Tag: China

Five Down, Six to Go

Russia makes it clear that it’s moving on to the third phase of territorial acquisition by taking 200 km2, including a lot on the new Sumy front, in the last week.

The Russian army took 18 settlements, almost 200 km², in 7 days. Russian troops are demonstrating the most active advancement in the DPR, Kharkov and Sumy regions. According to the publication’s experts, the Ukrainian Armed Forces are unable to stop the offensive due to an acute shortage of personnel, which cannot be eliminated in the near future. — Bild

As I and many others have predicted, the failure of the Kiev regime to surrender when it is observably defeated means that the Russians now intend to take on the battlefield what they obviously desired from the beginning.

State Duma Defense Committee Chairman Kartapolov issued an even more pronounced statement—that Ukraine would lose Sumy, Zaporozhye, Dnipropetrovsk, Kharkov, Nikolayev, and Odessa if it continues to resist.

There is absolutely nothing the USA, NATO, or anyone else can do to stop Russia from taking the entirety of those six additional provinces except try to negotiate a conditional surrender that confirms Russia’s control of all the territory up to the Dnieper and turns over Odessa to the Russians. I expect control of Odessa is a non-negotiable at this point and that we are likely less than one year from Russia being in a position to demand an unconditional surrender by Kiev. Russia now has the full and open support of China; the clumsy attempts of the USA to pivot from Ukraine to Taiwan, the trade war, and the US support for the Gazacaust have only increased China’s appreciation for the importance of its alliance with Russia.

Since 2022, the Chinese have resolutely refused to blame Russia for the war in Ukraine despite US demands to do so, and now, to the contrary, they have very publicly, and correctly, laid “a major responsibility” for the war on the USA.

The United States bears a major responsibility for the outbreak of the war and the continuation of the war. But, of course, the United States has a responsibility to work its efforts and play its part for an early ending of the conflict. We urge the United States to concentrate on the ongoing diplomatic effort and stop this rather boring blaming game. — Deputy UN Representative Geng Shuang

All of this highlights the intrinsic danger of allowing men and women who believe in subversion and word magic to hold power at the national level. They will cling to their belief in their fantasies even when objective reality conclusively disproves them.

DISCUSS ON SG

A Chilling Warning

Also, and more importantly, a foolish and futile one:

US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth issued a chilling warning on the China threat during a defense summit in Singapore. He said on Saturday that the threat from China was potentially imminent as he pushed allies in the Indo-Pacific to spend more on their own defense.

Hegseth, speaking for the first time at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, Asia’s forum for defense leaders, militaries and diplomats, underlined that the Indo-Pacific region was a priority for the Trump administration.

‘There’s no reason to sugar coat it. The threat China poses is real, and it could be imminent’ Hegseth said, in some of his strongest comments on the Communist nation since he took office in January. He added that any attempt by China to conquer Taiwan ‘would result in devastating consequences for the Indo-Pacific and the world,’ and echoed Trump’s comment that China will not invade Taiwan on the president’s watch.

Hegseth is sufficiently educated in military affairs to know better than to spout nonsense like this. The US not only will not win a war with China in the Indo-Pacific, it cannot even put up a serious military challenge to China.

The entire world has been watching as Russia, with only limited assistance from Belarus, Iran, and North Korea, has almost singlehandedly defeated the entire might of the USA and its NATO allies. The result would not be any different even if the USA had attempted to utilize its own forces directly; the Kiev regime has already lost twice as many men as exist in the US armed forces without ever even forcing the Russians to utilize most of its frontline troops, its best hardware, or the greater part of its missile stocks.

The Russians, knowing the possibility of direct NATO intervention, have been keeping very powerful reserves in order to utilize them if necessary. This is why most of the Russian casualties have been from the provincial militaries and the mercenary companies. The Russian air force has lost all of 6 aircraft in 2025; the US Navy lost half that many from a single carrier in a single deployment in the Red Sea.

So I very much doubt that the Chinese are very impressed by the performance of the US military or are afraid to risk a confrontation with it over Taiwan. I also doubt there will be an actual invasion as such; it is far more likely that reunification will be quietly negotiated behind the scenes, then announced one day along with a series of arrests of pro-independence advocates.

It’s a shame that the foreign rulers of the USA have inverted the historical American philosophy coined by Teddy Roosevelt, and instead elect for speaking loudly while carrying a small and fragile stick.

