in lobbying U.S. regulators to continue providing China’s companies with regulatory advantages, which kept up their Chinese stock prices.

That sordid party is ending, but addicted institutional investors are scheming an afterparty and trying to smuggle out their drugs, which are the tanking Chinese assets.

SEC Loopholes for Chinese Firms Should be Closed Immediately

The three researchers want the insider trading loophole closed, but, as usual, the SEC is dragging its feet and continues to give China’s companies a major advantage that likely bilks small American investors of billions of dollars.

There are other SEC loopholes for China’s publicly-listed companies as well. The SEC does not require the same auditing standards of Chinese companies listed on U.S. exchanges that are required of U.S. companies.

Some of these auditing loopholes are being closed through legislation rather than quick executive action, which should be the rule. The executive branch is more beholden to big bank lobbying on China than is Congress.

But even this legislation is taking years to effect. Audits are only extracted from China’s companies through the too-gradual threat of delisting, with a three-year warning. And new loopholes are being negotiated with China by the Biden administration at this very moment.

Due to the threat of delisting, the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) is proposing  that it jointly investigate with U.S. and other authorities, which would give it influence on decisions and a patina of respectability that it does not deserve as a democratically unaccountable authority. It would also provide plenty of opportunities for Beijing officials to attempt to corrupt American SEC officials who are supposed to be laser-focused on integrity.

There is a more significant political reason for the proposal as well. “China doesn’t want to be seen as making concessions just to the U.S.,” a China financial analyst told the Wall Street Journal. Thus, China’s regulators are negotiating face-saving measures for Beijing and advantages for Chinese companies that they don’t deserve, given their lack of transparency.

The CSRC should be told in no uncertain terms to pound sand. U.S. authorities should investigate China’s companies listed on U.S. exchanges.

Yet the Biden administration is showing weakness. China’s companies could hire Western auditors that subcontract key work to Chinese auditors without checking the work closely. This auditing chain that relies on auditors in China—who are beholden to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and unreachable by American and other democratic authorities—will be unreliable and should be forbidden by the SEC.

As usual, the devil is in the details.

All of these loopholes and bargaining by the Biden administration give as much time and space as possible to U.S. banks to unravel their positions, even as their research departments publicly claim that China assets are underpriced. Small American investors, who do not have the time to do the research, have paid the price.

Last month, according to Institute of International Finance (IIF) data, $11.2 billion  flowed out of China bonds, and $6.3 billion flowed out of China stocks. It is an “unprecedented dynamic that suggests a market rotation” away from China, according to the IIF.

Compare that to emerging markets ex-China, which saw $10.8 billion  flow into debt and an outflow of less than $400 million from stocks, according to the IIF data. Emerging markets ex-China means emerging markets except for China.

Stronger US Government Action Needed

U.S. loopholes that give China’s companies and insiders advantages are an obvious mistake of current and past administrations since the early 1990s—none of which fixed the problem, despite years of China’s economic and military growth into an existential threat to both the United States and democracy more generally.

The political influence of the big banks, all of which are deeply invested in China, is mainly to blame. So the researchers are right—inside trading loopholes for China’s companies should be closed immediately.

But much more is needed.

Even if the SEC closes all loopholes and preferences that favor China, China’s insiders could continue to trade on inside information and escape legal consequences if they are far from American law enforcement. That China’s insiders are beyond American law—and the law of other democracies—needs to be corrected.

Anyone caught insider trading anywhere in the world, if outside the reach of law enforcement in democracies, should at minimum be subject to individualized economic and visa sanctions by democratic governments. This is absolutely necessary for democratic accountability, the rule of law, fair treatment of small investors, and the smooth functioning of international markets.

Anders Corr has a bachelor’s/master’s in political science from Yale University (2001) and a doctorate in government from Harvard University (2008). He is a principal at Corr Analytics Inc., publisher of the Journal of Political Risk, and has conducted extensive research in North America, Europe, and Asia. His latest books are “The Concentration of Power: Institutionalization, Hierarchy, and Hegemony” (2021) and “Great Powers, Grand Strategies: the New Game in the South China Sea” (2018).

https://www.theepochtimes.com/china-insiders-steal-billions-from-us-investors_4388320.html

Why Is Taiwan a Mortal Threat to the CCP?

Guermantes Lailari

April 9, 2022 Updated: April 10, 2022

Commentary

Most of the world knows that the Chinese Communist Party ( CCP ) has a psychological animus against Taiwan . Why would the CCP want to erase the existence of the independent democratic country of Taiwan?

Taiwan, officially known as the Republic of China  (ROC), threatens the entirely false premise that the CCP is the best form of government in the world and especially the best form of government for the Chinese people. Taiwan represents an alternative view that the CCP cannot allow to blossom.

The CCP fundamentally fears that Taiwan will be, like the Chinese proverb states, the “single spark that can start a prairie fire.”

An Ideological Threat

Taiwan is more than a flourishing democracy. First and foremost, Taiwan is an ideological threat to the CCP. Taiwan represents a country where the individual is the ruler or the sovereign, and the government serves the people. This idea is clearly stated in Taiwan’s Constitution: “Sovereignty of the Republic of China shall reside in the whole body of citizens.”

In China, sovereignty resides in the Party: the CCP is the ruler, and the people serve the Party. This type of thinking is no different than how the masses were treated under the Chinese emperor or the serfs of Europe.

Therefore, Taiwan represents a revolutionary ideological threat to CCP authoritarian statism.

Proximity

Taiwan is geographically close to China—Formosa is about 100 miles from mainland China. Some of Taiwan’s islands, such as the Kinmen islands, are only a few miles from the Chinese port city of Xiamen.

With travel usually allowed between Taiwan and China, the ideological infection that Taiwan represents terrifies the CCP. In 2019, over 2.5 million Chinese citizens visited Taiwan, and before the COVID-19 pandemic, an average of 6 million Taiwanese citizens visited China each year.

To nip this ideological threat in the bud, the CCP uses extensive measures through its United Front and the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) media, psychological, and legal warfare departments to counter the ideological threat.

Regardless of relentless ideological attacks against Taiwan, the idea of democracy and individual freedom continues to spread throughout China. Examples of activities in favor of democracy include the following: the deadly demonstrations in Tiananmen Square in 1989, where (an estimated) 10,000 people were massacred; the brutal suppression of protests in Hong Kong; the severe oppression of the Falun Gong movement. These examples demonstrate that the CCP constantly struggles to maintain its oppressive totalitarian rule.

Of course, CCP propaganda ignores protests against the regime, and Beijing wants its citizens and the rest of the world to believe that the CCP has rendered a “miracle” in transforming its country—as if the communists had such a word in their anti-religious vocabulary.

Divergent History

After the fall of the Qing Dynasty in 1912, two types of government emerged: democratic and communist. Ironically, each of these government types is based on Western ideologies.

For Taiwan, the shift to democracy is enunciated in the constitution’s Three Principles of the People: “… shall be a democratic republic of the people, to be governed by the people, and for the people.”

The idea of equality is reinforced throughout the constitution, as the following selections demonstrate:

Article 5: Complete equality among the various ethnic groups.

Article 7: All citizens of the Republic of China, irrespective of sex, religion, ethnic origin, class, or party affiliation, shall be equal before the law.

Article 8: Personal freedom shall be guaranteed to the people … no person shall be arrested or detained other than by a judicial or police organ in accordance with the procedure prescribed by law. No person shall be tried or punished other than by a court of law in accordance with the procedure prescribed by law.

Article 10: The people shall have freedom of residence and of change of residence.

Article 11: The people shall have freedom of speech, teaching, writing, and publication.

Article 12: The people shall have freedom of privacy of correspondence.

Article 13: The people shall have freedom of religious belief.

Article 14: The people shall have freedom of assembly and of association.

Article 15: The right to existence, the right to work, and the right to own property shall be guaranteed to the people.

Article 16: The people shall have the right to present petitions, lodge complaints, and institute legal proceedings.

Article 17: The people shall have the right to election, recall, initiative, and referendum.

The above list of freedoms is antithetical to the CCP’s hold over the people in the mainland. For example, freedom of speech is denied under the CCP. Anyone holding “divergent” views is subject to harassment, prison time, and even torture.

The CCP has created the dystopian hyper-technological version of “Thought Police” described in George Orwell’s “1984.”

The social credit system implemented throughout China creates new classes of people based on a CCP scoring system, similar to the five-layered caste system in Aldous Huxley’s novel “Brave New World.”

The CCP denies all freedoms listed in the Taiwanese Constitution to the people of China.

Who Does the Military Protect and Defend?

According to Articles 138 and 139 of the Taiwanese Constitution, the Armed Forces’ purpose is to protect the people; it is above party affiliation, and it cannot be used as an instrument for individual or party power.

The Taiwan military oath states, “I do solemnly and sincerely swear that I will be loyal to the nation, safeguard the security of the State.”

This apolitical structure of Taiwan’s military is opposed to how the CCP has constructed its power structure. The PLA’s purpose is to protect the Party. The PLA’s oath of office includes the following: “I promise that I will follow the leadership of the Communist Party of China.”

Conclusion

Taiwan is an ideological threat to CCP rule. Although the PLA military invasion threat persists against Taiwan, the CCP fears the ideological threat of Taiwan’s ideas of freedom, which include equality before the law, freedom of religion, freedom of association, freedom of the press, right to privacy, freedom of movement, right to petition, and right to work.

Each of these rights and freedoms represents moral and mortal spears to the CCP, which one should hope, will liberate the Chinese people from the dictatorship of the Party.

Taiwan’s democratic principles can achieve Sun Tzu’s ultimate goal in warfare against the CCP: “The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.”

Guermantes Lailari is a retired USAF Foreign Area Officer specializing in the Middle East and Europe as well as counterterrorism, irregular warfare, and missile defense. He has studied, worked, and served in the Middle East and North Africa for over 14 years and similarly in Europe for six years. He was a U.S. Air Force Attaché in the Middle East, served in Iraq and holds advanced degrees in International Relations and Strategic Intelligence. He researches authoritarian and totalitarian regimes that threaten democracies. He will be a Taiwan Fellow in Taipei during 2022.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/why-is-taiwan-a-mortal-threat-to-the-ccp_4389459.html

New Hypersonic Missile Versus China

Australia, UK, and US will coordinate on electronic warfare development

Anders Corr

April 10, 2022

News Analysis

AUKUS , the defense partnership of Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States, is expanding  from its original focus on nuclear submarine technology to cooperation on hypersonic and electronic warfare capabilities.

The trilateral cooperation will also improve counter-hypersonics, information sharing, and defense innovation.

According to British officials cited in The Times  of London, “hiding key targets” and “laser weapons that could disrupt a missile’s flight path” could be developed as anti-hypersonic weapons.

AUKUS released a statement  and fact sheet  on April 5, stressing that AUKUS defense cooperation is compliant with International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) leadership on non-proliferation and will strengthen the world’s nuclear and other weapons non-proliferation agreements.

The “nuclear” in AUKUS is for submarine propulsion, not weapons.

According to the latest AUKUS information, defense cooperation will now include the following: undersea drones planned for 2023; quantum technologies for “positioning, navigation, and timing”; artificial intelligence (AI) and autonomy that improve “the speed and precision of decision-making processes … in contested environments”; advanced cyber, “including protecting critical communications and operations systems”; and innovation, including the integration of commercial technologies for military use.

On nuclear submarines, AUKUS seeks to transfer the technology and knowledge necessary for Australia to maintain and build on these vehicles indefinitely through advanced science and technology education. This will prepare an Australian workforce with nuclear science and engineering, including “skills, training, and qualifications to build, operate, and sustain a conventionally-armed nuclear-powered submarine capability.”

Australia will add an eastern submarine base and nuclear submarine construction yard in Southern Australia to complement its already-existing Western submarine base.

Australians are already getting hands-on planning , training, and access to nuclear submarine technology, including a land-class submarine tender visit to Brisbane and Sydney: the USS Frank Cable, designed to support Los Angeles-class nuclear-powered attack submarines with weapons, repairs, and provisioning.

The new fact sheet said that AUKUS’ joint steering group teams are traveling  to Australia to assist with planning for the submarines. They are baselining Australia’s “nuclear stewardship, infrastructure, workforce, and industrial capabilities and requirements.”

AUKUS meetings are already being held, and attendees include the following: the senior officials group, consisting of the three nations’ top national security advisers; the joint steering groups, which have met in Washington, London, and Canberra; and 17 working groups, nine of which are focused on the nuclear-powered submarines. The other eight address the additional advanced military technologies.

While AUKUS was originally conceived to deter China’s increasing belligerence in Asia, the Russian invasion of Ukraine also makes it essential for the defense of Europe. The United Kingdom is leading Europe in providing weapons to the Ukrainian military, for example, and so needs to improve its defenses against Russia’s hypersonic missiles.

For Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, the deepening AUKUS coordination raised questions from the press about whether Australia would join in a fight against China if Beijing decided to invade Taiwan. He deflected the question, saying that the new military technologies are now necessary because they are part of modern warfare.

Russia and China are currently ahead in developing hypersonic missiles, with China testing  hundreds of such missiles since 2014, and Russia’s testing that started in 2018. Russia was the first to deploy the missile in combat—against Ukraine.

China successfully tested  a hypersonic missile  that recently flew 25,000 miles to circumnavigate the globe and fired a projectile from the missile once it arrived over the South China Sea. This seemingly insuperable technical feat surprised Pentagon officials who thought it was not yet possible.

The most recent three U.S. flight tests of hypersonic missiles have all failed.

Unfortunately, Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin are punching above their countries’ economic weight because they can ignore voter preferences for social spending, and coerce businesses and government agencies to steal and provide dual-use technology to their defense industries.

Their leadership thrives on an aggressively militaristic approach to politics that, while alien to democracies, is nevertheless ascribed by their propaganda departments to all three AUKUS allies.

Seeing the strength, cohesion, and technological benefits of AUKUS, other countries will surely seek to join. Loyal countries that solidly support democratic values, such as Japan, should be allowed to do so.

The latest AUKUS statement  offers hope for such expansion, noting, “As we mature trilateral lines of effort within these and other critical defense and security capabilities, we will seek to engage allies and close partners as appropriate.”

By increasing and strengthening AUKUS and other democratic defense alliances, perhaps including an Asian version of the NATO alliance, Russia and China can be contained, or better yet, rolled back from their territorial conquests, for example, in Ukraine, Georgia, and the South China Sea.

Anders Corr has a bachelor’s/master’s in political science from Yale University (2001) and a doctorate in government from Harvard University (2008). He is a principal at Corr Analytics Inc., publisher of the Journal of Political Risk, and has conducted extensive research in North America, Europe, and Asia. His latest books are “The Concentration of Power: Institutionalization, Hierarchy, and Hegemony” (2021) and “Great Powers, Grand Strategies: the New Game in the South China Sea” (2018).

https://www.theepochtimes.com/new-hypersonic-missile-versus-china_4391253.html

China Plans to Raid the Arctic

John Mac Ghlionn

April 17, 2022

Commentary

One week after Russia invaded Ukraine, seven countries—Canada, the United States, Norway, Iceland, Sweden, Denmark, and Finland—announced that they were withdrawing  from the Arctic  Council until further notice. At present, the only remaining member is Russia.

With the likes of the United States and Canada turning their backs on the council, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has spotted an opening. Xi Jinping and his colleagues appear to be extremely interested  in exploring the Arctic region. The question, though, is why?

I reached out to Brigt Dale , the research director for the Environment and Society Research Group at Nordland Research Institute, for comment on the matter.

Why, I asked, is Beijing so interested in this largely inhospitable region?

First, said Dale, the Arctic has a pool of resources  that are “ready to be taken.” It “is reminiscent of the colonialist idea which, for many in the Arctic, is not a part of history but rather manifests every day.”

Within the realm of geopolitics, discussions regularly revolve around the idea of “how one can exploit Arctic resources to the benefit of others elsewhere—whilst at the same time maintaining the notion that the Arctic is ‘being taken care of,’” said Dale.

The researcher told me that “natural resource utilization and exports of goods has always been a part of subsistence here—as can be exemplified by the trading of furs, fish, and products from the hunting of marine mammals going back for centuries, perhaps even millennia.”

Thus, extracting “resources from the Arctic is nothing new.” Today, however, “we see an increased interest in hydrocarbons, in particular, but also for minerals (an increased interest due to the needs arising from green tech development) both from Arctic states and from other states [that] in one way or another define themselves as ‘having interests in the Arctic,’ a process that alienates as much as invites local communities and Arctic populations,” added Dale.

In Russia, China ’s close ally, “the focus is still on oil and gas—and minerals—as the foundation of their economy, and the latter (access to minerals) are, I would guess, as important to the Chinese as oil and gas.”

Additionally, according to Dale, “the Northern sea route from the Barents Sea to the Bering Strait is of great importance to the Chinese,” as it offers access to new “ fishing  grounds.”

Domestically, China’s fish stocks are at risk of collapse . As a symbol of abundance  in Chinese culture, fish is a key ingredient  in many of the country’s most popular dishes. The Arctic region offers Beijing the opportunity to avert a fish-centered crisis.

Moreover, Dale noted the region’s abundance of rare earth minerals. As the scholar Mark Rowe has written previously , rare earth metals like neodymium, praseodymium, terbium, and dysprosium “are key to the world’s electric-vehicle and renewable-energy revolutions, underpinning battery technology and wind turbines among other things.”

China is leading both the electric vehicle  and renewable energy  revolutions. To maintain its position, though, it needs easy access to valuable minerals. The Arctic offers such access.

What are the potential geopolitical implications of China’s Arctic ambitions?

I asked Indra Overland , a lead researcher at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs, this very question.

“What Russia really would like,” he said, “is if the Chinese could help keep its Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) projects on the Yamal Peninsula moving forward.”

According to Overland, such assistance “would make Russia less dependent on the European natural gas market.” However, he added, at present, “the Chinese do not have the necessary technology for this.”

Overland added, “If the Russians could not easily acquire it themselves until now, it is not something the Chinese can easily copy from Western and Japanese companies in a hurry either.” Nevertheless, “it is possible the Chinese and Russians will do their best to try to work together on the Yamal Peninsula.”

When discussing the possibilities of Russian and Chinese cooperation in the Arctic region, so much depends on what happens in Ukraine. Overland told me that the “Russian invasion of Ukraine represents both possible downsides and possible upsides for China.”

The possible downside is obvious; he continued, “Russia could be defeated and the unity and determination of Western countries in defending democracy strengthened.”

The upside, on the other hand, “is that China may get heavily discounted access to Russian natural resources, including natural gas, oil, coal, metals, and grain,” while “Western demand for Chinese solar panels and other clean energy goods skyrockets due to the strengthened desire to reduce dependency on Russian fossil fuels,” Overland said.

If Russia is defeated in Ukraine, then China’s Arctic ambitions may be delayed indefinitely. However, if Russia emerges victorious, China will likely be given the keys to the Arctic, allowing its contractors to fish and mine with impunity.

John Mac Ghlionn is a researcher and essayist. His work has been published by the New York Post, The Sydney Morning Herald, Newsweek, National Review, and The Spectator US, among others. He covers psychology and social relations, and has a keen interest in social dysfunction and media manipulation.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/china-plans-to-raid-the-arctic_4393485.html

CCP Propaganda in Overdrive on COVID-19, South China Sea, Foreign Investment

For every new lie, China should get a new economic sanction

Anders Corr

April 17, 2022

News Analysis

China ’s propaganda machine is in overdrive against America on issues like the South China Sea, U.S. investment in China, and the threat of forced child separation from parents as a method of COVID-19 lockdowns.

Beijing is trying to separate off our allies, our money, and our simple observations of the truth through lies meant to lull us into a sleep from which we will never wake up.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping recently met  Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte to publicly declare an intention to decrease tensions in the South China Sea. The Philippines used to be a solid American ally. No more. Its islands are being eaten one by one by China’s navy and air force, but one wouldn’t know it from what Xi says publicly.

China’s top securities regulator claimed  to an industry group in Beijing that he is working hard to widen market access. He’s actually negotiating with the Biden administration for a continuation of securities regulation loopholes that bilk  American and other investors of billions of dollars.

And China’s foreign ministry has struck back at the United States, labeling as “groundless accusations” American claims that China’s authorities are separating children from parents as a lockdown measure. As with most of Beijing’s propaganda, it is all full of lies and half-truths meant to advance and protect the Chinese Communist Party ( CCP ).

South China Sea Propaganda

At Xi’s virtual meeting with Duterte on April 8, the two supposedly spoke  about Ukraine. Duterte must have gotten in trouble for the Philippine vote to remove Russia from the United Nations Human Rights Council.

The two “leaders” also spoke about COVID and “stressed the need to exert all efforts to maintain peace, security and stability in the South China Sea by exercising restraint, dissipating tensions and working on a mutually agreeable framework for functional cooperation,” according to a presidential office statement.

This “framework” discussion is more of the CCP’s take-and-talk strategy, which is apparently unending on the South China Sea as claimants have been unable to convert a 2012 declaration  into a binding agreement on all members, including China.

As recently as March, the Chinese Coast Guard engaged in dangerous maneuvers close to Philippine ships at Scarborough Shoal, which is a traditional fishing spot within the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone.

According to my sources, Duterte’s network of friends and family has gotten millions of dollars for looking the other way as Beijing expands its influence and territory at the expense of Manila. Most of the billions of dollars worth of promised Chinese aid, loans, and investment to the Philippines never materialized.

COVID Lockdown Denials

On April 10, China’s foreign ministry spokesperson, Zhao Lijian, said , “We express strong dissatisfaction and firm opposition to the groundless accusations against China’s pandemic prevention policy from the U.S. in its statement, and have lodged solemn representations.”

On April 8, the U.S. State Department said its non-emergency staff and families of employees in Shanghai could depart, given the risk that China’s regime would separate COVID-infected children from parents as part of the city’s draconian lockdown measures.

Food is running low in cities under lockdown, including for the seven U.S. Marines who protect the consulate in Shanghai. On April 6, State Department employees distributed  an appeal to collect fresh food for the American soldiers, who had to rely on prepackaged “Meals Ready-to-Eat,” known as MREs.

Citing the risk of parent-child separation, the United States also advised America citizens to limit travel to Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Jilin Province in China. Diplomatic representations from 30 countries recently pleaded against the separations.

In response, the CCP called its lockdown measures “scientific and effective.”

Market Access Claims

The chairman of the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC), Yi Huiman, claimed  on April 9 that he is working with the United States to resolve concerns about the lack of accounting standards in Chinese companies that are publicly traded on American stock exchanges. Beijing seeks more U.S. investment in China through initial public offerings of Chinese companies on American stock exchanges.

The CCP is likely seeking to shift regulation from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to an international agency more vulnerable to Beijing’s influence. Yi said that China is moving forward with its plan to “establish an international regulatory environment for a highly [liberalized] capital market.”

Beijing has been working to “bridge the gaps in auditing rules” since at least 2012, according to the South China Morning Post.

The CCP is widening its “connect cross-border investment channels” with London and Hong Kong exchanges, which are linked to China’s two exchanges in Beijing and Shanghai. In addition to equities, the network will now trade financial derivatives and commodities, according to Yi. The Beijing Stock Exchange opened in November.

Yi sought to calm investor nerves over bad news in China’s capital markets, including from the COVID lockdowns and increasing property development debt that is being shifted to state-owned enterprises in unrelated sectors, such as aerospace defense and mining.

According to the South China Morning Post, “Yi’s prepared remarks would bolster confidence among investors who have been beaten down by a relentless sell-off in technology stocks, combined with concerns of an economic slowdown as the Covid-19 pandemic flared up in Shanghai, Jilin province and Guangzhou city.”

Propaganda Central to CCP Expansion

Propaganda, lies, and the suppression of free speech has always been an important means for CCP expansion.

Alternative viewpoints on any of the “three T’s”—the Tiananmen massacre of 1989, the Tibet invasion of 1949, and the success of democratic Taiwan—are strictly censored in China. Beijing instead promotes an official narrative of few deaths in Tiananmen on June 4, 1989, which was in any case, according to the narrative, necessary for national stability. Tibet and Taiwan, the official story goes, were always part of China.

These are all CCP lies, to which are added new untruths on a daily basis in Beijing, most recently on topics as disparate as the South China Sea, capital markets, and COVID lockdowns.

At some point, the world must stop giving Beijing’s propaganda the benefit of the doubt, and start increasing its defenses against the CCP’s fake news. At some point there should be, for every new lie, a new economic sanction.

Anders Corr has a bachelor’s/master’s in political science from Yale University (2001) and a doctorate in government from Harvard University (2008). He is a principal at Corr Analytics Inc., publisher of the Journal of Political Risk, and has conducted extensive research in North America, Europe, and Asia. His latest books are “The Concentration of Power: Institutionalization, Hierarchy, and Hegemony” (2021) and “Great Powers, Grand Strategies: the New Game in the South China Sea” (2018).

https://www.theepochtimes.com/ccp-propaganda-in-overdrive-on-covid-19-the-south-china-sea-foreign-investment_4396158.html

Why the US Should Ban TikTok

John Mac Ghlionn

April 19, 2022

Commentary

Since the turn of the century, rates of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) have skyrocketed. One in ten  American kids currently suffer from the condition.

A chronic, debilitating illness, ADHD is a neurodevelopmental disorder that affects people’s behavior. It negatively affects  a child’s academic achievements and is a considerable barrier to successful socialization.

Since 2019, ADHD has exploded  on social media platforms. Millions of American kids  are affected by ADHD. Many of them turn to the internet for answers. Some turn to TikTok, one of the most problematic apps  on the planet.

ADHD, according to some supposed experts , is a blessing. They’re wrong. Contrary to the nonsensical musings spouted by members of the neurodiversity movement, there’s no concrete evidence   that ADHD fuels creativity.

However, there’s plenty of research  outlining the dangers of ADHD. Children suffering from the disorder are at an increased risk of developing mental, behavioral, and emotional issues. Moreover, children diagnosed with ADHD are at greater risk of engaging in antisocial activities compared to those without the illness. In short, ADHD is a multifactorial psychiatric disorder ; it’s something to be tackled, not celebrated .

To treat ADHD, one must be first diagnosed with the chronic illness. This diagnosis should come from a doctor, not a social media app like TikTok.

According to a study recently published in The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry , 52 percent of ADHD-related video footage on the platform is “misleading.” This is especially concerning when one realizes that many of these videos rack up millions of views in the United States and beyond.

In an interview  with PsyPost ,  one of the authors behind the study, Dr. Anthony Yeung, said that the misleading videos are contributing to a climate of fear, confusion, and erroneous beliefs.

“In the past two years (in particular since the start of the pandemic),” he said, “many doctors are noticing an increase in patients showing up to their offices wondering if they have ADHD.”

They see a video on TikTok, digest the misinformation, and run to their doctors for support.

As Yeung explained, the vast majority “of these misleading videos oversimplified ADHD, recommended incorrect treatments or wrongly attributed symptoms of other psychiatric disorders as being a symptom of ADHD.”

TikTok, arguably the most popular  Chinese app of all time, is banned in China . To those who say that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has nothing to do with TikTok, let me remind you that the CCP now controls a board seat  in ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company.

A Propaganda Machine of Epic Proportions

Jacob Helberg, a bestselling author and senior adviser at the Stanford University Center on Geopolitics and Technology, has argued , rather convincingly, that the most powerful nations are the ones with control of “the information networks and communications technologies” that shape “the daily lives of billions of people.”

Enter TikTok, an app that has over 1 billion users  worldwide. More than one-third of the American population  is on TikTok. Americans between the ages of 12 and 17 use the app regularly.

Rather worryingly, a study  carried out by Techcrunch showed the Chinese platform grew as a news source last year; in fact, it was the only social media platform to grow as a news source. This means that millions of impressionable young minds are being fed dangerous garbage. The dissemination of misinformation and disinformation is not a glitch in the machine—TikTok is designed to spread lies.

A recent piece published by the New York Post  warned that the CCP uses the “global social media ecosystem to expand its already formidable influence.” Through apps like TikTok, the CCP has “quietly built a network of social media personalities who parrot the government’s perspective.”

The posts, which are masterfully manufactured, operate “in virtual lockstep as they promote China’s virtues, deflect international criticism of its human rights abuses and advance Beijing’s talking points,” according to the article.

The influencer network is the perfect Trojan horse for disseminating deliberately misleading messages. Hundreds of influencers “with connections to the Chinese government or its state media,” we’re told, now operate in dozens of different languages. The CCP has weaponized TikTok.

Clint Watts, a former FBI agent who now works with Miburo , a company specializing in detecting and countering misinformation and disinformation campaigns, told the New York Post that the CCP is desperately “trying to infiltrate” countries around the world, including the United States.

With an addictive app like TikTok, the CCP knows that if you “bombard an audience for long enough with the same narratives, people will tend to believe them over time.” Of course, Watts is correct.

TikTok is arguably the most harmful social media app in existence. Worryingly, it’s growing in popularity. TikTok will have more than 1.5 billion users worldwide by the end of the year. With an increasing number  of Americans downloading and using the app, there has never been a better time to ban  TikTok.

John Mac Ghlionn is a researcher and essayist. His work has been published by the New York Post, The Sydney Morning Herald, Newsweek, National Review, and The Spectator US, among others. He covers psychology and social relations, and has a keen interest in social dysfunction and media manipulation.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/why-the-us-should-ban-tiktok_4398906.html

China Is Nearly Done Building a Taiwan Invasion Fleet

Western democracies need to address the exigent threat

J.G. Collins

April 20, 2022

Commentary

The Treaty of Versailles that ended World War I prohibited Germany from creating an air force. So, before plunging the world into the cataclysm of World War II, Adolph Hitler engaged in a massive, clandestine, determined, effort to build Germany’s air force, the Luftwaffe, under the guise of building out Germany’s civil airline, Lufthansa.

By 1935, Hitler revealed his new air arm to the world. The allied victors of World War I protested, but could do nothing.  Within five years,  the Nazis had intimidated Austria to give in to the Anschluss and had walked into Czechoslovakia. Then, they rolled up rapid conquests over Poland, Denmark, Norway, Belgium, Holland, Luxembourg, and France.

By 1940, Hitler and his Nazis controlled much of continental Europe and were preparing to invade Britain.

Just as Hitler used the guise of Lufthansa to build out his air force, Xi Jinping is using China’s massive merchant ship building facilities to rapidly build out the Peoples’ Liberation Army Navy, or “PLAN.” It has gone largely unacknowledged by the Western media.

What we consultants call “ cross functionality ” in businesses, the Chinese apply to their military, intelligence, and commercial operations into what they call “military civil fusion” ( pdf ). This means that China applies the expertise and competitive advantage it gleans from China’s civilian activities to its military activities and vice versa.  In ship building, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) recently reported  the confluence of China’s enormous state-owned merchant ship building business, China State Shipbuilding Corporation (CSSC), with its extraordinarily rapid pace of building naval vessels by the same company.  In at least one instance, satellite imagery shows the PLAN’s latest Type 003 aircraft carrier being built directly next to what appears to be a container ship for Taiwan’s Evergreen Marine Corporation.

The benefits of this military-civilian fusion in ship building are clear: economies of scale , shared services, a common pool of workers, and ready access to the kind of “ shop floor innovation ” that increases efficiency and improves quality in all manufacturing processes.

Of course,  all societies that produce arms have some confluence of civil and military production. The Boeing 767 airliner, built around the airframe of the U.S. Air Force KC-46 Pegasus tanker and transport, comes to mind as an example.

But for most countries, the convergence in building weapons platforms and building out their civilian counterparts are at risk from market forces. China’s CSSC is state-owned in an authoritarian government and answerable, ultimately, to China’s political leadership, not shareholders. For China, shipbuilding is a central element of its military spending and industrial policy;  all costs are essentially military spending. All ships that China builds for foreigners are, essentially, a contribution to the PLANs ship building program.

Just as  Hitler used his built-out Luftwaffe to train combat pilots, China’s military-civil fusion extends to developing skilled seafarers.  China’s merchant fleet is second only to Greece by Dead Weight Tonnage (DWT)  and the speed at which it is growing—55 percent in just five years—is extraordinary.

Dr. Kori Schake  of the American Enterprise Institute, writing in the March/April issue Foreign Affairs  magazine, highlighted the importance of the merchant marine in maintaining naval hegemony in a recent book review .  She reminds us that, at the apex of U.S. power in the early 1950s, the United States accounted for 43 percent of global shipping.  By 1994, we were down to just four percent.  The U.S. merchant fleet now ranks 27th in DWT.

