Banking in Yuan

Russian banks are openly discussing settlements in the Chinese currency:

The hegemony of the US dollar is seriously challenged by the rise of the Chinese yuan and by Washington’s failed attempt to wreck the Russian economy by weaponizing the greenback, Andrey Kostin, head of Russia’s banking major VTB, told Reuters on Friday.

The major banking figure said that under the current geopolitical circumstances more and more nations are shifting away from trade settlements in dollar and euro, while China is moving towards removal of strict currency policies.

“The long historical era of the dominance of the American dollar is coming to an end,” Kostin said, in an interview with the news agency. “I think that the time has come when China will gradually remove currency restrictions.”

According to Kostin, VTB has been discussing using the Chinese national currency in settlements with third countries.

US Dollar hegemony was always based on US military supremacy which began with the security of the US industrial homeland and was secured by the physical destruction of all of its potential economic rivals from 1939-1941. But now that Clown World is collapsing under the weight of its incoherencies, that global military supremacy has devolved to the mere regional superiority of a traditional Great Power, as evidenced by the recent failures of its proxies in Syria, Afghanistan, and Ukraine.

And that is a very, very different game than global monopower.

My expectation is that the political structure of the USA will fail before most Americans recognize the extent to which the global balance of power has changed.

UPDATE: The Chinese are directly targeting the US film industry as well.

China Film Association released professional ethics convention for film practitioners, vowing firm opposition to tax evasion, pornography, gambling and drugs.

The association published the convention on its WeChat account on Thursday, saying that the move is aimed to further strengthen the construction of professional ethics of film workers and the construction of film industry style in order to create a clean environment for the Chinese film industry and contribute to building China into a country with a strong socialist culture.

The convention called on Chinese film practitioners to stick to loving the country and the people and to firmly oppose any remark or behavior attempting to split the country, destroy national unity, damage social harmony and stability or infringe people’s interests.

It requires film practitioners to comply with the laws and regulations on environmental protection, cultural relics protection and production safety at filming sites; resolutely resist tax evasion, pornography, gambling and drugs.

It also expresses opposition against violating behaviors like exorbitant pay, ghostwriting by gunmen, malicious hype, fake box office and illegal reprinting, and calls on the industry to abandon abnormal aesthetics.

Translation from the original Mandarin: No more Disney films in China.

DISCUSS ON SG


Stormy Seas Ahead

With the NATO-Russian war heating up over Kosovo, American troops being deployed in both South America and Africa, and China beginning to prepare for worst-case scenarios, it’s probably fair to anticipate some difficult times ahead.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping has called on his top national security officials to think about “worst case” scenarios and prepare for “stormy seas,” as the ruling Communist Party hardens efforts to counter any perceived internal and external threats.

“The complexity and difficulty of the national security issues we now face have increased significantly,” Xi said Tuesday at a meeting of the party’s National Security Commission, state news agency Xinhua reported.

“We must adhere to bottom-line thinking and worst-case-scenario thinking, and get ready to undergo the major tests of high winds and rough waves, and even perilous, stormy seas,” he added.

The latest stern instructions from Xi, China’s most powerful leader in decades, comes as Beijing faces a host of challenges, from a struggling economy to what it sees as an increasingly hostile international environment.

In face of what he called a “complex and grave” situation, Xi said China must speed up the modernization of its national security system and capabilities, with a focus on making them more effective in “actual combat and practical use.”

He also called for China to push ahead with the construction of a national security risk monitoring and early warning system, enhance national security education and improve the management of data and artificial intelligence security.

Since coming to power a decade ago, Xi has made national security a key paradigm that permeates all aspects of China’s governance, experts say. He has expanded the concept of national security to cover everything from politics, economy, defense, culture and ecology to cyberspace. It extends from the deep sea and the polar regions to space, as well as big data and artificial intelligence.

Under Xi’s notion of “comprehensive national security,” China has introduced a raft of legislation to protect itself against perceived threats, including laws on counter-terrorism, counter-espionage, cybersecurity, foreign non-government organizations, national intelligence and data security.

