Tag: China

Chinese Warning

People often forget that it is China which keeps North Korea on a short leash. I interpret this recent missile launch over Japan as a warning from China that if and when the Second Front of WWIII is opened, it will not only be the Chinese taking action.

North Korea fired a ballistic missile over Japan, for the first time in five years on Tuesday, prompting a warning for residents to take cover and a temporary suspension of train operations in the northern part of the country.

The Japanese government warned citizens to take cover as the missile appeared to have flown over and past its territory before falling into the Pacific ocean.

It said it did not use any defence measures to destroy the missile, which was the first to fly over or past Japan from North Korea since 2017.

Speaking to reporters shortly afterwards, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida condemned the launch and called North Korea’s actions ‘barbaric.’ He noted that the government would continue to gather and analyse information.

The launch is the latest weapons test by North Korea in an apparent response to military drills between South Korea and the United States.

In fact, it wouldn’t be a surprise if the North Koreans were the first to initiate action; the major players are seldom the first to get directly involved.

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A Non-Coup in China

Never pay any attention to all the ridiculous media stories about how Putin has leprosy or Xi has been replaced by a Google-powered robot. There was never any sort of coup in Beijing and Xi is fine. It was just the usual wordspellers engaged in their futile attempts to alter reality through magical thinking and mass propaganda.

Chinese communist leader Xi Jinping made his first public appearance in nearly two weeks, terminating an absence that fueled a storm of unsubstantiated rumors regarding his whereabouts. Xi, who leads China as general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, visited an exhibition in Beijing on Sept. 27, according to Chinese state-owned media.

The event was Xi’s first public appearance since returning to China from a summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in Uzbekistan earlier in the month.

Xi had met with Russian President Vladimir Putin, an unofficial ally, during that summit. The two leaders reaffirmed their nations’ support for one another in the face of mounting resistance from the West regarding China’s plans for Taiwan and Russia’s war in Ukraine.

My assumption is that Xi has been occupied with overseeing the coordination of China’s next move with the coming Russian offensive. This would be an ideal time to open the second front, after Russia ties down US forces in Eastern Europe. Both Xi and Putin know that the USA is no longer equipped to fight two first-tier opponents at the same time, and I assume that Putin would not have proceeded with the four referendums without an assurance from Xi that China will enter the conflict in a meaningful manner.

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Color Revolution in China

The Prometheans are reportedly making a desperate play to bring China back under their control.

The reports coming out of Beijing could rock the world. Global media has no idea what is going on with Xi Jinping at his home. Honestly, at this point those who want the tyrant to remain in power should forget about his third term; it appears that CCP veterans have already crushed his lust for power.

Chinese netizens have stormed Social Media timelines with reports that Beijing is under military seizure. The world, though, has no idea of what’s happening because the city is eventually cut off from the world.

According to News Highland Vision, former Chinese President, Hu Jintao and former Chinese Premier, Wen Jiabao had persuaded Song Ping, the former member of the Standing Committee and retaken control of the Central Guard Bureau (CGB).

For those who don’t know, the purpose of CGB is to provide close personnel protection to members of the Politburo Standing Committee and other CCP leaders. The committee is also responsible for the protection of Xi Jinping.

As Hu and Wen retook control of CGB, information was conveyed to Jiang Zeng and the Central Committee members in Beijing via telephone. The original standing committee members abolished Xi’s military authority at that very moment.

Xi returned to Beijing on the evening of 16th September after learning the truth. However, Xi Jinping was detained at the airport and most probably is currently being held under house arrest in Zhongnanhai’s house.

Hu Jintao is the neo-liberal world order’s puppet in China. He was supposed to prepare the transition of the seat of the Empire That Never Ended from Washington DC to Beijing, hence all of those “ghost cities” being constructed. However, the unexpected rise of Xi Jinping and his subsequent anti-corruption campaign put an end to those plans.

The globalist Empire is now in desperate straits due to the success of the Sino-Russian alliance, which is why Ukraine was used to provoke Russia into war with NATO. However, NATO cannot defeat Russia and will inevitably lose any war against both Russia and China. Hence this reported attempt to bring China back under imperial control, or at least render it neutral in the NATO-Russian war.

As with the US-backed anti-Erdogan coup in 2016, I wouldn’t take these early reports of Xi being overthrown and being held under house arrest too seriously. We’ll have to wait and see what is actually happening over there, although we were promised a big event on 9/24/22, so perhaps this is it.

For the record, none of my connections in China believe it is real. My own opinion is best described as “deeply skeptical”.