Our Navy is in even worse shape, according to Dr. Schake: “The U.S. Navy had more ships in 1930 than it does today; China supplanted the United States as the world’s largest naval power in 2020. And the Pentagon’s goal of increasing the size of the fleet from 306 to 355 ships has a target date of 2034—a far-off objective for which Congress has not yet provided funding.”

I’ve been concerned with the growth of China’s sea power for years.  In a 2011 letter  to the New York Post, I wrote that “We should use every means at our disposal, including trade policy, economic sanctions, and diplomacy, to derail China’s (naval) plans.” But I noted that with the fiscal challenges we faced even then—and now far exacerbated today—neither of the two major political parties were prepared to seriously address the challenge. That continues to this day.

The fiscal challenge of the United States maintaining a maritime force to counter the PLAN is insurmountable, given the U.S. national debt. China has already built out the biggest navy in the world, with 355 ships as of last November, according to the U.S. Naval Institute .

Most worrisome in the PLAN fleet is a formidable amphibious invasion fleet , including eight Type 071 “Qilianshan” (NATO: “Yuzhao”) Class LPDs (Landing Platform Dock) and a scheduled eight Type 075 “Hainan” (NATO: “Yushen”)  Class LHDs (Landing Helicopter Dock).

Writers at Naval News speculate that the aim of the Yushen Class LHD  “is likely to increase the ‘vertical’ amphibious (i.e., helicopter)  assault capability with the very mountainous East Coast of Taiwan in mind.”

The Yuzhao Class of LPDs are capable of “ Multidimensional troop delivery , air defense, and precision anti-ship and land attack,” according to the prototype’s captain.  Multidimensional troop delivery includes infantry delivered ashore via transports, hovercraft, armor, and landing craft.

As with Hitler’s Luftwaffe signaling Germany’s expansionism in the 1930s, all this formidable buildup of Chinese naval assets should be clearly read as the long-simmering belligerence of Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) as approaching a boiling point.  China is set upon an expansionist foreign policy that includes asserting control over Taiwan and, likely, other Pacific islands and nations.

There is an exigent need to deter China from moving toward an invasion of Taiwan and plunging the region into kinetic war.

But that deterrence cannot be borne by the United States alone. Instead, we must act to maintain the stability of the Indo-Pacific Region.  That will require the United States to lead an alliance of Indo-Pacific democracies and NATO to proactively deter China from engaging in the kind of aggression we’ve seen this year against Ukraine.

The United States and other allies should engage in an exercise to deploy a corps—two divisions—at Taiwan’s government’s request—for a few weeks, as quickly as possible.  Then, we should cycle division-sized units—First Marines, 101st Airborne, 1st Cavalry—all our most combat-ready units—in and out of the island over several months so that we maintain a division there.  Then, while one of the divisions is deployed, the United States should renounce our now obsolete policy of “ strategic ambiguity ,” given the CCP’s clear belligerence.  We and our democratic allies must state, clearly and unambiguously, that we are “all-in” to defend Taiwan to deter China’s belligerence and deploy the same kind of “tripwire  defense”—a relatively small force deployed by a far larger power so that any attack on the small force will implicate the larger force—that we’ve used to defend South Korea for 70 years.

To further ensure the stability of the region, the alliance should create a multilateral shipbuilding consortium among its members akin to the European consortium that built Airbus Industrie. The consortium’s mission would be to grow civilian and naval ship building and develop ship building technology to match the astounding level of productivity of the PLAN shipyards.  (The PLAN shipyard can produce a new Yushen Class LHD every six months.) The consortium’s plans should include building smaller, cheaper, LHDs and LPDs, small aircraft carriers with VSTOL (vertical and short takeoff and landing) aircraft, diesel attack submarines, and older classes of U.S. nuclear-powered attack and strategic submarine platforms. Closely guarded classified U.S. technology could be maintained by building classified components using American expatriates overseas and deploying foreign ships with a small contingent of U.S. Navy personnel on secondment  to foreign vessels’ crews.

Finally, the alliance should expand their training and recruitment of seafarers.  The U.S. Naval Academy should expand to add 500 more foreign midshipmen to the brigade. We should provide much higher funding for Naval Reserve Officer Training (NROTC) scholarships at civilian colleges. We should triple the enrollment of the U.S.  Merchant Marine Academy at Kings Point, New York, and double the size of the U.S. Coast Guard Academy classes.  We should provide “full ride” scholarships for associate degrees for superior students in sciences, technology, engineering, and math (“STEM”) in exchange for three years of enlisted service in the U.S. Navy with additional enhancements to maintain recruitment.

World geopolitics is at a critical juncture, akin to 1938, and the Indo-Pacific is in a classic Thucydides Trap  caused by China’s belligerent expansionism and stated intention to overthrow the existing global order.  As Henry Kissinger noted in “A World Restored,” “Whenever there exists a power which considers the international order … oppressive, relations between it and other powers will be revolutionary. … Diplomacy, the art of restraining the exercise of power, cannot function in such an environment.”

Kissinger goes on to say, “Those who warn against the danger are considered alarmists; those who counsel adaptation to circumstance are considered balanced and sane. … ‘Appeasement’ … is the result of an inability to come to grips with [an adversary’s] policy of unlimited objectives.”

I will cast my lot with Kissinger’s “alarmists.”  The United States and our allies in the Indo-Pacific region are in a contest for hegemony that will depend on naval and maritime assets.  The United States, NATO, and the Indo-Pacific democracies need to act now to deter Xi Jinping’s ambition to make the South and East China Seas—the world’s shipping lanes—Chinese territorial waters.

We either act now to deter his ambitions or surrender the region to the harsh dictates of Beijing’s criminal class of rulers.

J.G. Collins is managing director of the Stuyvesant Square Consultancy, a strategic advisory, market survey, and consulting firm in New York City. His writings on economics, trade, politics and public policy have appeared in Forbes, the New York Post, Crain’s New York Business, The Hill, The American Conservative, and other publications.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/china-is-nearly-done-building-a-taiwan-invasion-fleet_4414077.html

China Threatens the Breakup of Europe

Europe and America should respond with tripwire troops in Taiwan

Anders Corr

April 20, 2022

News Analysis

As Russian President Vladimir Putin escalates the war in Ukraine  to that of nuclear threats, massacre, and the systemic rape of children in cities like Bucha , China  continues its diplomatic support of Russia, including now by threatening the breakup of the European Union.

China’s state-controlled Global Times mooted  the idea under the guise of a friendly warning on April 18, after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that Ukrainians are prepared to fight a ten-year war against Russia. Such a war, warned this most nationalist of Beijing mouthpieces, could lead to the breakup of Europe and its control by the United States.

“It is exactly due to the continuous flow of economic and military aid from the US and NATO that has prolonged the military conflict, cheering Ukraine up to fight a 10-year war,” according to the anonymous Global Times author.

After a “bleeding decade” of war over Ukraine, “Europe, being entangled in a war, will completely lose its security autonomy and become fully reliant on the US umbrella. It will have to confront a 10-year crisis on energy, food, refugees and inflation. Social turmoil will surface. The [ EU ] bloc may even split on the issue.”

Despite Beijing and Moscow’s “no limits” partnership, meant to deter the United States, they clarified recently that the violence in Ukraine is apparently entirely the fault of our evil capitalist country and its NATO lapdogs.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) thus seeks to divert blame and use threats and scare tactics against Brussels to separate it from Washington. It’s not hard to understand why.

Together, the two democratic superpowers and their allies in places like Japan and Taiwan, from an economic and increasingly military standpoint, are the world’s best hope for defending the international system against the plans of Beijing and Moscow to expand territorially and create a “new type” of international relations.

If Ukraine and Xinjiang are any indication, this “common destiny” envisioned by Beijing will be no walk in the park. At best, it will be totalitarian developmentalism of the sort that creates ghost cities and failed property developers in loan default. At worst, genocide and civil war will emerge on every continent, as the citizens of formerly democratic countries resist the kind of neocolonialism doled out by the CCP to Uyghurs in Xinjiang. It could be one and then the other. We all need to wake up and mitigate the risk of any of the above.

In the short term, Beijing wants the European Union to cave to Russian demands and pressure Zelenskyy into conceding control of all of Ukraine to Moscow. This would strengthen the credibility of Beijing’s threat against Taiwan, and make forced unification of the island democracy more likely, and with less effort.

It would also relieve a major source of diplomatic discomfort in Beijing, which is increasing attention to its failure to denounce the Russian military’s egregious violence.

But Moscow and Beijing badly miscalculated the unity and commitment of Washington, Brussels, and London to protecting Ukraine from Putin’s bloody assault. We aren’t fools.

As noted  by Didi Tang in The Times of London on April 19: “Beijing is trying to sow division in the West by exploiting any differences between European and US policy in support of Ukraine. Beijing is worried that a united front will damage its ambitions to rival Washington.”

Increasingly, news reporters like Tang are flatly reporting Beijing’s divide and conquer strategy to achieve global hegemony. It’s refreshing but insufficient to stop the CCP.

Beijing is already taking notes on Ukraine and revising its plans  to invade Taiwan accordingly. According to a Chinese military source quoted by Nikkei Asian Review on April 20, China’s military planners expect to invade Taiwan within the seven-day period that it would take U.S. Marines stationed on Okinawa to obtain permission from Washington to land in, and militarily reinforce, the island democracy. To deter this, given the demonstrated power of U.S. and allied defensive weapons used against Russian invaders, Beijing is increasing its nuclear arsenal.

In other words, the CCP plans to threaten nuclear war against the United States to keep it from protecting Taiwan. Russia is hinting at a similar threat now, to stop the influx of military supplies to Ukrainian forces.

Beijing and Moscow are thus trying to use their nuclear weapons as not only a deterrent force, but a compellent force. They want to compel the world’s democracies into following their wills, and if given half a chance, they will do so.

All this to say that democracy, of which the United States, the EU, and allies like Japan are the world’s biggest defenders, relies on the unity of these countries, and more, in keeping up the pressure of economic sanctions on Moscow and arms shipments to the brave defenders of Ukraine.

But let’s think beyond the war today. After all, Ukraine is an object lesson in the failure of weak deterrence. Ukrainians will ultimately win the war, but only after losing millions of citizens and dozens of cities to Putin’s bombs.

Democracy also depends on effective deterrence, which can only be achieved through strength. Deterrence in Taiwan is currently weak, thus inviting an attack by Beijing. To forestall that sad eventuality, and protect democracy on a global level, thus requires increasing the defense of Taiwan by preemptive emplacement of defenses. These can and should include tripwire troops and nuclear weapons.

Anders Corr has a bachelor’s/master’s in political science from Yale University (2001) and a doctorate in government from Harvard University (2008). He is a principal at Corr Analytics Inc., publisher of the Journal of Political Risk, and has conducted extensive research in North America, Europe, and Asia. His latest books are “The Concentration of Power: Institutionalization, Hierarchy, and Hegemony” (2021) and “Great Powers, Grand Strategies: the New Game in the South China Sea” (2018).

https://www.theepochtimes.com/china-threatens-the-breakup-of-europe_4416595.html

Israel Is Mistaken About China

An American ally assists Beijing’s illiberal goal to displace the dollar

Anders Corr

April 22, 2022

News Analysis

Israel  is America’s longtime friend and ally. We have been through a lot together. And Israel is a rare democracy in the Middle East. So when Israel’s central bank recently made plans to downgrade  the U.S. dollar in its reserves and introduce China ’s yuan , it really hurt.

Friends should not do this to each other. Countries that believe in protecting democracy should not undermine the international monetary foundation of liberty.

Israel is by no means alone among America’s friends to start turning their backs on the dollar and toward the yuan, also known as the renminbi. In addition to the usual suspects, Britain, Australia, Japan, Germany, Canada, South Korea, Taiwan, and Switzerland have all collaborated with China’s regime in its attempts to internationalize the yuan. The United States is also responsible, not least for failing to make a bigger stink about the yuan’s increased utilization globally.

Other hard currencies—the euro, Japan’s yen, and the British pound—do not pose a threat. These are all from democracies.

But the regime in Beijing is the greatest threat to democracy and peace globally. Just look at the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) support for Russian President Vladimir Putin and his bloody wars. None of us should want that future.

Enabling the CCP by introducing its currency into Israel’s reserves, or any country’s reserves, furthers its goal of displacing all other currencies globally. Beijing seeks global hegemony, and the yuan serves as its vehicle, one country at a time.

Russia and China, for example, have attempted to preempt sanctions against their future transgressions by denominating their trade in their own currencies, side-stepping the dollar and euro entirely. In March, China’s trade with Russia increased  12.8 percent to $11.7 billion from a year earlier.

Without the global dominance of democratic currencies, Beijing, Moscow, Pyongyang, and Tehran need not concern themselves about the threat of economic sanctions for their terrorism, human rights abuse, and territorial expansion.

Even the Saudis, also longtime allies of the United States, are now cozying up to Beijing. The Middle East is less safe today because of Beijing and its support for Iran, yet Israel now supports this terroristic regime mediately through its monetary policy.

When Israel decided this year to decrease the U.S. dollar and euro in its $206 billion worth of reserves, it did so due to a change in its “whole investment guidelines and philosophy,” according to a recent Bloomberg interview with a deputy governor of its central bank.

“We look at the need to earn a return on the reserves that will cover the costs of liability,” he said.

Apparently, Israel’s top bankers are not costing in the political risk of enabling the regime in Beijing, nor the negative externalities to other countries worldwide that value their sovereignty and freedoms.

In 2021, Israel’s reserves consisted mostly of dollars, with 30 percent in euros and over 2 percent in pounds.

In 2022, “following discussions held by the monetary committee last year,” according to Bloomberg, Israel’s reserves will include the yen and pound at 5 percent each, Australian and Canadian dollars at 3.5 percent each, and China’s yuan at 2 percent.

To Israel’s credit, it increased the British pound, Japanese yen, and Canadian dollar in its basket. These are all democracies and so should be supported. Diversifying currency reserves is a good idea. The only mistake is its planned allocation of reserves to the yuan.

Washington and Brussels should already have delivered formal objections to Israel’s central bank, foreign minister, defense minister, and prime minister. Enabling the CCP threatens all of their portfolios. They should make these objections public to educate the world, including American citizens, and pressure countries like Israel and themselves at risk of straying too close to China’s monetary orbit.

The consequences to the international system of unmitigated expansion of CCP monetary power are unfathomable to most people. It could decrease the effect of sanctions and, thus, lead to an increase in war, terrorism, and genocide globally.

If committed democratic allies cannot convince themselves and their closest friends to close ranks against the CCP in their own defense, then America, Europe, Israel, and democracy generally will fail.

Anders Corr has a bachelor’s/master’s in political science from Yale University (2001) and a doctorate in government from Harvard University (2008). He is a principal at Corr Analytics Inc., publisher of the Journal of Political Risk, and has conducted extensive research in North America, Europe, and Asia. His latest books are “The Concentration of Power: Institutionalization, Hierarchy, and Hegemony” (2021) and “Great Powers, Grand Strategies: the New Game in the South China Sea” (2018).

https://www.theepochtimes.com/israel-is-mistaken-about-china_4418876.html

Beijing’s Indo-Pacific Arc of Power Crystallizes

Gregory Copley

April 25, 2022

Commentary

Beijing  now has in place a basic architecture of power projection targets throughout Southeast Asia, from Burma in the West to Indonesia, Timor-Leste, as well as Papua New Guinea, and the Solomon Islands in the South Pacific.

They each represent decades of work for the Chinese Communist Party of China (CCP) and are now coming into a degree of clarity.

Some targets, such as Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s, have waxed and waned as possible CCP success stories. All regional states in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the South Pacific have been targeted. Each represents a different challenge for Beijing, but the overall pattern is designed to give China dominance of strategic sea lanes and strategic commodities, from food to minerals and energy.

The CCP must now be expected to begin reviving—on a more visible level—its campaign to gain strategic dominance in Timor-Leste after the election there on April 19 of a new president, José Ramos-Horta, one of the original independence leaders who had earlier served as the country’s second president.

Beijing’s campaign in Timor-Leste will bookend China’s current major campaign to gain a foothold in the Solomon Islands, 2,350 miles to Timor-Leste’s east. Significantly, the CCP ’s strategic outreach programs in Burma (also known as Myanmar), Indonesia, East Timor, Papua New Guinea, and the Solomon Islands represent a cohesive umbrella of resource-rich countries immediately to Australia’s north. Beijing has also developed discreet but positive relations with Bangladesh and Thailand.

The pattern of power projection mirrors Japan’s Greater Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere strategy of the 1930s and early 1940s, which also targeted control of strategic resources from Southeast Asia and Australia.

Beijing’s battle for influence in Timor-Leste—which will emerge as a new battleground on a par with its current Solomon Islands campaign—began even before the country’s independence from Indonesia in 2002. Those CCP operations began when East Timor was still a Portuguese colony, before it was seized (just as Portugal granted it independence) by Indonesia under former President Suharto’s legislation on June 17, 1976, to integrate the territory as Indonesia’s 27th province.

Timor-Leste, strategically placed within the Southeast Asian sea lanes, is too significant a target for the CCP to ignore. Especially as the incoming president, José Ramon-Horta, has promised to call early parliamentary elections to oust the administration of Prime Minister Taur Matan Ruak.

Ramos-Horta and his alliance partner, former President Xanana Gusmão, are both left-leaning and have made a career of playing hard politics against the country’s foundational ally, neighbor, and donor, Australia, with which Timor-Leste shares extensive offshore energy fields.

All the successive governments in Timor-Leste have depended on Australian military and economic support to varying degrees. Still, they have fought for a greater share than would typically be considered reasonable of the seabed gas deposits, which are divided between the Australian and Timor-Leste exclusive economic zones (EEZs).

Moreover, all Timor-Leste administrations since independence in 2002 (and their predecessor revolutionary groups during the Portuguese and Indonesian eras) have maintained strong links with Socialist International networks, which, in turn, have strong links to Beijing, especially after the collapse of the USSR.

In particular, Timor-Leste has maintained seemingly illogically close ties with a country without territory, the Saharan Arab Democratic Republic (SADR), which claims but does not occupy Moroccan Western Sahara. The SADR and its “ruling” group, the Polisario, is a front for the Algerian government to gain land access from Algeria across Western Sahara to the Atlantic. Algeria’s closest strategic ally is China. Not coincidentally, the key union movements supporting the Australian Labor Party (ALP) have long also supported the Polisario and the earlier East Timorese revolutionary groups.

The Asia Times on April 20 noted: “A change of government [in Timor-Leste] could lead to renewed enthusiasm for a seemingly stalled onshore gas processing megaproject that would likely only find China wanting to assist financially with its development.”

“On the face of it, Timor-Leste’s cooperation with China is limited. In 2020, Timor-Leste ex- ported just US$1.1-million worth of goods to China, and imported US$190-million from it. … But China has built the presidential palace, foreign ministry, and defense buildings in Dili, the capital, and friendly overtures have been made by both sides.”

Ramos-Horta has repeatedly scoffed at suggestions that China was gaining strategically significant leverage over Timor-Leste in recent years. However, the reality is that he will be approached about financing not only the stalled Greater Sunrise gas field project, but the related issue of onshore processing of the liquefied natural gas.

Gusmão, who will feature heavily in the background or foreground of the next administration, championed the Tasi Mane project, a corridor of petroleum infrastructure along the southwest coast of Timor-Leste where the LNG would be processed.

Certainly, Ramos-Horta—like Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare in the Solomon Islands—has to tread carefully to balance the threats and promises of both Beijing and the Washington-Canberra axis. Beijing has been accustomed to working gradually but relentlessly, trying to stay under the radar as much as possible.

Lately, it has not been possible for China to avoid alarming Australia and the United States in the Solomons. And now Timor-Leste is likely to further awaken Canberra and Washington.

Noted Canadian strategic analyst Cleo Paskal, who focuses heavily on Indo-Pacific  events, said on April 20, “The PLA is essentially putting pieces in place to create its own version of a first island chain to hem in and isolate Quad/AUKUS/Five-Eyes member Australia.”

She noted that the response of Canberra to the buildup of Chinese influence and penetration in the Solomons was to “double down” on Sogavare, which, in effect, repudiates the mass of Solomon Islanders who have opposed Sogavare’s security deal with Beijing. Sogavare, she said, had been attempting to postpone the 2023 elections because of his unpopularity and opposition to the Chinese security pact with the Solomons.

Paskal also cites Tongan analyst Tevita Motulalo, who said that “security policy” [in much of the South Pacific] was to bring in more Chinese influence in order to get Washington (and Canberra) to pay attention to the locals’ needs. The same could be said for Timor-Leste’s policies.

In the meantime, however, the CCP has built a comprehensive arc of influence down into the Indo-Pacific. It is pushing the line of engagement between China and the AUKUS alliance further south toward Australia.

For Beijing, economic contraction at home does not equate to strategic contraction abroad. China’s Belt & Road Initiative (BRI, also known as “One Belt, One Road”) funding may contract elsewhere, but it now focuses on its momentum in the Indo-Pacific.

Gregory Copley is president of the International Strategic Studies Association based in Washington. Born in Australia, Copley is a Member of the Order of Australia, entrepreneur, writer, government adviser, and defense publication editor. His latest book is The New Total War of the 21st Century and the Trigger of the Fear Pandemic.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/beijings-indo-pacific-arc-of-power-crystallizes_4423545.html

China Gains Access to the Bay of Bengal

US and India should work together to counter China in the Indian Ocean

Antonio Graceffo

April 25, 2022

News Analysis

The United States and India  are threatened as the Chinese regime stands on the brink of securing a port in the Indian Ocean  on pace to achieve its goal of sea control  by 2030 and naval superiority by 2049.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has a long history of circumventing sanctions to support the military rulers of Burma (also known as Myanmar). The stakes are made even higher by the China-Myanmar Economic Corridor  (CMEC), a portion of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI, also known as “One Belt, One Road”) that runs from China ’s Yunnan Province to a Burmese port on the Indian Ocean .

CMEC will enable the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) to encroach on India in the Bay of Bengal . It will also allow CCP oil shipments to avoid the Strait of Malacca, which the U.S. Seventh Fleet patrols. While the United States and India appear to be at odds over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the two have a shared interest in preventing the PLAN from gaining access to the Indian Ocean.

India is caught in a balancing act  between its long-term ally Russia and long-term adversary China. Over the past few years, the United States has intensified its alliance with India through the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (the Quad) and other initiatives. Still, the Ukraine crisis is putting this budding friendship to the test.

While Beijing may seek to draw India away from the United States, New Delhi’s anger about the CCP border incursions of the past two years will not be easily forgotten. Neither is India prepared to ignore the growing threat China plays in the Bay of Bengal. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi even rejected a proposed meeting  with China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi last month.

Another dimension to the Indian Ocean situation is that the United States’ China containment strategy focuses on the Pacific Ocean, the Strait of Malacca, and the Taiwan Strait . In contrast, the United States has generally left the defense of the Indian Ocean to India. The U.S. Indo-Pacific Strategy paper confirms that the United States counts on India “as a partner in this positive regional vision .” However, whether or not India is up to the task remains a question mark.

The Office of U.S. Naval Intelligence  estimates that by 2030, the PLAN will have 67 new major surface ships and 12 new nuclear-powered submarines, which is enough to control  the Indian Ocean. The larger CCP plan is to grow the military so that China will be able to control the seas  by 2030 and displace the United States as the world’s most powerful navy by 2049.

There is concern within India that CCP threats  to India’s land borders, such as the 2020 incursions into the Himalayan territory , are distracting the government from building a strong navy. Apart from the fact that India is a peninsula with 4,350 miles of coastline , security experts, including Center for Strategic International Studies  (CSIS), agree that India should increase its maritime capabilities. This is particularly true now that China has established ports at Gwadar in Pakistan, Hambantota and Colombo in Sri Lanka, and will soon have ports in Burma. In August 2021, China successfully tested a cargo run from Yangon Port,  which is in the Indian Ocean, in Burma all of the way to Yunnan.

On Sept. 16, 2021, Voice of America reported that Rajeswari Pillai Rajagopalan, director for the Center for Security , Strategy, and Technology  at New Delhi’s Observer Research Foundation, said that the ports in Burma, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka represented the CCP closing in on India.

A senior Indian naval official told the Business Standard in January that there were as many as 125 foreign vessels  in the Indian Ocean at any time, the most since World War II. Speaking with reporters in December 2021, Chief of Naval Staff Adm. R. Hari  said that the Indian navy might be tracking up to three PLA ships at any given moment.

Anit Mukherjee, associate professor at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies who authored a book on India’s military, told the Business Standard  in January that in order to meet the challenge of the CCP, India needs to build up its naval power. Historically, the navy has been the “ forgotten service ” when it comes to India’s military funding, always receiving only a fraction of the budget it asks for.

On average, India spends 15 percent  of its military budget on its navy despite only having three branches, while the United States, with six branches, spends 30 percent  on the navy. The amount the CCP spends  on its navy is not clear; however, China’s total defense spending of $252 billion  is more than three times India’s $72.9 billion.

Finally realizing the need to catch up, the Indian government increased the navy budget by 44.53 percent this year . Currently, the Indian navy only has 130 vessels , many of which are two-decades old. So while the increase in funding is a welcomed move in the right direction, the situation is far from resolved.

The United States has a number of tools to aid India in improving its maritime defense capabilities. In 2012, the U.S.-India Defense  Technology and Trade Initiative (DCIF) was established to foster cooperation between the two countries in research and develop, as well as production of defense technologies. Additionally, the United States has other programs in place to finance the military of foreign countries and provide them with defense-related equipment. Both the foreign military financing  (FMF) and excess defense articles  (EDA) have been applied to Egypt and Israel  and could be expanded to include India.

A sticking point in U.S.-Indian cooperation has always been the United States’ refusal to provide India with nuclear submarines  and other advanced weaponry, forcing India to rely on purchases from Russia. Now, in the context of the Ukraine invasion, India’s arms trade with Russia is in conflict with the Countering America’s Adversaries  Through Sanctions Act. As the United States will not sell India the latest weapons, India must do without them, or maintain its ties with Russia.

Preventing the CCP from gaining control of the Indian Ocean may necessitate the United States to adopt a new Indian Ocean policy  and to deepen its involvement with India through the Quad and other programs. Washington is in a position to coordinate with New Delhi by supporting the development of India’s economic, political, and military power. To do this, the United States will have to evaluate whether India’s ties to Russia outweigh the help that New Delhi can lend Washington in countering Beijing. Similarly, India will have to decide if gaining U.S. support against the CCP is worth abandoning its relationship with Russia.

Antonio Graceffo, Ph.D., has spent more than 20 years in Asia. He is a graduate of the Shanghai University of Sport and holds a China-MBA from Shanghai Jiaotong University. Graceffo works as an economics professor and China economic analyst, writing for various international media. Some of his books on China include “Beyond the Belt and Road: China’s Global Economic Expansion” and “A Short Course on the Chinese Economy.”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/china-gains-access-to-the-bay-of-bengal_4421292.html

China Considers a Rare Earth Gambit

Even after several failures, Beijing still prefers bullying

Milton Ezrati

April 26, 2022

Commentary

Chinese leader Xi Jinping and others among Beijing’s leadership enjoy reminding the world of China ’s cultural legacy, particularly how it values patience and takes the long view.

A classic illustration comes from a comment by former leader Deng Xiaoping some years ago. When France’s ambassador to China asked him whether he thought the French Revolution of 1789 had been successful, Deng replied that it was “still too early to tell.”

But Beijing’s recent behavior suggests that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has lost track of these virtues that is has turned to bullying and pressure to achieve its immediate goals. Beijing would do well to return to its cultural roots, for impatience and bullying have gotten China nowhere, while at the same time, they have harmed the nation’s long-term prospects.

This unfortunate turn showed how Beijing has lashed out at the United States, Japan, and especially Australia, threatening to cut off their supply of rare earth  elements. Since China controls more than two-thirds of global production, and these elements are crucial to modern technologies, such a cutoff could significantly harm these economies.

But in the long run, such a cutoff would encourage users to find other sources, and these exist. China would lose a major portion of what today are lucrative trading arrangements while earning the enmity and distrust of more than just these three nations.

Indeed, it is strange that China would consider such policies, whether with rare earth elements or any other goods. All such efforts in the past have not only failed to achieve Beijing’s objectives, but they have also impelled more movement away from China trade, either sourcing in China or viewing it as an attractive market.

A noteworthy example is Beijing’s 2010 effort to deny Japan rare earth products over the long-standing dispute about control of unpopulated islands in the East China Sea—the Senkaku in Japanese and Diaoyu Dao in Chinese. Beijing blocked sales to Japanese users after a particularly hot exchange between ships from Japan’s navel self-defense force and Chinese fishing vessels.

Japan’s only concession was to turn down the heat in the dispute. Japan did not relinquish its claims to the islands and now actively warns other trading nations of how unreliable a trading partner China is, including recent warnings from Japan’s Ambassador to Australia, Yamagami Shingo.

More recently, the CCP has tried similar bullying tactics with Australia, also to no avail. Angered by Australia’s desire to investigate the cause of the COVID-19 pandemic, Beijing imposed an array of quotas and huge tariffs on Australian goods coming into China, especially metals, energy, and agricultural products. Part of that effort included an 80 percent tariff on Australian barley.

But none of these efforts to punish the Australian economy got what Beijing wanted. The government in Canberra refused to back down in its efforts to find the origin of the disease, and Australian producers found other markets for their goods and relatively quickly, too.

Now with the loss of Ukrainian and Russian grain from world markets, Australian agriculture has less need than ever for China’s markets. The only lasting effect Beijing managed in the exchange was to earn Australian enmity and a more general distrust of China as a trading partner.

Now in 2022, Beijing is trying such tactics again. In response to military cooperation between the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Japan, the CCP has threatened to cut off supplies of rare earth elements. Washington’s warnings to Beijing about helping Russia evade sanctions have also contributed to China’s desire to hurt the United States.

There can be little doubt that if China were to go through with such plans, it would exacerbate already troublesome supply chain issues. But for the long run, such a cutoff would encourage these major buyers to shift away from China and take a lucrative source of trade with them.

And there are alternatives to Chinese rare earth sources. The fact is that rare earth elements are not very rare. They exist in many places on the globe. The only reason China presently has a near-monopoly is that the refining of these elements is very hard on the environment, and richer economies prefer to offload such environmental destruction to China.

But if Beijing forces the issue as it has threatened, the need for these products will force these other nations to change their priorities. China will lose its present near-monopoly and earn the distrust and enmity of others relatively quickly in the grand scheme of things.

China would do well to recapture its cultural heritage and spend more time taking the longer view than it has of late. Rather than excuse its own mistakes by pointing out America’s, Beijing might learn from others’ mistakes and its own in this regard. However, given Beijing’s behavior in recent years, China’s leadership seems unlikely to take the lesson. In this regard, it seems ineducable.

Milton Ezrati is a contributing editor at The National Interest, an affiliate of the Center for the Study of Human Capital at the University at Buffalo (SUNY), and chief economist for Vested, a New York-based communications firm. Before joining Vested, he served as chief market strategist and economist for Lord, Abbett & Co. He also writes frequently for City Journal and blogs regularly for Forbes. His latest book is “Thirty Tomorrows: The Next Three Decades of Globalization, Demographics, and How We Will Live.”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/china-considers-a-rare-earth-gambit_4425411.html

China Deploys New Missiles Against the US Navy

Rick Fisher

April 29, 2022 Updated: April 30, 2022

News Analysis

China ’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) on April 20 revealed two new missiles  intended to increase its ability to overwhelm the defenses of U.S. Navy ships that help deter Chinese Communist Party (CCP) aggression.

While the disclosures were timed to coincide with the 73 rd  anniversary of the PLA Navy (PLAN), the timing also served to counter the implications of the April 14 sinking of the Russian cruiser Moskva for the Russian-technology-dependent Chinese navy.

These disclosures also had the main elements of a CCP propaganda department orchestration: vague images derived from obscure videos; and an echo chamber of propaganda organs, this time by the South China Morning Post and the Global Times.

The more important missile disclosure was that of a new anti-ship ballistic missile (ASBM) that could be capable of hypersonic speed, but is small enough to be fired from the vertical launch systems (VLS) of PLAN cruisers, destroyers, and frigates.

For the PLA, ASBMs are a key weapon to deter a U.S. military  response to a Chinese attack against Japan or Taiwan. They are accurate enough to target large U.S. Navy ships like aircraft carriers and fast enough to stress U.S. ship defenses.

