Tag: China

By Any Means

China has been watching NATO encroach on Russia’s borders over the last two years and it is clearly not inclined to permit a similar process take place in or anywhere near its own territory:

Beijing will use “any means” to prevent the secession of Taiwan, Chinese President Xi Jinping said on Tuesday, adding that the island’s reunification with the mainland is inevitable. Xi’s comments were part of a speech to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, at a symposium marking the 130th birthday of Mao Zedong, according to Xinhua news agency.

“We will resolutely prevent anyone from making Taiwan secede from China by any means,” Xi was quoted as saying.

Xi also described the “complete reunification” of China as “an inevitable trend”; both in the national interest and the desire of the people. He called for efforts to “promote the peaceful development” of relations with the island and further integrated development “in all fields.”

Xi sends warning over Taiwan, RUSSIA TODAY, 27 December 2023

China’s state media and diplomats have also made it clear that they are paying close attention to Japan’s historical decision to further abandon its post-WWII pacifism under pressure from the USA:

Global Times: It is reported that the Japanese government adopted the updated Three Principles on Transfer of Defense Equipment and Technology and its implementation guidelines (herein referred to as “Three Principles”) on December 22 with a decision to provide its home-made Patriot air defence missiles to the United States. It is the first time that Japan has allowed the export of destruction weapons since its Cabinet’s adoption of the Three Principles in 2014. On the same day, the Cabinet approved the budget for Fiscal Year 2024 with a record defense budget of around JPY 7.9 trillion, up by 16.6 percent year on year. What is your comment?

Mao Ning: Given Japan’s recent history of militarist aggression, Japan’s military and security moves are closely watched by its Asian neighbors and the international community. In recent years, Japan has been drastically readjusting its security policy, increasing defense spending year after year, easing the restrictions on arms export and seeking military breakthroughs. We urge Japan to earnestly respect the security concerns of neighboring countries, reflect on its history of aggression, commit itself to the path of peaceful development and earn the trust of its Asian neighbors and the wider international community through concrete actions.

There is no amount of deception and narrative massage that is going to fool the Chinese government. Whereas Russia was foolish enough to buy into the global economy narrative and accept the idea that the USA and its European satrapies could be partners, it’s very clear that the Chinese have learned from the Russian example and have no intention of being similarly bamboozled.

If the USA attempts to reconstruct SEATO, it is certain that China will take steps to prevent it, and it will do so much more quickly and aggressively than Russia did with NATO.

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China Connects the Dots

It’s fascinating to see the Chinese media is now openly discussing the sort of connections that tend to get one rapidly cancelled as a “conspiracy theorist” and even an “antisemite” in the West:

“A just cause enjoys abundant support, while an unjust cause finds little support.” No one feels this snippet of wisdom more deeply than the US now. A spokesman for Spain’s defense ministry told AFP on Sunday that the country will not participate in the so-called Operation Prosperity Guardian, a US-led maritime task force in the Red Sea that aims to protect the passage of Israeli-owned and Israel-bound merchant vessels.

Obviously, the US’ European allies are no longer willing to foot the bill of the US’ selfishness. Operation Prosperity Guardian organized by the US has a strong political overtone, that is, safeguarding Israel’s national interests. Israel’s actions in Gaza have aroused the anger of the international community. More than 20,000 Palestinians have reportedly been killed, more than 50,000 injured, and much of Gaza has been destroyed. Some European countries have begun to diverge from the US on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The objective of the US creating the Red Sea alliance, on the one hand, is testing whether its allies share the same beliefs with it on this issue. On the other hand, Washington is levering multilateral diplomatic actions to cover up its unilateral support of Israel.

US allies always support the US and share its stance, but that does not mean they will unlimitedly support the frenzied positions taken by the US on all issues, especially when the US position is contrary to their own interests…

Song Zhongping, a Chinese military expert, believes that no matter it is the Iraq war, the Afghan war, or the current Russia-Ukraine or Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the US’ performance has made it lose its credibility and leadership. US allies see clearly that the US only causes trouble, but it is not willing to bear the consequences. Instead, it lets its allies clean up the mess. The appeal of the US has declined, as the US that is used to being echoed is now being rejected. This is a true manifestation of “A just cause enjoys abundant support, while an unjust cause finds little support.”

