Tag: China

NATO Takes Aim at China

Fresh from losing a proxy war to Russia, the brilliant strategists at NATO are now preparing for war with China over Taiwan. Rhetorically, anyhow:

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte issued a warning highlighting that the “massive” military buildup in China raises the risk of a potential invasion of Taiwan, potentially dragging Russia into this and impacting European security.

“We have this close relationship with Japan and the Republic of Korea, Australia and New Zealand, exactly for the reason that these countries are very, very worried about the massive military buildup in China that at the moment is taking place,” Mark Rutte said ahead of the Nato summit in The Hague, the Independent reported.

Rutte speculated that if China attempt to attack or invade Taiwan, then there is a possibility that Beijing would draw in Vladimir Putin, who would create trouble in Europe to divert the attention and resources of NATO. ‘We are all very worried, of course, about the situation in Taiwan. And we also know there is a risk that if the Chinese will try anything with Taiwan, that no doubt he will call his junior partner, Mr Putin, and make sure … he will keep us busy here, if that would happen’, he added.

He also noted in his pre-summit address that the rapid expansion of military capabilities of China was evident from the global rise of its defence firms. “We know that out of the 10 biggest defence companies, only a couple of years ago, you would not find any Chinese companies. At this moment, you will find three to five Chinese defence companies in the top 10 of the biggest defence companies in the world. This shows you that this massive buildup is taking place and is having a huge impact, also when it comes to the defence industrial production of China,” he also said.

Neither NATO nor the USA can fight China. We’ve already seen that the collective might of NATO can’t do anything more than slow Russia down, and the combined alliance of Israel and the USA was able to settle for an inconclusive draw with Iran.

China has more people, a larger military, and far more formidable industrial capacity than Russia and Iran combined. If China wanted to take Canada, there isn’t anything anyone could do about it, let alone Taiwan.

So expect reunification with the mainland within the next decade, and most likely a reunification as peaceful and devoid of global drama as the resolution of the Hong Kong situation was. And the first sign of it coming will likely be either South Korea or Japan “unexpectedly” changing sides and signing some kind of alliance with China.

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US Begs China for Help

Are we seriously supposed to believe that no one in the Trump administration took the probability of Iran restricting global oil supplies into account?

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has called on China to prevent Iran from closing the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most important shipping routes. His comments came after Iran’s state-run Press TV reported that parliament had approved a plan to close the Strait but added that the final decision lies with the Supreme National Security Council.

Any disruption to the supply of oil would have profound consequences for the economy. China in particular is the world’s largest buyer of Iranian oil and has a close relationship with Tehran.

Oil prices rose following the US attack on Iranian nuclear sites, with the price of the benchmark Brent crude reaching its highest level in five months.

“I encourage the Chinese government in Beijing to call them [Iran] about that, because they heavily depend on the Straits of Hormuz for their oil,” Rubio had said in an interview with Fox News on Sunday. “If they [close the Straits]… it will be economic suicide for them. And we retain options to deal with that, but other countries should be looking at that as well. It would hurt other countries’ economies a lot worse than ours.”

I would be too sure about that, given the way China obviously foresaw the need to avoid utilizing the more traditional sea routes.

On May 25, 2025, the first freight train from Xi’an, China, arrived at the Aprin dry port, Iran, marking the official launch of a direct rail link between the two countries. This new logistical artery significantly reduces transit times (from 30–40 days by sea to roughly 15 days by land) yielding a direct impact on transportation costs. This railway is part of a much larger and broader East-West Corridor that is designed to link China, physically, with a trade route directly to Africa, and to Europe, without having to use the more traditional sea trade routes.

An oil tanker carries between 500k and 2 million barrels of oil. 18.5 million barrels transit the Straits of Hormuz every day, which means about 18 tankers per day. China utilizes 16 million barrels per day, although obviously not all of it comes through the Straits.

A rail tanker car carries 700 barrels and Canada ships 150,000 barrels by rail every day from the Albert oil sands. Taking the faster rail delivery time into account, it would require 9,150 rail cars to replace those 16 daily tankers, and a total of 274,500 rail cars to meet the daily oil requirements without a hitch. That sounds like a lot, until you observe that the China Railway Rolling Stock Corp. is the world’s leading manufacturer of rolling stock, with the capacity to manufacture over 500 high-speed train sets, 12,000 subway cars and 50,000 freight cars per year.

I think it is safe to assume that China has already built the 300k or so freight cars required to replace the 1,120 sea tankers that historically supplied it, given that they didn’t just start building the Aprin-Xi’an link in 2024 and the two countries signed an economic cooperation pact in 2021.