Already deployed PLA ASBMs—like the DF-16B, DF-21D, and DF-26B—are much larger, not designed for ship launching, and are controlled by another service, the PLA Rocket Force.

But as the PLAN has 3,300-plus vertical launchers, it could potentially overwhelm U.S. Navy ships or those of any other democracy around the world that lacks the means to defend against ASBMs.

Some Chinese internet observers called this missile the YJ-21, or “Strike Eagle-21,” and it was shown being fired vertically from a new PLAN 13,000-ton Type 055 cruiser. It features a unitary diameter first stage and a finned second stage that may or may not have a rocket motor.

In an April 20 article, Minnie Chan, a military issue reporter for the South China Morning Post with a long record of assisting PLA propaganda themes, cited Chinese analysts reporting that this new ASBM has a range of 600 miles to 930 miles.

On April 21, the Global Times reported the new missiles were “merely speculative” and an example of “hype by foreign media.”

But there has been a prior Chinese warning of this missile. In his famous 2017 university briefing on future Chinese naval programs, leaked on the Chinese internet, Adm. Zhao Dengping was the first to disclose publicly that the PLAN was working on an ASBM that could be fired from the vertical launchers of warships.

In early 2018, a source at an Asian military exhibit told this analyst that the PLA had started to test this new ASBM, and the most recent disclosures indicate this missile may now be in service.

Another April 20 disclosure came in the form of a brief video that provided a clearer, but not high-definition, image of the PLA’s new air-launched ballistic missile (ALBM), which arms the Xian Aircraft Corporation H-6N refuelable medium bomber of the PLA Air Force (PLAAF).

While first seen in 2017 and featured prominently in a 2018 major PLA military parade, it was not shown armed with its novel ALBM. The Chinese propaganda department only allowed one other vague image of this missile to appear.

But the latest image seems to confirm Chinese source reports from early 2017 of a new H-6 version that would be armed with a large ALBM.

This missile appears to be an air-launched version of the China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation (CASIC) three-stage DF-21D, a 1,050-mile range anti-ship ballistic missile. When launched from altitude, the ALBM version likely has a range exceeding 1,200 miles.

Unrefueled, the H-6N could launch ALBM strikes against the increasingly important U.S. military bases at Guam.

But with multiple aerial refuelings from the PLAAF’s new Y-20U tankers, the H-6N could approach Hawaii close enough to launch ALBM strikes against the U.S. Navy base at Pearl Harbor.

It is also likely that the current or future versions of the PLA’s ALBM will be able to target U.S. military satellites in low Earth orbit, which are crucial to distributed U.S. military operations in the Pacific.

The PLA’s new ALBM and ship-launched ASBM are now part of an array of at least 20 weapons that target large U.S. Navy ships. Ship-launched ASBMs can further increase the PLA’s ability to overwhelm U.S. Navy ships with long-range missile strikes.

In addition, the ALBM, like other large PLA theater-range missiles, can be armed with a nuclear warhead, while the small ASBM could be armed with small tactical nuclear warheads that would also arm shorter-range PLA ballistic and cruise missiles.

Starting under the Trump administration, one American response was to get out of the 1987 Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty that prevented U.S. deployment of missiles with a range greater than 300 miles, and start developing new theater-range missiles.

According to reports, the U.S. Army may purchase more than 3,900 of its 300- to 500-mile range Precision Strike Missile (PrSM); a new 930- to 1,200-mile Typhon medium-range ballistic missile; and a 1,860- to 3,100-mile-range Long Range Hypersonic Weapon (LRHW).

Since the Typhon is based on the U.S. Navy’s Raytheon SM-6 anti-aircraft and missile intercepting missile, it is possible that this missile could also be developed in a new U.S. vertical launched ASBM.

In Asia, U.S. Navy warships can deploy over 4,200 vertical launch systems. While a larger number than that of China, the PLAN could catch up quickly; from 2021 to early 2022, it deployed over 1,200 new VLS on new warships.

A new U.S. ASBM could pose a powerful deterrent to the CCP using its warships to attack Japan or invade Taiwan. At the same time, multi-role surface-to-air missiles could allow for a more robust defense against the large variety of PLA missiles that target large U.S. Navy warships.

Rick Fisher is a senior fellow at the International Assessment and Strategy Center.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/china-deploys-new-missiles-against-the-us-navy_4435911.html

Beijing Increases Blame Campaign Against NATO for Russia-Ukraine Conflict

Dominick Sansone

May 1, 2022 Updated: May 2, 2022

News Analysis

Beijing doesn’t just want to upend the U.S. system—it wants to replace it.

China ’s strategy for challenging the U.S.-led international order largely proceeds according to two separate yet interrelated prongs. First, Beijing expounds on the failures of Washington’s foreign policy, pointing to its consequences and castigating its interventionist principles. Second, Beijing simultaneously presents the Chinese model of governance as a superior alternative to the liberal democratic regime, highlighting selective economic metrics and espousing its principles of “greater good” Marxian collectivism over inhumane Western individualism. Both of these prongs have recently been on display.

In the international realm, Beijing has continued to focus on the Russo-Ukraine war as a direct consequence of failed U.S. foreign policy. Throughout the conflict, the Chinese Communist Party ( CCP ) has continued to blame the outbreak of hostilities on U.S. foreign meddling and the reckless expansion of NATO. On April 26, CCP propaganda outlets ran multiple stories on the United States as an interventionist menace to the global community.

This is not an isolated incident. Throughout the nearly two months since Russia first began its military operation, there has been a steady stream of headlines such as the “Role of NATO after end of Cold War: Pawn for U.S. in seeking hegemony ” (People’s Daily) and “[NATO] … a monstrous remnant from Cold War days” (Xinhua).

The final sentence of the former article summarizes the general sentiment that CCP propaganda has been attempting to emphasize: “The Ukraine crisis once again proves that the U.S. hegemony is the fuse for global instability and the U.S. is the largest perpetrator of turmoil in the world.”

This evaluation is shared by decision-makers in the Kremlin, as well.

Russia has presented multiple justifications for its military operation in Ukraine: denazification, securing national security interests in the Black Sea region, ensuring Ukrainian neutrality, and stopping the eastward spread of NATO. On April 25, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov reiterated his country’s opposition to the transatlantic alliance.

“NATO is essentially going to war with Russia through a proxy and arming that proxy. In war, as in war,” said  Lavrov during a televised news segment.

Yet all of these purported justifications for intervention have been predicated on one central premise—the same as that mentioned above in Chinese sources: the United States’ unipolar moment has passed, and the Wilsonian crusade for international liberal democracy undergirded by Washington’s economic (and military) hegemony is no longer viable.

Russia has consistently blamed the current bloodshed in Ukraine on a confrontational U.S. military establishment. Rather than be subjugated by the latter, the Kremlin argues that it has had its hand forced by an America that refuses to accept the national security considerations of other nations. Instead, the United States seeks a subjugated system of client states that promote Washington’s interests at the expense of all others.

On this point, China and Russia clearly agree. As such, both perceive the relative weakening of the United States as a necessary condition for the emergence of a multipolar world. The latter would be defined by an international balance of power in which regional power centers have their own respective sphere of influence free from the meddling of others—such as China in Southeast Asia and Russia in the post-Soviet space.

In pursuit of this end, the second prong of Beijing’s strategy for undermining U.S. hegemony is to present the CCP example as an effective model of governance, both as a means for intimidating competitors in its geographic proximity as well as in offering a viable alternative to the system of liberal democracy espoused by the United States.

As the flames of war continue to rage across Ukraine, China’s tacit support for Russia is, therefore, about more than just advantageous trade deals or expanded market access. Instead, it is about shining a spotlight on U.S. foreign policy and making the bloodshed a reflection of America’s political system in general.

China has an apparent interest in the latter. CCP leadership perceives any poor optics for liberal democracy as inherently positive for the authoritarian communist alternative of the Chinese system. Not only does the former lead to needless war, as in the conflict over Ukraine, but it additionally fails to provide the same level of material benefit to its citizens as the latter.

Recent reporting  by The Wall Street Journal states that CCP leader Xi Jinping prioritizes consistent economic growth above 5 percent and stable governance as a direct challenge to the U.S.-led system. It seeks to showcase how “China’s one-party system is a superior alternative to Western liberal democracy, and that the U.S. is declining both politically and economically.” Therefore, increasing output and reaching growth goals is imperative  of geopolitical competition as much as it is for domestic prospering.

Many factors influence the decision-making of an international actor. The CCP may desire the spread of its variety of communism to other countries based on revolutionary zeal and Marxist social philosophy. However, the influence of a normative socialist principle (such as the latter) does not preclude the fact that Beijing also considers its security considerations as a nation-state.

The more players in the international system that adopt a top-down authoritarian style of governance similar to that of China—whether they nominally identify as Marxist or not—the more advantageous it is for Beijing.

It is ironic that the CCP constantly describes NATO as a remnant of the Cold War and accuses the United States of having an anachronistic foreign policy. Encouraging other countries to adopt a similar political model was a primary consideration in the geopolitical competition of the Cold War, in which the United States and the Soviet Union each tried to win adherents over to their respective political system as much as a matter of national security as of ideological competition.

Beijing may not place as much explicit pressure on other nation-states as the USSR, or the United States did during the latter half of the 20 th  century. Still, it certainly seeks to co-opt them to its system of stable and predictable—if oppressive—authoritarianism.

It is no secret that Beijing interprets the Russo-Ukraine conflict through the lens of Sino-American competition. However, it is important to realize that this goes beyond the realm of simple economic considerations or competing military interests—it is a battle for the political character of the global community.

Dominick Sansone is a regular contributor to The Epoch Times. He focuses on Russia-China relations and U.S. foreign policy.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/beijing-increases-blame-campaign-against-nato-for-russia-ukraine-conflict_4431415.html

What to Do About China

Gordon G. Chang

May 2, 2022

Originally published by Gatestone Institute

Commentary

All the conditions for history’s next great war are in place. Jim Holmes, the Wiley Professor at the Naval War College, actually talks about this period as being 1937.

1937 was the year in which if you were in Europe or America, you could sense the trouble. If you were in Asia in 1937, you would be even more worried, because that year saw Japan’s second invasion of China  that decade.

No matter where you lived, however, you could not be sure that the worst would happen, that great armies and navies around the world would clash. There was still hope that the situation could be managed. As we now know, the worst did happen. In fact, what happened was worse than what anyone thought at the time.

We are now, thanks to China, back to 1937.

We will begin our discussion in Afghanistan. Beijing has had long‑standing relations with the Afghan Taliban, going back before 9/11, and continuing through that event.

After the United States drove the Taliban from power and while it was conducting an insurgency, China was selling the group arms, including anti‑aircraft missiles, that were used to kill American and NATO forces.

China’s support for killing Americans has continued to today. In December 2020, Indian Intelligence was instrumental, in Afghanistan, in breaking up a ring of Chinese spies and members of the Haqqani Network. The Trump administration believed that the Chinese portion of that ring was actually paying cash for killing Americans.

What can happen next? We should not be surprised if China gives the Taliban an atomic weapon to be used against an American city. Would they be that vicious?

We have to remember that China purposefully, over the course of decades, proliferated its nuclear weapons technology to Pakistan and then helped Pakistan sell that Chinese technology around the world to regimes such as Iran’s and North Korea’s.

Today, China supports the Taliban. We know this because China has kept open its embassy in Kabul. China is also running interference for the Taliban in the United Nations Security Council. It is urging countries to support that insurgent group with aid. It looks as if the Taliban’s main financial backers these days are the Chinese.

Beijing is hoping to cash in on its relationship in Central Asia. Unfortunately, there is a man named Biden, who is helping them.

In early August, Biden issued an executive order setting a goal that by 2030, half of all American vehicles should be electric‑powered. To be electric‑powered, we need rare earth minerals, we need lithium. As many people have said, Afghanistan is the Saudi Arabia of rare earths and lithium.

If Beijing can mine this, it makes the United States even more dependent on China. It certainly helps the Taliban immeasurably.

Unfortunately, Beijing has more than just Afghanistan in mind. The Chinese want to take away our sovereignty, and that of other nations, and rule the world. They actually even want to rule the near parts of the solar system. Yes, that does sound far‑fetched, but, no, I’m not exaggerating. Chinese President Xi Jinping would like to end the current international system.

On July 1, in a landmark speech, in connection with the centennial of China’s ruling organization, he said this: “The Communist Party of China and the Chinese people, with their bravery and tenacity, solemnly proclaim to the world that the Chinese people are not only good at taking down the old world, but also good in building a new one.”

By that, China’s leader means ending the international system, the Westphalian international system. It means he wants to impose China’s imperial‑era notions of governance, where Chinese emperors believed they not only had the Mandate of Heaven over tianxia , or all under Heaven, but that Heaven actually compelled the Chinese to rule the entire world.

Xi Jinping has been using tianxia  themes for decades, and so have his subordinates, including Foreign Minister Wang Yi, who in September 2017 wrote an article in Study Times, the Central Party School’s influential newspaper.

In that article, Wang Yi wrote that Xi Jinping’s thought on diplomacy—a “thought” in Communist Party lingo is an important body of ideological work—Wang Yi wrote that Xi Jinping’s thought on diplomacy made innovations on and transcended the traditional theories of Western international relations of the past 300 years.

Take 2017, subtract 300 years, and you almost get to 1648, which means that Wang Yi, with his time reference, was pointing to the Treaty of Westphalia of 1648, which established the current system of sovereign states.

When Wang Yi writes that Xi Jinping wants to transcend that system, he is really telling us that China’s leader does not want sovereign states, or at least no more of them than China. This means that when Biden says, “Oh, the Chinese just want to compete with us,” he is wrong. They do not want to “compete” within the international system. They do not even want to change that system so it is more to their liking. They want to overthrow it altogether, period.

China is also revolutionary with regard to the solar system. Since about 2018, Chinese officials have been talking about the moon and Mars as sovereign Chinese territory. In other words, as part of the People’s Republic of China. This means that China considers those heavenly bodies to be like the South China Sea: theirs and theirs alone.

This also means that China will exclude other nations from going to the moon and Mars if they have the capability to do so. We do not have to speculate about that: Chinese officials say  this is what they are going to do.

Let us return to April 2021. Beijing announced the name of its Mars rover. “We are naming the Mars rover Zhurong,” the Chinese said, “because Zhurong was the god of fire in Chinese mythology.” How nice. Yes, Zhurong is the god of fire. What Beijing did not tell us is that Zhurong is also the god of war—and the god of the South China Sea.

Is Xi Jinping really that bold or that desperate to start another war? Two points. First, China considers the United States to be its enemy. The second point is that the United States is no longer deterring China. China feels it has a big green light to do whatever it wants.

On the first point, about our enemy status, we have to go back to May 2019. People’s Daily, the most authoritative publication in China, actually carried a piece that declared a “people’s war” on the United States. This was not just some isolated thought.

On Aug. 29, 2021, People’s Daily came out with a landmark piece that accused the United States of committing “barbaric” acts against China. Again, this was during a month of hostile propaganda blasts from China.

On the Aug. 29, Global Times, which is controlled by People’s Daily, came right out and also said that the United States was an enemy or like an enemy.

We Americans don’t pay attention to propaganda. The question is, should we be concerned about what China is saying? After all, these are just words.

At this particular time, these words are significant. The strident anti‑Americanism suggests to me that China is laying the justification for a strike on the United States. We keep ignoring what Beijing is saying. We kept ignoring what Osama bin Laden was saying.

We have to remember that the Chinese regime, unlike the Japanese, always warn its adversaries about what it is going to do. Jim Lilley, our great ambassador to Beijing during the Tiananmen Massacre, actually said that China always telegraphs its punches. At this moment, China is telegraphing a punch.

That hostility, unfortunately, is not something we can do very much about. The Chinese Communist regime inherently idealizes struggle, and it demands that others show subservience to it.

The second reason war is coming is that America’s deterrence of China is breaking down. That is evident from what the Chinese are saying.

In March of 2021, China sent its top two diplomats, Yang Jiechi and Wang Yi, to Anchorage to meet our top officials, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan. Yang, in chilling words, said the United States could no longer talk to China “from a position of strength.”

We saw the same theme during the fall of Kabul. China then was saying, “Look, those Americans, they can’t deal with the insurgent Taliban. How can they hope to counter us magnificent Chinese?” Global Times actually came out with a piece referring to Americans: “They can’t win wars anymore.”

We also saw propaganda at that same time directed at Taiwan. Global Times was saying, again, in an editorial, an important signal of official Chinese thinking, “When we decide to invade, Taiwan will fall within hours and the US will not come to help.”

It is probably no coincidence that this propaganda came at the time of incursions into Taiwan’s air-defense identification zone.

We need to be concerned with more than just the intensity and with the frequency of these flights, however. We have to be concerned that China was sending H‑6K bombers; they are nuclear‑capable.

Something is wrong. Global Times recently came out with an editorial with the title, “Time to warn Taiwan secessionists and their fomenters: war is real.”

Beijing is at this moment saying things heard before history’s great conflicts. The Chinese regime right now seems to be feeling incredibly arrogant. We heard this on Nov. 28, 2020, when Di Dongsheng, an academic in Beijing, gave a lecture live-streamed to China.

Di showed the arrogance of the Chinese elite. More importantly, he was showing that the Chinese elite no longer wanted to hide how they felt. Di, for instance, openly stated that China could determine outcomes at the highest levels of the American political system.

Di’s message was that with cash, China can do anything it wants, and that all Americans would take cash. He mentioned two words in this regard: Hunter Biden.

Unfortunately, President Joe Biden is reinforcing this notion. China, for instance, has so far killed nearly one million  Americans with a disease that it deliberately spread beyond its borders. Yet, what happened? Nothing.

We know that China was able to spread this disease with its close relationship with the World Health Organization. President Trump, in July of 2020, took us out of the WHO. What did Biden do? In his first hours in office, on Jan. 20, 2021, he put us back into the WHO.

In February, he had a two‑hour phone call with Xi Jinping. By Biden’s own admission, he didn’t raise the issue of the origins of COVID‑19 even once. If you are Xi Jinping, after you put down the receiver, your first thought is, “I just got away with killing hundreds of thousands of Americans.”

Then there’s somebody named John Kerry. Our republic is not safe when John Kerry carries a diplomatic passport, as he now does. He is willing to make almost any deal to get China to sign an enhanced climate arrangement.

Kerry gave a revealing interview to David Westin of Bloomberg on Sept. 22, 2021. Westin asked him, “What is the process by which one trades off climate against human rights?” Climate against human rights?

Kerry came back and said, “Well, life is always full of tough choices in the relationship between nations.” Tough choices? We Americans need to ask, “What  is  Kerry willing to give up to get his climate deal?”

Democracies tend to deal with each other in the way that Kerry says. If we are nice to a democracy, that will lead to warm relations; warm relations will lead to deals, long‑standing ties. Kerry thinks that the Chinese communists think that way. Unfortunately, they do not.

We know this because Kerry’s successor as Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, in February 2009, said in public, “I’m not going to press the Chinese on human rights because I’ve got bigger fish to fry.” She then went to Beijing a day after saying that and got no cooperation from the Chinese.

Even worse, just weeks after that, China felt so bold that it attacked an unarmed U.S. Navy reconnaissance vessel in the South China Sea. The attack was so serious that it constituted an act of war. The Chinese simply do not think the way that Kerry believes they do.

All of this, when you put it together, means that the risk of war is much higher than we tend to think. Conflict with today’s aggressor is going to be more destructive than it was in the 1930s. We have news that China is building something like 345 missile silos in three locations: in Gansu, Xinjiang, and in Inner Mongolia.

These silos are clearly built to accommodate the DF‑41. The DF‑41 has a range of about 9,300 miles, which means that it can reach any part of the United States. The DF‑41 carries 10 warheads. This means that China could, in about two years, as some experts think, have a bigger arsenal than ours.

China has built decoy silos before. We are not sure they are going to put all 345 missiles into these facilities, but we have to assume the worst because Chinese leaders and Chinese generals, on occasion, unprovoked, have made threats to nuke American cities.

This, of course, calls into question their official no‑first‑use policy, and also a lot of other things. China will not talk to us about arms control. We have to be concerned that China and Russia, which already are coordinating their military activities, would gang up against us with their arsenals.

In July, 2021 China tested a hypersonic glide warhead, which circled the world. This signals China intends to violate the Outer Space Treaty, to which China is a party. It also shows that in hypersonic technology, which was developed by Americans, China is now at least a decade ahead of us in fielding a weapon.

Why is China doing all this now? The country is coming apart at the seams. There is, for instance, a debt crisis. Evergrande and other property developers have started to default. It is more than just a crisis of companies. China is basically now having its 2008.

Even more important than that, they have an economy that is stumbling and a food crisis that is worsening year to year. They know their environment is exhausted. Of course, they also are suffering from a continuing COVID‑19 epidemic.

To make matters worse, all of this is occurring while China is on the edge of the steepest demographic decline in history in the absence of war or disease.

Two Chinese demographers recently stated that China’s population will probably halve in 45 years. If you run out those projections, it means that by the end of the century, China will be about a third of its current size, basically about the same number of people as the United States.

These developments are roiling the political system. Xi Jinping is being blamed for these debacles. We know he has a low threshold of risk. Xi now has all the incentive in the world to deflect popular and regime discontent by lashing out.

In 1966, Mao Zedong, the founder of the People’s Republic, was sidelined in Beijing. What did he do? He started the Cultural Revolution. He tried to use the Chinese people against his political enemies. That created a decade of chaos.

Xi Jinping is trying to do the same thing with his “common prosperity” program. The difference is that Mao did not have the means to plunge the world into war. Xi, with his shiny new military, clearly does have that ability.

So here is a 1930s scenario to consider. The next time China starts a conflict, whether accidentally or on purpose, we could see that China’s friends—Russia, North Korea, Iran, Pakistan—either in coordination with China or just taking advantage of the situation, move against their  enemies.

That would be Ukraine in the case of Russia, South Korea in the case of North Korea, Israel in the case of Iran, India in the case of Pakistan, and Morocco in the case of Algeria. We could see crises at both ends of the European landmass and in Africa at the same time.

This is how world wars start.

*   *   *

Question:  Why do you believe China attacked the world with coronavirus?

Chang:  I believe that SARS‑CoV‑2, the pathogen that causes COVID‑19, is not natural. There are, for example, unnatural arrangements of amino acids, like the double‑CGG sequence, that do not occur in nature.

We do not have a hundred percent assurance on where this pathogen came from. We do, however, have a hundred percent assurance on something else: that for about five weeks, maybe even five months, Chinese leaders knew that this disease was highly transmissible, from one human to the next, but they told the world that it was not.

At the same time as they were locking down their own country—Xi Jinping by locking down was indicating that he thought this was an effective way of stopping the disease—he was pressuring other countries  not  to impose travel restrictions and quarantines on arrivals from China. It was those arrivals from China that turned what should have been an epidemic confined to the central part of China, into a global pandemic. As of today, more than eight million people have died outside China. What happened? No one imposed costs on China.

For at least a half‑decade, maybe a little bit longer, Chinese military researchers have been openly writing about a new type of biological warfare. This was, for instance, in the 2017 edition of “The Science of Military Strategy,” the authoritative publication of China’s National Defense University.

They talk about a new type of biological warfare of “specific ethnic genetic attacks.” In other words, pathogens that will leave the Chinese immune but sicken and kill everybody else, which means that the next disease from China can be a civilization killer.

Remember, Xi Jinping must be thinking, “I just got away with killing eight million people. Why wouldn’t I unleash a biological attack on the United States? Look what the virus has done not only to kill Americans but also to divide American society.”

A lot of military analysts talk about how the first seconds of a war with China are going to be fought in outer space. They are going to blind our satellites, take them down, do all sorts of stuff. Those statements are wrong.

The first day of war against the United States occurs about six months earlier, when they release pathogens in the United States. Then  we are going to have that day in space. The war starts here, with a pathogen—a virus, a microbe, a bug of some kind. That is where it begins.

Question:  You mentioned 1939. Taiwan is the Poland of today. We get mixed signals: Biden invites the Taiwanese foreign minister to his inauguration, but then we hear Ned Price, his State Department spokesman, say that America will always respect the One‑China policy. Meaning, we’re sidelining defending Taiwan?

Chang:  The One‑China policy is something many people misunderstand. Probably because Beijing uses propaganda to try to fuzzy up the issue. China has a One‑China principle: that Taiwan is part of the People’s Republic of China, full stop.

We have a One‑China policy, which is different. We recognize Beijing as the legitimate government of China. We also say that the status of Taiwan is unresolved. Then, the third part of our One‑China policy is that the resolution of the status of Taiwan must be with the consent of people on both sides of the Strait. In other words, that is code for peace, a peaceful resolution.

Our policies are defined by the One‑China policy, the Three Communiques, Reagan’s Six Assurances, and the Taiwan Relations Act.

Our policy is difficult for someone named Joe Biden to articulate, because he came back from a campaign trip to Michigan, and he was asked by a reporter about Taiwan, and Biden said, “Don’t worry about this. We got it covered. I had a phone call with Xi Jinping and he agreed to abide by the Taiwan agreement.”

In official U.S. discourse, there is no such thing as a “Taiwan agreement.” Some reporter then asked Ned Price what did Biden mean by the Taiwan agreement. Ned Price said, “The Taiwan agreement means the Three Communiques the Six Assurances, the Taiwan Relations Act, and the One‑China policy.”

Ned Price could not have been telling the truth because Xi Jinping did not agree to America’s position on Taiwan. That is clear. There is complete fuzziness or outright lying in the Biden administration about this.

Biden’s policies on Taiwan are not horrible, but they are also not appropriate for this time. decades, we have had this policy of “strategic ambiguity,” where we do not tell either side what we would do in the face of imminent conflict. That worked in a benign period. We are no longer in a benign period. We are in one of the most dangerous periods in history.

We need a policy of “strategic clarity,” where we tell China that we will defend Taiwan. We also say we will extend a mutual defense treaty to Taiwan if it wants it, and we will put American troops on the island as a tripwire.

Question:  You think he is not saying that because he has no intention of actually doing it, so in a way, he is telling the truth?

Chang:  The mind of Biden is difficult to understand. We do not know what the administration would do. We have never known, after Allen Dulles, what any administration would do, with regard to Taiwan. We knew what Dulles would have done. We have got to be really concerned because there are voices in the administration that would give Taiwan, and give other parts of the world, to China. It would probably start with John Kerry; that is only a guess.

Question:  You mentioned earlier the growing Chinese economic problems. Would you use taking action on the enormous trade deficits we run with China to contribute to that problem?

Chang:  Yes, we should absolutely do that. Go back to a day which, in my mind, lives in infamy, which is January 15th, 2020, when President Trump signed the Phase One trade deal, which I think was a mistake. In that Phase One trade deal, it was very easy for China to comply, because there were specific targets that China had to meet in buying U.S. goods and services. This was “managed trade.”

China has not met its obligations. As of a few months ago, China had met about 62 percent of its commitments. That means, they have dishonored this deal in a material and significant way. If nothing else, China has failed to meet its Phase One trade deal commitments.

We should be increasing the tariffs that President Trump imposed under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974. Remember, those tariffs are meant to be a remedy for the theft of U.S. intellectual property. China has continued to steal U.S. IP. As matter of fact, it has gotten worse: for instance, these Chinese anti‑lawsuit injunctions, which they have started to institute.

We need to do something: China steals somewhere between $300 to $600 billion worth of U.S. intellectual property each year. That is a grievous wound on the U.S. economy, it is a grievous wound on our society in general. We need to do something about it.

Question:  As a follow‑up on that, Japan commenced World War II because of the tariffs Roosevelt was strapping on oil imports into Japan, do you think that might well have the same effect on China, where we do begin to impose stiffer tariffs on American imports?

Chang:  That is a really important question, to which nobody has an answer. I do not think that China would start a war over tariffs. Let me answer this question in a different way. We are Americans. We naturally assume that there are solutions, and good solutions, to every problem. After three decades of truly misguided China policy, there are no  good solutions. There are no solutions that are “undangerous.”

Every solution, going forward, carries great risk. The current trend of policy is unsustainable. There will be no American republic if we continue to do what we are currently doing and if we continue to allow China to do what it does.

I do not think that enforcing a trade deal will start World War III. The point is, we have no choice right now. First, I don’t think the Chinese were ever going to honor the Phase One agreement . This was not a deal where there were some fuzzy requirements. This deal was very clear: China buys these amounts of agricultural products by such and such date, China buys so many manufactured products by such and such date. This was not rocket science. China purposefully decided not to honor it.

There are also other issues regarding the trade deal do not think that we should be trying to foster integration of Wall Street into China’s markets, which is what the Phase One deal also contemplated. Goldman Sachs ran away like a bandit on that. There are lot of objections to it. I do not think we should be trading with China, for a lot of reasons. The Phase One trade deal, in my mind, was a great mistake. Do not take it from me, just look at their failure to comply with very simple, easy‑to‑comply-with requirements. It was a mistake.

Question:  Concerning cybersecurity, as we saw in the recent departure of a Pentagon official, ringing the alarm on how we are completely vulnerable to China’s cyberattacks. From your perspective, what would an attack look like on China that would hurt them? What particular institutions would be the most vulnerable? Is it exposing their secrets? Is it something on their financial system? Is it something on their medical system or critical infrastructure? What does the best way look like to damage them?

Also, regarding what you mentioned about Afghanistan, we know that China has been making inroads into Pakistan as a check on American hegemony in relationships with India and Afghanistan.

Now that the Afghanistan domino is down, what do you see in the future for Pakistan’s nuclear capability, in conjunction with Chinese backing, to move ever further westward towards Afghanistan, and endangering Middle East security?

Chang:  Right now, India has been disheartened by what happened, because India was one of the main backers of the Afghan government. What we did in New Delhi was delegitimize our friends, so that now the pro‑Russian, the pro‑Chinese elements in the Indian national security establishment are basically setting the tone. This is terrible.

What has happened, though, in Pakistan itself, is not an unmitigated disaster for us, because China has suffered blowback there. There is an Afghan Taliban, and there is a Pakistani Taliban. They have diametrically‑opposed policies on China. The Afghan Taliban is an ally of China; the Pakistani Taliban kill Chinese.

They do that because they want to destabilize Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad. Beijing supports Islamabad. The calculation on part of the Pakistani Taliban is, “We kill Chinese, we destabilize Islamabad, we then get to set up the caliphate in Pakistan.” What has happened is, with this incredible success of the Afghan Taliban, that the Pakistani Taliban has been re‑energized—not good news for China.

China has something called the China‑Pakistan Economic Corridor, part of their Belt and Road Initiative. Ultimately that is going to be something like $62 billion of investment into Pakistani roads, airports, electric power plants, utilities, all the rest of it.

I am very happy that China is in Pakistan, because they are now dealing with a situation that they have no solutions to. It’s like Winston Churchill on Italy, “It’s now your turn.”

We should never have had good relations with Pakistan. That was always a short‑term compromise that, even in the short term, undermined American interests. The point is that China is now having troubles in Pakistan because of their success in Afghanistan.

Pakistan is important to China for a number of reasons. One of them is, they want it as an outlet to the Indian Ocean that bypasses the Malacca Strait—a choke point that the U.S. Navy—in their view—could easily close off, which is correct.

They want to bypass that, but their port in Gwadar is a failure in many respects. Gwadar is in Pakistan’s Baluchistan. The Baluchs are one of the most oppressed minorities on earth. They have now taken to violence against the Chinese, and they have been effective. Pakistan is a failure for China.

The best response would be if we hit them with everything at once because China right now is weak. If we were going to pick the number one thing to do, I would think trade.

Trade is really what they need right now. Their economy is stalling. There are three parts to the Chinese economy, as there are to all economies: consumption, investment, and net exports. Their consumption right now is extremely weak from indicators that we have. The question is can they invest?

China now has a debt crisis, so they are not going to invest their way out of this crisis, which means the only way they can save their economy is net exports. We should stop buying their stuff.

We have extraordinary supply chain disruptions right now. It should be pretty easy for us to make the case that we must become self‑sufficient on a number of items. Hit them on trade. Hit them on investment, publicize the bank account details of Chinese leaders. All these things that we do, we do it all at the same time. We can maybe get rid of these guys.

Question:  In the Solomon Islands, they published China’s under-the-table payments to political figures. Should we do the same thing with China’s leaders?

