Tag: China

WWIII is Already Underway

If Ron Unz is correct and Vladimir Putin and Xi Xinping have already reduced their international travel due to concerns about assassination by Clown World, I think it’s safe to conclude that peace is not even a remote possibility in the near future:

The Hudson Institute is a leading DC think-tank, quite influential in mainstream political circles, and a report with five co-authors that runs 128 pages must surely carry considerable weight in establishment circles. So when it suggests that the Chinese government is fragile and might soon collapse, those policy makers hostile to China are likely to take such views quite seriously.

Suppose that a leading Chinese think-tank with close ties to the PRC government published a weighty report predicting that America might soon collapse, then went on to argue that Chinese military forces would need to be deployed in our own country to seize our key military and technological assets and also establish a new government organized along Chinese lines. I doubt that most American political leaders or ordinary citizens would view such Chinese proposals with total equanimity, and indeed the blogger quoted a shocked Western pro-China business executive who succinctly summarized some of the striking elements in that Hudson Institute research study:

…which provides detailed operational plans for inducing Chinese regime collapse through systematic information operations, financial warfare, and covert influence campaigns, followed by detailed protocols for U.S. post-collapse management including military occupation, territorial reorganization, and the installation of a political and cultural system vassalized to the U.S.

Rand and Hudson are two of our leading mainstream think-tanks and the New Yorker is one of our most prestigious media outlets. Taken together those major articles and reports could easily convince the ignorant and suggestible ideologues in our government that the Chinese military was weak and the Chinese government fragile and ripe for collapse.

If delusional beliefs regarding the fragility of the Iranian and Russian governments had already led to American assassination attempts against their top leadership, similar reasoning might easily result in targeting those of China as well, especially President Xi Jinping, widely regarded as the strongest Chinese leader in decades. And given all of the recent American assassination projects, the Chinese government might certainly have itself reached such conclusions.

China and Russia are the two leading members of the BRICS movement, which held its 17th summit last month in Brazil. The media noted that neither Russian President Putin nor Chinese President Xi attended in person, with the latter missing his first BRICS summit since he came to power 13 years ago.

Xi’s surprising absence caused some discussion in the media. I initially paid little attention to this issue, but then some commenter suggested an obvious explanation: Both Xi and Putin were concerned about the possible risk of American assassination.

Brazil is located within the Western Hemisphere, a region under full American military domination. Given the extremely reckless and unpredictable behavior of the American government, with President Trump having publicly threatened to assassinate Iran’s top leader just a couple of weeks earlier, both China and Russia may have believed that some risks should best be avoided.

Over the years, Xi and Putin had both met on numerous occasions with Iranian President Raisi, with whom they had developed an excellent working relationship, and surely his 2024 death in a mysterious helicopter crash while returning from a foreign trip would have concentrated their minds.

It’s been very difficult for Americans to understand that the rest of the world doesn’t aspire to become like them. And while Americans also like to think of the USA as the big dog on the world stage, I don’t think many of them grasp that many countries around the world, including some very powerful ones, are beginning to conclude that the big dog is now rabid.

And what is the point of talking to a rabid dog? What can one possibly hope to accomplish?

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What Strength?

The UK Defense Secretary apparently hasn’t kept up on his reading of Jane’s Fighting Ships:

The United Kingdom could resort to military force against China in the event of an escalation over Taiwan, British Defense Secretary John Healey has said, though he emphasized that London continues to prefer a diplomatic resolution. Speaking to The Telegraph during a visit to Australia, Healey said Britain would “secure peace through strength” if necessary – marking one of the clearest signals yet from a senior UK official regarding the possibility of direct confrontation with Beijing.

Healey made the remarks as the HMS Prince of Wales, a British aircraft carrier equipped with F-35 fighter jets, docked in the northern Australian city of Darwin. It is the first time in nearly 30 years that a British strike group has arrived in the region. The carrier is on a nine-month Pacific deployment, participating in Australia’s Talisman Sabre exercise and visiting ports in Japan and South Korea.

”If we have to fight, as we have done in the past, Australia and the UK are nations that will fight together. We exercise together and by exercising together and being more ready to fight, we deter better together,” Healey said when asked what London would do in case of an escalation around Taiwan.

What strength? The UK hasn’t been a major military power for 70 years! Forget the seas, Britain doesn’t even rule its own borders anymore. I’m not sure the Chinese would even notice if the UK actually went to war against them.

Clown Worlders are observably delusional in the extreme.

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China’s Demographic Decline

It’s not a great mystery why China recently revised its marriage and divorce laws to make the former easier and significantly disincentivize women from pursuing the latter:

The number of Chinese kindergartens has fallen by a quarter in four years, prompting the closure of tens of thousands of schools in the country as a precipitous drop in births hits the education system.

