Tag: China

Iron Curtain 2.0

The USA is establishing a military base in Poland and NATO is increasing its high-alert troops from 30,000 to 400,000. It’s probably nothing, right?

America will deploy thousands more troops to Europe along with fighters, air defences and ships, Joe Biden announced today, as NATO reinforces its eastern flank in a new Iron Curtain to protect the continent from Russia.

Joe Biden, speaking at a NATO summit in Madrid today, announced the creation of a new base for the US Fifth Army Corps in Poland – the first permanent American base in the country – along with 3,000 extra soldiers to be sent to Romania and ‘enhanced’ troop rotations for the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

Two more squadrons of F-35 fighters will be deployed to the UK, Biden added, along with additional air defence systems for Germany and Italy, and another two destroyers which will be stationed at Rota Naval Station in Spain, bringing the total to six.

Meanwhile NATO formally invited Finland and Sweden to join the alliance after Turkey dropped its opposition, and announced it will boost troops on its eastern flank by almost 4,000 compared to March this year.

It comes after alliance chief Jens Stoltenberg yesterday announced NATO’s high-alert force – troops which are not deployed but can be quickly sent into battle in the event of war – is being increased from 40,000 to 300,000.

The question is: how are these 400,000 troops going to be armed when NATO is already running out of ammunition after sending its existing stocks to the Ukrainian military? Too bad the greater part of the manufacturing capabilities of the Arsenal of Democracy was moved to Mexico and China, while the quality of the labor force has declined precipitously since 1940.

Anyhow, this puts the ball squarely in the Sino-Russian court. Even though time is on their side, it might make more sense to get things rolling before NATO actually finishes its mobilization. My guess is that Russia would prefer to let China make the next move and open up the second front before it strikes NATO directly, and it’s not in China’s interest to let Russia get too weakened before it gets involved.

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The War Spreads to Asia

NATO is attempting to bring Japan, South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand into its underpowered alliance:

NATO should stop looking for “imaginary enemies” in the Asia-Pacific and never be allowed to set up a version of the bloc in the region, China’s envoy to the UN has said.

“We firmly oppose certain elements clamoring for NATO’s involvement in the Asia-Pacific, or an Asia-Pacific version of NATO on the back of military alliances,” Zhang Jun said at a UN Security Council meeting on Tuesday.

The diplomat’s statement came after Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand were invited for the first time to attend the annual NATO summit, which opened on Tuesday in Madrid, Spain.

John Kirby, a senior White House security official, said last week that the participation of the four nations was not an attempt to forge “an Asian version of NATO,” but “an indication of the linkage of global security between Europe and the Indo-Pacific.”

Translation: they’re not attempting to forge an Asian version of NATO, they’re going to bring their Asian satrapies into NATO.

This is complete nonsense. All four states don’t even begin to counterbalance the military and economic weight of China. But it could be worse; they could have invited the island of Taiwan to join NATO, although I suppose we can’t entirely rule out the possibility that they’ll be dumb enough to do that too.

And China is clearly not happy with NATO’s actions.

As a product of the Cold War and the world’s largest military alliance, NATO has long clung to the outdated security concept and become a tool for certain country to maintain hegemony. NATO’s so-called new Strategic Concept is just “old wine in a new bottle”. It still has not changed the Cold War mentality of creating imaginary enemies and bloc confrontation. We solemnly urge NATO to immediately stop spreading false and provocative statements against China. What NATO should do is to give up the Cold War mentality, zero-sum game mindset and the practice of making enemies, and stop seeking to disrupt Asia and the whole world after it has disrupted Europe.

Zhao Lijian, Foreign Ministry, 28 June 2022

NATO directly caused and continuously strengthened Europe’s security dilemma and the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine conflict is a manifestation of its disastrous consequences. Facts have proven that the extreme pursuit of absolute security under the name of collective defense will eventually lead to confrontation between camps. In other words, NATO is by no means an antidote to Europe’s security crisis, but poison. If anyone spreads such poison to East Asia, which is called “the oasis of world peace and development,” the behavior is insidious and appalling…  In any case, NATO cannot change the nature of being a military and political bloc. Its very existence poses a threat to world peace and stability.

Asia-Pacific countries should not stand under ‘dangerous wall’ of NATO, Global Times, 29 June 2022

The most significant thing about NATO’s expansion to the South Pacific, other than the fact that the US military is now observably preparing for direct military conflict with both Russia and China at the same time, is that the Philippines were not invited, presumably to avoid the humiliation of having the invitation declined. This suggests that the Philippines are continuing to exit the US orbit and will side with China once the war actually comes to the Pacific.