Chang:  Yes. There is now a contest for the Solomon Islands, which includes Guadalcanal. China has bought the political establishment in the Solomon Islands, except for one brave man named David Suidani. Recently, somebody got the bright idea of publishing all of the specific payments that Beijing has made to Solomon Islands politicians. This was really good news. We should be doing this with payments to American politicians, we should be doing this across the board.

Why don’t we publish their payments to politicians around the world? Let’s expose these guys, let’s go after them. Let’s root out Chinese influence, because they are subverting our political system.

Similarly, we should also be publishing the bank account details of all these Chinese leaders, because they are corrupt as hell.

Question:  Could you comment, please, on what you think is the nature of the personal relationships between Hunter Biden, his father, and Chinese financial institutions. How has it, if at all, affected American foreign policy towards China, and how will it affect that policy?

Chang:  There are two things here. There are the financial ties. Hunter Biden has connections with Chinese institutions, which you cannot explain in the absence of corruption.

For instance, he has a relationship with Bohai Harvest Partners, BHR. China puts a lot of money into the care of foreign investment managers. The two billion, or whatever the number is, is not that large, but they only put money with people who have a track record in managing investments. Hunter Biden only has a track record of being the son of Joe Biden.

There are three investigations of Hunter Biden right now. There is the Wilmington U.S. Attorney’s Office, the FBI—I don’t place very much hope in either of these—but the third one might actually bear some fruit: the IRS investigation of Hunter Biden.

Let us say, for the moment, that Biden is able to corrupt all three of these investigations. Yet money always leaves a trail. We are going to find out one way or another. Peter Schweizer, for instance, is working on a book on the Biden cash. Eventually, we are going to know about that.

What worries me is not so much the money trail—and of course, there’s the art sales, a subject in itself, because we will find out.

What worries me is that Hunter Biden, by his own admission, is a troubled individual.

He has been to China a number of times. He has probably committed some embarrassing act there, which means that the Ministry of State Security has audio and video recordings of this. Those are the things that can be used for blackmail. We Americans would never know about it, because blackmail does not necessarily leave a trail. This is what we should be most concerned about.

Biden has now had two long phone calls with Xi Jinping. The February call, plus also one a few months ago. We do not know what was said. I would be very worried that when Xi Jinping wants to say something, there will be a phone call to Biden, and it would be Xi doing the talking without note takers.

Question:  Please tell us about the China desk over the 30 years, the influence of the bureaucracy on politics; what can they affect?

Chang:  I do not agree with our China policy establishment in Washington, in general, and specifically the State Department and NSC.

This a complicated issue. First, there is this notion after the end of the Cold War, that the nature of governments did not matter. You could trade with them, you could strengthen them, and it would not have national security implications. That was wrong for a number of reasons, as we are now seeing.

What bothers me is that, although their assumptions about China have demonstrably been proven wrong, American policymakers still continue with the same policies. There is, in some people’s mind, an unbreakable view that we have to cooperate with China.

You hear this from Blinken all the time: “We’ve got to cooperate where we can.” It is this formulation which is tired, and which has not produced the types of policies that are necessary to defend our republic. That is the unfortunate thing.

This is what people learn in international relations school when they go to Georgetown, and they become totally stupid. We Americans should be upset because we have a political class that is not defending us. They are not defending us because they have these notions of China. George Kennan understood the nature of the Soviet Union. I do not understand why we cannot understand the true nature of the Chinese regime.

Part of it is because we have Wall Street, we have Walmart, and they carry China’s water. There are more of us than there are of them in this country. We have to exercise our vote to make sure that we implement China policies that actually protect us.

Policies that protect us are going to be drastic and they will be extreme, but absolutely, we have now dug ourselves into such a hole after three decades of truly misguided views on China, that I don’t know what else to say. This is not some partisan complaint. Liberals and conservatives, Republicans and Democrats, all have truly misguided China policies.

I do not know what it takes to break this view, except maybe for the deaths of American servicemen and women.

Question:  Is the big obstacle American businesses which, in donations to Biden, are the ones stopping decoupling of commerce, and saying, “Do not have war; we would rather earn money”?

Chang:  It is. You have, for instance, Nike. There are a number of different companies, but Nike comes to mind right now, because they love to lecture us about racism.

For years they were operating a factory in Qingdao, in the northeastern part of China, that resembled a concentration camp. The laborers were Uighur and Kazakh women, brought there on cattle cars and forced to work.

This factory, technically, was operated by a South Korean sub‑contractor, but that contractor had a three‑decade relationship with Nike. Nike had to know what was going on. This was forced labor, perhaps even slave labor.

Clearly, Nike and Apple and other companies are now, at this very moment, trying to prevent  Congress from enacting toughened rules on the importation of forced‑labor products into our country.

One of the good things Trump did was, towards the end of his four years, he started to vigorously enforce the statutes that are already on the books, about products that are made with forced and slave labor. Biden, to his credit, has continued tougher enforcement.

Right now, the big struggle is not the enforcement, but enhancing those rules. Apple and all of these companies are now very much trying to prevent amendment of those laws. It’s business, but it’s also immoral.

Question:  It is not just big Wall Street firms. There are companies that print the Bible. Most Bibles are now printed in China.

When President Trump imposed the tariffs, a lot of the Bible printers who depended on China actually went to Trump and said, “You cannot put those tariffs in because then the cost of Bibles will go up.”

Chang:  Most everyone lobbies for China. We have to take away their incentive to do so.

Question:  What are the chances that China’s going to invade Taiwan?

Chang:  There is no clear answer.

There are a number of factors that promote stability. One of them is that, for China to invade Taiwan, Xi Jinping has to give some general or admiral basically total control over the Chinese military. That makes this flag officer the most powerful person in China. Xi is not about to do that.

Moreover, the Chinese regime is even more casualty‑adverse than we are. Even if Beijing thinks it can take Taiwan by force, it is probably not going to invade because it knows an invasion would be unpopular with most people in China. It is not going to risk hundreds of thousands of casualties that would result from an invasion.

The reason we have to be concerned is because it is not just a question of Xi Jinping waking up one morning and saying, “I want to invade Taiwan.” The danger is the risk of accidental contact, in the skies or on the seas, around Taiwan.

We know that China has been engaging in hostile conduct, and this is not just the incursions into Taiwan’s air-defense identification zone. There are also dangerous intercepts of the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Air Force in the global commons. One of those accidents could spiral out of control.

We saw this on April 1st, 2001, with the EP‑3, where a Chinese jet clipped the wing of that slow‑moving propeller plane of the U.S. Navy. The only reason we got through it was that George W. Bush, to his eternal shame, paid China a sum that was essentially a ransom.

He allowed our crew to be held for 11 days. He allowed the Chinese to strip that plane. This was wrong. This was the worst incident in U.S. diplomatic history, but Bush’s craven response did get us through it. Unfortunately, by getting through it we taught the Chinese that they can without cost engage in these dangerous maneuvers of intercepting our planes and our ships.

That is the problem: because as we have taught the Chinese to be more aggressive, they have been. One of these incidents will go wrong. The law of averages says that. Then we have to really worry.

Question:  You don’t think Xi thinks, “Oh well, we can sacrifice a few million Chinese”?

Chang:  On the night of June 15th, 2020, there was a clash between Chinese and Indian soldiers in Ladakh, in the Galwan Valley. That was a Chinese sneak attack on Indian-controlled territory. That night, 20 Indian soldiers were killed. China did not admit to any casualties. The Indians were saying that they killed about 45 Chinese soldiers that night.

Remember, this was June 15th of 2020. It took until February of 2021 for China to admit that four Chinese soldiers died. TASS, the Russian news agency, recently issued a story reporting that 45 Chinese soldiers actually died that night.

This incident shows you how risk‑averse and casualty‑averse the Chinese Communist Party  is. They are willing to intimidate, they are willing to do all sorts of things. They are, however, loath to fight sustained engagements. Remember, that the number one goal of Chinese foreign policy is not to take over Taiwan. The number one goal of Chinese foreign policy is to preserve Communist Party rule.

If the Communist Party feels that the Chinese people are not on board with an invasion of Taiwan, they will not do it even if they think they will be successful. Right now, the Chinese people are not in any mood for a full‑scale invasion of Taiwan.

On the other hand, Xi Jinping has a very low threshold of risk.

He took a consensual political system where no Chinese leader got too much blame or too much credit, because everybody shared in decisions, and Xi took power from everybody, which means, he ended up with full accountability, which means—he is now fully responsible.

In 2017, when everything was going China’s way, this was great for Xi Jinping because he got all the credit. Now in 2021, where things are not going China’s way, he is getting all the blame.

The other thing, is that Xi has raised the cost of losing a political struggle in China. In the Deng Xiaoping era, Deng reduced the cost of losing a struggle. In the Maoist era, if you lost a struggle, you potentially lost your life. In Deng’s era, if you lost a struggle, you got a nice house, a comfortable life.

Xi Jinping has reversed that. Now the cost of losing a political struggle in China is very high. So there is now a combination of these two developments. Xi has full accountability. He knows that if he is thrown out of power, he loses not just power. He loses his freedom, his assets, potentially his life.

If he has nothing to lose, however, it means that he can start a war, either “accidentally” or on purpose. He could be thinking, “I’m dying anyway, so why don’t I just roll the dice and see if I can get out of this?”

That is the reason why this moment is so exceedingly risky. When you look at the internal dynamics inside China right now, we are dealing with a system in crisis.

Question:  China has a conference coming up in a year or so. What does Chairman Xi want to do to make sure he gets through that conference with triumph?

Chang:  The Communist Party has recently been holding its National Congresses once every five years. If the pattern follows—and that is an if—the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party will be held either October or November of next year.

This is an important Congress, more so than most of them because Xi Jinping is looking for an unprecedented third term as general secretary of the Communist Party.

If you go back six months ago, maybe a year, everyone was saying, “Oh, Xi Jinping. No problem. He’s president for life. He’s going to get his third term. He will get his fourth term. He will get his fifth term, as long as he lives. This guy is there forever.” Right now, that assumption is no longer valid. We do not know what’s going to happen because he is being blamed for everything.

Remember, as we get close to the 20th National Congress, Xi Jinping knows he has to show “success.” Showing “success” could very well mean killing some more Indians or killing Americans or killing Japanese or something. We just don’t know what is going to happen.

Prior to the National Congress, there is the sixth plenum of the 19th Congress. Who knows what is going to happen there. The Communist Party calendar, as you point out, does dictate the way Xi Jinping interacts with the world.

Question:  Going back to the wing-clip incident, what should  Bush have done?

Chang:  What Bush should have done is immediately  demand the return of that plane. What he should have done was to impose trade sanctions, investment sanctions, whatever, to get our plane back.

We were fortunate, in the sense that our aviators were returned, but they were returned in a way that has made relations with China worse, because we taught the Chinese regime to be more aggressive and more belligerent. We created the problems of today and of tomorrow.

I would have imposed sanction after sanction after sanction, and just demand that they return the plane and the pilots. Remember, that at some point, it was in China’s interests to return our aviators. The costs would have been too high for the Chinese to keep them. We did not use that leverage on them.

While we are on this topic, we should have made it clear to the Chinese leadership that they cannot kill Americans without cost. Hundreds of thousands Americans have been killed by a disease that China deliberately spread.

In one year, from 2020 to 2021, nearly 80,000 Americans died  from fentanyl, which China has purposefully, as a matter of state and Communist Party policy—sold to Americans. China is killing us. We have  to do something different. I’m not saying that we have good solutions; we don’t. But we have to change course.

Question:  Biden is continuing this hostage thing with Huawei, returning the CFO of Huawei in exchange for two Canadians. Have we taught the Chinese that they can grab more hostages?

Chang:  President Trump was right to seek the extradition of Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer of Huawei Technologies. Biden, in a deal, released her. She did not even have to plead guilty to any Federal crime. She signed a statement, which I hope we’ll be able to use against Huawei.

As soon as Meng was released, China released the “two Michaels,” the two Canadians who were grabbed within days of our seeking extradition of Meng Wanzhou. In other words, the two Michaels were hostages.

We have taught China that any time that we try to enforce our own laws, they can just grab Americans. They have grabbed Americans as hostages before, but this case is high profile. They grabbed Americans, and then they grabbed Canadians, and they got away with it. They are going to do it again.

We are creating the incentives for Beijing to act even more dangerously and lawlessly and criminally in the future. This has to stop.

Question:  On the off-chance that the current leader does not  maintain his position, what are your thoughts on the leaders that we should keep an eye on?

Chang:  There is no one who stands out among the members of the Politburo Standing Committee. That is purposeful. Xi Jinping has made sure that there is nobody who can be considered a successor; that is the last thing he wants.

If there is a change in leadership, the new leader probably will come from Jiang Zemin’s Shanghai Gang faction. Jiang was China’s leader before Hu Jintao, and Hu came before Xi Jinping.

There is now a lot of factional infighting. Most of the reporting shows that Jiang has been trying to unseat Xi Jinping because Xi has been putting Jiang’s allies in jail.

Remember, the Communist Party is not a monolith. It has a lot of factions. Jiang’s faction is not the only one. There is something called the Communist Youth League of Hu Jintao. It could, therefore, be anybody.

Question:  Double question: You did not talk about Hong Kong. Is Hong Kong lost forever to the Chinese Communist Party? Second question, if you could, what are the three policies that you would change right away?

Chang:  Hong Kong is not lost forever. In Hong Kong, there is an insurgency. We know from the history of insurgencies that they die away—and they come back. We have seen this in Hong Kong. The big protests in Hong Kong, remember, 2003, 2014, 2019. In those interim periods, everyone said, “Oh, the protest movement is gone.” It wasn’t.

China has been very effective with its national security law, but there is still resistance in Hong Kong. There is still a lot of fight there. It may not manifest itself for quite some time, but this struggle is not over, especially if the United States stands behind the people there. Biden, although he campaigned on helping Hong Kong, has done nothing.

On the second question, I would close China’s four remaining consulates. I would also strip the Chinese embassy down to the ambassador and his personal staff. The thousands who are in Washington, D.C., they would be out.

I would also raise tariffs to 3,600 percent, or whatever. This is a good time to do it. We have supply chain disruptions. We are not getting products from China anyway. We can actually start  to do this sort of stuff.

The third thing, I would do what Pompeo did, just hammer those guys all the time verbally. People may think, “Those are just words.” For communists, words are really important, because they are an insecure regime where propaganda is absolutely critical.

I would be going after the Communists on human rights, I would be going after them on occupying the South China Sea, on Taiwan, unrelentingly—because I would want to show the world that the United States is no longer afraid of China.

We have taught the world that we are afraid of dealing with the Chinese. State Department people, they are frightened. We need to say to the Chinese regime, like Dulles, “I’m not afraid of you. I’m going after you, and I’m going to win.”

This article is based on a recent address to Gatestone Institute.

Gordon G. Chang is a distinguished senior fellow at the Gatestone Institute, a member of its Advisory Board, and the author of “The Coming Collapse of China.”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/what-to-do-about-china_4440206.html

China Unveils Global Security Initiative: A Move Toward CCP-Led Globalism

Antonio Graceffo

May 5, 2022

News Analysis

At the Boao Forum last month, Chinese leader Xi  Jinping blamed America for war and the global economy’s state, without actually naming the United States, while unveiling the “Global Security Initiative.” This is another vague plan for Beijing’s global expansion.

The Boao Forum for Asia (BFA) is an annual Chinese-led forum of 28 countries  modeled on the World Economic Forum held in Davos, Switzerland. The BFA is named after Bo’ao, a town in China ’s Hainan Province, where it has permanent residence despite its headquarters operating in Beijing.

This year’s Boao Forum, which ran from April 20 to April 22, was titled “The World in COVID-19 and Beyond: Working Together for Global Development and Shared Future.”

Xi talked about cooperation , integration, trade, and economics  in his opening speech at the forum. This type of language is a veiled attack on the United States, which the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) portrays as isolationist and protectionist even though Chinese tariffs on U.S. imports are higher than U.S. tariffs on Chinese imports . Furthermore, China has virtually unrestricted investment and market access in the United States, whereas Chinese markets are heavily restricted.

The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), a multilateral free-trade agreement that China strongly supported and the United States withdrew from, also convened this year, and many of the member countries were in attendance. This worked well for the CCP’s framing of the United States as a protectionist state despite the number of bilateral trade agreements America already has with RCEP members.

Along with blaming the United States for impeding world trade, the CCP criticizes the U.S. Federal Reserve (the Fed) and the European Central Bank for raising interest rates. In fact, one of the BFA sessions was called “Global Inflation, Interest Rate Hikes and Economic Stability.”

In March, the United States was facing 8.5 percent inflation  while Europe was experiencing a record inflation  rate of 7.5 percent. The European Central Bank and the U.S. Fed have been raising interest rates to combat this inflation. Meanwhile, China is expected to cut interest rates  to compensate for the negative impact of continued COVID lockdowns in major cities and commercial centers.

Beijing has been critical of Washington for hiking rates, saying that the United States should consider how its actions  impact developing countries. However, Beijing is noticing that as lockdowns persist, the likelihood of hitting its modest 5.5 percent  growth target this year is declining. Furthermore, the U.S. rate increases will negatively impact China’s growth as investors will be lured away  from China and into the United States.

In a move toward Chinese-led globalism, Xi said that the world should “embrace a global governance  philosophy.” He went on to say that nations must “firmly safeguard the international system with the U.N. at its core and the international order underpinned by international law. ”

Although the CCP talks of supporting the United Nations and international law, it refuses to condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine or the coup in Burma (commonly known as Myanmar), which ousted duly-elected Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi.

Among other topics, Xi talked about global security and reforming “the world’s security governance  system.” He used the phrase “ territorial integrity ,” which is a subtle reference to Taiwan, implying that the United States should not interfere if China invades the island nation.

Xi urged nations to “reject the Cold War mentality ,” “group politics,” and “block confrontation.” This was a veiled reference to NATO, the Quad, the Five Eyes, and AUKUS multinational security organizations that were formed to protect democracies from the likes of Russia and China. He also mentioned the “legitimate security concerns ” rhetoric that the CCP had previously used to justify the Russian invasion  of Ukraine.

While there is nothing new about the CCP blaming the United States for most of the world’s ills, including those that China is guilty of, what was most noteworthy was the unveiling of the Global Security Initiative. Not much concrete detail was given, but Xi used “ indivisible security. ” Russian President Vladimir Putin used the exact words to justify his confrontation with Ukraine  in a Feb. 2 phone call with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

In his opening speech at the Boao Forum, and statements later published in state-run media Xinhua, Foreign Minister Wang Yi provided greater detail about the security initiative. He said, “The initiative contributes Chinese wisdom to make up for the present peace deficit.”

Chinese state-run media Global Times interpreted Wang’s statement as, “China will never claim hegemony, seek expansion or spheres of influence , nor engage in an arms race.” However, the CCP has done and is doing all of those things. Global Times subtly accused the United States of undermining the global security order  by seeking hegemony in the name of democracy.

One of the six component areas of the Global Security Initiative is “stay committed to taking the legitimate security concerns of all countries seriously, and uphold the principle of indivisible security .” Once again, the key words “legitimate security concerns” and “indivisible security” were present.

Although it is unclear exactly what form this security initiative will take, it seems clear that it seeks to legitimize the Russian invasion of Ukraine and support the CCP’s position to take Taiwan. Geopolitical scholars from Europe , India , Australia,  and the United States agree that these are the greatest threats to global security.

Antonio Graceffo, Ph.D., has spent more than 20 years in Asia. He is a graduate of the Shanghai University of Sport and holds a China-MBA from Shanghai Jiaotong University. Graceffo works as an economics professor and China economic analyst, writing for various international media. Some of his books on China include “Beyond the Belt and Road: China’s Global Economic Expansion” and “A Short Course on the Chinese Economy.”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/china-unveils-global-security-initiative-a-move-toward-ccp-led-globalism_4441863.html

Tension Grows Between the CCP and the Chinese People

Joseph Cheng

May 4, 2022

Commentary

During the era of China ’s economic reform and opening up to the world under Deng Xiaoping, the Chinese people accepted the Chinese Communist Party’s ( CCP ) rule. The principal reason was that the Chinese leadership secured its legitimacy through economic growth.

People’s living standards improved substantially, and they expected further improvements ahead. Hence they did not challenge the regime, as they understood that the price of doing so was high.

Under the Hu Jintao–Wen Jiabao administration, Beijing introduced a social security net, providing a basic living standard to the people, in an attempt to reduce the dissatisfaction with the widening gap between the rich and the poor. Authorities at the grassroots level also tried to quell public unrest. Meanwhile, the CCP leaders appealed for nationalism, enhancing their legitimacy by strengthening China’s international status and influence.

The Chinese leaders know the importance of maintaining stability; the expenditure for this purpose exceeds that spent on national defense, demonstrating their awareness of the serious causes of instability and dissatisfaction. The rich and powerful, as well as the affluent middle class, all send their families and assets to Western countries; historically, there has been no other country with such a high proportion of its elites sending their families and wealth abroad.

Some years ago, an academic article published by the China Journal exposed this phenomenon. It highlighted a group of middle-class mothers in Shanghai  quietly exchanging information on safe food products to protect their children’s health better. They lacked confidence in the authorities but still showed no intention to challenge the regime, preferring to hold onto their existing vested interests.

Shanghai’s recent “humanitarian tragedy” may have disrupted the apparent stability. The authorities’ unreasonable COVID measures have triggered resistance from the community as the CCP cadres have violated the red line of the people. An ordinary mother would not normally criticize and challenge the regime. Still, when the authorities took away her COVID-infected child, she reacted fiercely.

A six-minute video clip called “The Voice of April,” released on April 22, is now widely circulated on the internet. It shows the difficulties encountered by the Shanghai residents during the lockdown. The inconveniences suffered by people amid pandemic lockdowns were seen worldwide, and many countries have been slow to ease their restrictions. But the severity of the measures in China is unprecedented. Why does China continue to implement harsh measures rather than loosen them like other countries? Is Beijing’s “zero-COVID” approach reasonable and based on science? Do they align with the people’s interests?

Shanghai residents increasingly believe that their problems are caused by the stubbornness of their leaders, who are mainly concerned about their authority and prestige and neglect the people’s interests. Hence the public protested.

On April 21, students in Fudan University gathered to protest; the authorities entered the campus and cut off internet communications. Political rumors indicate that Beijing saw this as the largest student-led protest since the Tiananmen Square massacre and demanded strict handling of the incident.

In fact, all types of protest activities took place. The municipal government imposed lockdowns on buildings and surrounded them with wire fences guarded by security personnel, leading to conflicts with the residents. Anti-lockdown posters appeared everywhere. When the Shanghai Party Secretary Li Qiang patrolled the streets, he was met with strong condemnation. Vice-Premier Sun Chunlan, who arrived in Shanghai to oversee the “zero-COVID” campaign, avoided the crowd and filmed her publicity materials on a rooftop. Grassroots cadres could not handle the people’s complaints and lost their credibility.

The panic recently spread to Hangzhou city and the Chaoyang district in Beijing. People rushed to supermarkets to stock up on food and daily necessities, emptying the shelves. Local officials’ assurances had no impact. Local COVID measures also generated chaos, with truck drivers being the first to be adversely affected. This means that supplies would be short, and consumer prices would go up, exacerbating people’s worries.

Yet Chinese leaders have not adjusted their policies. Liang Wannian, head of the COVID response expert team of the National Health Commission, publicly stated on April 22 that China does not have the necessary conditions to ease its COVID restrictions. A new plan will be implemented in Shanghai to increase its COVID isolation facilities as residents are transferred to neighboring provinces. The food shortage problem has yet to be resolved.

Pandemics are natural disasters. But the subsequent humanitarian tragedies have led to resistance from the people. Tension runs high between the CCP and the people, and maintaining stability will be increasingly difficult. People do not easily forget.

Joseph Yu-shek Cheng is a retired professor of political science at City University of Hong Kong. He publishes widely on the political developments in China and Hong Kong, Chinese foreign policy, and development in southern China. He has been an activist serving the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong for four decades. In his retirement, he continues to work as a current affairs commentator and columnist. Email: josephcheng6@gmail.com

https://www.theepochtimes.com/tension-grows-between-the-ccp-and-the-chinese-people_4441735.html

Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran Want to Use Nuclear Weapons Offensively

Deterrence thus requires US allies to increase their nuclear forces

Anders Corr

May 5, 2022

Commentary

Russia , China , North Korea , and Iran  are toying with the offensive use of nuclear weapons rather than seeing them as a defensive deterrent. The American allies they target, including Ukraine, Taiwan, South Korea, and Israel, should strengthen their nuclear defenses in response.

On May 1, Russia ’s state media threatened the United Kingdom with a literal nuclear tidal wave. One could be created, according to Russian anchor Dmitry Kiselyov, by exploding a nuclear bomb delivered by an underwater drone just off the west coast of Britain. The explosion would create a 500-meter tsunami, turning the British Isles into “a radioactive wasteland.”

Russia is trying to use a nuclear doomsday scenario to scare Britain into ceasing its military support to Ukraine. Britain reacted to the invasion quickly with the provision of materiel to Kyiv, which used Western aid generally, including from the United States and Germany, to roll back the Russian invasion from the capital to the Eastern outskirts of the country.

Ultimately, Ukraine could continue its roll, pushing Russian troops from territory occupied since the 2014 invasion, including Crimea and parts of eastern Ukraine known as the Donbass.

But Ukraine and its allies must constantly think of one major risk: winning the conventional war against Russia would provoke Vladimir Putin into using his nuclear weapons against Ukraine, Britain, or even the United States. In this way, the threat of nuclear escalation helps Putin’s offensive in Ukraine by paralyzing the defense.

For years, China and North Korea have made similar, though lower-profile, offensive use of their nuclear weapons.

In 2016, China ’s People’s Liberation Army flew a nuclear-capable H-6K bomber over Scarborough Shoal, a traditional fishing ground within the exclusive economic zone of the Philippines. The flight came days after an international court ruling that recognized Philippine fishing rights around the tiny island, also within Beijing’s illegal nine-dash line claim to almost the entire South China Sea.

With the H-6K flight, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) sought to scare the Philippines, and its ally, the United States, into backing away from internationally-recognized Philippine claims to the island and surrounding resources, which in the South China Sea more broadly includes up to $60 trillion  in oil and gas.

Since at least 2017, the Beijing regime has used similar nuclear-capable flights near Taiwan.  to scare the country into “reunification” with the mainland. Its nuclear saber-rattling has failed so far, but the drumbeat of war from Beijing keeps getting louder.

North Korea  is learning from Putin’s invasion that it could invade South Korea and hold the latter’s allies, including the United States, at bay with the threat of nuclear escalation.

“It seems that North Korea’s strategy has changed,” professor Andrei Lankov, a Korea expert, told  Josh Rogin at The Washington Post. “When they started their nuclear program decades ago, they thought about deterrence and self-defense. Now they are working on a program which will one day make conquest possible—conquest of the South, of course,” Lankov said.

Iran  is also learning about nuclear offense from Putin. “Watching the language of Russia and North Korea is a peek into what Iran would like to do,” according to Seth J. Frantzman in the Jerusalem Post.

Iran is building its own nuclear weapons despite the threat of tough international sanctions from the West. Tehran frequently threatens the destruction of Israel, but appeasing it to the point of allowing an Iranian nuclear weapon would transform the country into a major regional power.

As Frantzman points out, “The goal of the appeasers is often to give the nuclear-armed power a huge sphere of influence and not ‘threaten’ or ‘provoke’ it by supporting countries or people being suppressed by the nuclear power.”

Nuclear weapons would give Iran the capability to suppress its own people and neighbors with much less worry of economic or military sanctions. It could then dominate Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, and more.

What applies to Iran applies to the rest of the world’s dictators. Give them nuclear weapons, and they think they have rights to oppress and conquer at will. Conversely, democracies are by nature more decentralized and decentralizing in their approach to both domestic and international power.

But to defend themselves from their regional adversaries, allied democracies like Ukraine, Taiwan, Israel, and South Korea must massively increase their military defenses. Sole reliance on other countries’ security guarantees, as Ukraine did when it gave up its 5,000  nuclear weapons in 1994, is clearly a strategy that invites aggression.

Ukraine has a strong conventional military, but not strong enough to have stopped Russia from invading.

So America’s frontline democratic allies facing threats from Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran must strengthen not only their conventional military forces, which are critical to defending space once an invasion starts, but nuclear defenses, to deter regional wars from starting in the first place.

Anders Corr has a bachelor’s/master’s in political science from Yale University (2001) and a doctorate in government from Harvard University (2008). He is a principal at Corr Analytics Inc., publisher of the Journal of Political Risk, and has conducted extensive research in North America, Europe, and Asia. His latest books are “The Concentration of Power: Institutionalization, Hierarchy, and Hegemony” (2021) and “Great Powers, Grand Strategies: the New Game in the South China Sea” (2018).

https://www.theepochtimes.com/russia-china-north-korea-and-iran-want-to-use-nuclear-weapons-offensively_4442672.html

The CCP’s Criminal Intent Revealed

Trillions must be protected before China risks more sanctions

Anders Corr

May 9, 2022

Commentary

While Russia’s war in Ukraine rages, China’s Xi Jinping is watching with interest—especially to the canceling of Russian access to Moscow’s own foreign investments, including hard currencies, which it thought it could use to backstop the invasion.

China, too, invested in foreign assets, including $3.2 trillion  in foreign reserves that it has tried to sell over the past few months.

Using these currencies requires the cooperation of banking authorities in the countries from which they came. China’s investment would be vulnerable should the Chinese Communist Party ( CCP ) decide to commit an international crime, for example, helping Moscow even more than it has, or launching an invasion of Taiwan.

Apparently, to that end, the CCP is stockpiling commodities like oil and grain, attempting to make its economy self-reliant by reshoring supply chains to itself and countries it trusts, decoupling its financial system from major democracies, evolving its economic strategy through stress tests  and simulations, and legally formalizing its counter- sanctions  capabilities.

Reporting on May 3 indicates that China’s independent refiners are undermining  Western sanctions against Russia through discreet oil purchases at steep discounts. The purchases are moving from China’s large state-owned commodity traders to small independent refiners “to avoid attracting scrutiny and being hit by US sanctions,” according to the Financial Times.

On May 4, HSBC bank’s biggest shareholder called  for splitting the bank’s most important profit centers in Asia, from its headquarters in the United Kingdom. The shareholder, a Chinese insurance company, likely had top cover from the regime in Beijing to thus shield the bank from Western sanctions.

Beijing subsidized computer chip  production with billions of dollars, and is promoting domestic production of grain . In December, Xi said, “The Chinese people’s rice bowl must be firmly held in their own hands at all times, and the rice bowl must mainly contain Chinese grain.”

This is the fortress mentality of someone with criminal intent who expects to be sanctioned. Given that Xi is the world’s most powerful and genocidal dictator, in cahoots with the likes of Russia’s Vladimir Putin and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, the crimes are likely premeditated and of the gravest threat to humankind.

The CCP is unrepentant over its genocide, its support for Russia and North Korea, and its hypocritical promotion of a “ new type of international relations ,” which, despite its flowery words, likely means ignoring Western norms of democracy and human rights in favor of a Beijing-centric world focused on growing CCP power through the help of any pariah states desperate enough to join.

The response will be competing for U.S. and Chinese sanctions that bifurcate the global economy.

Due to the Uyghur genocide, for example, the United States is increasing pressure on China’s Hikvision, the world’s biggest surveillance camera maker. While Hikvision was already on the “ entity list ,” denying it the ability to purchase from U.S. companies, the likely new sanction  would have a global effect. Any of over 180 countries that currently use Hikvision cameras could face secondary U.S. sanctions if they continue the purchases.

Entities that comply with U.S. or European sanctions, however, could break China’s 2021 anti-foreign sanction law . While the Biden administration has in the past said it does not ask countries to take sides, increasing sanctions and counter-sanctions create a catch-22 that will force their hand.

The CCP’s actions are driving its economy and the world toward a costly decoupling, and indicating the regime’s intention to expand what should be recognized as not just healthy competition or even unhealthy adversarial relations. Beijing is setting its autocratic form of government onto a collision course with democracies. The mutual insecurities that result could easily spiral out of control and into military conflict.

Giving Beijing time to prepare its economic defenses invites such aggression. Better to mitigate the risk now, while we still have the leverage, through much tougher economic measures. The regime is already guilty and sanctionable. Rather than kicking the can down the road yet again, deny the CCP the strength to commit more international crimes through sanctions now, not later.