Enrolments in China’s kindergartens have declined by 12mn children between 2020 and 2024, from a peak of 48mn, according to data from the country’s ministry of education. The number of kindergartens, serving Chinese children aged 3-5, has also fallen by 41,500 from a high of nearly 295,000 in 2021.

Falling enrolments are now “baked into the system and that’s not going to change”, said Stuart Gietel-Basten, director of the Center for Aging Science at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. He added that compared with five or 10 years ago, the decline in births was “huge”.

The contraction of China’s pre-school system is a foretaste of the challenges to come for business and policymakers from China’s demographic decline, which is expected to be one of the most rapid in the world. China has recorded three consecutive years of population decline to 2024 following the decades-long policy, ended in 2016, that limited many couples to one child. While the number of births rose by about 520,000 last year to 9.3mn, following a record low in 2023, they were still outpaced by deaths and have declined by nearly half since the peak of 17.9mn in 2017.

It’s fascinating to observe that the importation of Western feminism has proven to be even worse for Chinese fertility than the notorious one-child policy that was in place from 1978 to 2015. Which suggests that if the birth rates don’t turn around quickly, China is going to start cracking down hard on permitting young women to pursue higher education, given that education has proven to be the most efficient way to render women barren.

It’s far too soon to tell, but I suspect that it is the Enlightenment and its false values that the historians of the future will eventually hold responsible for the decline and fall of the West.

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Where Does China Stand

Peter Turchin turns his structural-demographic analytical eye on the rising 21st century power. But can he gather sufficient reliable data for the analysis?

As the American Empire continues to disintegrate from within, the most likely next hegemonic power is going to be China. The size of China’s economy has already exceeded that of the US (measured in PPP terms).

In other forms of social power, military and ideological/soft power, China still lags, but is gaining on America. For example, Chinese movie industry produced quite a number of world blockbusters, starting with the 2000 epic, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

I asked ChatGPT and DeepSeek, “If we consider a list of 100 world blockbuster movies in the last decade, what would be the breakdown in terms of countries producing them?” They gave similar answers. USA, of course, dominates, with >80% of world blockbusters, but China is the second, and fastest-growing, contender. ChatGPT estimated its influence as 5-8%, while DeepSeek (predictably) gave a higher estimate of 10-15%. In any case, China has a long way to go yet.

Whether China continues to gain, and eventually overtake America on these dimensions of power will depend a lot on its internal cohesion and stability. Thus, an empirically based and theoretically sound forecast is clearly needed.

On the other hand, it is not yet clear to me whether my team will be able to collect all the necessary data. We will find out.

It’s good to see more people are finally branching out from the obvious decline of the West and beginning to pay attention to the rest of the world.

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Adapt or Disappear

This is confirmed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for the People’s Republic of China:

On the morning of July 15, 2025, President Xi Jinping met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.

Xi Jinping asked Sergei Lavrov to convey his cordial greetings to President Vladimir Putin. Xi Jinping stressed the need for both sides to implement the important understandings reached between the two presidents, deepen the China-Russia comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination, strengthen mutual support in multilateral fora, safeguard their development and security interests, promote solidarity among Global South countries, and work together to make the international order more just and equitable. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which was jointly established by China and Russia, is a comprehensive regional cooperation organization that holds significant importance for maintaining peace, stability and development on the Eurasian continent. Both sides should support each other, steer the development course of the SCO, continuously inject new momentum, and make this strategic platform more substantive and stronger.

This is not.

President Xi Jinping of China, meeting with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov of Russia, made some brutal remarks about the United States and Europe today.

Xi said “China and Russia are not building an alliance. We are building a new global reality. The West must either adapt or disappear.”

He went on to say: “The West wants others to live in perpetual poverty so that their banks remain rich.”

Then, the big remark:  speaking before Lavrov and Iran Foreign Minister Araqchi, Xi Jinping declared: “We do not seek to rule the world… only to liberate it from those who believe they own it.”

It would certainly be interesting to see a transcript of that meeting. Either way, it is entirely obvious that both China and Russia know that Clown World is the real enemy.

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China Warns EU

For the first time, China has openly sided with Russia and acknowledged that it is in a de facto state of conflict with the USA:

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told the European Union’s top diplomat on Wednesday that Beijing cannot afford a Russian loss in Ukraine because it fears the United States would then shift its whole focus to Beijing, according to several people familiar with the exchange.