Both Putin and Xi know very well what they’re up against in Clown World. The current iteration of The Empire That Never Ended more than a mere human enemy, it is a spiritual machine, which I suspect is why both men are being so circumspect about engaging in direct conflict any sooner than is absolutely necessary. It may be hard to understand their caution, in light of their overwhelming combined economic, demographic, and military advantages, but it’s that very caution, and the awareness that caution signifies, that appears to be panicking the leaders of Clown World.

DISCUSS ON SG


Don’t Talk to Clown World

The Chinese have apparently decided that there is no point in talking to the United States. It would be reasonable to assume that they have reached the same conclusion as the Russians, which is that the governments of Clown World are agreement-incapable.

China has rejected Washington’s proposal that their respective defense chiefs meet this week, the Pentagon said on Monday. The news comes amid a renewed diplomatic spat between the two countries.

“Overnight, the PRC informed the US that they have declined our early May invitation for Secretary [Lloyd] Austin to meet with PRC Minister of National Defense Li Shangfu in Singapore,” the Pentagon said in a statement to the Wall Street Journal, referring to the People’s Republic of China.

“The Department believes strongly in the importance of maintaining open lines of military-to-military communication between Washington and Beijing to ensure that competition does not veer into conflict,” the statement read.

The WSJ cited an unnamed US defense official as saying that China’s dismissal was “an unusually blunt message.”

According to the report, the Pentagon had wanted the meeting to take place on the sidelines of the annual Shangri-La Dialogue security forum. Li will speak at the event as part of his trip to Singapore from May 31 to June 4, the Chinese Defense Ministry said. The Pentagon said last week that attempts to establish contacts with their Chinese counterparts in recent months have failed.

The Great Bifurcation of the global economy continues apace.

Whether one is operating at the international, the professional, or the personal level, it makes absolutely no sense to talk to parties one knows to be dishonest. Once you permit any communication whatsoever with a liar, a gaslighter, or a manipulator, they will do their utmost to use literally anything you say against you in some way. Moreover, if you engage with them directly, they can invent your words out of thin air and turn the situation into a “he said, she said” scenario that leaves you in retreat and on the defensive no matter what you actually say. Any engagement is inherently disadvantageous.

Once you have determined that the other side is a bad actor, do not engage with them at all, ideally, not even to tell them you will not talk to them. But if it is necessary to RSVP, such as in the case of international diplomatic relations or formal invitations to family events, then simply checking “no” and refusing to provide any explanation whatsoever is the correct action. Remember, an explanation is an invitation to argue, and is itself a form of engagement and communication.

Note the way in which the Chinese a) declined a specific invitation to meet with the Secretary of Defense with “an unusually blunt message” and b) have not permitted the Pentagon to “establish contacts” at all. This is very wise, as it prevents the US propaganda machine from spinning the Chinese response due to the fact that there is nothing to spin.

DISCUSS ON SG


A Tale of Two Chinas

Taiwan island submits to the globohomo death cult:

Gay and lesbian couples will now be able to legally adopt children in Taiwan, after the island’s legislature voted in favor of the change on Tuesday. Taiwan became the first jurisdiction in Asia to legalize same-sex marriage four years ago.

The mainland supports future Chinese generations:

There has been a decline in births since 2017 as well as a falling marriage rate, independent demographer He Yafu told the Global Times on Sunday. The measures target important issues affecting the willingness to marry and have children, and they will help curb some of bad social customs through long-term efforts, observers noted. With economic and social development, the Chinese younger generations’ concept of marriage has undergone changes, He said, pointing out that the key to improve the culture of marriage and childbirth lies with young people.

“The society needs to guide young people more on the concept of marriage and childbirth, and encourage young people to get married and have children,” He said.

Indeed, efforts to improve society’s marriage culture and environment will hedge against the possible negative effects of some of the demographic downturn, analysts noted.

He pointed out that population problems are chronic and that population declines will have little impact on China’s economy and society in the short term. China is expected to introduce measures to reduce the cost of marriage and childbirth and vigorously create a childbearing-friendly social environment, he said.