DISCUSS ON SG

Free Trade is Deader than Dead

Free Trade, and the Comparative Advantage theory that supported it, were always examples of the Ricardian Vice, in which all other relevant variables are stripped away in order to support false conclusion based on a single variable. But among the many fatal flaws of Free Trade, and there are at least nine, is the loss of national security based on outsourcing consumer production to potential enemies.

Engineers have discovered ‘kill switches’ embedded within Chinese-manufactured parts in American solar farms, raising fears that Beijing could manipulate power supplies or even ‘physically destroy’ grids across the US, UK and Europe.

Energy officials are now assessing the risks posed by small communication devices discovered inside power inverters – an integral component of renewable energy systems that connects them to the power grid.

While inverters are built to allow remote access for updates and maintenance, the utility companies that use them typically install firewalls to prevent direct communication back to China.

But rogue communication devices not listed in product documents have been found in some solar power inverters by US experts who strip down equipment hooked up to grids to check for security issues, two sources told Reuters.

Using these devices to skirt firewalls and switch off inverters remotely, or change their settings, could destabilise power grids, damage energy infrastructure and trigger widespread blackouts, experts said.

‘That effectively means there is a built-in way to physically destroy the grid,’ one of the sources declared.

In other words, it appears that China can turn off power to the West any time it chooses, thanks to the economists and politicians who encouraged the outsourcing of solar power manufacturing there.

DISCUSS ON SG

Why China Can’t Win the Trade War

The US cannot win a military war against China. By the same token, China cannot win a trade war with the USA under the present circumstances. In addition to the fact that the nation with the trade surplus is the one with the weaker hand in a trade war, there is the situation regarding China being the leading holder of US debt.

And as J. Paul Getty is believed to have said: “If you owe the bank $100 that’s your problem. If you owe the bank $100 million, that’s the bank’s problem.”

In any event, here are the retaliatory measures reportedly being contemplated by China in response to the 104 percent tariffs imposed by the US government.

1) Retaliatory Tariff increases on U.S. Agricultural Products including Soybeans and Sorghum.

Whoop-de-damn doo. No one cares about the profitability of Big Agriculture. Feed it to the cattle.

2) Banning import of U.S. Poultry into China

Whoop-de-damn two. No one cares about the profitability of Big Agriculture. Lower prices on rotisserie chicken and at KFC are not things that fall into the problem category for Americans.

3) Suspending Sino-U.S. cooperation on Fentanyl-related issues

Whoop-de-damn three. There is nothing the Chinese can do, or should be expected to do, to stop Americans from taking illegal drugs.

4) Countermeasures in the Service related Sector

China already erected The Great Firewall. That card has been played.

5) Banning the import of US Films into China

Feature, not a bug. Burn Hollywood, burn.

6) Investigating the Intellectual Property Benefits of US Companies operating in China

It’s hard to threaten IP rights when there has never been any respect shown for them from the start.

China has already raised tariffs on US imports to 84 percent, which will effect pretty much zero Americans in any way, shape, or form.

That is a weak, weak hand that is arguably net beneficial to the USA. Frankly, I don’t see what China can do on the trade front that might even have the hope of accomplishing anything, although obviously it could choose to escalate to proxy military conflict in Ukraine, the Middle East, and the South China Sea.

It would be better to follow the lead of many smaller nations, refuse to retaliate, and accept President Trump’s invitation to negotiate for better terms. Because this really isn’t something that the USA can afford to back down on.

DISCUSS ON SG

104 and Counting

Tariffs on Chinese goods are going to 104 percent.

China now faces another 50% in tariffs after Beijing missed a noon deadline to withdraw the retaliatory import taxes it imposed on the United States.

The new tariffs will go into effect at 12:01 am, the White House said. That brings the total tariffs on all goods from China coming into the United States to 104%.

Trump placed a 34% increase on China when he announced his tariff plan on Liberation Day. That was on top of 20% import taxes rolled out earlier this year on Beijing.

The president, on Monday, pledged another 50% tariffs after Beijing responded to his tariff threat with a 34% increase on U.S. goods coming into China.

Well, the Chinese can’t say they weren’t warned. I warned them, on their state TV, nearly nine years ago, that President Trump would wage, and would win, a trade war against them. None of the Chinese or Hong Kong economists agreed, of course, but what was obvious then is even more obvious now.

When you’re running a trade surplus, you can’t win a tariff battle. Reciprocal tariffs are not a viable weapon for the country doing most of the exporting, because the importing country benefits from protecting its manufacturers.

DISCUSS ON SG

China Hits Back

Even though the trade war is not the war that China can win right now.