Anders Corr has a bachelor’s/master’s in political science from Yale University (2001) and a doctorate in government from Harvard University (2008). He is a principal at Corr Analytics Inc., publisher of the Journal of Political Risk, and has conducted extensive research in North America, Europe, and Asia. His latest books are “The Concentration of Power: Institutionalization, Hierarchy, and Hegemony” (2021) and “Great Powers, Grand Strategies: the New Game in the South China Sea” (2018).

https://www.theepochtimes.com/the-ccps-criminal-intent-revealed_4447672.html

Russia and China: The Worst Moment in History Coming Soon

Gordon G. Chang

May 9, 2022

Originally published by Gatestone Institute

Commentary

On May 1, on Russian TV, the media executive often called “Putin’s mouthpiece” urged the Russian president to launch a Poseidon underwater drone with a “warhead of up to 100 megatons.” The detonation, said  Dmitry Kiselyov, would create a 1,640-foot tidal wave that would “plunge Britain to the depths of the ocean.” The wave would reach halfway up England’s tallest peak, Scafell Pike.

“This tidal wave is also a carrier of extremely high doses of radiation,” Kiselyov pointed out. “Surging over Britain, it will turn whatever is left of them into radioactive desert, unusable for anything. How do you like this prospect?”

“A single launch, Boris, and there is no England anymore,” said Kiselyov, addressing the British prime minister.

The threat followed one on April 28 made by Aleksey Zhuravlyov, chairman of Russia ’s pro-Kremlin Rodina Party. On the “60 Minutes” program carried on Channel One, Russian TV, he urged  Putin to nuke Britain with a Sarmat, the world’s largest and heaviest missile.

The program noted that a missile launched from Russia’s Kaliningrad enclave would take 106 seconds to hit Berlin, 200 seconds to reach Paris, and 202 seconds to obliterate London.

The NATO designation of the Sarmat is “Satan II.”

Putin himself has gotten in on the fun. Just before sending his forces across Ukraine’s border, he warned  of “consequences you have never encountered in your history.” On Feb. 27, he put his nuclear forces on high alert . On March 1, the Russian leader actually sortied  his ballistic missile submarines and land-based mobile missile launchers in what was called a drill. On May 4, the Russian Defense Ministry announced  “electronic launches” in Kaliningrad of its nuclear-capable Iskander mobile ballistic missile.

Russia has a nuclear doctrine known as “escalate to deescalate” or, more accurately, “escalate to win,” which contemplates threatening or using nuclear weapons early in a conventional conflict.

China , which on Feb. 4 issued a joint statement  with Russia about their no-limits partnership, has this century been periodically making unprovoked threats to destroy the cities of states that have somehow offended it. In July of last year, for instance, the Chinese regime threatened to nuke Japan  over its support for Taiwan. In September, China issued a similar threat  against Australia because it had joined with the United States and UK in the AUKUS pact, an arrangement to maintain stability in the region. This March, China’s Ministry of Defense promised the “ worst consequences ” for countries helping Taiwan defend itself. The threat appeared especially directed against Australia.

This month, North Korea said that, in addition to using nuclear weapons to retaliate against an attack, it might launch nukes  to attack others.

It cannot be a good sign that Russia, China, and North Korea at the same time are threatening to launch the world’s most destructive weaponry.

Why are the planet’s most dangerous regimes all making such threats?

First, Putin showed the world these warnings in fact intimidate. As Hudson Institute senior fellow Peter Huessy told me in March, escalating to win assumes nuclear threats will “coerce an enemy to stand down and not fight.” Because the Western democracies have largely stood down and are clearly not fighting in Ukraine, Beijing and Pyongyang want similar successes.

Second, Putin and Chinese ruler Xi Jinping could make such threats because they do not respect nations perceived as enemies. “The bungled withdrawal from Afghanistan and the unwillingness to effectively support Ukraine since our 1994 guarantee  and especially over the past year have led nuclear-armed enemies to ratchet up threats to the U.S. and its allies,” Huessy, also president of GeoStrategic Analysis, said to Gatestone at the beginning of this month. “They sense a growing American weakness.”

“Like Vladimir Putin, the Communist Party of China has lost its fear of American power,” Richard Fisher of the Virginia-based International Assessment and Strategy Center said to me shortly after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “China’s nuclear threats expose the Party’s arrogance in the face of perceived American weakness, expose the risk of the lack of a U.S. regional nuclear deterrent, and expose the inadequacy of U.S. leadership.”

Third, internal considerations may make such threats easy to make. Many say the most dangerous moment since World War II was the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962. Perhaps even more perilous was the Checkpoint Charlie standoff in Berlin the preceding October. Yet both Kennedy and Khrushchev knew there must never be a nuclear exchange. The issue today is whether Putin and Xi know that as well. Maybe they do not.

These threats may reveal that the leaders of these regimes share a last-days-in-the-bunker mentality. Both Russia and China, albeit in different ways, are ruled by regimes in distress, which means their leaders undoubtedly have low thresholds of risk.

Whatever the reason for the threats, Putin and Xi have told everyone what they intend to do. Unfortunately, Western leaders are determined not to believe them.

In response to Russian threats, President Joe Biden on Feb. 28 said  the American people should not worry about nuclear war. On the contrary, there is every reason to worry.

In line with Western thinking, presidents and prime ministers have almost always ignored nuclear threats, hoping not to dignify them. Unfortunately, this posture has only emboldened the threat-makers to make more threats. The later the international community confronts belligerent Russians, Chinese, and North Koreans, the more dangerous the confrontations will be.

The world, therefore, looks like it is fast approaching the worst moment in history.

“A nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought,” Biden stated  in June of last year. Maybe. Putin, who jointly issued those words with the American president, may think he can wage one and even win.

Gordon G. Chang is a distinguished senior fellow at the Gatestone Institute, a member of its Advisory Board, and the author of “The Coming Collapse of China.”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/russia-and-china-the-worst-moment-in-history-coming-soon_4454948.html

CCP Aid: A Domination Strategy

US must provide alternative to China’s debt trap

Antonio Graceffo

May 12, 2022

News Analysis

As part of its global domination strategy, China  has become one of the world’s largest lenders to the least developed nations , charging higher interest rates and demanding collateral in the form of ports, airports, minerals, and revenue streams .

Foreign aid accounts for 1 percent  of the $4.05 trillion  U.S. federal budget, with half of this money being spent on poverty reduction. While U.S. aid can come in various forms of international assistance, U.S. aid looks like real aid. With China, the line is blurred between aid and investment. China claims to be one of the largest donors, but it would be more accurate to call it a giant creditor.

The Chinese Communist Party ( CCP ) has a focused aid strategy wrapped up in its program of foreign investment and trade  promotion. The United States, on the other hand, does not seem to have a unified or codified aid strategy. Moreover, U.S. trade and investment are made by the private sector, with little or no government direction.

In addition to grants and interest-free loans, the CCP considers concessional loans as aid. Beijing links aid, loans, export credits, and military aid together, although these would not qualify as aid under the Organization of Economic  Co-operation and Development (OECD).

The CCP aid/investment campaign is already nearly 60 years in the making. In 1964, then-Premier Zhou Enlai  visited Ghana. He established the Chinese aid pattern that remains today, namely that Chinese-funded projects must use Chinese-manufactured equipment, materials, and technical assistance.

The Belt and Road Initiative  (BRI, also known as “One Belt, One Road”) adopted by the CCP in 2013 is the most recent and blatant example of how Beijing develops a long-term plan, then rolls short- and medium-term milestones into it. This creates a complex web of investments, trade, propaganda, soft power, coercion, and geopolitics, which could result in China becoming the preeminent world power  by 2035.

Debt-trap diplomacy is a powerful weapon in the CCP’s arsenal. Like cheetahs singling out and stalking the sick gazelle in the herd, Beijing looks for countries close to the breaking point of debt . These are small undeveloped economies one loan away from collapse. The CCP then offers them loans with oppressive terms , which ultimately allows Beijing to gain control of the country’s assets or revenue streams.

Research into Chinese lending finds that much of it is being carried out by state-owned actors rather than the government directly. In total, counting government and state-backed lending, China is outspending the United States and Western nations on lending to the world’s poorest countries  2 to 1. Additionally, the CCP generally charges higher interest rates, has shorter repayment periods, and demands collateral.

The collateral can be ports, such as Greece’s Piraeus Port , Sri Lanka’s Hambantota Port, or Pakistan’s Gwadar Port , all of which the CCP now has significant control or ownership of. Beijing’s investment and aid regimen are targeted at countries that could provide resources such as minerals and metals and countries like Djibouti with strategic locations. The CCP now controls Djibouti’s Doraleh naval port.

The CCP argues that China was not the first or largest lender for many countries that have gone into default; however, the Western counterargument is that the Chinese loans have pushed these countries over the brink.

These countries seek loans from China because the IMF, World Bank, Paris Club, and other traditional lenders have deemed the countries in danger of default . In many instances, these countries seek to borrow money to pay interest  on previous loans. The traditional lenders will refuse to lend money to these countries for fear of worsening their economic situation.

Meanwhile, the debt owed by the world’s poorest countries to China increased three-fold  between 2011 and 2020. On April 22, South China Morning Post reported that both the IMF and the World Bank  had warned about record levels of global debt, particularly among developing countries. For this reason, the United States and other Western nations  have accused the CCP of debt-trap diplomacy and the seizure of key assets. Beijing has refuted  these claims.

Under the Trump administration in 2019, the U.S. International Development Finance Corp . (DFC) was overhauled. Designed to counter CCP influence, the DFC provides loans to help developing nations promote infrastructure improvements. The Financial Times of India  suggested that U.S. financial and military aid should be coupled with a comprehensive trade policy. Without a trade component, foreign nations may question the U.S. commitment to a long-term relationship. This is particularly true in Africa, Latin America, and Asia where investment and trade are desperately needed and where China links its strategic and military goals to its trade and investment decisions.

The Atlantic Council recommended on April 25 that the United States adopt more of a private sector mindset . Washington should aim to find out what foreign countries need and want, and then provide aid in such a way that helps solve these countries’ problems before the CCP arrives with a checkbook. Furthermore, the United States must be more unified across government agencies with all parts working together and in cooperation with the private sector.

Antonio Graceffo, Ph.D., has spent more than 20 years in Asia. He is a graduate of the Shanghai University of Sport and holds a China-MBA from Shanghai Jiaotong University. Graceffo works as an economics professor and China economic analyst, writing for various international media. Some of his books on China include “Beyond the Belt and Road: China’s Global Economic Expansion” and “A Short Course on the Chinese Economy.”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/ccp-aid-a-domination-strategy_4458174.html

Chinese Weaponized Corruption Is a National Security Threat

Austin Bay

May 12, 2022

Commentary

In November 2018, at the direction of then-President Donald Trump, the U.S. Department of Justice, the FBI, and other federal security and economic agencies launched the China  Initiative to halt the massive transfer of American information and technology to China and counter Chinese spying in American businesses, research institutions, and universities.

In late February of this year the Biden administration terminated the project, alleging the initiative was racially biased and ineffective.

Perhaps. There is evidence the FBI mishandled several cases.

However, the strategic problems posed by China’s aggressive spying operations and influence operations within the United States have not disappeared.

Why didn’t the Biden administration address the China Initiative ’s problems instead of eliminating the effort?

That’s not just a fair question, it’s a fundamental national security question that deserves better answers than the administration has provided.

In early January I wrote a column sketching four strategic challenges the United States faces.

Challenge No. 4 is relevant to this column: No. 4—The pervasive corruption  of influential but venal individuals and venal institutions in democratic nations. The corruption is so internally corrosive to these nations that timely and effective political and military response to Challenges Nos. 1 through 3 is systemically delayed, undermined, or immobilized.

The other challenges were No. 1: Imperialist powers bent on recovering lost empires; No. 2: Failed states seeding regional anarchy; No. 3: Militant extremists attempting to acquire weapons of mass destruction.

They still plague us, and Challenge No. 4 exacerbates all of them.

The Pentagon, State Department and FBI take the national security threat of corruption very seriously. They refer to the corruption strategies, tactics and techniques employed by enemies targeting leaders and institutions as “weaponized corruption.”

China is unquestionably the most pervasive employer of weaponized corruption in the world.

Consider its activities in sub-Saharan Africa, particularly in Congo’s notorious “China Deal.” Congo President Felix Tshisekedi ordered the review of the multibillion-dollar China Deal; investigators discovered some $55 million in kickbacks (perhaps more). The bribe plot used shell companies to make the operation look legit.

China has outright cheated Congo. It promised to invest several billion in infrastructure projects, but by the end of 2021 had invested less than half of what the contract stipulated.

Congo is far more vulnerable than the U.S., but it provides an example of China employing economic and financial corruption techniques. State-owned Chinese companies are in thrall to the Chinese Communist Party  ( CCP ). That means they are tools of CCP policy. The companies can be coerced financially and their employees physically intimidated—to do things like spy in the United States.

All of America’s enemies prey upon corruptible American leaders and institutions. China, however, has mastered the dark art of targeting corruptible U.S. leaders and influencers using investment ploys, outright bribes, kickback schemes, and blackmail. It certainly appears Beijing set a sex blackmail “honey trap” for Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.)—check out his romance with suspected Chinese spy Christine Fang aka Fang Fang.

China also employs physical threat. Media have reported that FBI agents investigating suspected Chinese spy and influence operations said ethnic Chinese nationals living in the U.S. claimed Chinese intelligence officers told them their families in China faced reprisals if they refused to spy or provide data Beijing sought. That is physical threat.

Ultimately, China uses individual and institutional corruption as a strategic weapon to weaken U.S. defenses, damage the U.S. economy, sap American morale and advance Chinese science and technology.

America needs a focused effort to combat China’s threat, and that includes punishing corrupt politicians, businesspeople, and academics.

But the Biden administration terminated rather than improved the China Initiative.

Last year the Washington Free Beacon reported that China gave the University of Pennsylvania $72 million after Penn opened the Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement (Biden Center). Is it a cleverly disguised quid pro quo? Then there is Hunter Biden’s notorious laptop, which contains details about his multimillion-dollar deal with the CEFC China Energy company.

The sources of our corruption and the individually corrupt must be publicly identified and judicially confronted.

Austin Bay is a colonel (ret.) in the U.S. Army Reserve, author, syndicated columnist, and teacher of strategy and strategic theory at the University of Texas–Austin. His latest book is “Cocktails from Hell: Five Wars Shaping the 21st Century.”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/chinese-weaponized-corruption-is-a-national-security-threat_4463484.html

Portugal Is Being Used by China to Undermine EU’s Human Rights

Portugal’s weak commitment to rule of law threatens the safety of Europeans everywhere

Peter Dahlin

May 13, 2022

Commentary

Unbeknownst to almost everyone, Portugal , in a shocking decision by its Supreme Court, has decided to extradite a woman to China , going against a clear trend in Europe.

After years of setbacks for the Chinese regime in its attempt to expand its global long-arm policing, especially in Europe—a key battleground for China—Portugal offers China a victory. The decision concerns 43-year-old Zhang Haiyan, who has been fighting against being extradited to China ever since she was first detained on an Interpol arrest warrant by Portuguese authorities in the small northern city of Viseu in April 2019.

Zhang, her husband, and their firstborn child came to Portugal in 2018. Soon after, the couple welcomed twins. However, their life was upended not only when Zhang was detained and arrested but when the local court approved to have her extradited to China, as often is the case in Europe and elsewhere.

Unfortunately, it has become the norm for local courts to approve extraditions to China, but so is the level of ignorance and lack of knowledge about China within Europe’s legal sphere among defense attorneys, prosecutors, and judges. Far worrying is that the regional appeal court upheld that decision in January. This spring, when the case was brought before the highest court in Portugal, the Supreme Court of Justice, it went along with the same decision.

This is the fourth known extradition  case in Portugal from China and the only one to be taken to the Supreme Court. The first case was denied in 2014, while two more followed in 2018 and were both granted.

It is a significant issue that local courts often approve cases while higher courts reject them. Those with resources and highly professional lawyers can often appeal their cases. This means, in essence, that poor people are far more likely to be extradited than rich people.

Beijing has had a growing string of successes in having people extradited after this campaign started with Xi Jinping’s rise to power, but that string of victories ended in 2019.

Since then, the Supreme Courts in Sweden and the Czech Republic have denied extraditions to China because they declared that diplomatic assurances could not be trusted, and also due to two key parts of the legally-binding European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), namely concerning freedom from torture and the right to a fair trial. Other local and appeal courts in Poland, France, and even Turkey, have followed suit.

From 2019 to 2021, Beijing’s attempt to expand its long-arm policing into Europe and, at the same time, undermine the rule of law and human rights  protections was beaten back.

China knows Europe’s weak underbelly—primarily countries like Portugal, Spain, Greece, and Cyprus—like Russia knows Serbia, Hungary, and Austria. And they are going all-in to utilize it.

In one case, Beijing sent a significant delegation of “experts” to appear at a trial in Cyprus  late last year, something it has never done at other much higher profile hearings. But the plan backfired due to the horrendous performance of China’s lead “expert.” He became flustered and hostile when he was questioned about China’s criminal justice system or the role of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

Now back to Portugal.

Zhang Haiyan is accused of fraudulent fundraising—but this is insignificant to China. Her case merely represents an opportunity to turn the tide here in Europe. And it’s quite upsetting that Portugal has granted China just that.

What is so stunning is that the Supreme Court of Justice, in direct opposition to other high courts across Europe, decided that loosely worded “diplomatic assurances” could be taken at face value. The underlying decisions themselves didn’t even have to be presented. It was merely enough for China’s foreign ministry to say that such decisions had been made.

Even worse, neither verdict even touch upon the two key aspects of the European Convention on Human Rights. There is no discussion about the issue of maltreatment, torture, and the rather ludicrous idea of a fair trial in China. The use of extracting confessions is not mentioned—not once. Conditions in Chinese prisons are also not touched upon.

It is hoped that Zhang’s case can be brought before the European Court of Human Rights—something that has never been done before—not so much to stop the extradition itself but to ensure that China cannot continue to undermine the rule of law and human rights in Europe by these extradition requests. Because that is what it does: when courts in Europe fail to assess legally-binding human rights criteria in their judicial processes, the Chinese regime has, in a sense, already won. In this case, not only did such an assessment fail to align with reality, but there simply was no assessment or consideration at all.

Northern Europeans are aware that Southern European countries like Portugal, despite their own recent history of dictatorship and oppression, will often turn a blind eye to reality at any point it can because it is easier to carry out orders rather than stand on principles. But aren’t principles the foundations of the rule of law and human rights?

With its lack of commitment to the rule of law and its attempt to avoid reality, we cannot let Portugal become another Trojan horse for another hostile dictatorship to undermine the European Union and our most basic values. Isn’t it enough that we have to deal with Hungary acting as an agent of Russia already?

It is becoming clear why the UK Foreign Office has warned numerous people in the United Kingdom, who are known to be critical of the CCP, against traveling to Portugal and several other countries that maintain extradition treaties with China—it is clear their court system is unable to guarantee basic rights, despite their claims to the opposite.

The Portuguese Ministry of Justice, which has failed to educate its court system and the country’s court system itself, should feel nothing but shame right now.

Peter Dahlin is the founder of the NGO Safeguard Defenders and the co-founder of the Beijing-based Chinese NGO China Action (2007–2016). He is the author of “Trial By Media,” and contributor to “The People’s Republic of the Disappeared.” He lived in Beijing from 2007, until detained and placed in a secret jail in 2016, subsequently deported and banned. Prior to living in China, he worked for the Swedish government with gender equality issues, and now lives in Madrid, Spain.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/portugal-is-being-used-by-china-to-undermine-eus-human-rights_4453631.html

Guess Who’s the World’s Greatest Colonial Power Now?

China’s strategic neocolonialism extends into Argentina

James Gorrie

Writer

May 16, 2022

Commentary

While the world has focused on the war in Ukraine—and before that, the pandemic, Beijing’s crushing of Hong Kong, the situation in the Middle East, and other big events— China  has been steadily replacing U.S. influence in Latin America .

The consequences are not just limited to trade, economic, and market issues, although those are all certainly important. Beijing’s Latin American relationships are also quite strategic in nature.

One would imagine that given the U.S. influence in Europe and the Mideast is waning, preserving our own regional influence and security would be on our list of things to do. So, too, might doing everything possible to blunt our adversary’s strategic moves so close to home.

But evidently, that’s not the case.

This non-reaction by the United States is perplexing, to say the least, and doesn’t bode well for anyone–except China.

Beijing’s Soft Colonialism

China’s penetration into Latin America looks different from Cuba, the old Soviet client state from the 1960s. An overt communist takeover like Cuba in 1959 or even Venezuela’s descent into Marxist hell over the past two decades is easy to spot and demonize.

Although, on the surface, China’s “appropriation” of Latin America appears to be benign, it’s a much bigger problem than some may imagine. As the latest country to join China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI, also known as “One Belt, One Road”), Argentina  is a particularly pungent example of Beijing’s strategically significant but corrupting relationships  with political leaders.

Instead of taking over a nation with military force, as it were, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) uses its formidable financial power to capture assets within nations that it can use to strengthen China’s geopolitical posture. CCP leader Xi Jinping has had his eye on Latin America in general, and specifically resource-rich Argentina, for years. In 2017, he categorized it as a “ natural extension of the BRI .”

As noted above, the “natural extension of BRI” is not just limited to trade relationships. Its policy extends to the corruption of national leaders who, in turn, allow Beijing a freer hand in exploiting  host nation resources.

Targeted assets are typically farmland, ports, fishing rights, infrastructure projects, as well as politicians. Beijing has figured out that owning the leadership by enrichment and influencing media outlets to avoid criticism is a much smarter way to control another country.

Trade With China Is Booming

Beijing is already reaping the fruits of its efforts with Buenos Aires.

Having recently replaced Brazil as Argentina’s largest trading partner, Beijing is now in an advantageous position to expand its positive relationship as trade figures continue to rise. This fact alone gives our top geopolitical adversary enhanced influence over one of the most resource-rich nations in the hemisphere.

The CCP deepened its hold on Buenos Aires by agreeing to finance several  major infrastructure projects. They include nuclear power plants, dams, railways, solar energy, and more toward the further joint development of Argentina’s urban and rural regions. That influence has already paid off with access to other, more strategic assets.

Beijing’s Lithium Mining Play

The rare earth element lithium is a critical component in high-tech products, from missile guidance  systems to electric car batteries . As part of the “ lithium triangle ,” including Chile and Bolivia, Argentina is the world’s fourth-largest lithium producer. Not surprisingly, it plays a significant role in China’s ongoing strategy of cornering the world’s supplies of strategic metals.

This strategy explains Beijing’s recent commitment to invest $380 million in the Tres Quebradas  mining project.

Boosting the Yuan, Beating the Buck

A bilateral currency relationship is also part of Beijing’s strategic campaign for domination of Latin America and beyond. Given the fact that Argentina has been in debt to the IMF for decades and that inflationary financial policies in the United States ultimately impact the Argentine economy, Buenos Aires is open  to a new currency arrangement with China.

It may or may not benefit Argentina in the long term, but it certainly helps to internationalize  the yuan, which hurts the dollar and helps China.

Entering the Anti-Satellite Weapons Race?

Argentina is also home to a Chinese-owned space station  located in the northwest of Patagonia. This secretive installation is run by the People’s Liberation Army, which effectively makes it an advanced foreign military base with strategic implications.

The Chinese regime wholly controls the base and land without any restrictions from the Argentine government. No taxes  can be levied, and no local labor is allowed—but the free movement of Chinese labor is permitted. In other words, the Argentine government has given up  complete sovereignty over part of its territory to the Chinese.

The purpose  of the base is suspicious, but U.S. intelligence speculates that it’s a spaceport from which to launch anti-satellite  weapons.

Will Argentina Laugh Now and Cry Later?

On the flip side, with all the information and evidence of how bad  a partnership with China’s BRI program can turn out, why would the leadership of Argentina agree to get in bed with Beijing?

It’s no secret that nations that deal with China end up being owned by the CCP in debt traps.

Furthermore, as the world’s largest prison nation and the source and cause of the global CCP virus  pandemic, one would imagine that China’s pursuit of colonialism in Argentina—which has powerful labor unions—would trigger outrage among the anti-colonialism crowd.

But that doesn’t seem to be the case, either.

Will the US Be Left Behind?

One reason could be that the United States isn’t paying attention to Latin America the way China certainly is. Another may be that Beijing is making Buenos Aires an offer that it just can’t—or won’t—refuse.

In either case, American power and influence throughout Latin America—our own “backyard,” as it were—is being directly challenged  by China, the most powerful communist nation on Earth.

Sadly, our leaders in Washington are doing virtually nothing about it.

James R. Gorrie is the author of “The China Crisis” (Wiley, 2013) and writes on his blog, TheBananaRepublican.com. He is based in Southern California.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/guess-whos-the-worlds-greatest-colonial-power-now_4458603.html

Global Week of Prayer, Advocacy for China: Christians Pray for Fellow Believers, Other Persecuted Groups

Garnett Genuis

Member of Parliament

May 19, 2022

Commentary

The second annual Week of Global Prayer for China  will begin on May 22. In 2021, a group of lay Christians from around the world responded to Cardinal Charles Bo’s call for prayer for the Christians and the church of China. This year, Christians have continued the call and are mobilizing to pray for China.

The situation in China for Christians and other minority believers such as Falun Gong practitioners and Muslims is grim. State-directed persecution of religion is pervasive, constant, and severe. Thousands of religious Chinese are currently in prison for their faith. Some of the lucky ones have fled the country over the past decades, and these also number in the thousands. In many cases, the state seeks to co-opt religious communities, officially approving of their existence but compelling them to contort their beliefs beyond recognition.

This may raise the question, considering the magnitude of what Christians and others in China face simply for being religious, what difference could praying make, especially among people so far removed from China?

There are practical elements around communal prayer that can have an important influence on a range of different circumstances. When people gather together to pray for an issue, it spreads awareness of the issue in question, both within their communities and beyond. Community-wide prayer also strengthens the fortitude and conviction of the community. The sincere concern of one community for another can inspire others to take action as well.

More than this, the Christian call to God for justice and freedom is supposed to be heard not merely in God’s ear but all around the world.

Yet Christians also believe that prayer has a real impact in the world. Christians are commanded to pray, including for their enemies. Jesus said to “love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you.”

The Week of Global Prayer for China is very much a response to this, too. During the prayer week, Christians will pray for their fellow Christians in China  who are persecuted and who suffer greatly. They will pray for these Christians as well as for other persecuted minorities to be treated with the dignity their humanity requires.

It is important to note also that this response to Chinese government human rights abuses is not an exercise of ill will toward China. Rather, Christians in the Week of Global Prayer are expressing their goodwill for the people of China, Christian or not.

Christians have been persecuted in China for a very long time, and the era of modern China, from 1949 until the present, has been one of the worst times in history for Christians and other religious minorities in China. President Xi Jinping has renewed, reinvigorated, and expanded his government’s hostility toward all things religious, and millions are paying the price for his totalitarian vision of China’s future.

For decades China has ranked as one of the worst places in the world to be a Christian. As awareness of human rights issues in China has increased, so too has there been a growing response in civil society around the world. Yet there is much more to be done. One thing that has been conspicuously absent among religious people who are concerned for China is a consolidated, focused prayer campaign. This is what the Week of Global Prayer for China seeks to address.

As a Canadian parliamentarian, I have been able to support human rights and the victims of oppression in China in many ways. We must continue to use every tool at our disposal to help the persecuted in China. I am glad to support another important initiative—Christians seeking to move heaven and earth for the good of Chinese Christians and for the good of China as a whole during the Week of Global Prayer for China.

Garnett Genuis is a Conservative Member of Parliament in Canada.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/global-week-of-prayer-advocacy-for-china-christians-pray-for-fellow-believers-other-persecuted-groups_4476460.html

Fighting the CCP’s Diplomatic Warfare Against Taiwan

Guermantes Lailari

May 20, 2022

Commentary

On May 13, President Joe Biden signed a bill to direct the secretary of state to develop a strategy to regain observer status for Taiwan  in the World Health Organization (WHO).

Why is this significant?

A definition  of diplomatic warfare is the use of diplomacy to influence international bodies (such as the United Nations), other nations, and domestic audiences to support a course of action that benefits one nation while impairing another country.

The Chinese Communist Party ( CCP ) wants to use diplomatic warfare to isolate Taiwan from the rest of the world to the point that no country will recognize and come to assist it in times of crisis. Below are examples of how the United States pushed back on the CCP’s diplomatic warfare against Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC).

Taiwan would like to participate in international discussions, at a minimum, in the following five organizations: International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), International Criminal Police Organization (INTERPOL), U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), WHO, and World Health Assembly (WHA)—a WHO decision-making body.

Taiwan was a member  of INTERPOL between 1961 and 1984 until China joined INTERPOL and lobbied the members to remove Taiwan. Today, the CCP prevents Taiwan from having any meaningful participation in all U.N. organizations. For example, Taiwan was an observer member of WHO from 1998 to 2016, when CCP-Taiwan relations were “acceptable” to the communists. The CCP appears to be punishing Taiwan (using diplomatic warfare) for electing the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).

According to the bill , “Statehood is not a requirement for attendance at the WHA, and numerous observers, including non-members and non-governmental organizations, attended the most recent virtual WHA in May 2020.”

The CCP prevented Taiwan from attending by making attendance conditional on Taiwan agreeing to the CCP’s “One China” principle, which denies Taiwan its existence.

Why should Taiwan be able to attend?

First, Taiwan has provided over $6 billion in international medical and humanitarian aid since 1996, impacting over 80 countries.

Second, had the WHO taken the advice of Taiwan early during the COVID-19 pandemic, most of the world would have known about the danger of COVID early on and taken preventive measures to stop the spread of the disease, saving lives.

Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, initiated the Senate Bill 812 on March 17, 2021. Menendez was one of five U.S. Senators who visited Taiwan on April 14–15, 2022. Three other lawmakers co-sponsored the bill: Sens. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), Christopher Coons (D-Del.), and Ted Cruz (R-Texas).

The Senate passed the bill with unanimous consent, and the House of Representatives voted  425-0 in favor of the bill (75 Republican Representatives and 53 Democratic Representatives co-sponsored  the House bill HR 1145). Biden approved the bill on May 13.

Congress and the president sent a clear unanimous message to Taiwan, the CCP, and the rest of the world that the United States is fed up with the CCP’s attempt to “zeroize” Taiwan from the world.

Carter’s Abandonment of Taiwan

For those who might not know the history, Congress similarly took the initiative when then-President Jimmy Carter announced on Dec. 16, 1978, that the United States would do the following:

- Not renew the U.S.-ROC Mutual Defense Treaty (signed on Dec. 1, 1954, and would expire on Jan. 1, 1980).

- Withdraw U.S. troops from Taiwan (stationed since 1955) by Jan. 1, 1979.

- Terminate diplomatic relations with the ROC on Jan. 1, 1979. (Relations with ROC were established  in 1928 and followed the ROC government movements during World War II even as it moved to Formosa island in 1949.)

Carter gave Taiwan two weeks for the dramatic change of relations. He did not formally coordinate with Congress, Taiwan, or any allies. He only coordinated with the CCP.

In retribution for Carter’s abandonment of Taiwan for China, Congress enacted the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA), which provided for the following:

- Established the American Institute on Taiwan ( de facto  U.S. Embassy).

- Promised that the United States would provide defensive weapons to Taiwan.

- Declared that the United States would seek a peaceful resolution of Taiwan and that this was a matter of U.S. national security.

The sale of defensive weapons was a provision that Carter had not planned. Furthermore, the TRA infuriated the CCP because the U.S. arms sales to Taiwan was not agreed  to between Carter and the CCP. Congress created friction between Carter and Beijing.

To further counter Carter’s actions, in 1982, the Reagan administration provided unilateral “Six Assurances” to the ROC as clarifications to the Third Communiqué between the United States and China.

These “Six Assurances” were :

- The United States has not agreed to set a date for ending arms sales to Taiwan.

- The United States has not agreed to consult with China on arms sales to Taiwan.

- The United States will not play a mediation role between Taipei and Beijing.

- The United States has not agreed to revise the Taiwan Relations Act.

- The United States has not altered its position regarding sovereignty over Taiwan.

- The United States will not exert pressure on Taiwan to enter into negotiations with China.