The future belongs to those who show up for it. Clown World is desperately attempting to shore up its weakening position with technology and parasitical behavior. Russia and China, along with the European Christian remnant in the West, are taking actions that will inevitably assure their ascendance.

Build platforms. Build homesteads. Build families. And prepare to defend all of them from the increasingly desperate clowns and the NPCs they have programmed.

DISCUSS ON SG


Not the Next Ukraine

Taiwan makes it clear that it has no intention of permitting Clown World to sacrifice it in the name of containing or deterring China.

Taiwan Minister of National Defense Chiu Kuo-cheng (邱國正) on Monday said that the armed forces would not tolerate the destruction of any Taiwanese facility, in response to a suggestion by U.S. Congressman Seth Moulton that the U.S. should warn China that it would “blow up” Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) if it attacked Taiwan.

At a conference organized by the California-based think tank Milken Institute in May, Moulton was asked what deterrence effect U.S. chip policy could have on China, to which he responded, “the U.S. should make it very clear to the Chinese that if you invade Taiwan, we’re going to blow up TSMC.” U.S. defense policy advisor and former government official Michele Flournoy quickly countered his remark, saying that if TSMC was destroyed, there would be a “two trillion dollar impact on the global economy within the first year” and “you’d put manufacturing around the world at a standstill.”

Before a session of the Legislative Yuan on Monday, Chiu was asked by the media to comment on Moulton’s statement. Chiu said that anyone who wants to bomb any facility in Taiwan, regardless of whether it is meant for defensive purposes, has exceeded defense norms, reported Liberty Times. The defense minister said that the armed forces are responsible for defending Taiwan and its people, materials, and strategic resources. Therefore, “if they want to bomb this or that,” the armed forces will not tolerate this kind of situation, Chiu said.

It’s very much for the good of the people of Taiwan island that their leadership is taking this stand. No doubt they’ve seen what the foreign leadership of Ukraine has done to the people of Ukraine, and even the most rabid proponent of independence would prefer reunification to that.

I still anticipate that the reunification of Taiwan with the mainland will eventually be as peaceful as the reunification of Hong Kong proved to be. Sure, there will be protests and much criticism from the globalist media, but ultimately, it should be possible for both Chinese parties to accomplish the inevitable without war or even violence.

DISCUSS ON SG


Preparing for Defeat

Clown World’s pet politicians and intellectuals are beginning to change the Narrative and prepare the public for its inevitable defeat in Ukraine.

The conflict between Russia and Ukraine may not end in victory for Kiev, and its Western backers should prepare for such an outcome, Czech President Petr Pavel has told The Guardian newspaper.

“I think we should do anything… at our disposal to encourage Ukrainians and to support them to be successful. But internally, we should also be ready for other contingencies,” said Pavel, who was in London for the coronation of King Charles III.

A lot will depend on the outcome of Ukraine’s planned spring counteroffensive, explained the Czech leader, who has a background in intelligence and served as chairman of the NATO Military Committee between 2015 and 2018.

The outcome is not in doubt. While the game still needs to be played out, the Russians are as confident of victory now as they were in 1943, when Stalin, post-Tehran, commented: “Roosevelt has given me his firm word to open extensive actions in France in 1944. I think he will keep his word. And if he doesn’t keep his word, we are strong enough to crush Hitler and Germany on our own.”

Notice that Clown World strategist emeritus, who was among the first clowns to recognize that the neoliberal world order was in decline back in 2014, is now openly predicting a negotiated settlement brokered by the Chinese.

Former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger has told CBS News that the conflict in Ukraine may be approaching a turning point, and that Chinese-brokered peace talks could begin by the end of 2023.

“Now that China has entered the negotiation, it will come to a head, I think by the end of the year,” the 99-year-old diplomat told CBS in an interview broadcast on Sunday. By that time, he continued, “we will be talking about negotiating processes and even actual negotiations.”

Kissinger drew the ire of Kiev last year when he suggested that Ukraine should accept a return to the “status quo ante,” or relinquish its territorial claims to Crimea and grant autonomy to the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, in the name of peace. He has since suggested that these territories become the basis of negotiations after a ceasefire and Russian withdrawal.