At the invitation of the Philippine government, Special Representative of President Xi Jinping and Vice President Wang Qishan will lead a delegation to attend the inauguration ceremony of President Ferdinand Romualdez Marcos on June 30 in Manila, the Philippines.

CCTV: Could you share the arrangements for Vice President Wang Qishan’s trip to the Philippines and China’s expectation for the trip?

Zhao Lijian: China and the Philippines are close neighbors facing each other across the sea and important cooperation partners. China always sees the Philippines as a priority in its neighborhood diplomacy. With the concerted efforts of both sides, China-Philippines relations have been growing with a sound momentum, delivering tangible benefits to both peoples. Not long ago, President Xi Jinping had a phone conversation with President-elect Ferdinand Romualdez Marcos. They reached important common understandings on staying committed to good-neighborliness and friendship and pursuing shared development, which pointed the way forward for bilateral relations.

Vice President Wang Qishan’s upcoming trip to the Philippines as President Xi Jinping’s Special Representative for President Marcos’ inauguration ceremony fully demonstrates the great importance China attaches to the Philippines and bilateral relations. We believe this trip will help both sides to carry forward our friendship, cement mutual trust, expand cooperation, open up broader prospects for bilateral relations, and bring more benefits to both countries and peoples.

So, does anyone still seriously believe all this is just about Ukraine?

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In Which a New Strategy is Required

Russia claims it wiped out Ukraine’s General Staff:

RIA Novosti. Russian Kalibr missiles struck a command post of Ukrainian troops near the village of Shirokaya Dacha in Dnipropetrovsk Region, killing dozens of generals and officers, Defense Ministry spokesman Lieutenant General Igor Konashenkov said. A working meeting of the command staff of the operational-strategic grouping of troops “Alexandria” was held there at the time, he explained.

“As a result of the strike more than 50 generals and officers of the AFU, including the General Staff, the command of the grouping of troops “Kakhovka”, airborne assault troops and formations operating in the Nikolaevsk and Zaporozhye directions were destroyed,” the general said.

If it really was the General Staff, then one would expect that more than a few US military advisers were also affected by the strike. The loss of his strategists might explain why Zelensky is crazy enough to publicly advocate preemptive war against China too.

While appealing to Asian nations for support to fend off Russia’s invasion on Saturday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the international community should help Taiwan resist China’s aggression now, before Beijing attacks the island democracy it claims as its own province.

The comments risk upsetting Ukraine’s delicate balancing act with China; nevertheless, Zelensky insisted that aggressors must be confronted wherever they emerge. Asian countries must not wait for the crisis to act on Taiwan’s behalf, which would be repeating the mistake Europe made before Russian President Vladimir Putin’s attack on Ukraine.

Meanwhile, the Chinese are sending signs that they will respond to sanctions against China by forcing reuinification with Taiwan.

“If the United States and the West impose destructive sanctions on China as they treat Russia, we must recover Taiwan,” said China’s economist Chen Wenling on May 30 at a forum hosted by the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, according to state outlets. “Especially in the reconstruction of industry and supply chains, we must seize TSMC, a firm that inherently belongs to China.”

Chen is the chief economist at the China Center for International Economic Exchanges, a state think tank overseen by China’s top economic planning agency National Development and Reform Commission. Her comments came as TSMC, a global leader in semiconductor production, becomes increasingly important amid the global chip crunch.

As I’ve previously mentioned, WWIII has already started. Both President Trump and Fake Pope Francis have acknowledged as much. It presently appears to be somewhere between the Sudentenland and Poland phases. Plan accordingly, but don’t panic and keep in mind that it doesn’t mean the end of the world.

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Knock Off the Retardery

The war in Ukraine is not a “distraction”. China is not going to use the “distraction” to invade either a) Australia or b) the USA. The very idea is so prodigiously stupid that anyone suggesting the idea with a straight face should never be taken seriously again.

China is even less likely to invade the West Coast than Japan was, and the historical records show that neither the Japanese Navy nor the Japanese Army ever even contemplated the notion beyond briefly looking at the possibility of invading Hawaii before concluding that they lacked a) the transport capability, b) the logistical capability, and c) the airpower to even bother putting together an actual warplan.

For crying out loud, the military strategists who pay attention to this sort of thing aren’t even sure China has the capability to successfully invade Taiwan island. They do, but the point is the mere fact the issue is even potentially in doubt renders the other hypothetical invasions very highly improbable.