Cracks in Red Sea alliance underline US-Europe division, GLOBAL TIMES, 25 December 2023

The fact that China is openly connecting the dots for the benefit of the global public is highlighted by the way Clown World’s media is actively attempting to hide the nature of the Yemeni-Israeli conflict and the fact that the Yemenis are only attacking Israeli-owned ships attempting to transit the Red Sea.

This operation is now coming apart in recriminations because commercial vessel owners in France, Spain, and Italy have accepted that if they negotiate Israel-boycott deals directly with the Houthis, they can continue to operate through the Red Sea. They resent the commercial competition from Russia and China which are operating oil tankers and dry-cargo carriers without hindrance or threat.

The obviousness of the targeting by the Houthis, and of Houthi deal-making by the Russians and Chinese, are being concealed, however, in the US and UK maritime industry media and the mainstream press.

In the most recent strike, the Israeli oil tanker Chem Pluto was hit on Saturday, December 23, by a drone about 1,600 kilometres east of the Yemen coast; about 200 kilometres west of the Indian coast. Initial media reporting claimed the vessel was “affiliated” to Israel but emphasized that it was owned by a Japanese entity and managed by a Dutch one… The allies knew at once that the Chem Pluto had been targeted because it was Israeli-owned. However, the Pentagon, the Voice of America, and UK propaganda continue to pretend that the Houthi targeting is not tied to the Israel Defence Forces’ operations in Gaza, and carefully restricted to Israeli and allied targets.

As with the current economic and military situations, the Western media’s attempts to construct and maintain false narratives, and to limit the influence of alternative medias that do not respect the narrative, is being systematically undermined by Clown World’s inability to influence the Chinese and Russian medias.

It’s very interesting to see how long it will take US politicians, narrative police, and corporate interests to come to term with the fact that the USA is no longer a monopolar power and that the markets of the West are no longer the most sizable, most advanced, or the most profitable.

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Questionable Sushi

China suspended all imports of Japanese fish after the Japanese government permitted the release of more than one million metric tons of treated radioactive waste water from the destroyed Fukushima nuclear plant into the sea.

Chinese seafood imports from Japan have plummeted following Beijing’s ban on marine products from its neighbour in response to the discharge of wastewater from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Imports fell by 67% in August from the same month a year earlier, to about ¥3bn ($20.2m), the public broadcaster NHK said, citing data from Chinese customs. The decision by Beijing and Hong Kong to suspend all imports of Japanese marine products in late August has sparked a diplomatic row and a rise in anti-Japanese sentiment in China.

Maybe, just maybe, they had reason…

Thousands of tons of dead sardines, mackerel wash ashore in northern Japan.

Mystery surrounds the phenomenon of tons of dead fish that were washed up on a beach in northern Japan last week. Sardines and mackerel were washed ashore in Hakodate on Japan’s northernmost main island of Hokkaido on Thursday morning, creating an unsettling sliver blanket that covered almost a mile of shoreline.

Marine biologists have concluded that a lack of oxygen in the water may have killed the fish. The first theory is that the fish were being hunted by predators and were herded into the shallow bay by the village of Toi, where the huge numbers of fish quickly consumed all the available oxygen in the water.

An alternative explanation is that the fish encountered a sudden pocket of significantly colder water on their migration route, which weakened them.

It is, indeed, a mystery.

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The Collapse of the Coalition

Even Clown World’s European satrapies are beginning to refuse to go along with the USA’s desperate attempts to shore up the edges of empire:

Australia is the latest country to reject a request from the United States to send warships to the Red Sea under the command of the Pentagon’s Operation Prosperity Guardian to protect commercial vessels along the critical maritime trade route from Iran-backed Houthi.