China will soon impose an additional 34 per cent tariffs on all American imports in retaliation for Donald Trump’s 34 per cent levy. Beijing announced the measure today, the most serious escalation in a trade war with Trump that has fed fears of a recession and triggered a global stock market rout.

The new tariff, which comes into effect on April 10, matches the rate of the ‘reciprocal’ tariff imposed by Trump this week. The levies are in addition to the existing tariffs already imposed on US goods.

US exports to China totalled $143.5 billion last year, according to Office of the US Trade Representative data. Oilseeds and grains, including soybeans, machinery and aerospace products were America’s top exports to the country. The US imported $438.9 billion worth of goods from China last year, with top imports including electrical and electronic equipment, machinery, toys, and plastics.

I don’t know why China is doing this, since the balance of trade surplus means that the more US-China trade declines, the more it will hurt China rather than the USA. All I can think is that China isn’t actually concerned about the inevitable trade war, but is more interested in gradually turning up the heat in a conflict that it knows to be unavoidable.

Time would appear to be on China’s side in this regard. It has been 25 years since Bill Clinton announced the United States-China Relation Act of 2000 that opened the floodgates of US-China trade.

DISCUSS ON SG

Clown World Abandons Taiwan

“The Taiwan Fixation” is a long and meandering article in Foreign Affairs that serves to obscure the primary point being made there. But the inescapable conclusion eventually reached by the intrepid reader who manages to slash-and-burn his way through the jungle-like maze of text is that Clown World’s strategerists now accept that the US military is no longer capable of winning a war with China. Which is good, because it isn’t.

The fate of Taiwan keeps American policymakers up at night, and it should. A Chinese invasion of the island would confront the United States with one of its gravest foreign policy choices ever. Letting Taiwan fall to Beijing would dent Washington’s credibility and create new challenges for U.S. military forces in Asia. But the benefits of keeping Taiwan free would have to be weighed against the costs of waging the first armed conflict between great powers since 1945. Even if the United States prevailed—and it might well lose—an outright war with China would likely kill more Americans and destroy more wealth than any conflict since the Vietnam War and perhaps since World War II. Nuclear and cyber weapons could make it worse, bringing destruction on the U.S. homeland. These would be catastrophic consequences for the United States.

As terrible as a U.S.-Chinese war would be, an American president would face immense pressure to fight for Taipei. Many U.S. policymakers are convinced that Taiwan, a prosperous democracy in a vital region, is worth protecting despite the daunting price of doing so. Political calculations may also push a U.S. president into war. By staying out, the president could expect to be blamed not only for permitting the economic meltdown that China’s invasion would trigger but also for losing Taiwan after a decades-long battle of wills between Washington and Beijing over the island’s future. That would doom a president’s legacy. Against such a certainty, any chance of salvaging the situation could look like a better bet—and by opting to fight China to protect Taiwan, the president would preserve the possibility of going down in history as a great wartime victor. In the 1960s, President Lyndon Johnson faced a choice between ramping up a U.S. military campaign in Vietnam and allowing the Communists to take over the country. He doubted that a war was necessary or winnable. But he sent American soldiers all the same.

U.S. leaders need a way to escape the ghastly decision to either wage World War III or watch Taiwan go down. They need a third option. Washington must make a plan that enables Taiwan to mount a viable self-defense, allows the United States to assist from a distance, and keeps the U.S. position in Asia intact regardless of how a cross-strait conflict concludes. This way, the United States could abstain from sending its military forces to defend Taiwan if China invades the island and does not attack U.S. bases or warships..

Before the moment of crisis arrives, political leaders should initiate a frank national dialogue about U.S. interests in the western Pacific. Americans must know the true costs of conflict with China: the deaths of tens and perhaps hundreds of thousands of U.S. soldiers, the possibility that nuclear weapons would be fired in desperation, an economic downturn dwarfing that of the Great Recession of 2008, and severe disruption to everyday life. It will take great effort for policymakers to communicate the scale of the potential devastation because a war with China would look nothing like the relatively small and contained wars that the United States has waged in recent decades.

In addition to making clear the costs of war with China, U.S. officials should stress the need to coexist with China as prominently as they discuss the need to compete with it. In the coming years, especially if Beijing’s behavior improves, American policymakers should adopt “competitive coexistence” as an approach for U.S. relations with China. In doing so, they would convey Washington’s willingness to establish stable patterns of interaction, limit security competition, and address global problems collaboratively. At a minimum, political leaders should avoid undue alarmism about Taiwan. The Biden administration was right to tamp down public speculation about the year by which China might intend to launch an invasion. The Trump administration should go further to discourage catastrophic thinking, including by communicating to the public that China would not pose an immeasurably greater challenge to the United States if Taiwan came under its control.