To have any chance of conquering Taiwan, China might need to transport as many as two million troops across the rough 100 miles of the Taiwan Strait and land them under fire at the island’s 14 potential invasion beaches or 10 major ports.

That’s a lot of people—far, far more than the People’s Liberation Army Navy can haul in its 11 new amphibious ships. To transport the bulk of the invasion force, Beijing almost certainly would take up into naval service thousands of civilian ships.

To that end, the Chinese Communist Party has created a legal and bureaucratic framework for taking over control of commercial shipping. Meanwhile, naval engineers have begun modifying key vessels to make them better assault ships.

All that is to say, the vast flotilla that would be both the vehicle for China’s assault on Taiwan—and the biggest target of Taiwanese forces and their allies—is taking shape.

“If the PLA invasion force was a million or more men, then we might expect an armada of thousands or even tens of thousands of ships to deliver them, augmented by thousands of planes and helicopters,” Ian Easton, an analyst with the Project 2049 Institute in Virginia, wrote in a recent report.

The PLAN’s eight modern Type 071 landing docks and three Type 075 big-deck assault ships together can haul around 25,000 troops. A drop in the bucket. To transport the balance of the invasion force, the Chinese navy can take up around 2,000 large commercial vessels crewed by around 650,000 mariners.

The legal framework is a new one. On Jan. 1, 2017, China’s National Defense Transportation Law went into effect. “Among other things, the law mandated that all of China’s basic infrastructure and related transportation platforms would henceforth be treated as military-civil fusion assets,” Easton explained.

“At the CCP’s discretion, they were now legally required to be designed, built and managed to support future military operations. In the event of conflict, they would be pressed into wartime service. Now they had to prepare accordingly in peacetime.”

According to Easton, the roughly 1,000 large vessels belonging to China COSCO Shipping Corporation could comprise the backbone of this improvised fleet.

For what it’s worth, the USA doesn’t have the ability to invade China either, despite its air and naval superiority. Hence the loss of its sole superpower status even if nuclear weapons are left out of the equation.

This really isn’t that hard and requires nothing more than a modicum of military history and basic math. So please, just stop already.

If you want to worry about something that is a genuine threat to the USA and its European satrapies, worry about China one-upping Russia by exiting the neoliberal economic order voluntarily without waiting for sanctions.

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天音

The Chinese Ilk have created a translated variant of this blog, which is going to become increasingly important as it belatedly dawns upon everyone that the winner of the Russ-Ukrainian-NATO war and ultimate successor to the neo-liberal world order is China. That East Asian Studies major is turning out to be rather useful after all, although definitely not in the way I expected.

It’s going to be a long time, probably decades, before most Americans and Europeans understand, much less accept, this, of course. After all, there are still British people who genuinely believe that Great Britain is a major world power.

Welcome to Chung Kuo.

UPDATE: Chinese-speaking Ilk have also added a Simplified Chinese version on Weibo 天音 (微博).

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Sabres Rattling in the South China Sea

The Chinese are making it very clear that the USA will not be permitted to interfere the way it has with Ukraine in the event the Taiwanese irredentists declare independence from China.

Beijing will “not hesitate to start a war” if Taiwan declares independence, China’s defence minister warned his US counterpart on Friday (Jun 10), the latest salvo between the superpowers over the island. The warning came as Wei Fenghe held his first face-to-face meeting with US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue security summit in Singapore.

US-China tensions have been soaring over democratic, self-ruled Taiwan, which lives under constant threat of invasion by China. Beijing views the island as its territory and has vowed to one day seize it, by force if necessary.

Wei warned Austin that “if anyone dares to split Taiwan from China, the Chinese army will definitely not hesitate to start a war no matter the cost”, defence ministry spokesman Wu Qian quoted the minister as saying during the meeting.

The Chinese minister vowed that Beijing would “smash to smithereens any ‘Taiwan independence’ plot and resolutely uphold the unification of the motherland”, according to the Chinese defence ministry. He “stressed that Taiwan is China’s Taiwan … Using Taiwan to contain China will never prevail”, the ministry said.

At this point, it wouldn’t be a surprise if some sort of peaceful settlement were arranged before the end of the year, because the US and Europe are increasingly desperate to convince China to continue operating within the neoliberal economic order. And in the light of the complete failure of the Russian sanctions, the only card they have to play is offering to accept reunification as a fait accompli.

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Historical Injustices

China is making it clear that it is not only aligned with Russia, but also with Palestine. And, one therefore has to assume, with Iran.