UPDATE: The primary propagator of the #China coup rumor is now saying that the rumor is not true. She has also said that 3 senior anti-Xi officials were sentenced to death. However, only the sentence for Former Vice Public Security Minister Sun Lijun, 53, has been confirmed, in this case by Bloomberg, and the death sentence was suspended in favor of life imprisonment with no possibility of parole.

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The End of Strategic Ambiguity

Joe Biden makes it clear that the US will fight China over Taiwan

President Joe Biden once again claimed that Washington is willing to use military force to defend Taiwan from Beijing, if necessary, while insisting that the US still adheres to ‘One China’ policy and is “not encouraging” the island’s independence.

During a ‘60 Minutes’ CBS News interview aired Sunday night, Biden was asked if the US would become directly involved to “defend the island” in a potential conflict between Beijing and Taiwan, including through the use of military force.

“Yes, if in fact there was an unprecedented attack…” Biden replied, before the broadcaster cut away to clarify the controversial statement.

Checkmate, Xi!

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Xi Knows

China’s President makes it clear that the Chinese know perfectly well who is behind the trouble in Ukraine and other unstable countries:

Member states of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) must work with each other to prevent outside forces from organizing color revolutions in their countries, Chinese President Xi Jinping warned on Friday.

Speaking at the SCO summit in Samarkand, President Xi said that member states should “support each other’s efforts to protect security and development interests,” noting that the world is undergoing “accelerating changes unseen in a century,” and has entered a phase of uncertainty and transformation.

He added that it is paramount to “guard against attempts by external forces to provoke a color revolution, and jointly oppose interference in other countries’ internal affairs under any pretext,” referring to Western-backed protests that have aimed to overthrow governments in post-Soviet countries.

Xi’s statement came as Russian President Vladimir Putin hailed the growing influence of “new centers of power” that cooperate with each other and have the capacity to challenge the West’s global dominance.

Translation: give it up, George Soros and company. No one is taking any of that “open society” neocon nonsense seriously anymore.

It’s been fascinating to see how the rising nationalist leaders are openly and successfully taking on the rhetoric that was so effective in subverting Anglo-Saxon and European societies. It’s not enough to simply squawk “democracy, democracy” and “human rights” to rule over others anymore.

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China is Next

The USA’s European satrapies have apparently been ordered to start reducing their economic ties with China:

Germany’s economy ministry is considering a range of measures to make business with China less attractive as it seeks to reduce its dependency on its major trading partner, according to a Reuters report. Sources familiar with the matter revealed that the measures may include reducing or even scrapping investment and export guarantees to China in addition to reducing participation in trade fairs and scaling basic training for local employees.

There have been ongoing discussions in Germany about “overdependence on China,” especially since Scholz assumed office. Despite the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine conflict on Germany’s concerns about the security of its industrial and supply chain, its economy ministry’s consideration over measures is essentially related to a policy shift away from China.

It’s legitimate for a country to be concerned about its high level of external dependence and long-term economic security. However, it is unrealistic to unilaterally emphasize a so-called “decoupling.” After all, China and Germany cannot be decoupled considering the strength of two-way economic ties. It’s understandable for Berlin to assess adjusting and diversifying the supply chains in order to safeguard the stability. What is unacceptable to China is using “reducing dependency on China” as a pretext of “decoupling” while accusing China of being “unreliable,” which is a discriminatory and targeted attack on a major trading partner.

It would appear that the second front is in the process of coming, and that the US doesn’t wish to get caught off-guard as it was by Russian preparations for Western sanctions. But so much of the Western economy is reliant upon Chinese manufacturing that it’s hard to imagine the effect being less catastrophic than the consequences of sanctioning Russia have been.

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The Real Rebel Alliance

China and Russia stand together in an alliance against the evils of imperialist global government and they are confident of their ultimate success, because they understand that all attempts to rule the world are doomed to fail.

Western governments, most notably the US, are trying to impose their neo-colonial order on the world, Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service chief Sergey Naryshkin claimed on Thursday during a Russian-Chinese roundtable meeting to discuss historical processes and the structure of the modern world.

In his opening statement, Naryshkin, who also heads up the Russian Historical Society, stated that the international sphere is currently going through a transformation as many countries are embarking on the path of sovereign development and are relying on their own cultural heritage and traditions.

“However, a small group of Western countries is standing in the way. Western liberal-totalitarian regimes which have essentially usurped the right to decide the vector of humanity’s development and have imposed their own neo-colonial world order,” Naryshkin said.