Defense Minister Richard Marles told Sky News that Australia’s military would not send a “ship or a plane” to the Red Sea but would triple the number of troops for the US-led maritime force. “We need to be really clear around our strategic focus and our strategic focus is our region,” Marles said.

The Pentagon’s formation of Operation Prosperity Guardian, a new task force to protect shipping from Houthi drone and missile attacks in the Bab Al-Mandeb Strait and the Red Sea, requires increased warship patrols by the US and allies. This will create a security umbrella over commercial vessels to defend from attacks.

Reuters said about twenty countries have signed up for the Pentagon’s new operation. However, several countries, including Australia, Spain, Italy, and France, have rejected the Pentagon’s request to participate in the operation.

These coalitions usually aren’t more than diplomatic cover for US troops, but in this case, the involvement of the lesser navies is actually necessary in the hopes of preventing the Houthis from sinking a US warship and thereby revealing the naked state of the US military. These hopes were always futile, however, since it’s pretty obvious that while Hezbollah, Iran, Russia, and China are all being cautious about directly attacking US military assets without the benefit of US camouflage – such as the Rangers and Patriot missile teams in Ukraine, for example – the Houthis appear to be very nearly ready to take on all comers as the Taliban.

None of this is happening by accident. The unrestricted and asymmetrical nature of the conflicts popping up one by one around the world, combined with China’s apparent quiescence, is very much in keeping with the geopolitical strategy laid out 24 years ago by the Chinese military. The fact that the neoclown strategists are keeping at least one very wary eye on China, despite its seeming lack of involvement in any of these conflicts and close calls from Gaza to Georgia, tends to suggest that the imperial advisers are well aware of this.

It may be another decade of this death-by-one-thousand-cuts warfare before China bestirs itself to openly challenge the Empire. Or it may only be a few more months before one or another of the various fronts that have been opened collapses. But regardless, it is eminently clear that we are witnessing the fall of an empire that has been in decline since 1973.

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The USN is Now Obsolete

Vladimir Putin makes it very clear that China, and most likely Iran as well, will be getting hypersonic missile technology.

Russia’s current relationship with China allows for full-spectrum cooperation in the tech sector, including with regards to its military applications, President Vladimir Putin told a Chinese entrepreneur on Thursday during a panel discussion at VTB Bank’s ‘Russia Calling!’ forum.

The remark was part of Putin’s answer to a question about US sanctions policy, which includes a ban on export of certain technologies to some nations, which, the Chinese businessman suggested, was forcing them to “reinvent the bicycle”. The Russian leader said such restrictions were not viable in the long run even before the world became profoundly interconnected…

Washington’s current policies are meant to preserve its dominant status, the Russian president claimed, but “if we act across the board, supporting and helping each other, no restrictions by whoever tries to keep its advantage can stop us.”

As for China specifically, Russia is ready to cooperate in every area, Putin assured.

“We have no limits. This includes the military sphere,” he said. “When it comes to security, we are moving away from the traditional ‘buy-sell’ kind of relationship. We think about the future, about technologies.”

Translation: Because, unlike the US and British empires, the Russian people are not seeking to unilaterally dominate the world, there is no reason not to share its advanced weapons technology with other powers that share the Russian objective to free itself from Clown World’s economic and military dominance.

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The Global Economy is Dead

And the Great Bifurcation is now in place. Russia and China are no longer using the US dollar for trade between their countries:

Western currencies have been almost completely phased out in Russia-China trade, as nearly all payments between the countries are now carried out in rubles and yuan, Russian First Deputy Prime Minister Andrey Belousov announced on Monday.

Since the introduction of Western sanctions on Moscow, Russia and China have accelerated the use of their own currencies in trade. According to Belousov, 95% of all transactions between Russia and China are now carried out in one of the countries’ national currencies, and given the rapid expansion of mutual trade and cooperation, this percentage is likely to grow.

Speaking at a meeting of the Russia-China intergovernmental commission in Beijing, the deputy prime minister said bilateral trade between the two countries will exceed the target of $200 billion this year, and may reach $300 billion by 2030.