I have no doubt that Kissinger is sending a signal to Putin that Clown World is finally willing to compromise, but I am dubious that the Russians – or the Chinese – will be short-sighted enough to settle for what is on offer, given that it is already within their grasp. Putin has openly stated that the Russian objective is not merely the declowning of Ukraine, but of Europe and the West.

And there is no reason for China to encourage a settlement on the Ukraine front when peace there would permit the military forces of Clown World to concentrate on Taiwan. Which is why I anticipate, to the contrary, the opening of a third front somewhere else in the world, most likely either a) the Middle East or b) Africa.

UPDATE: Meanwhile, the clowns in the EU are just digging themselves in deeper:

The European Union is seeking to tighten its economic screws on Russia by sanctioning Chinese companies that conduct trade with Moscow, the Financial Times reported on Sunday.

They’ve clearly learned absolutely nothing from the way their anti-Russian sanctions boomeranged on them. And now they’re encouraging the biggest manufacturing country on the planet to remove itself from the shrinking “global” economy.

Watching Clown World try to throw its nonexistent weight around is disturbingly like seeing an obese 50-year-old former cheerleader strutting around in a miniskirt still thinking she’s hot.

DISCUSS ON SG


A Wargame in Washington

This may be the only time I have ever regretted not becoming a Congressman. This weekend, the House Ways and Means Committee played a wargame simulating a US-China war over Taiwan.

It’s April 22, 2027, and 72 hours into a first-strike Chinese attack on Taiwan and the U.S. military response. Already, the toll on all sides is staggering.

It was a war game, but one with a serious purpose and high-profile players: members of the House select committee on China. The conflict unfolded on Risk board game-style tabletop maps and markers under a giant gold chandelier in the House Ways and Means Committee room.

The exercise explored American diplomatic, economic and military options if the United States and China were to reach the brink of war over Taiwan, a self-ruled island that Beijing claims as its own. The exercise played out one night last week and was observed by The Associated Press. It was part of the committee’s in-depth review of U.S. policies toward China as lawmakers, especially in the Republican-led House, focus on tensions with President Xi Jinping’s government.

In the war game, Beijing’s missiles and rockets cascade down on Taiwan and on U.S. forces as far away as Japan and Guam. Initial casualties include hundreds, possibly thousands, of U.S. troops. Taiwan’s and China’s losses are even higher.

Discouragingly for Washington, alarmed and alienated allies in the war game leave Americans to fight almost entirely alone in support of Taiwan.

In the war game, lawmakers played the blue team, in the role of National Security Council advisers. Their directive from their (imaginary) president: Deter a Chinese takeover of Taiwan if possible, defeat it if not. Experts for the Center for a New American Security think tank, whose research includes war-gaming possible conflicts using realistic scenarios and unclassified information, played the red team.

In the exercise, it all kicks off with opposition lawmakers in Taiwan talking about independence.

With the think tank’s defense program director Stacie Pettyjohn narrating, angry Chinese officials respond by heaping unacceptable demands on Taiwan. Meanwhile, China’s military moves invasion-capable forces into position. Steps such as bringing in blood supplies for treating troops suggest this is no ordinary military exercise.

Ultimately, China imposes a de facto blockade on Taiwan, intolerable for an island that produces more than 60% of the world’s semiconductors, as well as other high-tech gear.

One hopes that the wargame’s designers made it real enough to teach the politicians that a war with China over Taiwan is actually less winnable than Ukraine. The basic concept of a “regional power” necessarily entails not interfering with that power in its region-of-control.

The fact that the wargame did not culminate in a US victory, unlike the previous wargames by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, is a good sign that it had at least some connection to the actual situation. But the fact that one of the lessons they took from the exercise concerned “diplomacy” and “the lack of direct, immediate leader-to-leader crisis communication” is dangerous, because a) there is no amount of diplomacy or talk-talk that is going to dissuade the Chinese and b) it means the politicians are still hoping to find some sort of painless Smart Boy solution that does not exist.

China fully expects reunification by 2030. I would not be surprised if it takes place sooner than that, and more or less peacefully, given the absolute lunacy of Clown World’s latest ideas for trying to deter the Chinese from their top strategic priority.