He pointed out that the US, which was “blinded by its quasi-victory in the Cold War,” has been trying to impose its so-called ‘rules-based order’ on the world, noting Washington’s repeated interference in the internal affairs of sovereign governments, ignoring Russia’s concerns about the expansion of NATO towards its borders, and the “blatantly tactless” visits of US politicians to Taiwan.

“What is this if not a manifestation of imperial swagger?” Naryshkin asked, noting that the US has been provoking conflicts all over the world in order to uphold its hegemony, which is being threatened by a global crisis caused by the greed and shortsightedness of the West.

“The Anglo-Saxon desire for world domination spreads to continental Europe as well,” the official stated, noting that nearly all European states today are essentially under the direct rule of Washington. “Unfortunately, most European politicians today are not guided by the needs of their constituents,” the intelligence chief asserted.

He concluded his address by pointing out that this is not the first time that a specific country or political bloc has attempted to rule the world, but stated that human history shows that all such attempts are inevitably doomed to fail.

Naryshkin’s comments were backed by the head of the Chinese Academy of History, Gao Xiang, who noted a “shortage of trust and peace” in the world and accused Western countries of returning to a Cold War mentality and causing major disruptions and turmoil around the globe.

Some of my critics claim that I am blind to the flaws of the two nations leading the war against global subjugation to satanist Promethean rule, particularly China. This is absolutely not true; you may recall that I am an East Asian Studies major and I have appeared on Chinese television, so I have a better idea about what China is like than the average Westerner.

And the point is not if the Chinese are angels, but rather, if they are literal devil-worshippers like far too many of those who presently rule the West? Remember, both the Chinese and the Russians have suffered tremendously at the hands of the great-grandfathers and grandfathers of those who are responsible for the ruin of the USA and Europe, so they have a much better understanding of what is happening, and what is going to happen, than the Americans and Europeans do.

Just as the USA today is not the USA that won WWII, Russia today is not the USSR of the Bolsheviks and China today is not the China of Mao and Li Dunbai. Try to keep this in mind when you are contemplating global geopolitics.

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Proxy War 2.0

Ukraine is a proxy war between the USA and Russia and everyone knows it, including, most importantly, the Chinese. They also know that Taiwan is anticipated to be the next proxy war, which is why I expect Chairman Xi, who according to Lee Kwan Yew is the most intelligent senior actor on the international scene, to work out a peaceful alternative to shedding large quantities of Chinese blood on behalf of US neocons.

GLOBAL TIMES: Some argue that the US wants to use Taiwan as a “porcupine” and is ready to fight to the last drop of Taiwan people’s blood to weaken China just as what it did with Ukrainians. How do you view such an opinion? Does the US have such intent?

Berletic: This is actually the most likely scenario – using Taiwan as a proxy against the rest of China to exhaust it politically, economically, and militarily. The US is indeed conducting a similar proxy conflict against Russia through Ukraine. Many aspects of US interference in regards to Taiwan including political and military support, mirror what preceded the conflict now raging in Ukraine. The US deliberately picked a red line to Russia in regards to Ukraine and is now doing the same to China in regards to Taiwan. The US demonstrably doesn’t care about Taiwan’s future in any sense and has already begun preparing itself in terms of semiconductor production for a disruption in Taiwan Washington itself is attempting to create. The US will do everything in its power to realize this provocation by crossing red lines for China it knows cannot be ignored.

GLOBAL TIMES: Is there a trend that Washington is shifting from strategic ambiguity toward Taiwan to strategic clarity? Is this an adventurous move?

Berletic: The shift in Washington is one born out of desperation rather than adventurism. The US is out of time. China’s economic and military rise means that as each year goes by the US is less and less able to hold any sort of advantage over China should it provoke a conflict either directly or by proxy.

Empires are increasingly prone to fighting proxy wars in their final stages, because they simply do not possess the military might that was required to establish the empire in the first place. And they avoid direct confrontation for fear that they will be defeated; it’s much easier to spin and create separation from a proxy defeat than from a direct one. This foreign policy on the part of the empire’s foreign rulers is absolutely pro forma; history suggests that one should expect a domestic crackdown on regime critics to accompany the proxy wars that will almost certainly end in defeat.

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WW3 Mobilization Math

The Tree of Woe contemplates WW3 from a historical and statistical perspective, and reaches precisely the same conclusions I have.