I don’t know why the neocons are preemptively aligning themselves with reality in the case of China when they aggressively refused to do so in the case of Russia. Perhaps they simply don’t hate the Chinese with the same irrational hatred they harbor for the Russians, perhaps the extent of the Chinese industrial advantage is simply too great for even the most magickal-thinkers to believe they can simply wish away, or, more likely, they want to reserve the limited US military resources that will be available for any foreign adventures for the Middle East.

The trade war with China should provide sufficient excitement to keep even the most inveterate drama-seekers occupied. There is simply no benefit to the United States of engaging in an actual war in the South Pacific.

DISCUSS ON SG

State Implies Support for Independence

I don’t know if this action by the US State Department is simple Deep State shenanigans or what would appear to be a significant step by the Trump administration:

Bloomberg: Earlier this week, the U.S. State Department removed the words “we do not support Taiwanese independence” from a fact sheet on Taiwan relations on its website. Have you discussed this with the U.S. and do you have any comment now? 

Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesman Guo Jiakun: There is but one China in the world, Taiwan is part of China and the government of the People’s Republic of China is the sole legal government representing the whole of China. It is a prevailing international consensus and basic norm governing international relations, and also a solemn commitment the U.S. has made in the three China-U.S. joint communiqués.

History cannot be tampered with, facts cannot be denied, and truth cannot be distorted. U.S. State Department updated its fact sheet on relations with Taiwan and gravely backpedaled on its position on Taiwan-related issues. This move severely violates the one-China principle and three China-U.S. joint communiqués, goes against international law and basic norms of international relations, and sends a seriously wrong signal to the separatist forces for “Taiwan independence.” This is another example of the U.S. clinging to its wrong policy of “using Taiwan to contain China.”

We urge the U.S. to immediately correct its wrongdoings, abide by the one-China principle and three China-U.S. joint communiqués, handle the Taiwan question with extra prudence, stop using Taiwan to contain China, stop upgrading its substantive relations with Taiwan, stop helping Taiwan expand so-called “international space,” stop emboldening and supporting “Taiwan independence,” and avoid further severe damage to China-U.S. relations and peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait.  

This is a key moment for the Trump administration to decide if it is genuinely nationalist or if it is still going to try to prop up the lite globalism known as “civic nationalism” that has systematically weakened the USA for the last century.

Although most people are incapable of examining the roots of their beliefs, at their cores, the Chinese position is the nationalist one and the independence position is the civic nationalist one. Regardless, it isn’t any business of the USA’s how the unification process takes place, so it’s not a good sign that the State Department is sending interventionist signals like this.

Americans might not consider this to be a big deal, but it’s the top story on Global Times today.

DISCUSS ON SG

The Case of the Gold Buddhas

This is the first I’ve ever heard about any of this. Don’t ask me if it’s legitimate or the plot of Chuck Dixon’s next action movie.

Now that we’re finally allowed to talk about conspiracies and USAID—can we talk about the CIA moving gold on ships?

Can we talk about how, before WWII, nearly every village in China had a gold Buddha filled with gems, serving as the local bank?

Can we talk about how the Japanese looted them all and launched a massive sealift operation to stash them in the Philippines?

Or how a farmer found ONE of these Buddhas—only for Ferdinand Marcos to steal it?

Or how a U.S. court valued that SINGLE Buddha at $22 BILLION in 1998?

Or how, if that one Buddha had been invested in the S&P 500, the farmer would be richer than
@elonmusk
today?

Can we talk about how Google raided libraries and archives, scanning every book to track it down?

Can we talk about how certain tech firms used this knowledge to leverage the US Government and CIA to work for them?

Or how most of that gold is STILL buried in the Philippines—
And how Taiwan is a distraction while China builds a massive Navy to take it back?

Or how at least one of the CIA’s secret ship registries was accidentally exposed in the USAID data dump?

Or how the CIA funded a History Channel program about all this—to paint anyone searching for the truth as a nutcase?

Or how the co-founder of Jeff Bezos’ starship company wrote a bestselling “fiction” book about this gold becoming the world’s Bitcoin reserve—nine years before Satoshi Nakamoto launched Bitcoin?

It does tend to strike me as an awful lot of interest in a barbarous relic. But how can one single gold Buddha be worth anything close to that much?

DISCUSS ON SG