World War III largely remains unfought, and yet its economic victors are already apparent. For decades, the USA has bombed, staged coups, invaded, and occupied in order to defend the primacy of the US dollar. In less than two years, inspired by what has to be the dumbest, least well-considered economic siege in recorded history, the USA has lost its ability to exert currency influence over the biggest economy on the planet and the foremost military power on Earth.

It’s only a matter of time now before all the BRICS countries stop using the dollar for trade outside the Western bloc. The ramifications of this are massive, and may well serve to mark the precise moment that the USA ceased to be a global power and became a regional one again.

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Meanwhile, on Taiwan

The two anti-independence parties are formally joining forces:

Taiwan’s opposition parties have agreed to run a joint campaign in January’s election, raising the chances that a more China-friendly government takes power in Taipei. The Kuomintang and Taiwan People’s Party announced plans to run a united campaign following a meeting Wednesday that centered around how to decide which of their two nominees would head the campaign as the presidential candidate…

“A successful opposition alliance — no matter who is running as president — means it’s likely cross-strait tensions will improve as the opposition has more than a 50% chance of beating the DPP’s Lai according to local polls,” according to Wang Yeh-lih, a political science professor at National Taiwan University.

Lai has benefited so far from a divided opposition to lead most opinion polls. He had a 33% support rating, according to the latest survey by broadcaster TVBS, with Ko in second at 24% and Hou with 22%. Foxconn Technology Group founder Terry Gou had the backing of 8% of respondents. An alliance between the KMT and the TPP could leave Gou out in the cold after the independent presidential contender also floated the idea of teaming up with Ko.

Which means that after the 2024 election, the Chinese will likely be negotiating with a relatively friendly government. If Gou ends up in a position of power, such as the Minister of Foreign Affairs, that may indicate that a sudden reunification announcement is in the cards.

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China Disappears Israel

China has literally wiped the name of Israel off its mapping software.

Chinese tech giants Baidu and Alibaba no longer display the name of Israel on their maps, The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday – a move they said reflected ‘Beijing’s vague diplomacy in the region.’

The online maps show Israel’s borders and cities, the paper said.

But the country itself is not named – in contrast to other neighboring countries.

Social media users shared maps they said confirmed the WSJ’s point.

I don’t think Beijing’s Middle East diplomacy has been even remotely vague; it’s apparent that the mainstream media doesn’t want to let the public know how massive the weight of world opinion against Israel is now.

It’s fascinating to see how the media appeals to world opinion when it’s attacking Russia, then tries to pretend it doesn’t exist and doesn’t matter when it’s defending Israel. And amping up the propaganda not only isn’t working, it’s counterproductive when literally no one except neocons and Boomercons believe it.

Meanwhile, the Chinese are observably unimpressed with the media theatrics.

The current ground operations have evidently resulted in excessive casualties, and with the situation in Gaza deteriorating further, a humanitarian disaster in the Gaza Strip is poised to escalate. Continuous casualties will only breed more hatred. Strategically, this is not merely a military test for Israel but also a test of wisdom. Excessive actions will cause Israel to lose the sympathy gained due to Hamas’ attacks. 

The criticism of Israel’s excessive use of force in Chinese public opinion is primarily based on morality. However, some Western media outlets have labeled the Chinese internet discourse as “antisemitic,” which is clearly an unjust accusation. There is absolutely no foundation for the formation of “antisemitism” as an ideology in China. China prioritizes regional peace and opposes the slaughter of civilians by a state apparatus. The mainstream voices on Chinese internet platforms echo this sentiment.

US and Israel should approach international criticism rationally, GLOBAL TIMES, 30 October 2023

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That Will Show China

A US response meant to mitigate a Chinese boycott inadvertently demonstrates China’s economic might:

The United States has for the first time begun buying Japanese seafood to supply its military there, a response to China’s ban on such products imposed after Tokyo released treated water from its crippled Fukushima nuclear plant into the sea.

Unveiling the initiative in a Reuters interview on Monday, U.S. Ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel said Washington should also look more broadly into how it could help offset China’s ban that he said was part of its “economic wars.”