However, China doesn’t transport all its oil through the Strait of Hormuz. It only obtains about one-third of it that way, 5.1 million barrels per day. So it only needs a total of 87,500 freight cars to substitute for that particular source. Which, one notes, the Chinese could have completed before the launch of the railroad if they started manufacturing them as recently as August 2023.

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The Irrelevance of the US Navy

China and Iran have just rendered the US Navy irrelevant, as it no longer has the ability to a) infringe upon Iran’s ability to export oil or b) prevent China from obtaining oil. This may be the most significant thing to happen on the global scene since the beginning of the Russian Special Military Operation in 2022.

China and Iran have launched a new rail route that directly links their economies and bypasses U.S. naval power and sanctions. The corridor shortens delivery times, facilitates Iranian oil exports, and strengthens Beijing-Tehran cooperation across the region.

  • The first cargo train from Xi’an, China arrived at Iran’s Aprin dry port near Tehran, marking the start of a new China-Iran rail route.
  • This rail line cuts freight travel time from Shanghai to Tehran from 30 days by sea to just 15 days by land.
  • Railway officials from six nations, including China and Iran, met in Tehran on May 12 to coordinate transcontinental trade standards.
  • The China-Iran rail connection enables oil shipments from Iran to China and the movement of Chinese goods to Europe without U.S. naval oversight.
  • China and Iran signed a 25-year, $400 billion economic cooperation agreement in 2021 as part of Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative.

The successful launch of the Xi’an-Tehran rail link is yet another demonstration of how the US has lost its global hegemony and superpower status. It is still a primary regional power, but it’s ability to project power has been significantly constrained and is now limited to Western Europe and the Americas.

At this point, it is reasonable to suspect that China’s regional dominance over Asia, Africa, and Persia is now more important than the USA’s regional dominance over the Americas and Western Europe, especially since the remnants of Clown World that rule Western Europe are directly opposed to the American national interest.

The current US political structure may not even make it to 2033, which, you may recall, I first predicted publicly 21 years ago, in 2004.

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From Kill Chain to Kill Web

The recent air battle between India and Pakistan does not bode well for the US military’s chances against China in the South Pacific:

China was building a “Kill Chain” against any US military intervention near China’s shores. The Kill Chain was focused on what Brose termed “Assassin’s Mace” – asymmetrical weapon systems, primarily hypersonic missiles, that could prevent US forces in its Western Pacific military bases, aircraft carrier groups, and strike fighters from approaching the theatres of operations that include Taiwan, the South China Sea and the East China Sea. Such a strategy is called Anti-Access Area Denial (A2AD).

In the recent India Pakistan air combat, we have witnessed an indirect manifestation of the Chinese military concept and capabilities, which is the driving force behind Pakistan’s stellar combat performance.

The battlefield actions clearly show that China has evolved from the linear “kill chain” to a “kill web” that integrates diverse platforms, sensors, and weapons across domains to create overlapping, resilient attack vectors, ensuring mission success even in high intensity combat environment.

The systems warfare in the India Pakistan air combat consists of Chinese J-10C fighters, PL-15E air to air missile, HQ-9P air defense systems, and EDK-03 early warning aircrafts. These weapon systems executed a perfect triangulated attack vector now referred to as the ABC kill web: A (HQ-9P) – detect, B (J-10C) – shoot, and C (EDK-03) – guide. This beyond-visual-range kill web took down multiple expensive Indian fighter jets without losses of any own assets.

Such sensor-shooter fusion technology is the defining feature of future air combat.

Of course, the India Pakistan air combat demonstrated only a few elements of the multi-domain full Kill Web that China has developed. Also the weapon systems used by the Pakistan air force is a full generation behind what is deployed at the PLA.

China’s full A2/AD platform encompasses a comprehensive suite of weaponry and systems, including various air and naval assets, hypersonic missiles, and other novel weapons such as the one-of-a-kind CH-T1 Ground Effect UAV (which I’ll discuss in a separate article).

China’s warfighting doctrine and capabilities have evolved much further than the Kill Chain described by Brose 5 years ago. The Kill Web is a multi-layered, redundant, and networked arsenal to achieve mission objectives in China’s A2AD strategy.

In early 2022, I pointed out, contra experts like Lind and Van Creveld, that Russia was going to win the war in Ukraine. There certainly weren’t any politicians or generals across the West who agreed with me. Now I’m pointing out, as I have for some time now, that the USA will lose any war it chooses to fight with China in the South Pacific.

Somehow, I doubt the politicians and generals will pay me any more heed than they did three years ago.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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