The latest remarks by the EU’s top diplomat Josep Borrell, who called for European navies to patrol the Taiwan Straits, caused huge controversy on Sunday as some Chinese observers said the comments are “extremely dangerous” and signal “a retrogression” of the EU’s stance on the Taiwan question following the recent G7 meeting during which the US tried to pressure its allies to take a tougher position on the matter.

European navies should patrol the disputed Taiwan Straits, Borrell wrote in an article published in the French newspaper Journal Du Dimanche, saying that the Chinese island concerns the EU economically, commercially and technologically, according to media reports on Sunday. He called for European navies to patrol the Taiwan Straits to “show Europe’s commitment to freedom of navigation” in this crucial area.

Call of top EU diplomat for European navies to patrol the Taiwan Straits ‘very dangerous’, Global Times

I really don’t think a resort to European gunboat diplomacy is a wise idea when China is actively seeking vengeance for its “Century of Humiliation”. Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.

DISCUSS ON SG


The Failure of the Materialist Model

Those who blame every form of evil and insanity on “corporate greed” will find it very difficult to explain why Clown World is so willing to sacrifice the US and European economies and destroy corporate profits on behalf of Ukraine and Taiwan:

President Joe Biden will stop at nothing to protect America against security threats posed by China, even if it means damaging the US economy, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has claimed.

“National security is of paramount importance in our relationship with China,” Yellen said during a speech in Washington in Wednesday. She gave the example of blocking China from obtaining certain technologies, adding, “We will not compromise on these concerns, even when they force trade-offs with our economic interests.”

It’s evident that China and Russia are leading the charge against Clown World’s satanic hegemony, and that more and more countries are showing signs of following their lead. This is a spiritual war between the global satanists and the nations, not an economic war between rival sets of materialists, which is why all of the secular and materialist analysts are completely off every time they make a prediction or offer an explanation for why things are happening.

DISCUSS ON SG


There is No Thucydides Trap

And WWIII has already begun, so Ron Unz is incorrect to imagine that the lunacies of the neocons have saved the USA from the inevitable war with China et al.

The reality is that over the last year the Neocon-orchestrated war against Russia has collapsed any American hopes of forming a strong anti-China coalition.

For generations, India has had a troubled relationship with China and just a couple of years ago a bitter border skirmish had prompted a national ban on TikTok. But India and Russia had been strong allies throughout the Cold War and most of India’s military equipment is still Russian, while it has also benefitted from a very lucrative trade in refining and selling sanctioned Russian oil. So India has now clearly moved towards the Russia-China bloc.

In recent years, China has become the largest market for Saudi oil, while Russia is the other leading member of the crucial OPEC+ cartel. With both those countries joined together in a tight embrace, a Saudi shift away from its longstanding American alliance was hardly so surprising, but it still generated shockwaves.

Japan’s energy needs have led it to begin importing Russian oil despite the Western campaign of sanctions, so even our strongest ally in the Far East may be starting to reconsider its options.

In his 2014 analysis, Mearsheimer had logically presented Russia, India, and Japan as the three most important members of the balancing coalition that America would create against China, but we have now lost two or possibly all three of those countries.

The First World War lasted so long and cost so many millions of lives because the two contending coalitions were evenly matched, with the rising power of Germany so immensely strong that an alliance of the next three European powers—Britain, Russia, and France—could barely fight it to a draw over four years, and only American intervention finally turned the tide at the end. As Niall Ferguson cogently argued in The Pity of War, a swift German victory would have essentially resulted in the creation of the EU a century earlier and with negligible bloodshed.

But if the British government of the time had been so mad as to deliberately provoke a conflict with Russia on the eve of that war, thereby driving the Czar into the arms of his German cousin, the resulting realignment would have ensured a quick victory for the Kaiser, or more likely a German-led coalition too strong to even be opposed.

As envisioned by Mearsheimer, an America allied with Russia, India, Japan, and the NATO countries would have constituted a better than even global match for China, thereby allowing a highly aggressive American policy in the South China Sea. But Neocon blunders have now produced an entirely different correlation of forces, one so unfavorable to our own country that any armed conflict has become much less likely.