Today, Russia spends 4.1% of its GDP on its military; America spends 3.5%; and China spends 2.1%. (Saudi Arabia, at 10.4%, and Israel at 5.2% are the two biggest spenders by ratio.) They are essentially on pre-war footing, demobilized.

To what extent could today’s superpowers match the mobilization of the WWII-era US and USSR?

According to the Center for Economic Policy Research (CEPR), about one-third of military spending is on personnel. The remainder is on equipment and operations, both of which are highly demanding on the economy’s manufacturing and energy sectors. At the outbreak of World War II, manufacturing and energy accounted for approximately 30% of the American GDP. From that basis, America spent 40% of its GDP on war. As a first approximation, therefore, the maximum extent to which an economy can be mobilized for defense spending might be 133% of its manufacturing and energy GDP.

At present, manufacturing and energy make up 41% of China’s GDP, 30% of Russia’s GDP, and 20% of America’s GDP. Therefore, the maximum mobilization we would expect their economy to achieve would be 54% for China, 40% for Russia, and 27% for America.

Wait, you ask — Why can’t we just “build more factories?” Because it’s very difficult to rapidly grow manufacturing. The fastest large-scale improvement I have found in looking at data is a 3% increase in the share of manufacturing per year for a major economy. Achieving this during wartime, when manpower is diverted into uniform and infrastructure is under attack seems unlikely. A nation can rapidly convert its peacetime manufacturing to wartime manufacturing, but it cannot rapidly build manufacturing capability where none existed. I assume that maximum mobilization might increase by at most 1% per year from their present level.

Even when taking advantage of pre-existing industrial infrastructure, mobilization is never instantaneous. In its best year, the US was able to mobilize from 10% to 35% (1941 to 1942), and the USSR was able to mobilize from 20% to 55% (1942 to 1943). That suggests the absolute best possible mobilization is a 3.5 increase annually. It’s not clear to me that any of today’s great powers could match those, due to the vastly increased complexity and fragility of our supply chains. Therefore I assume that actual mobilization can at most double yearly, until the maximum mobilization is reached. Therefore I estimate the following:

In one year, America could achieve 7% mobilization; in two years, 15% mobilization; in three years, 30% mobilization; in four years 31%; in five years 32%.

In one year, China could achieve 5% mobilization; in two years, 10%; in three years 20%; in four years 40%; in five years 60%.

In one year, Russia could achieve 8% mobilization; in two years, 16%; in three years, 33%; in four years 44%; in five years 45%.

Now, in considering what mobilization as a percentage of GDP means, we need to be sure we are comparing apples to apples. A comparison of nominal GDP won’t do. At a minimum we need to use Purchasing Parity Power (PPP) adjusted GDP. But even that might understate the relative capabilities.

In a July 2017 white paper by the Heritage Foundation called “Putting Defense Spending in Context: Simple Comparisons are Inadequate,” the authors found:

For the equivalent investment in terms of U.S. dollars, China and Russia respectively have 1.7 times and 2.5 times the purchasing power within their domestic markets… Due to differences in purchasing power across economies, then, two countries could hypothetically field the same size and quality force at dramatically different spending levels.

For example, the Chinese Yuzhao-class landing platform dock (LPD) costs approximately $300 million to build and is most similar in terms of displacement and capability to the U.S. San Antonio-class LPD. However, the purchase price of the San Antonio-class LP exceeds $1.6 billion per unit…

In the March 2015 article “China’s Military and Growing Political Power,” the CEPR notes:

Using exchange rates comparisons significantly understates the Chinese military spending. A much more realistic assessment is obtained using PPP terms… China’s military budget was 18% of that of the US using market exchange rate comparisons, but 33% of the one of the US using PPP exchange rates…

The correct exchange rate with which to compare military spending would be a price or unit cost ratio of military services in each country… We use market exchange rates as a measure of relative military equipment costs facing each country… For relative operations costs, however, we use PPP exchange rates as a reasonable proxy… Finally, relative personnel costs are obtained using manufacturing wages, either gross or net of on-costs, since this represents the social opportunity cost of military employment.

This low relative military costs exchange rate implies a real value of China’s military spending of 40% of the US in real terms – larger than the level implied by using PPP rates of 33%, and much larger than the market exchange rate based figure of 18%.

Thus the best estimates are that in relative terms, we have to scale up China’s GDP by (40%/18%) = 220% in order to get an accurate picture of its potential mobilization. Unfortunately CEPR did not provide a similar ratio for Russia, but we can approximate it by multiplying Russia’s PPP multiplier (250% of nominal GDP) by (40%/33%) = 120%, for a total multiplier of 300%.