President Ronald Reagan and his staff coordinated these “Six Assurances” with the ROC and Congress. All subsequent U.S. presidents and their administrations have honored these assurances. The Trump administration and Congress enhanced the U.S.-ROC bilateral relationship by enacting into law the Taiwan Travel Act (TTA), which facilitates  the following:

- Allow officials at all levels of the U.S. government to travel to Taiwan to meet their Taiwanese counterparts.

- Allow high-level Taiwanese officials to enter the United States under respectful conditions and to meet with U.S. officials.

- Encourage the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office and any other instrumentality established by Taiwan to conduct business in the United States.

Through its ambassador in Washington, China threatened dire results for approving this bill. And Congress responded accordingly by voting unanimously to pass the TTA, sending a clear message again back to the CCP that the United States does not appreciate being told how to conduct its relationship with other countries.

Recent Congressional Actions

On April 14–15, the following five U.S. lawmakers visited Taiwan as part of their Indo-Pacific meetings that include Australia and Japan: Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), Sen. Robert Portman (R-Ohio), Sen. Benjamin Sasse (R-Neb.), and Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-Texas) who is also a medical doctor.

Clearly, Menendez and the Congressional delegation took further action after their trip to Taiwan. They pushed Congress to get the Department of State (DOS) to report to Congress what the DOS had done to gain Taiwan observer status in the WHO. This law puts the onus on the DOS to demonstrate and explain what it has done publicly. Congress is leading the support to change how Taiwan is treated internationally.

Conclusion

Congress and Biden have recently sent a clear message that the U.S. government will work to add Taiwan as an observer to the WHO and the WHA. The U.S. government and Taiwan’s other allies should help Taiwan join at least the five U.N. organizations (WHO, WHA, INTERPOL, UNFCCC, and ICAO) as an observer.

Other U.N. organizations will become more important in the future as the CCP tries to expand its power. For example, since the CCP claims Taiwan and its islands, Taiwan should consider becoming an observer with the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), which adjudicates claims to exclusive economic zones. Another potential organization is the Outer Space Treaty . Since Taiwan is not a member, all 17 of Taiwan’s satellites are oddly registered to China as “Taiwan, Province of China.”

The United States and Taiwan’s allies will need to expend a lot of effort to return the ROC to the various U.N. organizations to counter the CCP’s diplomatic warfare against Taiwan.

Guermantes Lailari is a retired USAF Foreign Area Officer specializing in the Middle East and Europe as well as counterterrorism, irregular warfare, and missile defense. He has studied, worked, and served in the Middle East and North Africa for over 14 years and similarly in Europe for six years. He was a U.S. Air Force Attaché in the Middle East, served in Iraq and holds advanced degrees in International Relations and Strategic Intelligence. He researches authoritarian and totalitarian regimes that threaten democracies. He will be a Taiwan Fellow in Taipei during 2022.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/fighting-the-ccps-diplomatic-warfare-against-taiwan_4472454.html

Theft of Intellectual Property

Washington has failed utterly to stop Chinese stealing

Milton Ezrati

May 24, 2022

Commentary

One thing is sure: Washington has failed utterly in protecting American intellectual property (IP) from Chinese stealing. That failure has spanned decades under both Republicans and Democrats.

Another thing may not be sure, but it is highly likely: Under President Joe Biden, this sad pattern will remain in place.

For almost 40 years, every U.S. president has claimed to have taken action to stop Beijing from stealing intellectual property from U.S. businesses and inventors. All these efforts have failed, costing Americans, according to congressional research, billions of dollars a year.

The first efforts to stop this pattern occurred while Ronald Reagan was still in the White House. In 1986 under the auspices of the World Trade Organization (WTO), Washington pressed to halt Chinese theft of patents and copyrights. The initiative yielded the so-called “Trading-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights” agreement (TRIPS).

China  was not yet a member of the WTO. The WTO effort did nothing to temper Chinese rules coercing technology transfers from Western firms doing business in China or strengthening other avenues. American firms have to punish outright thefts of trade secrets and technologies.

Less than 10 years later, in 1995, the Clinton White House brokered an agreement, again through the WTO, that was supposed to stop IP theft . Beijing promised to implement a number of IP protections. But little changed.

In 2006, George W. Bush and Hu Jintao initiated the “Strategic Economic Dialogue.” It aimed to overcome this and other trade difficulties by having the two national leaders meet twice a year to discuss them. Five meetings occurred between 2006 and 2008. Though the two leaders and their agents discussed IP theft, the United States mostly turned a blind eye to the Chinese practice.

In 2015, Barack Obama and Xi Jinping agreed to rename the arrangement the “U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue.” That action added half as many syllables to the name but changed nothing. Only a few months after the two leaders made their respective announcements, the first signs of the so-called “Cloud Hopper Campaign” revealed how Chinese hackers had stolen and tried to steal American trade secrets and elements of U.S.-based technologies.

Trump promised more action when his administration invoked a Section 301 inquiry into Chinese IP theft and coercion. This section of the U.S. Trade Act gives the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) authority to investigate and take action to enforce U.S. rights under trade agreements and other trade violations. This was the basis on which the White House in 2019 imposed a broad array of tariffs on Chinese imports.

Though IP theft was mentioned, that effort failed to target specific Chinese abuses in this regard and so did little to halt Beijing’s continued demands for technology transfers and the use of more covert means to violate patents and copyrights.

Under the so-called “Phase One” of the ensuing trade deal between Washington and Beijing, China promised to import more from U.S. producers and streamline procedures for Americans to protect their IP rights from Chinese infringements. As it has turned out, China, as always in the past, failed to meet any of the goals stipulated in the agreement on either purchases of U.S. products or on IP violations.

For all his anti-Trump vitriol, Biden has left all his predecessor’s tariffs in place. The present American trade representative, Catherine Tai, has demanded that China comply with the “Phase One” agreement Beijing signed in January 2020 and has expressed frustration about continuing IP theft.

But the Biden administration has offered no new plans beyond continuing the Trump-era policies. Prospects then look likely to follow past patterns and do little to stop IP theft. It is noteworthy that Washington ignored a recent Chinese court decision declaring that Chinese firms cannot be sued anywhere in the world for IP theft. One of the protected firms is Huawei, which still faces federal charges for racketeering and the theft of trade secrets. But Washington effectively pretended that it did not happen.

Given this long, sorry track record and especially the Biden administration’s more recent inaction, it is hard indeed to generate any optimism on this matter. Washington’s repeated failures and seeming lack of will has cost American businesses and inventors billions of dollars a year.

In contrast, the nation ruled by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has—free of charge—used American technology and trade secrets to gain an advantage over the United States. This history and Washington’s present positions further suggest that the spate of anti-China legislation presently circulating in Congress will have little effect even if passed into law.

Perhaps the White House will change. Perhaps the next U.S. president will break with the patterns of the last 40 years or so. However, the odds suggest that American firms will get little help from Washington in keeping their trade secrets and technologies out of Beijing’s hands.

Milton Ezrati is a contributing editor at The National Interest, an affiliate of the Center for the Study of Human Capital at the University at Buffalo (SUNY), and chief economist for Vested, a New York-based communications firm. Before joining Vested, he served as chief market strategist and economist for Lord, Abbett & Co. He also writes frequently for City Journal and blogs regularly for Forbes. His latest book is “Thirty Tomorrows: The Next Three Decades of Globalization, Demographics, and How We Will Live.”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/theft-of-intellectual-property_4483021.html

China Starting Next Global Crisis by Gobbling Up Sri Lanka

Gordon G. Chang

May 24, 2022

Originally published by Gatestone Institute

Commentary

On May 12, India confirmed  that it would provide a desperate Sri Lankan government 65,000 metric tons of urea, pursuant to an existing $1 billion credit line. The sale, which overrides New Delhi’s ban on the exports of the commodity, relieves severe pressure on the government of Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa.

Sri Lanka  since the end of March has been wracked by violent protests. “ Shoot-on-sight ” orders have for the most part restored order, but the unrest has led to the replacement of Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa, once the country’s dominate political figure. His brother, the president, is unlikely to survive the tumult. The ongoing economic and financial crisis is Sri Lanka’s worst since independence from Britain in 1948.

Sri Lanka is only the world’s opening act. Disturbances there constitute the first in a series of crises about to engulf vulnerable countries, perhaps even large ones. The war in Ukraine, aggravating underlying problems in Sri Lanka and elsewhere, is shaking just about every corner of the planet.

Events in Sri Lanka also highlight how China  is going about dominating the world. Beijing is corrupting national leaders, drowning them in debt, and ultimately destabilizing their governments. Beijing, it appears, is particularly targeting democracies.

India’s urea, a fertilizer, will allow Sri Lankan farmers to plant in the May-August Yala cultivation season. It comes at a time of critical need. The country was spending about $400 million annually to import fertilizer but had not been able to make purchases recently due to the lack of foreign exchange. The government last year, to conserve currency reserves, banned chemical fertilizer.

The finance ministry reports  that the country has only $25 million in usable foreign reserves on hand, hardly sufficient to service obligations. Sri Lanka is scheduled to repay $7 billion in debt this year, a part of the $26 billion due by 2026. The country’s total foreign debt is $51 billion.

The chemical fertilizer ban forced farmers to abandon paddies, and some joined the recent protests.

There is, as a result, hunger in the country, and soaring food prices have fueled protests. “I’ve been living in Colombo for 60 years, and I’ve never seen anything like this,” said  Vadivu, a domestic worker, to AFP in March. “There’s nothing to eat, there’s nothing to drink.” This month, food prices there, Sri Lanka’s most-populous city, tripled in the space of a few days.

The new prime minister, Ranil Wickremesinghe, said he would ensure that everyone had three meals a day. “There won’t be a hunger crisis, we will find food,” he told  the BBC.

That is a promise Wickremesinghe may not be able to keep. Sri Lanka cannot solve its problems on its own. The COVID-19 pandemic ended tourism, a main source of revenue. Moreover, the Russian invasion of Ukraine—both countries are big sources of tourists for Sri Lanka—killed hopes for a recovery this year.

The issue, however, goes beyond tourist arrivals. The Ukraine war looks as if it is ending a decades-long period of globalization, and this transition is going to be difficult for countries that are especially dependent on others. The Sri Lankan crisis, therefore, is only the beginning. “Sri Lanka is the first country to buckle under the mounting economic pressures triggered by the war in Ukraine,” London’s Guardian stated . “It is unlikely to be the last.”

Sri Lanka also faces another difficulty: China. The dominant Rajapaksa clan, long thought to be in Beijing’s pocket, borrowed heavily from Chinese sources for misconceived ventures. Many of the “white-elephant projects” are in the Hambantota district, the home of the Rajapaksas.

The Hambantota port, losing $300 million in six years, was ill-conceived from the beginning. Port operators, therefore, were unable to service $1.4 billion in loans from China. Close to the port is a rarely used $15.5 million conference center. Thanks to a $200 million loan from China, Sri Lanka was able to build the nearby Rajapaksa Airport, which could not pay even its electricity bills.

In Colombo, there is Sri Lanka’s answer to Dubai: the Chinese-funded Port City, an island of 665 acres of landfill and a “hidden debt trap.” In that city is also the never-opened-to-the-public Lotus Tower, also funded by China. “What is the point of being proud of this tower if we are left begging for food?” asked  Krishantha Kulatunga, the owner of a small stationery store near the landmark. “We are neck-deep in loans already.”

China extended around 17 percent of the country’s total debt. Very few know the full extent of the indebtedness to Chinese parties because there are hard-to-track loans to Sri Lanka’s state firms and to the country’s central bank.

Whatever their amount, Chinese loans have broken Sri Lanka. In April, it declared a suspension of repayment of foreign debt. The BBC reports  that the suspension, the first default since independence, is “largely because it cannot service loans from China that paid for massive infrastructure projects.”

China is the world’s predatory lender, something evident from its Belt and Road Initiative, also known as BRI. Beijing’s grand infrastructure project specializes in roads, ports, and railroads that have, like the Sri Lankan projects, little or no commercial justification. So far, 146 countries  have signed BRI memo agreements with Beijing. Some of them find themselves in hock to the Chinese.

The Chinese have established a pattern. “China extends debt on onerous terms, backs up authoritarian governments when there are financial collapses or civil disobedience, and then takes everything it can find,” Cleo Paskal of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies told Gatestone.

This pattern is evident in Sri Lanka. In December 2017, Beijing took control of the Hambantota port, grabbing 70 percent of the equity and signing a 99-year lease, after that project could not repay high-interest loans extended by China. Now there are concerns that Hambantota will eventually become a Chinese naval base.

China’s admirals have long eyed Sri Lanka: In both September and October 2014 the Sri Lankan government allowed a Chinese submarine and its tender to dock at the Chinese-funded Colombo International Container Terminal.

A base in Sri Lanka would allow Chinese aircraft and surface combatants as well as submarines to cut sea lanes in the Indian Ocean and force next-door India to divert military assets to a threatening presence.

It is no coincidence that Djibouti, also heavily indebted to Chinese parties, is now the site of China’s first offshore military base.

“This pattern is deep, entrenched, and expanding, and so it’s like the dominoes have all been set up and Beijing is perfectly happy to have them fall down so that it can come to the rescue economically and politically and entrench itself even more,” Paskal noted.

Sri Lanka is now looking for a bailout from the International Monetary Fund, but that is not necessarily a good idea. The international community should not be helping a voracious China gobble up small, vulnerable societies.

“It’s not financial restructuring that you need, it’s political restructuring that you need before you should put in any more money,” Paskal said. “If the IMF bails out Sri Lanka without ensuring that it is no longer aligned with Beijing, it will have subsidized Chinese investment and politically reinforced a country that becomes a Chinese proxy.”

Gordon G. Chang is a distinguished senior fellow at the Gatestone Institute, a member of its Advisory Board, and the author of “The Coming Collapse of China.”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/china-starting-next-global-crisis-by-gobbling-up-sri-lanka_4487357.html

Kazakhstan Is a Prize Coveted by China

While the world focuses on Ukraine and Taiwan, China makes inroads in Kazakhstan

Stu Cvrk

May 24, 2022

Commentary

The U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan opened the door for increased Chinese pressure on Kazakhstan .

Communist China  continues to make news in its outreach and attempts to corrupt various countries around the world. The purpose of its Belt and Road Initiative  (BRI, also known as “One Belt, One Road”) is to change the dynamics of the world economy in favor of Beijing through a series of bilateral agreements with targeted countries that possess the resources and raw materials needed to fuel China’s industries.

To date, China has engaged in BRI-related investments in over 138 countries  worldwide. The Russo-Ukrainian war brought to public attention that Chinese investments in Ukraine had turned the country into a BRI gateway to Europe .

The People’s Liberation Army and Navy (PLA/PLAN) are the flipsides of the BRI, with the PLAN, in particular, pursuing overseas bases ostensibly aimed at “protecting China’s sea lanes and commercial shipping.” The Chinese have operated a base on the Horn of Africa in Djibouti since 2017 . There is much speculation that a Chinese logistics base will be opened in the Azores . And shocking the world, Beijing recently concluded a security agreement with the Solomon Islands that many observers believe could lead to a PLA/PLAN presence there .

But what about Chinese actions closer to home? While others fret about China and the United States clashing over the fate of Taiwan, the Spider Dragon’s pol-mil web is being woven tighter and tighter around many countries, even next door in Kazakhstan.

China’s atheistic communist regime brooks no nonsense with Islam, even among its own citizenry of “foreign” descent (non-Han Chinese.) In particular, this applies to Kazakhs and other Muslims in the Xinjiang region. The Muslim-majority Kazakhstan government in Astana even intervened on behalf of Kazakhs from the Ili Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture being detained in detention/reeducation/concentration camps  run by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in Xinjiang in 2018.

The CCP’s ongoing persecution of Muslims in Xinjiang—and Uyghurs in particular—and the search for better economic opportunities have convinced many Kazakhs living there to emigrate to Kazakhstan  in recent years.

Kazakhstan is the world’s largest landlocked country, with approximately 19.2 million people . It was the last of the “-stans” to declare its independence after the fall of the USSR in 1991. Authoritarian roots run deep among its 131 ethnicities.

Kazakhstan has enormous oil and gas reserves, as reported by World Atlas : “Kazakhstan’s oil reserves are estimated to be the 11 th  largest in the world … [and] has more than 80 trillion cubic feet of proven natural gas.” In addition, the country has the second-largest proven uranium reserves in the world.

The Kazakh government has encouraged foreign development of its natural resources, with the Americans, Russians, Chinese, and others competing for these resources with the free-wheeling (and corrupt) Kazakhs. The result for the Kazakhs has been the creation of a well-developed economy and the subsequent modernization of its cities, including Astana ( now called Nursultan ). Check out some of the spectacular pictures of Astana’s and Almaty’s city architecture here  and here . According to the World Bank, Kazakhstan’s gross domestic product was $170 billion in 2020 .

In April 2018, Kazakhstan announced that it would permit the United States and NATO to use Caspian ports to supply forces in Afghanistan. The agreement enabled “NATO forces to substantially increase use of the existing Caspian Trade Corridor, by shipping through the Aktau and Kuryk ports on the Caspian Sea, completely bypassing Russia,” according to Breitbart News . The Kazakhs were keen to maintain a U.S. presence in the region to offset its aggressive neighbors in Moscow and Beijing.

Neither the Russians nor the Chinese were happy with that Kazakh decision. Both feared that Aktau and Kuryk would be turned into American military bases over time. China, in particular, was concerned because Kazakhstan and the “Caspian Corridor” are smack dab in the middle of the CCP’s grandiose New Silk Road, which is part of the BRI. And the CCP has been feverishly pursuing joint investment in Kazakhstan for years.

China has invested $27 billion  in more than 50 joint industrial projects in Kazakhstan. It is no surprise that the main fields of cooperation are in the oil and gas, chemical, energy, mining, metallurgical, agricultural, and machine-building sectors. Resource-poor China is eager to access Kazakhstan’s natural resources—on the cheap, if at all possible, via BRI investments.

However, Chinese concerns about American encroachment in Central Asia were premature. The debacle of the Biden administration’s hasty withdrawal from Afghanistan instantly created a geopolitical vacuum in Central Asia that the communist Chinese have been only too happy to fill.

The PLA Air Force sent aircraft  almost immediately to Bagram after the United States abandoned the air base there. And according to an article by U.S. News and World Report , “The Chinese military is currently conducting a feasibility study about the effect of sending workers, soldiers and other staff related to its foreign economic investment program known as the Belt and Road Initiative in the coming years to Bagram.”

Note once again that where the BRI goes, the PLA follows!

The absence of a U.S. presence in Central Asia puts the squeeze on Kazakhstan, too, and the CCP is quickly putting on the squeeze.

On April 26 , CCP mouthpiece People’s Daily trumpeted the news that Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev and Chinese Minister of National Defense Wei Fenghe publicly agreed to “strengthen military cooperation”: “Tokayev said Kazakhstan attaches great importance to the military cooperation with China and hopes that the two militaries will continue to strengthen practical cooperation in peacekeeping operations, joint exercises, personnel training, military technology and other fields.”

Will this lead to at least a token presence of the PLA in Kazakhstan? The pattern seems clear.

Hmmm. Military cooperation and improved readiness against what common threats?

The Chinese regime is persecuting Muslims (and Kazakhs) in Xinjiang. Will they cooperate on “joint anti-terrorist” operations aimed at Muslims? Not likely!

Is the common threat Russia? Russia is embroiled in a war in Ukraine, and besides, the Chinese and Russians are allies these days after the public announcement of their joint partnership agreement  in February.

What about the United States? While there’s no secret that the CCP considers the United States to be its main geopolitical adversary, that view is not held in Astana. The United States has pulled out of Central Asia, and the Kazakhs don’t perceive America as a “common threat.”

On the contrary, Kazakhstan would prefer improved relations with and increased investments from the United States as a counterweight to Russia and China. But it seems clear that Kazakhstan is hedging its bets with “increase military cooperation” with China.

Concluding Thoughts

Kazakhstan’s natural resources—especially oil, natural gas, and uranium—are coveted by energy-poor China and others. As a result, the country is embroiled in a continuing geopolitical conflict and competition for access to and control of those resources in a remote corner of the world about which most Americans have only the slightest clue.

Rest assured, the deleterious effects of the hasty U.S. flight from Afghanistan have only just started being felt in Astana/Nursultan and other Central Asian capitals. The door is now open even wider for CCP exploitation via BRI investments in the region. And the CCP couldn’t be happier.

Stu Cvrk retired as a captain after serving 30 years in the U.S. Navy in a variety of active and reserve capacities, with considerable operational experience in the Middle East and the Western Pacific. Through education and experience as an oceanographer and systems analyst, Cvrk is a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, where he received a classical liberal education that serves as the key foundation for his political commentary.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/kazakhstan-is-a-prize-coveted-by-china_4484556.html

China Wants to Control the Cloud

John Mac Ghlionn

May 24, 2022

Commentary

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is no fan of cryptocurrency, especially Bitcoin. Not surprisingly, the elites in Beijing aren’t keen  on NFTs either. It makes sense. Both are highly speculative assets. However, when it comes to blockchain , the underlying technology powering Bitcoin and NFTs, the CCP appears to be very interested. In this piece, you’ll see why.

In 2019, Chinese leader Xi Jinping spoke glowingly about blockchain. He called on business people and tech-wizards across the country to “ seize the opportunity ” presented by the revolutionary technology. The emergence of blockchain, according to Xi, signaled an “important breakthrough in independent innovation of core technologies.”

He emphasized that further development of blockchain, very much a core technology, needed to be accelerated.

In a previous piece, I outlined how blockchain works in rather extensive detail . Although there are four types of blockchain structures, we need only concern ourselves with two of them: public blockchains and private ones. The former is permissionless in nature. Completely decentralized, it allows anyone to join. The latter, meanwhile, is managed by approved network administrators. Participants must get approval before joining the network.

It should come as little surprise to learn that the CCP is very much in favor of private blockchains. The question, though, is why?

Why is the CCP so invested in blockchain technology?

It’s simple—data.

Who Controls the Data Controls the Future

Two years ago, the CCP launched the Blockchain-based Service Network (BSN), a “common infrastructure for the deployment and operation of blockchain applications globally,” according to its website . Yes, globally.

Key members of the BSN include China  Mobile, China UnionPay, and Red Date Technology, the “technical architect behind the BSN.”

The CEO of Red Date Technology , Yifan He, told CNBC  that blockchain technology has the potential to “change the entire internet and almost all the entire IT system architecture.

Another blockchain guru, Paul Triolo, added to He’s point. “Blockchain technology,” said Triolo, “is very important for China, as government officials see it as a low barrier to the entry technology sector, and want Chinese companies to push the envelope on using blockchain applications to solve real-world problems.”

As the United States and the European Union use blockchain technology to track carbon emissions , China plans to use it for very different reasons. The CCP wants to control as much data as possible, not just in China but also internationally. If current developments are anything to go by, the CCP plans to use the BSN to achieve this rather worrying goal.

As the CNBC piece noted, the BSN is focused on working with large, international companies, “in particular, those operating cloud computing infrastructure.” Think of companies like Amazon and Microsoft, two large cloud operatives, for example.

Some readers may find themselves asking what the cloud is and its exact purpose.

In the virtual world, the cloud is everything. Microsoft defines cloud computing  as “the delivery of computing services—including servers, storage, databases, networking, software, analytics, and intelligence—over the internet (‘the cloud’) to offer faster innovation, flexible resources, and economies of scale.”

Now, China wants to use the BSN to control these services.

According to the aforementioned He, a decade from now, “all clouds will have a standard blockchain environment to handle all blockchain-related applications.” The BSN aims to be a “ one-stop shop ” for all blockchain-related activities in the cloud.

Anyone familiar with cloud computing knows that, in theory, you own the data you create and upload. However, cloud service providers are really the ones in control—in complete control—of your data.

Some 90 percent of enterprises around the world now use cloud-based systems . Many of these companies, like Amazon and Microsoft, have lots of data on you, the customer. Every single day, 2.5 exabytes  of data are generated. To put this rather enigmatic figure in perspective, Google, the go-to search engine, stores somewhere in the region of 10 exabytes.

Is it any surprise that the BSN (simply an extension of the CCP) wants a slice of the data-dense pie? In short, no. Not in the slightest. China is essentially a digital panopticon, a country built on data collection and never-ending surveillance.

To conclude, it’s important to stress that blockchain technology and the cloud can be used as forces for good. However, just like a bread knife in the wrong hands can become a deadly weapon, supreme technology in the wrong hands can be weaponized.

Inordinate amounts of sensitive data in Beijing’s hands is downright scary. With the BSN, the CCP wants to control the storage of data—my data, your data, everyone’s data. Will this dream become a reality? Don’t bet against it. The Chinese regime has been plotting and planning for years.

John Mac Ghlionn is a researcher and essayist. His work has been published by the New York Post, The Sydney Morning Herald, Newsweek, National Review, and The Spectator US, among others. He covers psychology and social relations, and has a keen interest in social dysfunction and media manipulation.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/china-wants-to-control-the-cloud_4476352.html

CCP Threatens Quad With Nukes

Russia joined in flights against the US, Japan, Australia, and India

Anders Corr

May 27, 2022

Commentary

While China  and Russia coordinate nuclear-capable bomber flights against the United States and its Quad allies—Japan, Australia, and India—the Quad is tied in knots, talking about fishing patrols, making unilateral concessions on Taiwan, and turning a blind eye to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

On May 24, the same day that Quad heads of state, including President Joe Biden, held their meetings in Tokyo , six Chinese and Russian bombers  flew over the Sea of Japan and environs. The flights directly threatened the other Quad heads of state, including Fumio Kishida of Japan, Anthony Albanese of Australia, and Narendra Modi of India.

Japan’s Air Self-Defense Force scrambled fighter jets in response to the bombers, warning them off of the country’s airspace.

Beijing aims to threaten, degrade, and test Japan and Taiwan’s air forces. The number of belligerent flights has increased  in tandem with China’s economic growth and military spending.

In February, China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) navy went further, sailing  into Australia’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ) and firing a military-grade laser at an Australian air force plane conducting legitimate surveillance close to home.

In the context of such belligerence, the Biden administration is doing too little and sometimes even backsliding into unilateral concessions.

On May 22, national security adviser Jake Sullivan made such a concession to Beijing, perhaps to “improve” the chances  of securing a summit between Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping. Sullivan announced  that Taiwan would not be joining Biden’s new Indo-Pacific  trade pact, the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF).

Predictably, throwing Taiwan under the bus had the opposite of the intended effect. Instead of announcing a summit, Xi got Russian President Vladimir Putin to join in bomber flights near both Japan and Taiwan.

Beijing wants countries in the Asia-Pacific—including India, Australia, Japan, and Taiwan—to feel so greedy for a part of China’s economic growth, and threatened by its nuclear-capable hypersonic missiles and long-range bombers that they cede leadership of all of Asia, piece-by-piece, to Beijing.

There aren’t many takers at the moment, though a few countries—like Laos, Cambodia, and most recently, the Solomon Islands —are succumbing to what likely includes Beijing’s widespread tactic of bribery of heads of state. This is according to court convictions , reporting , and my sources, who are in a position to know.

Beijing has presented the allegedly corruption-induced agreement with the Solomons as a model  for other Asia-Pacific islands, including Kiribati and possibly Tonga and Vanuatu. The agreements would cover economic, military, and cyber cooperation, putting these countries squarely into Beijing’s sphere of influence, including naval basing rights and opening of their telecommunications systems to electronic spying by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

Beijing is threatened by the Quad because the United States and its allies offer a better alternative, and without corruption. In two words, freedom and sovereignty.

The CCP’s response to this choice for integrity is to try and scare countries with the threat of nuclear war, as they did this week. In their small way, the Quad and allies are at least not showing much fear and inching forward in defense of the region. At the meeting, the Quad announced it will start satellite tracking  of illegal fishing in Asia, most of which emanates from Chinese ships that have turned off their transponders.

What’s really needed, though, is not just tracking but all NATO and Quad-plus  (those present at the Tokyo meeting by video also included South Korea, New Zealand, and Vietnam) coast guards on joint patrols in an arc of freedom from the Bay of Bengal off of India, through the South China Sea and the Philippine Sea, all the way to the Sea of Japan and beyond. China has the world’s largest fleet of illegal fishing vessels , which ply the EEZs of countries far from Asia, including around Africa and South America.

With the rise of China’s blue water navy, coast guard, and maritime militia, all of which are ultimately part of, and controlled  by, the PLA, China’s naval forces will increasingly deploy globally for the protection of illegal fishing and hydrocarbon exploitation in direct conflict with Quad members’ attempts to enforce the world’s EEZs. The requirement of a NATO-Quad EEZ police is a regrettable but necessary acceptance of risk against Beijing.

Fishing surveillance and unilateral concessions on Taiwan will not defeat Russian and Chinese bombers. The Quad will have to step up its game if it wants to hold the line.

Anders Corr has a bachelor’s/master’s in political science from Yale University (2001) and a doctorate in government from Harvard University (2008). He is a principal at Corr Analytics Inc., publisher of the Journal of Political Risk, and has conducted extensive research in North America, Europe, and Asia. His latest books are “The Concentration of Power: Institutionalization, Hierarchy, and Hegemony” (2021) and “Great Powers, Grand Strategies: the New Game in the South China Sea” (2018).

https://www.theepochtimes.com/ccp-threatens-quad-with-nukes_4494511.html

When China Uses Force: The Danger of ‘Pre-Crisis’ Conflict

Bradley A. Thayer

May 30, 2022

Commentary

President Joe Biden’s remarks about the U.S. commitment to Taiwan is an opportune time to consider a fundamental issue: when will the Chinese regime use force against U.S. interests?

There is a long history of first strike and preemption in Chinese military history. Chinese strategic thought is critical for understanding when China  will launch a surprise attack against its enemies.

There are two major relevant elements within Chinese strategic thought that U.S. decision-makers and the public should be aware of as they consider the probability of an attack against Taiwan or other U.S. interests in the Indo-Pacific.

The Search for Strategic Advantage

First, the opportunities the Chinese have will have been made possible by their perception of strategic advantage. The Chinese leadership’s perception of the opportunity they or the enemy has created is essential to understand. Sensitivity to perceptions of strategic opportunity is a central tenet of Chinese strategic thought. The attack may be kinetic, as was the case in Chinese history, or non-kinetic, such as with cyberattacks or an electromagnetic pulse (EMP).

An additional aspect here is that the leadership may execute an attack with a “pedagogical intent.” This attack is followed by a strategic pause to provide the foe with the strategic decision to escalate or de-escalate. The Chinese claimed they used this strategy in their invasion of Vietnam in 1979—they started the war “to teach the Vietnamese a lesson.” In fact, this was a total war attempt that failed due to the strength of Vietnamese resistance and thus required a change in Chinese stated objectives.

Perception About the Likelihood of an Attack

Second, Chinese military thought reveals that surprise attacks are well-considered and seen as viable and common strategies. The most important theorist is Sunzi, who identified “deception in warfare” as the epitome of success and the acme of measuring the quality of the general.

“Deception in warfare” must be understood broadly. The responsibility of the Chinese leader is to place the enemy in a position where he does not expect to be attacked; to put the foe in the circumstances where he believes he has the strategic momentum and events are proceeding as he has designed. In Chinese strategic thought, the use of force is like a sudden cascade of water flowing downhill from mountain peaks.

The Historical Evidence

The historical evidence contains examples where the Chinese have executed attacks. There were nine cases of first strikes by the People’s Liberation Army ( PLA ) from 1950 to 1988.

In 1950, China conquered Tibet, and the Chinese planned a war of annihilation against United Nations forces. But logistical difficulties in the face of U.N. airpower hindered the ability of the PLA to wage a war of annihilation and became a war of attrition.

In 1962, China attacked India. The first strike was supremely successful and led to the devastation of the Indian army.

The PLA preemptively deployed about 40,000 troops in Laos from 1964 to 1972 to deter the U.S. ground intervention in that country.

As with Laos, the PLA deployed about 60,000 troops in North Vietnam from 1965 to 1968.

The border disputes with the Soviet Union in 1968 and 1969 involved a Chinese first strike against Soviet forces. In the most famous of these attacks, the Chinese attack killed approximately 70 Soviet border troops. The Soviets responded with overwhelming force that forced China from the island.