Al Jazeera: An international commission of inquiry set up by the UN Human Rights Council released an 18-page report today, saying that Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory and discrimination against Palestinians are the root causes of recurrent tensions and protraction of conflict in the region. It also says that “Israel has no intention of ending the occupation”. What is China’s comment?

Zhao Lijian: The underlying reason for the recurring conflicts between Israel and Palestine and ongoing tensions over the occupied Palestinian territory is that the historical injustices done to the Palestinian people have been left unaddressed for too long and that the Palestinian people’s legitimate aspiration of establishing an independent state has long been denied. The international community needs to work more actively with a greater sense of urgency for an early resumption of peace talks between Palestine and Israel on the basis of the two-state solution, so as to achieve a comprehensive, just and lasting solution to the question of Palestine at an early date.

Zhao Lijian, Foreign Ministry, 8 June 2022

Conflict has a way of clarifying things. It would appear the Chinese didn’t take very kindly to the neocon plan to jump to China, or possibly India, in the aftermath of the USA’s economic collapse. And I am skeptical that hurling accusations of anti-semitism at the Chinese government is likely to favorably impress the Chinese.

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A Rare Confluence

In which, for once, I actually agree with the Andrew Anglin Committee:

Here is a simple outline of what I’ve argued over and over again regarding the overarching picture of the current situation:

• There is a long-running plan for a global “scientific dictatorship” that was more or less solidified in the 1970s when they first started pushing the environmentalist flapdoodle.

• In the 1970s, the people planning this did not believe that China was a threat at all, because they basically thought Chinamen were backward autistic morons.

• In the 1990s, Western industry was moved to China, creating massive wealth in China, and everyone just assumed that these small-eyed people they thought were autistic morons would be turned into gay retards by a little bit of economic success.

• In the late 00s and early 10s, it became clear that China was not interested in being a part of the globalist project – they were just going to keep the money and do their own thing, which is a kind of merchant empire that is not dependent on the interdependence of the Western globalist order.

• By this time, no one running elite organizations in the West was capable of recalibrating the agenda based on the predictions about China being proved wrong.

• The elite are pushing forward with the agenda as it was laid out before China’s current direction was clear.

I don’t think this is really that complicated, but a lot of people seem to not understand what I am saying. I have no desire or ability to force anyone to agree with me, but if they’re going to disagree, they should put forward a response to what I’ve said and a countertheory on why it appears that the West is totally destroying itself in a program that is going to leave the Chinese ruling the world.

The Status of the Globalist Agenda Has Been Escalated from “Confused” to “Chaotic”, 4 June 2022

I tend to agree with these observations. As I’ve pointed out previously, the high-performance, low-trust population that tends to dominate the globalist elite of Clown World has been dealing with high-performance, high-trust European populations for centuries and is accustomed to manipulating them with astonishing ease using nothing more than credit and rhetoric. The modern Chinese, however, have proven to be an unexpectedly high-performance, low-trust population, and they have the additional benefit of political leadership from very intelligent men of principle like Xi Xinping and intellectual leadership from brilliant intellectuals like Wang Hunin.

This was, very understandably in light of well-documented Chinese history, not even remotely anticipated by anyone, least of all by the planners of the globalist elite. There was absolutely no reason to expect that the Chinese wouldn’t fall headlong into Clown World every bit as quickly and completely as they were taken in by Marxist-Leninism.

Nor was the rise of Russia from the ashes of the much-plundered Soviet Union expected. And now, here we are, with the short-sighted, unimaginative posterity of the founders of Clown World attempting to blindly implement the plans made by their wicked, but more intelligent predecessors despite the fact that their evil plans no longer accord with reality.

Remember, it isn’t just the native populations of the West that have been materially dumbed-down. The globalist elite has also been affected by their own self-destructive policies, and their degradation has been exacerbated by their determination to silence everyone who tells them anything they don’t want to hear.

And just in case you weren’t convinced that Clown World is being ruled by retards.

The United States is involved in “extremely active” discussions with European countries aimed at limiting the revenues Russia can generate from selling oil without interrupting supplies, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said on Tuesday, according to Reuters.

Did it seriously not occur to anyone that a) Europe needed Russia’s oil more than Russia needed revenue from selling oil to Europe, and, b) there is no shortage of other buyers of Russian oil?

Also, about that….

European companies have almost doubled their shipments of Russian oil since the start of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, despite desperate efforts by EU leaders to squeeze the Kremlin war machine by blocking Russia’s exports from global markets.

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Has World War Clown Gone Global?