The comment, to the EU’s Kaja Kallas, would confirm what many in Brussels believe to be Beijing’s position but jar with China’s public utterances. The foreign minstry regularly says China is “not a party” to the war. Some EU officials involved were surprised by the frankness of Wang’s remarks.

Wang is said to have rejected, however, the accusation that China was materially supporting Russia’s war effort, financially or militarily, insisting that if it was doing so, the conflict would have ended long ago. During a marathon four-hour debate on a wide range of geopolitical and commercial grievances, Wang was said to have given Kallas – the former Estonian prime minister who only late last year took up her role as the bloc’s de facto foreign affairs chief – several “history lessons and lectures”…

The tone of Wednesday’s dialogue was said to be respectful, if tense. Nonetheless, some insiders were surprised by the harshness of Wang’s message, just three weeks out from an important leaders’ summit in China. Any appearance of a charm offensive is seen to have evaporated.

This is not exactly a surprise. China has been waging asymmetric “unrestricted” warfare against the United States since 1999, although part of that strategy has been assiduously avoiding any direct conflict and any actual military engagement. But it appears that as the NATO-Russian war enters what one hopes will be its final stage before the collapse of the Kiev regime and the subsequent Russian stabilization of the situation, China is preparing itself for the US to turn its attention from Ukraine and the Middle East and toward Asia.

Does this have anything to do with what are still nothing more than rumors of Xi’s weakening hold on power? I doubt it, but it’s important to remember that his successor may not be another Western-influenced liberal, but could be considerably more of a hawk on Taiwan, Japan, and the USA than Xi has been.

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Throw ‘Em in Dat Briar Patch

President Trump – presumably the short fake one – threatens the BRICS countries with an additional 10 percent tariff:

US President Donald Trump has threatened to impose an additional 10% tariff on any country which “aligns itself” with BRICS, accusing the economic bloc of adopting “anti-American policies.”

The warning came just hours after BRICS leaders concluded their annual summit in Rio de Janeiro. In its joint declaration, the bloc criticized unilateral tariff actions and condemned what it described as “indiscriminate” trade measures, without mentioning the US directly.

“Any Country aligning themselves with the Anti-American policies of BRICS, will be charged an ADDITIONAL 10% Tariff. There will be no exceptions to this policy,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social on Sunday.

There is just one problem with this tactic. The whole point of BRICS is to break free of the Clown World financial system. So increasing the cost of doing business with the United States, which requires submitting to that financial system, only further increases the incentives for the BRICS countries to not do business with the USA, but with each other instead.

And BRICS is already economically outperforming both the USA and the other G7 nations. We can expect it to continue doing so, especially as the USA wastes its resources in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and the South China Sea.

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You Just Thought of That NOW?

Remember when the jokers at NATO were telling everyone that Russia would be out of ammunition in two weeks and that it had no allies, so everyone should support the Kiev regime? Now they’re trying to scare everyone with a threat that was always obvious to more serious military analysts.

NATO chief Mark Rutte has chillingly warned that World War III will start with simultaneous invasions from Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin.

Secretary-general Rutte suggested the combined attacks from the Chinese and Russian leaders could trigger a World War nightmare and bring the planet to the brink of Armageddon.

According to the NATO chief, China would start by seeking to grab Taiwan – while ensuring the Kremlin dictator simultaneously attacks NATO territory, amid fears Putin is anyway eyeing the Baltic republics Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, formerly part of the USSR.

Now, suddenly, they’re aware that Russia has allies, that Russia and its allies significantly outnumber the US-EU-Israel alliance in terms of population, military power, and industrial capacity, and that the USA cannot possibly defeat either Russia or China, let alone both at once.

The fascinating thing is that their solution to the danger to which they are so newly awakened is exactly the same as their original call for everyone to support the Kiev regime.

I wouldn’t bet one single dime on these incompetent Clown World puppets. The smarter move would be to bet on their continuing failure.

Israeli media outlet Haaretz has reported that the U.S. military used 93 ‘THAAD’ interceptor missiles in 11 days to defend Israel, revising earlier estimates by others of $800 million to an actual cost of approximately $1.2 billion. With an annual production rate of roughly 36–48 ‘THAAD’ interceptors, the United States used nearly two years’ worth of interceptors during the war.

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China Backs Iran

This might explain why the Western media is so eager to prematurely write off Xi Xinping and his influence in China.

President Xi Jinping of China just got on television in Beijing and, among other things, announced “Our strategic interests in the Middle East will no longer be threatened. We will stand with Iran.”

This is a colossal development in geopolitical matters.