In January 1974, the PLA attacked and occupied the Paracel (Xisha) Islands of South Vietnam. China attacked Vietnam in 1979 in another attempt at annihilation, the objective was to conquer Hanoi, but Vietnamese resistance was stronger than anticipated. In 1988, China attacked the Vietnamese presence on Johnson Island in the Spratly Islands group and, as a result of their victory, defeated a significant Vietnamese presence in the Spratly Islands group and killed almost 70 Vietnamese troops.

The legacy of Chinese aggression and coercive pressure continues in the wake of the cold war against Taiwan, India on their disputed border, Japan in the East China Sea, and against the Philippines over Scarborough Shoal, and the other countries with interest in the South China Sea.

Five Lessons for the Protection of US Interests in the Indo-Pacific

There are five lessons that the United States should heed to protect its interests from China.

First, Chinese strategic thought advocates and places greater emphasis on surprise and first strike than does Western strategic thought.

Second, Americans and Europeans give greater discount to the success of surprise attack strategies and the risks inherent in them due to an appreciation of Clausewitzian “fog of war,” friction in military operations, and the risks of escalation. An understanding of each is present in American-European thought but absent in Chinese. The fact that the Chinese lack an understanding of the significance of the risks associated with these strategies significantly heightens crisis instability problems.

Third, in the course of their military history, and accounting for the relative stability faced by China in contrast to the West, the Chinese launched first strikes more often than European states. Non-kinetic options available to China and other advanced militaries make first strike and preemption more likely as they potentially lower the costs of doing so and introduce the possibility of the inability to attribute the attack. The Chinese are likely to execute first strikes and engage in preemption to advance their interests or when they perceive their interests to be threatened.

Fourth, the Chinese possess a significant difference from the European or American conception of preemption and war in that they have a conception of pedagogical war. The strategic essence of which is to attack to execute a limited campaign aims to “teach a lesson” to the enemy. That is, the application of coercive military power against the state to cause it to accept Chinese demands or interests.

Fifth, the Chinese perceive a “pre-crisis” period. Pre-crisis is when the Chinese prepare their surprise attack before the opponent recognizes that it is in a crisis situation. The classic case of a pre-crisis scenario is the situation of U.N. forces before the first Chinese intervention in October 1950. The Chinese were moving toward conflict with the U.N. without its knowledge. Beijing was obfuscating the situation, conveying conflicting messages to keep the U.N. unaware that it faced a military conflict with China.

Beware China’s Hair Trigger—Particularly in Pre-Crisis Situations

Two consequences result from China’s strategic conception that are immediately relevant to Taiwan and other U.S. interests. First, China may execute an attack under the guise of a “pedagogical strike” against U.S. interests. Second, timing is notable.

The historical evidence of its aggression shows that China will jump through windows of opportunity to attack states as opportunities arise for Beijing. In sum, the Chinese leadership has a hair trigger. It is critical to recognize that this hair trigger might be pulled in pre-crisis situations, in which U.S. decision-makers would not expect Chinese action or even be cognizant that they were on the cusp of crisis.

Bradley A. Thayer is a founding member of the Committee on the Present Danger: China and is the co-author of “How China Sees the World: Han-Centrism and the Balance of Power in International Politics.”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/when-china-uses-force-the-danger-of-pre-crisis-conflict_4491662.html

China’s Air Force Is Training in South Africa

Those who cooperate with Beijing should pay the consequences

Anders Corr

May 31, 2022

Commentary

China  is training its air force pilots  in South Africa  by using former French pilots, according to a new report. The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) uses a subsidiary and partner of its largest aerospace-defense contractor, Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC), to do the job.

AVIC purchased and partners with South African pilot training companies and French pilots who have access to fighter jets from the South African air force, and who secretly train in China on Chinese jets, the report says.

On May 23, Intelligence Online published details  of the South Africa and Chinese operations and the “renegade Western pilots” who assist the PLA against the wishes of authorities in the United States and France.

In April, a video  surfaced on Twitter that appeared to show a European trainer and Chinese air force pilot who had ejected from their JL-10 training aircraft in Anhui Province. The JL-10 is a supersonic light combat jet used for training purposes by the PLA air force (PLAAF). The builder of the JL-10, the Hongdu Aviation Industry Corporation, is a subsidiary of AVIC.

Intelligence Online, which is based in France, noted that the trainer in the video spoke English “with a slight French accent.” The Chinese man identified himself as a PLA officer.

“According to our sources, at least three former French fighter pilots, including at least one who had flown Dassault-built Rafale, have already taken part in flight training sessions for the Chinese army,” according to the article.

The training enables the PLAAF both directly and through observation of Western techniques, tactics, reflexes, combat practices, and rules of engagement. Such training would be critical in any future conflict, including for the prediction of Western pilot responses.

AVIC partners through the AVIC International Flight Training Academy (AIFA) with the Test Flight Academy of South Africa (TFASA), according to a TFASA presentation  available online. TFASA provides “military operational flight training” on both planes and helicopters, as well as “surveillance” operations.

AVIC has  three “bases”  in the southeastern part of South Africa, including AIFA George Base, AIFA Oudtshoorn Base, and AIFA Beaufort West Base.

“AIFA was established in 2011 by the acquisition of Cape Flying Services, which had been functioning as a flight training school at George Airport since 1980,” according to the AIFA website.

The AIFA South Africa Facebook page  shows a multicultural group of trainers and trainees, including from European, East Asian, South Asian, and Middle Eastern countries.

AVIC’s Oudtshoorn Base was apparently established in 2011 like the George base, and the Beaufort West base followed in 2015.

AIFA’s most recent post, from April 27, states that the school takes “pride in welcoming a new group of Private Enrolled Students from the Maldives and Syria  at our George Base.”

Syria is closely aligned with Russia and has committed  war crimes and crimes against humanity, including an air force bombing of a humanitarian convoy in 2017 that killed 14 aid workers.

An AIFA post from June 29, 2021, shows three individuals in a plane, one European and two Asians . While the European’s face is clear, the two Asians in the photo are blurred, hiding their identities. This follows a pattern of identifying, often by name, many of the Europeans in the AIFA posts, but almost none of the East Asians.

Another post, from June 15, 2021, shows two AVIC employees on a “ career day ” at an elite high school near the AVIC bases, speaking to three children.

Is China’s main air force supplier, controlled by one of the world’s worst human rights abusers, really what South Africa’s best schools should offer to their children as aspirational?

According to Intelligence Online, AVIC’s partner in South Africa, TFASA, “recruits former Western air force pilots by offering them attractive salaries [of up to $30,000 per month] and then sends them to China.”

TFASA has provided China’s commercial pilots with training for over 10 years, according to the report, including through civil aviation training in Liaoning Province and through a linkage to Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics. It trains students on the Z-10 attack helicopter and the Z-8 troop transporter.

TFASA was previously the South African government-affiliated National Test Pilot School, but closed in 2003 due to U.S. pressure from its “already existing links with China,” according to Intelligence Online.

“For its exercises in South Africa, [TFASA] hires Dassault Mirage F1s and Saab Cheetahs no longer used by the South African air force,” according to the report. “The company boasts that it can also provide pilots who have flown in Eurofighters, produced by BAE Systems, Airbus Group and Leonardo, Saab-built Gripens and BAE Tornados.”

Dassault, Saab, BAE, and Airbus are French, Swedish, British, and pan-European, respectively.

Given the Chinese Communist Party’s genocide, totalitarianism, plans to invade democratic Taiwan, and aspirations of global hegemony, private support to the PLA is unacceptable.

Pilots who work with TFASA and AVIC should lose their security clearances and pilots licenses. South Africa should be economically sanctioned for cooperating so closely with the aviation programs of a totalitarian country.

AVIC also operates subsidiaries  in Germany and Austria. These should be closed down immediately.

AVIC’s subsidiary in the United States filed  for bankruptcy in 2020. Good riddance, and let’s hope the company’s other subsidiaries soon follow.

Anders Corr has a bachelor’s/master’s in political science from Yale University (2001) and a doctorate in government from Harvard University (2008). He is a principal at Corr Analytics Inc., publisher of the Journal of Political Risk, and has conducted extensive research in North America, Europe, and Asia. His latest books are “The Concentration of Power: Institutionalization, Hierarchy, and Hegemony” (2021) and “Great Powers, Grand Strategies: the New Game in the South China Sea” (2018).

https://www.theepochtimes.com/chinas-air-force-is-training-in-south-africa_4501567.html

From Tiananmen in 1989 to Hong Kong’s Ongoing Political Crackdown

Edward Chin

June 1, 2022

Commentary

By the time this article is published, we have just a few days left before June 4, the 33rd anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Massacre. With the imposition of the National Security Law (NSL) for almost 2 years, the political atmosphere in Hong Kong is tense, almost like at Tiananmen Square in Beijing.

This year in Hong Kong, the Catholic church will no longer be hosting June 4 memorial services, and key organizers of the traditional large scale candlelight vigil at the Victoria Park are all in jail: Lee Cheuk-Yan (former law-maker, politician), Albert Ho Chun-Yan (solicitor and politician, former law-maker) and Chow Hang-Tung (barrister and politician), the former chairs and vice chairs of the now defunct Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movement of China (支聯會). They have been refused bail, and are waiting to be tried under the NSL.

Would “communist Hong Kong” go so far as to crackdown on private gatherings or scattered crowds holding up iphones in public with light on at 8:00pm, to commemorate what happened at Tiananmen Square 33 years ago?

It will be crazy to see the National Security Department or police start arresting these citizens. Not yet I hope. But we can never be sure.

Cardinal Joseph Zen Ze-kiun, 90 years of age, was recently arrested under the NSL and charged with suspected “collusion with foreign forces”.

This, is the “new Hong Kong.”

For those who didn’t follow too closely, communist Hong Kong has technically banned the Victoria Park June 4 candle light vigil three years in a row.

Hongkongers have been steadfast in organizing annual June 4 candlelight vigils at the Victoria Park since 1989, which always attracted thousands of people, until the regime banned it in 2020, using covid as the excuse.

Those who tried entering the Park on June 4, 2020 had already paid a hefty price, as alluded to earlier ̶ key organizers and supporters of the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China (支聯會) are either serving prison terms or are remanded in custody without bail, something no one would have imagined possible, even two years ago.

Jimmy Lai Chee-ying, founder of Apple Daily (pro-democratic newspaper), had been a keen supporter of Hong Kong’s June 4 candlelight vigil. His imprisonment, and freezing of his company’s assets to cripple his media group, had made headlines internationally last year.

Most outspoken voices of Hong Kong are almost either in jail or self-exile.

John Lee Ka-chiu, the man hand-picked by Beijing to be the incoming Chief Executive of Hong Kong on July 1, his last two posts being Chief of Security and Chief Secretary for Hong Kong, is a career policeman.

Lee is among the 11 Hong Kong ̶officials sanctioned by the US Treasury Department  in 2020 for “undermining Hong Kong’s autonomy and restricting the freedom of expression or assembly of the citizens of Hong Kong,” Lee, in particular, was “designated for being involved in coercing, arresting, detaining, or imprisoning individuals under the authority of the National Security Law, as well as being involved in its development, adoption, or implementation.”

Hong Kong has, beyond any doubt, turned into a police state.

It is sad to see Hong Kong’s autonomy fading so quickly. And the Tiananmen crackdown from 33 years ago has made another curse: Hong Kong, a city that once supported Tiananmen student protests in 1989, now faces its own crackdown by the CCP.

Being accustomed to express my thoughts with numbers and figures, let me put the picture in investment terms: the CCP has abruptly issued “a put option with a near term expiry date to kill Hong Kong,” and there is no genuine takers of this issuance, buyers or sellers alike.

Whatever the CCP does now, will ultimately choke and destroy Hong Kong. Ironically the CCP is on a different path to achieve just the same result, as depicted in some Hong Kong protestors’ slogan in the 2019 anti-extradition movement: “If we burn, Hong Kong burns with us.” (攬炒香港)

Meanwhile, the harsh political cleansing continues in Hong Kong.

Most of the 47 participants in the 2020 Hong Kong pro-democracy primaries, charged with the alleged crime of “conspiracy to commit subversion,” many of whom are former legislators and district councillors, remain remanded for well over a year now, have been refused bail, and are still waiting for trial dates at Hong Kong’s “kangaroo courts.”

The “confession sessions” are mostly announced through their Facebook accounts, which are managed by the detainees’ confidants. This might not last for too long, as there could be restrictions on social media coming soon in Hong Kong, starting with Telegram.

We start to see a lot of similarities now, between the prisoners of conscience in communist China and those in Hong Kong. The demands of Hong Kong people could no longer be heard, and those who resist the authority would be heavily punished.

Former paramount leader of the CCP, Deng Xiao Ping, was a man of controversy. He engineered China’s economic reforms that attracted foreign investments, but the Tiananmen Massacre made people look at him from a different light. The Tiananmen Massacre of 1989 would remain an indelible stain of modern China.

Deng pledged to allow Hong Kong remain unchanged for 50 years after the territory’s 1997 handover. Twenty five years on, it is now obvious the idea of keeping Hong Kong autonomous from the rest of communist China had hopelessly failed.

The CCP has now “DQed” (disqualified) Hong Kong, as the locals put it.

The so-called “brand new phase” of the “one country two systems” boasted by CCP influencers cannot be further from the truth. Each day grows darker for Hong Kong, and there is no point reminiscing the “glory” of our past.

While things look gloomy, and in the most extreme situation, the CCP might block off Hong Kong, we must all continue to “speak out loud” while we still can, to let the world know about the situation in Hong Kong. Let us also continue to fight for preserving our core values—our own language, our freedom and heritage.

Hongkongers, no matter where you are, especially prisoners of conscience held behind bars, let’s keep our faith in this difficult journey to freedom. The courage needed to keep up the spirit and hope, fighting for a free Hong Kong, is beyond what most people could comprehend. It comes with huge sacrifice. It’s never going to be easy to carry on, but we must have faith, that days are darkest before the dawn. We pray that a free China and a free Hong Kong will eventually come, one day.

Edward Chin was formerly Country Head of a UK publicly listed hedge fund, the largest of its kind measured by asset under management. Outside the hedge funds space, Chin is the Convenor of 2047 Hong Kong Monitor and a Senior Advisor of Reporters Without Borders (RSF, HK & Macau). Chin studied speech communication at the University of Minnesota and received his MBA from the University of Toronto. Email: edckchin@gmail.com

https://www.theepochtimes.com/from-tiananmen-in1989-to-hong-kongs-ongoing-political-crackdown_4489878.html

Communist China’s Global Plan Emerges

Austin Bay

June 2, 2022

Commentary

Communist China ’s violations of Taiwanese airspace and sea space are a physical indication Beijing targets Taiwan  as the world’s next Ukraine.

At the tactical level—the level where a shooter seeks a target—Beijing’s sorties probe Taiwan’s frontline air and sea defenses, seeking weaknesses and assessing reaction time.

At the strategic level—the Big Picture, which includes diplomacy and economics—the in-and-out feints of Beijing jets and fast attack warships test Taiwan’s allies. The feints ask this question: Do Taiwan’s alleged allies have the will to help the island resist a mainland Chinese assault?

That’s definitely a world-war-sized question.

Last week, President Joe Biden  said America was committed to Taiwan’s defense. Then Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin walked Joe’s words back, very adroitly.

Hard fact: In the past week Taiwan reported over 30 communist Chinese aircraft violated the island’s air defense zone. Twenty of the planes were high performance jet fighters—death dealers. The probes were the second largest incursion into Taiwan’s air defense zone in 2022.

It would be hyperbolic to call the air intrusions a specific test of Slow Joe’s confused commitment.

However, in the Big Picture, there is no doubt Beijing is challenging the United States and the rest of the world.

China is pursuing aggressive strategic initiatives aimed at achieving global domination. It’s based on a mythic world vision where China, a reborn Middle Kingdom, sets the global agenda. Forget “All Roads Lead to Rome.” After 2030 (give or take) all critical decisions proceed from Beijing.

Middle Kingdom defined: Chinese emperors thought they and their dominions were the center of the world. They were the only civilized human beings on the planet. China ruled. Everyone else? Tributary nations.

Now Chinese leader Xi Jinping has adopted the same grandiose schtick.

Here’s a point pertinent to this essay’s strategic analysis: There is nothing private in communist China. Corporations, assets, all organizations, and ultimately all people are subjects of the communist state. Being subjects of the state means the decisions of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) are final. All hail the Middle Kingdom.

Which takes us to the Ethiopian drilling rig incident in April 2007 when the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) attacked a Chinese oil facility in Ethiopia. The attack left 65 Ethiopian troops and nine Chinese workers dead. Seven Chinese workers were taken prisoner. The ONLF regarded oil drilling as theft.

China had already formed private security companies (PSCs) but after that incident the PSCs became increasingly powerful. Chinese oil rigs must be defended!

But Beijing has moved from protecting rigs to military preparation.

In May 2022, Jane’s Intelligence Review argued Chinese PRCs provide Beijing with a potentially wider foreign intelligence collection source.

They are more than that. PSCs have become forward deployed Chinese military forces. The Jane’s report is excellent, but it pulls its punches with lines like the PSCs are “led by former security officers, and their core personnel have been recruited from the PLA (Peoples Liberation Army), People’s Armed Police (PAP), and police force.” The Jane’s report acknowledges that China’s premier PSC, the Haiwei Group, “has close ties with the government.”

Remember: There is nothing private in communist China.

Like the giant Huawei electronics corporation (which faces numerous allegations of spying for Beijing), Haiwei’s ties to the government indicate it is beholden to the CCP.

Jane’s makes this sly admission: The connections between the PLA and PSCs are evidence of China’s “civil-military fusion (CMF) strategy.”

Where do the PSCs operate? In mineral rich sub-Saharan Africa and near African and South Asian seaports China regards as commercially and militarily valuable.

Beware: Beijing is attempting to create new security “arrangements” in the Pacific and central Asia. I suspect Beijing’s PSCs will take their weapons there as well.

Austin Bay is a colonel (ret.) in the U.S. Army Reserve, author, syndicated columnist, and teacher of strategy and strategic theory at the University of Texas–Austin. His latest book is “Cocktails from Hell: Five Wars Shaping the 21st Century.”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/communist-chinas-global-plan-emerges_4508285.html

Cancel All Debts to China

Sri Lanka’s debt is an example—but others should follow

Anders Corr

June 3, 2022

Commentary

One of the many threats to America from China  runs through Sri Lanka . In that South Asian country, there are ongoing food riots. Sri Lanka owes so much to Beijing that it had to surrender one of its ports, plus 15,000 acres, for 99 years . Beijing doubtless seeks to turn the port, about 250 miles from its arch-rival India, into a naval base.

Other countries also owe  dangerously unsustainable amounts of debt  to Beijing. Djibouti, Laos, Zambia, and Kyrgyzstan owe at least 20 percent of their respective gross domestic products (GDPs) to China. Most emerging market countries like this are paying more and more of their national income as interest. Once they can’t pay, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) springs the trap, demanding major concessions, including military bases that threaten the United States and its allies.

China already has a military base in Djibouti.

Beijing makes extraordinary profits on exports to the United States and Europe, then loans money to poorer countries around the world to finance infrastructure building by China’s own companies. The interest rates, repayment periods, and seniority of the debt (China gets paid first) are highly advantageous to Beijing because the CCP makes sure to grease the palms of leaders who cooperate with up to millions of dollars.

The usurious terms that result must be kept secret, or else they outrage voters. According to the Financial Times  on June 1, China “proved to be needlessly secretive in its dealings, so sovereign debt is more opaque than it was, as well as more fractured.”

The seniority of China’s loans is a stab in the back of international institutions like the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, along with U.S. corporations that lent money to emerging market countries long before Beijing came along.

“Unless and until debtors plagued by weak institutions and … corruption are held to account, a dollar borrowed will continue to be a dollar gained,” according to  Jay Newman, author of a book on illicit global finance.

Emerging market countries “will suck in as much money as they can, whenever they can—whether from markets, from bribes, from the IMF, or from China—and hide behind the notion that events spiraled beyond their control,” he wrote.

While the top politicians in these debtor countries spend their illicit millions—pennies compared to the billions in debt with which they saddle their countries—their people sink deeper into poverty and hunger.

In 2019, Sri Lanka was an upper-middle-income country with $8 billion  in reserves. Last month, it defaulted on $50 billion worth of international debts. Sri Lanka’s crisis has devolved  into government begging from neighbors and anti-government riots. In the short term, the country needs approximately 100,000 metric tons of food.

Sri Lanka is now plagued by fuel shortages, power blackouts, lack of medicine, delayed treatment at hospitals, and double-digit inflation. Rising interest rates in the United States and Europe will only further starve Sri Lanka and other emerging markets of capital.

India stepped in with $3 billion in credit and currency swaps for Sri Lanka. Still, India is the other country, in addition to China, that imposes egregiously opaque  terms on their foreign loans. They seek to make their debt senior to that of international institutions and U.S. loans. The latter, which typically have better terms for poorer countries, are being driven out.

During Sri Lanka’s time of greatest need, its “friend” China only offered a few hundred million dollars—in loans. The mask has dropped, and now it’s time for the CCP to try and extract another pound of flesh.

Sri Lanka, and the world, should say no. The CCP’s usurious debts globally are only imposed by bribing leaders and tricking voters. China’s regime is itself illegitimate, totalitarian, and allied with Russia.

Defaulting on loans to China would thus do the world a service, and ease a humanitarian crisis in emerging market countries. Western capital markets should not penalize Sri Lanka and other emerging markets for doing the world a favor.

Anders Corr has a bachelor’s/master’s in political science from Yale University (2001) and a doctorate in government from Harvard University (2008). He is a principal at Corr Analytics Inc., publisher of the Journal of Political Risk, and has conducted extensive research in North America, Europe, and Asia. His latest books are “The Concentration of Power: Institutionalization, Hierarchy, and Hegemony” (2021) and “Great Powers, Grand Strategies: the New Game in the South China Sea” (2018).

https://www.theepochtimes.com/cancel-all-debts-to-china_4509343.html

‘The Last Generation’ Reflects the Dehumanization of China by the CCP

In the ultimate statement of resistance, a new generation no longer believes in China

James Gorrie

Writer

June 3, 2022

Commentary

Despair is a powerful force. It’s the complete loss of hope. Without hope, there’s no meaning in life and no reason to go on living. That’s where the Chinese Communist Party ( CCP ) has led China ’s latest generation.

Or, as they call themselves, “The Last Generation.”

The Young and the Hopeless

This is more than just the flippant response of a young man despondent at the totalitarian lockdowns, surveillance, and state intrusion into his life. When police told him that his attitude and lack of cooperation in going to a quarantine camp would affect his family for three generations, the man replied, “This is the last generation.”

That “last generation” response resonated with China’s younger generation, which sees little to hope for in their lives. It quickly became a social media hashtag across the country, allowing young people to easily express their own despair with life under the CCP’s draconian decisions to lock down entire cities such as Shanghai and many others, isolating  tens of millions of young Chinese.

Ultimately, the response is borne of despair and disillusionment with life in modern China. One can certainly sympathize with their plight.

‘996 Culture’ Exploits a Generation

Typically, the generation of Chinese who are in their 20s and 30s today are the only child of their parents as a result of the CCP’s decades-long one-child policy. They may be married, with two sets of parents to take care of, but many are not married and live alone. Often as not, they have no children and may own an apartment that has fallen in value due to market manipulation by the state. Many cannot afford to buy an apartment, scrimping and saving just to get by.

Their jobs, if they have one , are long and tedious. These workers slave away their lives in high-tech roles that leave them little time in their lives. This new Chinese lifestyle has been cynically identified as the “ 996 culture ” in which young, college-educated workers are on the job from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. six days a week.

Although complaining about the “996” life is common on social media and has stirred a national discussion in China, it has been entirely supported by the upper echelons of business and political power for decades. Recent changes in the law have been made to reduce this modern phenomenon of high-tech labor exploitation, but it remains in place .

This exploitation and “ 996 culture ” serve the purposes of the state, of course, which gains both the productivity of its younger generation with the added benefit of it being too tired to do much of anything else.

A National Mental Health Crisis

What’s more, in the pandemic era, the state has become all-powerful and intrusive. Frequent testing , invasive monitoring by police, constant barrage of instructions over loudspeakers, and lack of communication with their peers have impacted the psyches of a generation .

Today’s generation has seen the country go from global leader in industry and even pandemic control to global pariah with a totalitarian government that has complete control over them.

The outcome is a national mental health crisis  that the government is ill-equipped to handle, much less recognize, characterized by mass disillusionment and apathy.

Run for Your Life–Out of China

In response, a new trend has emerged among the young known as “ runxue ” or the “run philosophy.” Its message is as simple as it is damning—it tells the young to run away from China for a better and safer life.

That new philosophy is as understandable as is the “last generation” sentiment. After all, young people need an opportunity to try new things, spread their wings, try, fail, and then try again without the stifling and constant pressure of the CCP’s boot on their necks and its presence in their minds.

From a behavioral perspective, the young generation is unlike any China has seen. During the one-child policy era, for example, many wanted more than one child while the state engaged in forced abortions  to enforce the policy.

Today, many young Chinese refuse to have any children. One poll showed two-thirds  of mostly women between the ages of 18 and 31 choose not to have children.

“Not bringing children to this country, to this land, will be the most charitable deed I could manage,” wrote a Weibo user  under the hashtag #thelastgeneration before it was censored.

Another wrote : “As ordinary people who’re not entitled to individual dignity, our reproductive organs will be our last resort.”

A Dystopian Present and Future

Even with government tax and income incentives to persuade the young to have up to three children, the idea of bringing a child into the dystopia  that is modern China isn’t appealing to the very generation on which the policy depends.

As one might expect, an aging population with below replacement birth rates does not bode well for the future of China or the CCP. That’s a separate topic, of course, but suffice to say that the CCP’s policies over the past several decades have created a generational and societal wasteland of which the consequences are only now beginning to become felt in the Party.

Of course, the CCP has handled such a devastating and apparently deep-seated mood among many of its young people, much like it approaches all the problems it faces: by stifling public discussion.

Naturally, the “last generation” is now censored across China’s social media channels. Apparently, the CCP’s thinking is that since it can’t be seen or expressed on social media, or any other media, the whole thing has gone away. The Party can confidently and officially declare that there is no more despair among the young.

Except, of course, that there’s despair among the younger generation. It’s borne of–or at least most identified with–the CCP’s extensive and cruel lockdown policies, but its roots are much deeper than that. What’s more, this deep despondency is rampant. Business crackdowns, lockdowns, and a collapsing economy have only made China less livable and the state more intimidating and aggressive toward its people.

Back in the early 1990s, when China was ascending rapidly, the promise of material wealth was on the lips of China’s leaders and the minds of the young generation. A popular saying at the time went, “I’d rather cry in your BMW than laugh on your bicycle.”

Today, much of China’s young generation is beyond tears, beyond numb, and perhaps irretrievably broken by their cruel government and are refusing to legitimize it by having children.

That’s a multidimensional problem for which the CCP lacks any empathy or real answers.

James R. Gorrie is the author of “The China Crisis” (Wiley, 2013) and writes on his blog, TheBananaRepublican.com. He is based in Southern California.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/the-last-generation-reflects-the-dehumanization-of-china-by-the-ccp_4505057.html

A War Over Taiwan Raises the Threat of Combined China-Russia Nuclear Operations

Rick Fisher

June 3, 2022

Commentary

It is all good that Sweden and Finland want to end their neutrality and join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and that President Joe Biden is apparently ready to commit U.S. military  forces to the defense of democratic Taiwan.

But as Biden failed to deter Russia ’s invasion of Ukraine, he is not committing to a level of rearmament necessary to defend an enlarged NATO and win a war against China  and Russia’s combined nuclear and conventional forces.

As Biden was engaged in a May 24 Tokyo meeting of the Quad (Australia, India, Japan, and the United States), Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping gave Biden and the Quad leaders a “combined” nuclear message.

On May 24, four People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) Xian H-6K bombers and two Russian Air Force Tupolev Tu-95MS bombers conducted the fourth joint China-Russia bomber exercise since 2019. This time, they flew over the Sea of Japan with a lengthy diversion south of the Miyako Strait to a region east of Taiwan, where they could launch potentially nuclear-armed cruise missiles against Taiwan and U.S. bases on Guam.

PLAAF H-6K bombers are armed with six CJ-20 precision-guided land-attack cruise missiles (LACMs) with a range of 930 miles, which can be armed with a tactical nuclear or non-nuclear warhead. In all, the PLA has about 125 H-6K/J/N bombers that can potentially launch salvos of 750 CJ-20 LACMs.

Russian Tu-95MS bombers, likely flying out of the Ukrainka air base in the Amur Oblast, are the latest 1980s-built versions of a four-engine turboprop bomber that first entered service in 1956, with about 60 in Russian service today.

Most carry about 16 1,500-mile-range Kh-55 LACMs or eight of the 1,800-mile-range Kh-101 LACMs that can be armed with nuclear warheads.

China and Russia held previous joint bomber exercises in 2019, 2020, and 2021, with the latter exercise featuring a separate Russian bomber sortie that flew to the west, likely simulating nuclear strikes against U.S. bases in Alaska and U.S. Navy strategic nuclear missile submarines based near Seattle.

These China-Russia bomber exercises are perhaps the most visible indicator that Russia intends to support China should it seek to impose a blockade or even invade Taiwan.

When Russia sent forces to participate in large-scale joint force exercises in China in August 2021, the PLA taught Russian troops how to drive PLA Ground Force ZTL-11 wheeled tanks that would be used in a Taiwan invasion.

In addition, these China-Russia bomber exercises are the most visible indicator they are engaged in some level of offensive nuclear coordination.

Joint exercises with nuclear-capable bombers employed to threaten the leaders of the Quad, and an American president traveling abroad at the time, indicate possible Chinese-Russian coordination of other offensive nuclear weapons like intermediate-range and intercontinental-range ballistic missiles.

China-Russia coordination of offensive nuclear weapons is also indicated by seven years of cooperation in nuclear missile defense. In 2016, 2017, and 2019, China and Russia held simulated command post-level missile defense exercises.

According to one Russian source report, these exercises involved coordinating short-range anti-missile systems like the Russian S-400 and the Chinese HQ-9. Still, both militaries are developing anti-missile systems to intercept theater and intercontinental-range nuclear missiles.

A Nov. 20, 2020, Russian report by Russian analyst Alexander Korolev noted a Chinese Ministry of Defense observation about the 2017 missile defense exercise: “The main task was ‘to work out joint planning of combat operations  when organizing air missile defences, operation and mutual fire support.’”

Would “mutual fire support” include the coordination of nuclear warhead armed intercontinental and theater ballistic and cruise missiles?

Then on Oct. 3, 2019, Putin announced that Russia was helping China develop a strategic missile early warning system. He stated: “This is a very serious thing, which will radically improve the defense capability of the People’s Republic of China.”

The extent of Russian assistance to China’s developing long-range strategic missile warning capability is not clear. However, Russian source reports have noted that Russian radar firms have been hired to develop software. Other reports hint that Russia may have offered technology for very large early warning radar and early warning satellites.

In addition, the November 2020 report notes the added advantages of Russia helping China with missile defense:

“It opens avenues for the integration of China and Russia’s early warning systems. When warning stations in Russia and China are merged into a single complex, this increases the speed with which the two countries can be warned of and intercept a potential missile attack … that integration of the two countries’ early warning systems facilitates further convergence of Russia and China’s defence strategies—resulting in the formation of a common defence policy.”

However, if Russian and Chinese early warning and missile defense capabilities become “merged into a single complex,” it would facilitate their coordination of offensive nuclear operations, possibly including a massive nuclear first strike against the United States.

A potential combined China-Russia nuclear offensive threat becomes a more serious consideration now that China is “sprinting” to achieve nuclear superiority over the United States.

While the U.S. Intelligence Community has offered the assessment that China could have 1,000 nuclear warheads by 2030, a basic counting of 360 new ICBM silos with 10-warhead capable DF-41 derived ICBMs, plus estimated production of submarine-launched missiles, points to a possible early 2030s capability that could exceed 4,000 warheads.

To this, one would add Russia’s currently acknowledged nearly 1,500 strategic nuclear warheads plus its 2,000 to 10,000 theater nuclear weapons and any growth in Russian nuclear inventories after the 2026 expiry of the extended 2010 U.S.-Russia New START nuclear limitation agreement.

One of Biden’s earliest strategic decisions was to extend New START, locking the U.S. strategic nuclear warhead count to about 1,550. The Biden administration just canceled a survivable and much-needed theater nuclear weapon, the nuclear-armed Sea Launched Cruise Missile (SLCM-N).