China, which had been the biggest buyer of Japanese seafood, says its ban is due to food safety fears.

The U.N.’s nuclear watchdog vouched for the safety of the water release that began in August from the plant wrecked by a 2011 tsunami. G7 trade ministers on Sunday called for the immediate repeal of bans on Japanese food.

“It’s going to be a long-term contract between the U.S. armed forces and the fisheries and co-ops here in Japan,” Emanuel said. “The best way we have proven in all the instances to kind of wear out China’s economic coercion is come to the aid and assistance of the targeted country or industry,” he said.

The first purchase of seafood by the U.S. under the scheme involves just shy of a metric ton of scallops, a tiny fraction of more than 100,000 tons of scallops that Japan exported to mainland China last year.

I’m sure the Japanese seafood industry appreciates the gesture. But one can’t help but ask two questions:

  1. Why hasn’t the USA been buying Japanese seafood to supply its troops occupying Japan until now?
  2. How, exactly, is replacing less than 1/100,000th of the lost business, or .001 percent, going to keep the Japanese seafood industry solvent?

As with seafood, so with artillery shells…

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China Warns Israel

The Chinese Foreign Ministry makes it very clear whose side China is on, and that the Chinese government will not endorse an Israeli invasion of Gaza:

AFP: Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi made comments yesterday on the recent situation in the Middle East. He said that the Palestinian question is at the core of the Middle East issue and the crux is that justice has eluded the Palestinians for too long. Can you elaborate on that?

Wang Wenbin: On October 12, Member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and Director of the Office of the Central Commission for Foreign Affairs Wang Yi talked with Celso Luiz Nunes Amorim, chief advisor of the Presidency of Brazil, on the phone with a focus on sharing views on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

Director Wang Yi noted that China is deeply saddened by the rising tension between Palestine and Israel and the huge civilian casualties. He said China opposes acts that harm civilians and condemns violations of international law. China calls on all parties to exercise restraint, de-escalate the situation on the ground as soon as possible and prevent further expansion of the conflict. The top priority is to ensure the safety of civilians, and open corridors for aid so as to avoid a severe humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

Director Wang Yi pointed out that the Palestinian question is at the core of the Middle East issue. He said the crux of the issue is that justice has eluded the Palestinians for too long. The current conflict showed again in an extremely brutal way that solution to the Palestinian question lies in resuming genuine peace talks as soon as possible and realizing the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people. China calls for an international peace conference with greater authority and impact as soon as possible to galvanize a more broad-based international consensus with the two-state solution serving as its basis and formulate a timetable and roadmap to that end. The UN has the responsibility and obligation to play its due role on the Palestinian question. China supports the Security Council in holding an emergency meeting on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, agrees that the meeting should focus on humanitarian concerns, demand a ceasefire, an end to violence and the protection of civilians, form a binding international consensus and take concrete next-steps. China will stay in contact and coordinate and cooperate closely with Brazil and relevant parties in this regard. 

Amorim said that the key to resolving the conflict is to resume peace talks, and Brazil is ready to closely coordinate with China to work jointly to ease the situation. 

The Chinese diplomats always utilize positive and neutral language, but in a way that leaves little room to misinterpret what they’re saying.

Translation: follow through on your threats to enter Gaza and we will backstop the support provided by Iran and Russia to Hezbollah and the Palestinians.

The Global Times made it even more explicit, just in case the message didn’t get through.

China’s top diplomat Wang Yi said Israel’s actions have gone beyond the scope of self-defense, expressing concerns about the escalating Israel-Palestine conflict as Israel ordered one million people from the northern part of Gaza to evacuate within 24 hours as it prepared for a ground assault.

No wonder Netanyahu and his generals are thinking long and hard about this one. I expect they’re going to roll the dice anyhow, though, because they have about as much military support from the US as they’re likely to receive in the foreseeable future. I’d like to be wrong, indeed, I very much hope I’m wrong, but the stark reality is that this may be Israel’s last, best, chance at ethnically cleansing Gaza and taking another big step toward Greater Israel that they’re ever going to have.

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