This is not a pretty picture if you like the Star-Spangled Banner. China’s military-effective GDP is already almost 200% the size of America’s military-effective GDP, and its effective military spending is 130% of our own! Meanwhile, Russia — currently mocked in the mainstream press as an economic weakling — is maintaining an effective military budget of 30% of America’s. Given that the US tries to maintain military power across the entire globe, while Russia only needs regional dominance, this should make us very uneasy about our relative capabilities.

It gets worse when we consider mobilization over time. Much, much worse. US deindustrialization has virtually crippled our large-scale mobilization, while China has become an Arsenal of Authoritarianism. Below I have tabulated each nation’s expected Mobilization Ratio and used that to calculate its Effective Military Spending (EMS) per year of World War Next.

The longer the war goes on, the worse it looks for America. In year one, America is able to spend 64% of China and Russia’s defense budget. By year five, America can only spend 26% of its rivals’ defense budgets.

The Tree of Woe’s detailed research backs up the previously observed historical analogy, which is to say that the USA and its European allies today are in much the same position that Germany and its allies were during WW2. Neither the superior quality of German and Japanese manufacturing nor the superior quality of German troops were sufficient to even begin to make up for the massive advantage in manpower and manufacturing enjoyed by the USA-USSR-UK alliance.

The Sino-Russian alliance alone dwarfs the manpower and manufacturing capacities of the NATO alliance, even if NATO’s prospective allies in South Korea, Japan, and Israel are included. And if the rest of the BRICSIA nations – who are already aligned with Russia in this global conflict – are included in the equation, the conclusion is even more heavily stacked against the Were-West.

The key is this: manufacturing capacity can be repurposed during wartime, but it cannot be constructed from scratch.

This mobilization math explains why the neocons and their pets presently presiding over the European nations have been so desperate to “win the war in Ukraine”. The Empire That Never Ended’s chances in the proxy war between Kiev and the Donbass republics were considerably better than its odds in either a regional war or a global war, although as we’ve seen, the proxy war has already been won by the two former Ukrainian republics.

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Strategic Anxiety

Global Times clearly recognizes that the erratic behavior of the US and other globalist leaders is derived from the strategic anxiety created by their belated realization of the failure of the liberal world order:

In his press briefing on Wednesday, US State Department Spokesman Ned Price referred to China-Russia relationship as a “burgeoning” one, which is “of concern” because the vision they have for the international order is “starkly at odds to the liberal vision” and “with the underpinnings of the international system that have been in place for some eight decades following the end of the Second World War.”

The US concerns toward China and Russia are also reflected in the latest massive coverage in the Western media about China sending troops to Russia to participate in the “Vostok” exercises, and the hype of the so-called threat from the two countries.

A thief crying “stop thief.” The US’ concerns about the China-Russia relationship are the product of US’ own strategic anxiety. Washington worries that the US-centered international order established after WWII would collapse, and the coordination between China and Russia in the security realm could offset US’ influence in the international order the US has long dominated.

US’ strategic anxiety stems from the fact that the US is declining, said Zhang Tengjun, deputy director of the Department for Asia-Pacific Studies at the China Institute of International Studies. “The US maintains its strategic competition posture with China and Russia simultaneously in the directions of Ukraine and the Asia-Pacific. Under such circumstances, if China and Russia get closer, it will affect US’ deployment of resources in the two directions and hinder its efforts to dominate regional order. But US’ current strength does not allow it to focus on both,” said Zhang.

The mismatch of US’ strength and its mentality of viewing itself as the world’s No.1 is the root cause of the existing division and chaos of the world. Zhang held the view that the crux of the problem is not what China and Russia have done or not done, but whether the US and the West can overcome their fears and anxiety about their own decline.

As the US attempts to sustain hegemony, China, Russia safeguard international order, justice, Global Times, 18 August 2022

The shiny, sexy, secular vision of the World Economic Forum is dead. The world will not be ruled by Davos Man. There will be no neocon empire built on a foundation of American lives and enforced by American guns. The globalists have failed, they know it, and their avowed enemies in China and Russia know it too.

Now it’s time for the nations of the West to recognize it and replace their wicked globalist rulers with nationalist leaders who are willing to put the interests of their nations first. With men like Vladimir Putin and Xi Xinping and Narenda Modi.

The European elites are absolutely terrified of being Sri Lanka’d this winter. And they may well be right to be frightened, because it appears the cold realities of inflation, darkness, and hunger this winter are going to punch right through their web of lies.

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