If this reported statement by the Chinese ambassador is true, then China has confirmed its intention to enter the war on the side of Russia and the Sovereign World.

“We must put an end once and for all to the hegemony of the United States, with its eternal desire to interfere in the affairs of sovereign states.”

Zhang Hanhui, Chinese Ambassador to Russia

I’m dubious about the legitimacy of this purported statement by the ambassador, as I have been unable to confirm it from any reliable Chinese sources. But it isn’t too terribly different from a genuine, and confirmed, statement from the Foreign Ministry.

Coercive diplomacy starts with the US. It is nobody else but the US that invented, patented and owns the intellectual property right of “coercive diplomacy”. In 1971, US scholar Alexander George coined the concept of “coercive diplomacy” to describe the US policy on Laos, Cuba and Vietnam. For years, from military threats to political isolation, from economic sanctions to technological blockade, the US has shown the world what “coercive diplomacy” is through what it has done. Some Chinese netizens have put it this way — to know what “coercive diplomacy” entails, just check what the US has done.

The US keeps talking about dealing with other countries from a position of strength. This, in effect, means whoever has a bigger fist calls the shots. Isn’t this “coercive diplomacy”? The US spared no effort to crack down on China’s Huawei, France’s Alstom and Japan’s Toshiba and coerced the TSMC, Samsung and other companies to provide to the US chip supply chain data. Isn’t this “coercive diplomacy”? The US forced countries to take sides in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine and wantonly threatened to impose unilateral sanctions and long-arm jurisdiction. Isn’t this “coercive diplomacy”? After China and Solomon Islands signed the security cooperation agreement on the basis on mutual respect, equality and mutual benefit, the US immediately sent officials to South Pacific island countries in an attempt to exert pressure on them and intimidate them to stop them from having normal cooperation with China. Isn’t this “coercive diplomacy”?

Secretary Blinken said that “all countries will be free to chart their own paths without coercion”. For that to happen, the US must first and foremost change its old habit of pursuing “coercive diplomacy”, stop interfering in the internal affairs of others, stop forcing countries to pick sides, stop abusing unilateral sanctions and stop hobbling hi-tech companies of other countries. China is ready to work with all countries upholding justice to stand against various coercive behaviors in the world. 

Zhao Lijian, Foreign Ministry, 6 June 2022

The expansion of the conflict from Ukraine to the USA appears to be locked in now. One hopes that the Lords of Clown World will have the wisdom to surrender instead of waging a brutal war that can only end in defeat and suicides in their New Zealand bunkers.

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The Country is the People

And the People are the Country.

Shenzhen TV: US Secretary of State Blinken said in his China policy speech that “We have profound differences with the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese Government. But those differences are between governments and systems – not between our people”. Do you have any comment? 

Zhao Lijian: Secretary Blinken’s remarks are part of an attempt to sever the strong bond between the CPC and the Chinese people. China firmly rejects that. The Chinese people are fully aware of the ill intention of the US to suppress and contain China’s development and hinder the Chinese nation’s rejuvenation. Moves like this that are designed to sow discord will not succeed. 

Any US politician who knows the basic facts about China knows that our Party is founded for the people and nurtured by the people. The leadership of the CPC is the choice of history and of the people, and is endorsed in China’s Constitution. China’s development would not be possible without the leadership of the CPC. Under its leadership, the Chinese people have, through arduous struggle and hard work, established the People’s Republic of China and freed themselves from bullying, oppression and subjugation. Under the leadership of the CPC, China has created the two miracles of rapid economic development and long-term social stability. It has also lifted over 800 million people out of poverty and led 1.4 billion people to modernization. Over the course of just several decades, China has completed a journey that took Western developed countries several hundred years.

The CPC has grown into the largest governing party in the world. Its membership has expanded to over 95 million from just over 50 when it was founded. What is the secret code of the CPC’s long governance success? It puts people first and believes that “The country is the people and the people are the country”. 

Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Zhao Lijian’s Regular Press Conference on June 2, 2022

It’s fascinating to see that I’m being denounced as a neo-Nazi White supremacist when my nationalist position is literally identical to that of the Communist Party of China. This may explain why I am treated with respect by the Chinese state media while being publicly denounced and defamed by the converged Swiss media.

Vox Day defines the alt-right as nationalist, opposed to globalization, gender equality, and committed to the “right to exist” of ethnically homogenous states. This places it on the extreme right of the European political spectrum.

Only in Clown World are Chinese Communists “on the extreme right of the European political spectrum”.

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