China, like every other nation on earth, understands that Israel started this trouble by making a SNEAK ATTACK upon Iran.   Everyone also knows the USA entered the fray with another SNEAK ATTACK against Iranian nuclear sites.  But that conflict did not go the way the Israelis or Americans thought it would.

It is widely understood that the only reason Israel stopped attacking Iran was because they were running out of anti-ballistic-missile defenses and on the final day of fighting, a full 50% of Iranian missiles were getting through, hitting targets inside Israel.

While Israel had more than adequate ability to continue OFFENSIVE action, they were ONE DAY away from having zero DEFENSIVE ability against Iranian ballistic missiles.

So they got US President Trump to work out a ceasefire to which Iran said “If Israel stops attacking us, we will stop attacking them.”  That was the “ceasefire.”

In the days since, it is widely rumored that the conflict __IS__ going to resume, once Israel loads-up on missile defenses.  Iran is aware of this, and is doing everything it can to prepare. Complicating things further, all countries of the world also found out yesterday, the US is ceasing certain weapons shipments to Ukraine because US inventory is “starting to get too low.”   So even the US is now in weapons trouble after wasting countless weapons, ammunition, and supplies, funding the disastrous Ukraine conflict with Russia.

Now, with Israel having basically run-out of air defense missiles, and with the US “too low” in inventory to continue supplying Ukraine, China steps-up and says they will stand with Iran.

Translation: this marks the long-expected shift of US attention from Ukraine to the Middle East and from Russia to Iran. Xi is giving President Trump and the neocons fair warning that the US will not be permitted to proceed in the Middle East with the uninterrupted hand to which it is accustomed.

UPDATE: 40 J-10 Chinese fighter jets arrived in Iran today, and 20 more are on the way.

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Who Comes After Xi

Xi Xinping has been the architect of China’s advance onto the world stage while simultaneously breaking free of Clown World’s subversion, but it appears that Clown World hasn’t given up on taking control of China yet.

CCP politics is getting wild… So for months rumors and whispers have swirled that Xi Jinping has lost control of the party to Zhang Youxia and the party elders. Xi Jinping supposedly has lost control to Zhang Youxia and the party elders. But this isn’t a simple case of one faction overpowering another. Even within the ranks of the party elders, there are competing priorities for what China’s next phase should look like. Some want to save the regime from collapse. Others want to push for political reforms. Some focus on reviving the economy. And there are those who want absolute control just to survive this life and death struggle.

Youxia has supposedly gambled everything to take down Xi Jinping. For a few weeks, the political center in Beijing appeared deadlocked. Xi Jinping disappeared, and then resisted change. Zhang Youxia, backed by military force, demanded it, and the party elders were caught in the middle trying to maintain a fragile balance. Then, in the last week or so, Xi Jinping suddenly re-emerged in public with greater visibility. He scored a minor win when Beijing announced that he would appear at the September 3rd World War II Victory Day parade. Whether he will inspect the troops or simply give a speech remains unclear.

Meanwhile, Zhang Youxia has been steadily expanding his grip. Miao Hua, one of Xi Jinping’s most trusted generals, was officially removed. Zhang has started moving into the Navy and the Air Force to root out Xi’s remaining loyalists. All the signs and rumors pointing to Xi Jinping’s loss of power reached a new phrase yesterday when Xi Jinping himself made an announcement on behalf of the party. In effect, he confirmed his own decline. After not announcing Politburo meeting minutes in May, the CCP made a single terse announcement at the end of June, saying the meeting was to review “regulations on the work of the Central Party Decision Making and Consolidation Body.

This body basically assumes the very role that Xi Jinping once held in making decisions. Meaning Xi is no longer the highest authority in the CCP. He now has a boss, and that boss is this new decision-making body. This new body isn’t just for advice. It controls the full chain of power from policy formation to execution. In fact, in effect, it is now the de facto highest governing body of the CCP.

Xi has strong support from Putin, but that may not be enough. Remember, the Hu Jintao faction never saw Xi coming, and if these reports are to be considered credible – which may or may not be the case, they may be pure Clown World wishful thinking – then it appears that Xi has not been able to set up a succession plan to continue what have been his generally successful policies.

China’s economic turmoils can hardly be laid at his door, as they are the inevitable result of the credit boom that began long before Xi came to power, and indeed, they are the result of the pro-Western faction within the CCP that is susceptible to the same corrupt blandishments that have bought the interests of politicians around the world from Australia to Zambia.

In any event, the next transitions of power in China and Russia will set the stage for the shape of the coming world order, so it is no surprise that various global factions are interests around the world are actively involved in attempting to influence those processes. And the unexpected ascendances of both Xi and Putin demonstrate that the next leaders may well be men that are not yet on the media’s radar.

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