Suppose Biden is serious about defending Taiwan along with U.S. military allies in Asia. In that case, it is crucial that the United States address the threat of a coordinated China-Russia nuclear capability. This is essential for a credible U.S. “extended deterrence” to protect U.S. allies and prevent China and Russia from starting a war over Taiwan.

Washington should abandon New START now and replace warheads reduced from U.S. strategic missiles due to this treaty, which would increase U.S. warheads closer to 3,000.

Then the United States should increase its strategic nuclear warhead levels and arm some proportion of new U.S. theater range, medium, and intermediate-range ballistic and cruise missiles with tactical nuclear warheads.

Furthermore, to better match Russian and potential Chinese nuclear escalation challenges, the United States should revive its former Cold War capability in low-yield tactical nuclear artillery shells and deploy them with U.S. Army and Marine units.

Ultimately, an assured deterrence against a combined China-Russia and/or rogue North Korean nuclear threats may require that the United States share some nuclear deterrent technologies with Japan, South Korea, and Australia—a precedent already set by U.S.-UK nuclear weapon cooperation.

A combined China-Russia coordinated nuclear defensive and offensive capability would pose the greatest threat ever to the United States and its allied democracies. Accordingly, it is imperative to prepare for a rapid and decisive American nuclear buildup to sustain deterrence.

Rick Fisher is a senior fellow at the International Assessment and Strategy Center.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/a-war-over-taiwan-raises-the-threat-of-combined-china-russia-nuclear-operations_4511201.html

Never Forget the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre

We must learn the lessons of June 4, 1989, for the future of the world

Benedict Rogers

June 4, 2022 Updated: June 5, 2022

Commentary

As I watched the military parades at the start of Queen Elizabeth II’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations on June 2, I was full of admiration for the men and women in uniform who not only marched and played music with remarkable precision and discipline, but whose very purpose is to defend us as a country and our values of freedom, democracy, the rule of law, and human rights.

They answer to a civilian, democratically-elected government and a monarch who, though unelected, embodies both in her role and in her character a constitutional assurance to safeguard our democracy.

Tens of thousands of people joined the celebrations in London’s parks and streets, and millions more participated across the United Kingdom and around the world. I was surprised to learn through the media commentary that the Commonwealth, a network of 54 countries with the queen at its head, represents 2.6 billion people, almost a third of the world’s population.

But as we mark the extraordinary 70 th  anniversary of the queen’s coronation, my thoughts quickly turn to another anniversary that we commemorate today, the Tiananmen Square massacre  in Beijing on June 4, 1989.

Thirty-three years ago today, in China, the most populous country in the world with 1.4 billion people, Beijing ordered its army to turn their guns and tanks on its own citizens. The death toll is estimated to be at least 10,000 , with thousands more injured, arrested, jailed, and tortured.

To paraphrase the title of Charles Dickens’ novel “A Tale of Two Cities,” this weekend, the world focuses on a tale of two armies: the British Army, with the queen at its head, the epitome of public service and duty, and the People’s Liberation Army, with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) dictators in charge, the embodiment of repression, inhumanity, cruelty, mendacity, impunity, and criminality.

No one would suggest that the British army is perfect—but the difference is this: it is accountable to the people through our democratically-elected leaders, the system addresses acts of wrongdoing, and their objective is to protect the country, its people, and its values, not a political party or an ideology. In contrast, the People’s Liberation Army’s name is a misnomer. It is against the people and against “liberation.” It should be renamed “the People’s Repression Army.”

That is why it is so vital that we remember the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre for three reasons.

First, the CCP regime is trying desperately to make us forget. Across China, generations of people have grown up since 1989 with no knowledge of the scenes of barbarity that occurred in Tiananmen Square, surrounding streets, and in cities across the country on June 4 that year.

The butchers of Beijing and their successors in Zhongnanhai have censored news, spread propaganda, and brainwashed people so successfully that many people genuinely do not know, and those who do are afraid to remember.

Until three years ago, Hong Kong was the only place under Chinese sovereignty that could still commemorate the June 4 massacre. Thousands of people would gather each year in Victoria Park. When I lived in Hong Kong for the first five years after the handover , I would join the crowds in a candlelit vigil. Now those vigils are banned under the draconian national security law imposed by Beijing on Hong Kong.

Some activists, like lawyer Chow Hang-tung, are serving long jail sentences for organizing such vigils. Last year, no formal vigil was permitted, but Catholic churches held masses and Hongkongers flashed their mobile phone torches as a sign of remembrance.

This year, the Catholic Church in Hong Kong has said it will not hold any masses, and the police closed Victoria Park, warning that even visiting a park on June 4 could be a crime. Illegal gatherings could result in five years in prison. Presumably, flashing a phone torch light is risky, too.

Late last year, all remaining symbols of remembrance for the Tiananmen Square massacre—the Pillar of Shame, the Goddess of Democracy, and other memorabilia—were torn down and banned. Beijing wants to erase the memory of the June 4 massacre, even in Hong Kong.

Despite this, some brave Hongkongers still found ways to mark the anniversary. Miniature figurines of the Goddess of Democracy were hidden around the campus of the Chinese University of Hong Kong in defiance of the authorities.

That is all the more reason why we who have freedom outside China must ensure that the spotlight remains on the June 4 anniversary. Later today, I will be speaking at three different rallies in London at key landmarks: outside the prime minister’s residence in Downing Street, Piccadilly Circus, and outside the Chinese embassy. We must not be silenced.

The second reason we must keep the spotlight on the Tiananmen Square massacre is simply this: we should have learned the lesson in 1989 that a regime that turns its guns on its people is not a regime to be trusted, respected, or legitimized. It says a lot about the nature and character of a regime if it is prepared to slaughter thousands of peaceful protesters in full view of the world.

Until recently, we failed to learn that lesson. For a time, myself included, many of us thought that we saw signs of liberalization in China in the 1990s and early 2000s. I traveled more than 50 times in China throughout that period, including living in China several times for short stints and living in Hong Kong for the first five years after the handover. I made many Chinese friends, including human rights lawyers, bloggers, religious leaders, and civil society activists, who appeared at the time to have a certain amount of space and who themselves felt cautiously optimistic that it might expand further.

#HongKongers  – & all peoples suffering under #China   #CCP  regime:

As we begin the 33rd anniversary commemoration & mourning of #TiananmenSquareMassacre   #June4th , here is my personal message, handwritten by myself in traditional Chinese characters, over 4 pages, for you, from my   pic.twitter.com/HPxQOCbMkP

— Benedict Rogers 羅傑斯 (@benedictrogers) June 3, 2022

Few of us were so naïve as not to understand that the CCP regime was always repressive, but it did appear that for a while, the red lines had become more distant, and space for some degree of free thought had expanded. Over the past decade of Xi Jinping’s rule, that view has been entirely reversed, as literally all that space has been shut down and many of its inhabitants locked up.

In China today, there are slow-motion June 4 massacres taking place all the time. Not with tanks and guns, but with repressive laws, prison camps, surveillance technology, and instruments of torture.

The Uyghurs are facing genocide, as is increasingly recognized by the international community. Atrocities in Tibet have increased. The persecution of Christians has intensified. The persecution of Falun Gong and forced organ harvesting  has continued. And Hong Kong has turned from one of Asia’s freest and most open cities into a police state.

I was denied entry to Hong Kong in 2017, have received numerous threats to myself and my mother over recent years, and have been warned by the Hong Kong Police Force officially that I could face jail in Hong Kong if they could get their hands on me. That does not worry me because there is little they can do as long as I don’t get extradited, but it illustrates the dangers for Hongkongers, Uyghurs, Tibetans, and mainland Chinese-exiled dissidents. If the CCP is willing to threaten a foreign activist in this way, the dangers for those it regards as its “own people” are even greater.

And that leads me to my third reason why today’s anniversary matters. We must always learn from history. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has surely taught us that. A regime that is allowed to massacre thousands of people with impunity is not only a threat to its own people—it becomes a threat to us.

All dictatorships are like bad drivers with one eye in the rear-view mirror. If no one tries to pull them over for their speeding or drunken driving, they’ll carry on, causing carnage. Until now, for 33 years, the rest of the world has failed to keep the CCP regime in check—and as a result, the regime has been emboldened. That is why today we have a Uyghur genocide, the total destruction of Hong Kong’s freedoms, the continued tragedy of Tibet, religious persecution, organ harvesting, and the all-out assault on civil society in China.

For my new book, “The China Nexus: Thirty Years In and Around the Chinese Communist Party’s Tyranny,” which will be published in October, I interviewed several prominent activists and journalists who were in Beijing on June 4, 1989. And their stories are consistent.

Yang Jianli, a prominent exiled Chinese activist, told me that in the early hours of June 4, he and his colleagues cycled into the square.

“We saw the troops open fire, and we saw many people killed,” he told me in an emotional online call. “It was so hard to believe. I saw tanks moving at high speed, tear gas, machine gun fire, and I heard so much screaming. That was what propelled me into becoming an activist.”

Veteran Canadian journalist Jan Wong, author of “Red China Blues,” who was in Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989, told me what she saw firsthand.

“They were shooting, people were running, and people tried to rescue others,” she said. “They brought out bodies on bicycle seats and pedicabs. They just ran into gunfire.”

Later that night, Wong herself narrowly missed a bullet fired into the wall of the Beijing Hotel, just inches from the balcony where she had stood observing the carnage.

Wong saw the infamous “Tank Man” scene in real-time.

“The army had been running people over, and I had watched the tanks. Then my husband pointed to this man standing in front of a tank. … I saw this whole dance between ‘Tank Man’ and the tank. He tried to stop the tank like a soccer goalie. Then he climbed onto the tank, tried to talk, then climbed down again,” she recalled. Then he “melted into the crowd.”

In addition to “Tank Man,” Wong believes that the tank driver was a “real hero” because he refused to run the man over.

I believe we need to do three things going forward.

We need to ensure that history keeps a record that—despite Beijing’s best efforts—the massacres of 1989 are not forgotten and that one day the cause for which so many gave their lives prevails in China: freedom, justice, peace, and truth.

Then we need to try to find the “tank drivers” in the regime who refused to run people over. As hard as it may be, we have to do to the CCP regime what they do with such skill to us—we must pursue a divide-and-rule policy and cause them to split.

And at the same time, we must create a “United Front” to fight their “United Front.” Unity does not mean uniformity. We can welcome and respect the diversity of thought, strategy, tactics, and approach. But we should endeavor to encourage a “unity of spirit and purpose.”

Egos and rivalries should be set to one side, personal agendas suspended, and everyone who opposes the regime in Beijing should find a way to work together—or at least not work against each other. Only when we do that—and create our own “United Front”—can we have a hope of advancing.

Thirty-three years on from the massacre, let us not allow China’s fallen heroes to be forgotten. And let us remind the free world, as a large part of it celebrates an icon of human dignity, the queen, this weekend, of the big challenge that faces us ahead in confronting the problem of the CCP regime. Action on that front would go some way toward respecting the legacy of those who stood—and fell—in Tiananmen Square in 1989.

Benedict Rogers is a human rights activist and writer. He is the co-founder and chief executive of Hong Kong Watch, senior analyst for East Asia at the international human rights organization CSW, co-founder and deputy chair of the UK Conservative Party Human Rights Commission, and member of the advisory group of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC), the International Coalition to End Transplant Abuse in China, and the Stop Uyghur Genocide Campaign.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/never-forget-the-1989-tiananmen-square-massacre_4511315.html

The UN Fails Again on Human Rights in China

The UN’s failure on China illustrates a problem that goes far deeper among human rights advocates

Anders Corr

June 6, 2022

Commentary

The United Nations’ visit  to China ’s Xinjiang  region elicited outrage among human rights  advocates and Western government officials.

Yes, U.N. Human Rights chief Michelle Bachelet  should long have been more forceful in her denunciations of Beijing for its genocide against the Uyghurs.

Yes, she should have refused a visit to the region unless she was going to really investigate.

Yes, Bachelet mouthed Chinese Communist Party (CCP) talking points.

Yes, she hyped what she saw rather than acknowledged that to which she was denied access.

Yes, the United Nations is overly influenced by China.

And yes, she should resign so somebody with a true moral backbone can take her place. The U.N. human rights chief should never sacrifice truth for access, which Bachelet did.

Bachelet should have called for international sanctions against China for its human rights abuse. But instead, she agreed with Beijing on more high-level discussions and “working groups,” which fit the CCP’s take-and-talk strategy of faits accomplis while providing the illusion of progress through an active diplomatic schedule.

Bachelet is a product of her milieu, composed of heads of state and U.N. ambassadors who are more concerned with increasing trade and profit in their own countries than human rights abroad. She is apparently attempting to change China through persuasion rather than the force of economic sanctions. This is unrealistic, as she should know. It leads to the increasingly dangerous illusion of progress.

Thus, the outrage among human rights organizations and Western governments who expect more of the United Nations.

But all of this, and the prediction that the United Nations would not do enough against China’s human rights abuse, should have been obvious decades ago. In 1989, China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) killed as many as 10,000 pro-democracy protesters in Tiananmen Square.

That was 33 years ago. It has since only gotten worse and more hidden. Those who are surprised by Bachelet apparently still haven’t learned.

It took just a couple of years after 1989 for American, European, and British businesses to convince their governments to green light their trampling of the dead and rush to keep making more money in China.

Criticism of our own corporate complicity and influence on our democratic governments—which give Beijing and Bachelet a pass to continue operating under a fig leaf of U.N. respectability in New York, Geneva, Paris, and Rome—is missing among mainstream human rights advocates, just as real criticism of the genocide is missing from Bachelet’s press conference and promised but unforthcoming U.N. report on Xinjiang.

Until we grapple with corporate influence in maintaining the fiction of progress by Western and U.N. human rights organizations, and their self-serving elision of the depth of genocide in China that goes beyond Uyghurs and Tibetans to Falun Gong and forced organ harvesting , we will not address the CCP’s human rights abuse in a fully honest way.

Those so-called human rights advocates who refuse to highlight the role of the CCP, refuse to call Beijing’s regime totalitarian, refuse to acknowledge how the West’s corporate political influence enables human rights abuse, refuse to offer prescriptions to finally defeat the CCP, and refuse to acknowledge the CCP’s rights abuse against other groups in addition to the Uyghurs, including Christians, Taoists, and Falun Gong, are like Bachelet, part of an elite milieu that prefers the illusion of human rights advocacy rather than the harsh reality of unmitigated truth in all of its completeness.

Human rights groups do highlight some of China’s problems, as Bachelet did in her virtual press conference  from China. She called on Beijing to increase the representation of women in politics and business, repeal arbitrary detentions, abolish the death penalty, allow for more judicial independence, transparency, and oversight, and prioritize informing Uyghur families of the whereabouts of their missing loved ones in China.

Bachelet said the treatment of lawyers, academics, the press, and human rights defenders, including in Hong Kong, is “deeply worrying.” She supported non-governmental organizations in China that advance gender equality and the rights of LGBTQ and the disabled. She supported broader political participation and freedom of expression. She called for more religious, educational, and linguistic freedom in Tibet.

Bachelet called on Beijing to ratify the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. She also called on China’s civil society to monitor Beijing’s compliance with International Labor Organization requirements and “highlight gaps.”

Beijing would not have welcomed any of these messages. Bachelet did not, therefore, only mouth CCP talking points.

But as human rights advocates are falling over themselves to reiterate, none of this is enough. What she and they are doing is one step forward, two steps back. Things are getting worse in China and the world, and the business-as-usual approach to human rights must end. On a matter this important, we need the full and unmitigated truth, along with clear advocacy for the tough economic sanctions that have at least a chance of actually making a change.

Anders Corr has a bachelor’s/master’s in political science from Yale University (2001) and a doctorate in government from Harvard University (2008). He is a principal at Corr Analytics Inc., publisher of the Journal of Political Risk, and has conducted extensive research in North America, Europe, and Asia. His latest books are “The Concentration of Power: Institutionalization, Hierarchy, and Hegemony” (2021) and “Great Powers, Grand Strategies: the New Game in the South China Sea” (2018).

https://www.theepochtimes.com/the-un-fails-again-on-human-rights-in-china_4513035.html

A New Era of Appeasement Toward the CCP

Ching Cheong

June 7, 2022

Commentary

The Biden administration’s highly accommodative approach will likely usher in another era of appeasement toward the Chinese Communist Party ( CCP ) and put the free world in harm’s way.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken delivered a lackluster China policy speech on May 26 in which he reiterated President Joe Biden’s oft-quoted policy of not seeking a new cold war with China, not seeking “unilateral changes to the status quo,” not seeking to strengthen alliances against it, and not supporting Taiwan’s independence.

To be fair, the administration is fully aware of the potential threat the CCP poses to the world. While Blinken stressed that Washington sees Beijing as a “long-term challenge” with the intention and ability to change the world order, Biden disclosed in his May 27 speech that CCP leader Xi Jinping told him that the authoritarian political system would ultimately prevail over the democratic one. Clearly, Xi believes that China will replace the United States in the long run.

Unfortunately, the administration’s awareness of the CCP’s intentions is not translated into firm actions to eliminate the threat but to accommodate it.

The three-thronged approach outlined by Blinken—“invest, align, compete”—does not confront the CCP head-on. It is but another way of expressing Biden’s “three Cs policy”—compete, cooperate, confront—which is wishful thinking. Such an approach assumes that the CCP is like-minded in its strategic thinking so that it is ready to carve out bilateral relations into three portions, fitting each to one of the Cs. It also assumes that the CCP is still willing to accept a U.S.-led world order. Such an appeasement-oriented approach will result in an aggrandizing CCP that eventually comes to plague the free world.

In the last 75 years, Sino-American history saw three major rounds of U.S. appeasement toward the CCP that eventually helped breed the communist monster of today. In the immediate post-World War II years, at the height of the Chinese civil war between the CCP and the ruling Kuomintang (KMT), the CCP succeeded in deceiving the American government that it would bring about a democratic and free China if it won. CCP founder Mao Zedong provided a written question and answer about democracy to Reuters correspondent Doon Campbell, which was published in the Xinhua Ribao on Sept. 27, 1945:

“Question: What are the concept and definition of a free and democratic China according to the Chinese Communist Party?

“A free and democratic China will be this kind of nation: all levels of government, including the central government, are created by general and equal secret balloting and are responsible to the people who elected them. It will implement Dr. Sun Yat-sen’s three principles of democracy, [Abraham] Lincoln’s principle of ‘of the people, by the people, and for the people’, and [Franklin D.] Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms as enshrined in the Atlantic Charter. It will assure the independence and unity of the nation and cooperate with all democratic powers.” (The “Four Freedoms” refer to freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear.)

This, and numerous similar proclamations, tipped the balance. The U.S. government decided to help the CCP by reining in the KMT central government, which was portrayed as corrupt by the CCP’s propaganda. President Harry Truman sent George Marshall to broker a ceasefire, which in effect tied the KMT’s hand in favor of the CCP leading, among other factors, to its final victory.

This was the first American appeasement that helped grow the CCP. The U.S. political elites felt terribly sorry for it, especially when both countries soon fought each other in the Korean War. This prompted a debate over who “lost” China, which was considered a “disaster in Asia” or an “avoidable catastrophe” by various political scientists.

The second spell of appeasement came in 1972 with the Nixon breakthrough. Aimed at containing the USSR, the realist Henry Kissinger persuaded U.S. President Richard Nixon to dump the KMT-run Taiwan in favor of the CCP-led China. (Incidentally, Kissinger’s recent advice for Ukraine to surrender territories to Russia in exchange for a ceasefire reminded one of his Machiavellian advice 50 years ago regarding Taiwan).

Washington did not block China’s entry into the United Nations and allowed it to take over the U.N. Security Council’s permanent membership from the KMT. This threw the door wide open for the CCP to widen its global space. Clearly, the United States was helping the CCP to come close to its world ambition.

The third spell came in 2000 when President Bill Clinton decided to “delink” China’s most favored nation privilege and human rights when many Chinese people were still reeling from the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. He also cleared the way for China’s entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO), misbelieving that a more open China would be less repressive. This reflected a serious lack of understanding of the nature of the CCP regime.

WTO membership helped propel the Chinese economy into the second-largest one in the world in a short span of two decades. During this third round of appeasement, the CCP has grown into a formidable size with the will and ability to challenge the United States—ideologically, politically, and militarily.

It is high time for the United States to learn from the consequences of its appeasement policy. President Ronald Reagan’s famous 1987 “Berlin Wall speech” that he delivered at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin—in which he challenged the USSR to “tear down this wall”—changed the course of history, and sets an example for Biden to confront communism with resolve.

Ching Cheong is a graduate of the University of Hong Kong. In his decades-long journalism career, he has specialized in political, military, and diplomatic news in Hong Kong, Beijing, Taipei, and Singapore.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/a-new-era-of-appeasement-toward-the-ccp_4511546.html

China Launches Its Third Aircraft Carrier

Rick Fisher

June 8, 2022

Commentary

Later this month, the People’s Liberation Army Navy is expected to launch its third aircraft  carrier, its first “flattop” capable of conventional takeoff or landing operations.

With this new carrier, and the many to follow, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) will begin using combined aircraft carrier battle groups and amphibious warfare battle groups to project power in pursuit of its goal of achieving global hegemony.

What is ominous is that while the U.S. Navy has been operating aircraft carriers for 100 years, it has taken China ’s People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) only some 40 years to develop and build a large flattop carrier with an advanced carrier air wing, which will be almost a capable as modern U.S. nuclear-powered carriers.

Component assembly for the latest Type-003 carrier started in May to July 2020 in Jiangnan Shipyard near Shanghai. However, component construction may have started from 2016 to 2017, for a total time of five to six years.

This compares to six to eight years for the construction of the first U.S. Navy Gerald Ford class nuclear-powered aircraft carrier or five years for the John F. Kennedy, the second of this class.

But the United States only has one shipyard, Newport News Shipyard in Norfolk, Virginia, capable of building one carrier at a time. In contrast, China’s Jiangnan shipyard can quickly build two Type-003 carriers simultaneously, and the Dalian shipyard has built one smaller 65,000-ton Liaoning class carrier.

Total displacement for the Type-003 is estimated at 90,000 tons, and it has a length of about 980 feet. It will operate three catapults that may utilize advanced electromagnetic launch (EML), which was rather difficult for the United States to develop for the U.S. Navy’s new 100,000-ton, 1,092-foot-long Gerald Ford class aircraft carrier.

But what is also very significant is that the PLA has developed a balanced 40-plus aircraft air wing for the Type-003 and subsequent carriers that soon will feature the PLAN’s first carrier-based 5 th  generation fighter.

This will be the Shenyang Aircraft Corporation’s 5 th  generation J-35 strike fighter, now in testing, featuring twin engines, stealth shaping, and internal weapons carriage. The J-35 is about the same size as the U.S. Navy’s 5 th  generation F-35C, which commenced carrier deployments in 2021.

The PLA Naval Air Force’s initial carrier strike fighter, the Shenyang J-15B, a much-modified copy of the 1980s Russian Sukhoi Su-33 canard (stabilizer in front of the wing) carrier fighter, will likely feature 4-plus generation capabilities like an active electronically-scanned array (ASEA) radar, 125-mile-range PL-15 air-to-air missiles, and an array of anti-ship/ground attack missiles.

It is likely that a dedicated electronic warfare (EW) variant of the J-15B will be developed, mirroring the U.S. Navy’s Boeing F/A-18G Growler EW strike fighter.

In addition, the PLAN is testing the Xian Aircraft Corporation KJ-600, a twin-turboprop airborne early warning and control system (AWACS) aircraft with a large radar radome, copying the configuration of the U.S. Northrop-Grumman E-2 Hawkeye. It should be expected that the KJ-600 will form the basis for anti-submarine warfare (ASW) and carrier cargo variants.

As the PLA has for over 20 years placed great emphasis on the development of unmanned combat platforms, the Type-003 can also be expected to eventually feature large unmanned combat aerial vehicles to help with ASW, surveillance, and strike missions.

Over the last decade, Chinese sources have not been clear whether the PLAN will build at least one more non-nuclear powered but likely improved Type-003, or just build one and transition quickly to serial production of nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, called the Type-004.

Production of a second Type-003 could be completed within five years, more rapidly giving the PLA up to four carrier battle groups that could overwhelm the one U.S. Navy carrier battle group based in Japan, better assuring that the PLA could mount a successful invasion of Taiwan.

With four carrier battle groups, the PLA could also more actively support CCP coercive diplomacy in the South Pacific, the Indian Ocean, Africa, and Latin America.

However, a more rapid transition to nuclear-powered Type-004 carriers would enable the PLAN to rapidly build the world’s first completely nuclear-powered carrier battle groups, which Chinese sources strongly suggest could include nuclear-powered escort cruisers and nuclear-powered underway replenishment ships.

The U.S. Navy has no plans to revive the production of nuclear-powered escort warships or begin producing nuclear-powered underway replenishment ships.

A completely nuclear-powered carrier battle group would give the CCP options to very quickly deploy naval power globally for combat or coercive missions. For example, from bases on Hainan Island, it could arrive in waters north of Australia in less than a week.

Even if the PLA just used its Jiangnan shipyard to produce four carriers per decade, it could accumulate to 10 PLAN aircraft carriers and deployed battle groups by the early 2040s.

Absent increased funding, the U.S. Navy will likely be hard pressed to fulfill plans to build and launch four Ford class carriers this decade to advance the replacement of aging Nimitz class carriers.

But having only one shipyard capable of nuclear carrier construction, the U.S. Navy will be hard pressed to maintain a fleet of 20 carriers, which means that due to maintenance cycles, only about five may be available for crisis reaction, not all of which would be in the Pacific.

To counter China’s rapidly deploying nuclear carrier battle groups, the U.S. Navy requires more “carriers” that are far less expensive to produce, can supplement the $13 billion Ford class, and can also pack impressive firepower.

To begin testing the concept of a small carrier, this past April, the U.S. Navy used the $4 billion, 45,000-ton America-class amphibious assault ship USS Tripoli to embark on its largest air wing of 20 5 th  generation Marine Corp F-35B short takeoff vertical landing (STOVL) strike fighters, which do not require expensive aircraft recovery systems.

A slightly larger America-class ship could host a solid 20 5 th  generation F-35B short takeoff vertical landing (STOVL) fighters, plus another 20 or so manned and unmanned vertical takeoff support aircraft, and 200 anti-ship ballistic missiles (ASBMs) based on the SM-6 surface-to-air missile (SAM) with a potential range of 1,200 miles.

Within the range of its ASBMs, guided by manned or unmanned support aircraft or even F-35Bs, such a smaller carrier could coordinate with land-based ASBMs or strike aircraft to destroy much larger PLAN carriers and their battle groups.

Such smaller carriers could also host several hundred Marines to work with larger Marine amphibious units, and/or Army Airborne forces, to preempt or counter global PLA amphibious and airborne assaults when needed.

A force of 10 such smaller carriers armed with a large number of ASBMs would better enable the U.S. Navy to deter Chinese naval-amphibious-airborne aggression that could emerge simultaneously at multiple global strategic locations—a threat that becomes increasingly likely as the PLA builds many more conventional and nuclear-powered aircraft carriers.

Rick Fisher is a senior fellow at the International Assessment and Strategy Center.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/china-launches-its-third-aircraft-carrier_4520765.html

Has China Already Won?

John Mac Ghlionn

June 10, 2022

Commentary

The United States and China  are engaged in a technological arms race . The country with the best artificial intelligence, quantum computing technologies, and cyber weapons will be best positioned to win the wars of tomorrow.

Which begs the question: Who looks likely to win these tech-infused wars?

According to Richard Silberglitt, a senior physical scientist at the RAND Corporation, although the United States remains the global technological leader , “China and the United States are now approaching parity, or in some cases, the United States is falling behind, in areas of close competition.”

In other words, the United States is in the lead, but China is catching up. If we look closer, it appears China has overtaken the United States in many key sectors.

In an effort to combat the threat from the Chinese regime, the U.S. National Intelligence and Security Center (NCSC) has prioritized the following five key sectors: AI, quantum computing, biotechnology, semiconductors, and autonomous systems.

According to the most recent NCSC report , these five sectors “produce technologies that may determine whether America remains the world’s leading superpower or is eclipsed by strategic competitors in the next few years.”

As the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) continues to employ various legal and illegal methods  to overtake the United States, I ask this: Has the report arrived about five years too late?

In all five sectors, as I demonstrate below, China is already ahead.

Let’s start with AI. As the NCSC researchers noted, China already possesses “the might, talent, and ambition” to win the AI arms race.

Nicolas Chaillan, who left his role as the U.S. Air Force’s first chief software officer in October last year, certainly agrees . Frustrated by the U.S. military’s lack of digital progress, he believes China has already won  the AI race, blaming “stale” technology  and bureaucratic red tape for the lack of innovation in the United States.

In an interview with Verdict, Michael Orme, senior analyst at GlobalData and a China specialist, echoed Chaillan’s concerns. Orme suggested that Beijing  has already “leveraged its wealth of data and the surveillance state to gain AI supremacy.”

The two men appear to be correct. In 2021, China overtook the United States  in AI journal citations. And for those who say citations aren’t everything, I agree. However, citations shouldn’t be overlooked.

Then, there’s quantum development, an area China is set to dominate . If China does achieve quantum supremacy, which looks increasingly likely, then the CCP will have the power to inflict further damage  on U.S. national security. In July last year, a Chinese research team built the world’s most powerful quantum computer. In this game of high-tech chess, their creation, which surpassed Google’s 2019 creation , gives China the “ quantum advantage .” More worryingly, with such advances, China looks set to create the world’s first unhackable internet communications network .

Furthermore, according to a report published by Booz Allen , a global leader in cyber solutions, China’s quantum developments will “eventually undermine all popular current public-key encryption methods, and plausibly boost the speed and power of artificial intelligence.”

The researchers warn that by the end of the decade, “Chinese threat groups will likely collect data that enables quantum simulators to discover new economically valuable materials, pharmaceuticals, and chemicals.”

The Booz Allen researchers added, “most of quantum computing’s potential lies more than a decade in the future—but risk management must start now.” The United States, the CCP’s number one enemy, should take note.

The third key sector is biotechnology. As a report published by Insider warned , Chinese biotech companies are among the most powerful in the world. The Chinese biotech industry has a global footprint, stretching from Uganda  to the United States. In August of last year, the Chinese company BeiGene announced plans  to build a 42-acre research and development center in New Jersey.

Rather alarmingly, according to a New York Times report , the Chinese regime is currently “collecting medical, health and genetic data around the world,” using “the intersection of technology and genetic and biological research as an area of competition and espionage.”

China has repeatedly emphasized the importance  of biology in future warfare. According to He Fuchu , a military medical scientist, the Chinese are busy working on “new brain-control weapons and equipment that interfere with and control human consciousness,” all in the hope of making “unmanned warfare possible.”

The fourth key sector involves semiconductors. For the uninitiated, without semiconductors, using smartphones, laptops, washing machines, and refrigerators simply wouldn’t be possible . Essentially, semiconductors are the brains of electronic devices . Until recently, the United States fully controlled the supply of these “brains.”

Today, however, China is on the ascendancy. Last year alone, the number of Chinese semiconductor firms tripled . The metaverse, the next step in the evolution of the internet, will rely heavily on semiconductors , hence China’s desire to become a dominant force .

The final sector involves autonomous systems, such as self-driving cars and surveillance drones. Baidu, China’s equivalent to Google, is leading the self-driving race . Last year, the Chinese company launched the first ever paid driverless taxi service .

In the United States, meanwhile, self-driving vehicles are decades away  from becoming a reality. China also leads the way  in the manufacturing and sales of surveillance drones; the United States is one of its biggest customers . If this isn’t worrying enough, China recently created an autonomous weapon that, according to reports , “uses explosives to destroy enemy satellites.” As tensions heat up between China and the United States, one shouldn’t be surprised if American satellites become a primary target.

All, of course, is not lost. The United States is still a supreme force. However, its position as a world leader is being tested by the Chinese regime. As we move forward, expect the testing to increase in both frequency and force.

John Mac Ghlionn is a researcher and essayist. His work has been published by the New York Post, The Sydney Morning Herald, Newsweek, National Review, and The Spectator US, among others. He covers psychology and social relations, and has a keen interest in social dysfunction and media manipulation.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/has-china-already-won_4522279.html