In his book, Allison considered a long list of geopolitical transitions over the last 500 years, and one of the few that avoided any bloodshed occurred when American power surpassed that of Britain early in the twentieth century. As he tells the story, by the time the British government considered challenging American dominance in the Western Hemisphere, our country had already grown too powerful to resist and their military leaders vetoed the idea. Lord Salisbury, the British Prime Minister, later wistfully reflected that if his country had intervened in the Civil War decades earlier and helped split the U.S. into rival, hostile nations, matters might have later played out very differently.

In similar manner, I think the developments of the last year have fostered the growth of a China-aligned global coalition far too powerful for America to directly confront, with even our subservient military leaders probably recognizing that reality.

Ron Unz is a smart and reasonably well-read individual. But, first of all, there is no such thing as a “Thucydides Trap”. It’s nothing more than a term coined by a Clown World pseudointellectual designed to capture the media’s attention and make other pseudos feel smart when stating the obvious, and it doesn’t even make sense, as anyone who compares the positions of Athens-Sparta to USA-China will immediately recognize.

“The front of the paperback edition was packed with a remarkable ten pages of glowing endorsements by a long list of the West’s most prestigious public figures and intellectuals, ranging from Joe Biden to Henry Kissinger to Gen. David Petraeus to Klaus Schwab.”

The “Thucydides Trap” is just another form of historical squid ink meant to obscure the observable patterns of the Empire That Never Ended from those capable of recognizing them. The only utility of the term is that one knows better than to take seriously anyone using it.

Second, China has been at war with the USA since 1999. It has been at war with Clown World since 2015. The fact that this war has been “unrestricted”, to use the Chinese word, rather than “hot” is irrelevant with regards to the possibility that the war might be avoided. But war that has already begun cannot, by definition, be avoided.

The historical truth is that empires always end. But other than a vague sense of discomfort, anomie, and being past the peak glory days, the citizens of the empire seldom realize that the imperial age has ended until it is long gone.

DISCUSS ON SG


Why Mexico Turned to China

After turning a blind eye to the Mexican invasion of the USA for the last 40 years, Republicans now want to invade Mexico:

US Republicans are increasingly warming to the idea of waging war against Mexico’s powerful drug cartels, according to Politico, which spoke to several lawmakers in the party about the controversial idea.

Former president Donald Trump is eager to send “special forces” south of the border to take out the cartels, according to Rolling Stone, whose sources claimed the 2024 Republican frontrunner was asking for “battle plans” to engage traffickers. Trump, they said, has been complaining about “missed opportunities of his first term” and is surrounded by people “who want fewer missed opportunities in a second Trump presidency.”

But the ex-president is far from alone inside his party. Republican congressmen Dan Crenshaw and Mike Waltz are pushing legislation that would seek an Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) targeting the cartels, accusing them of “turning Mexico into a failed narco-state.”

Waltz agreed that it was “time to go on offense” against the traffickers, echoing his colleague’s comparison to the banned terrorist group. “We need to start thinking about these groups more like ISIS than we do the mafia,” he told Politico on Monday.

A group of 20 Republican congressmen led by Texas Rep. Chip Roy last month introduced a bill that would designate the Gulf Cartel, Cartel del Noreste, Cartel de Sinaloa, and Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion as “Foreign Terrorist Organizations.”

Republican senators Lindsey Graham and John Kennedy unveiled a similar bill last month calling for a task force dedicated to cartels and drug traffickers and naming nine such organizations to be designated as terrorist.

What they’re leaving out is the fact that the US military trained the cartels. The cartels are genuinely analogous to ISIS, in that ISIS was a US creation utilized to justify the US military intervention in Syria. First they create the problem – ISIS, the cartels – and then they offer the solution, which is always a military intervention.

But whereas Russia stepped in to prevent the US from effecting regime change in Syria, I think we can expect China to step in to prevent the US from effecting regime change in Mexico. I also suspect that the “young Chinese men of military age” reported being seen in Mexico by Michael Yon are not there to prepare for a Chinese invasion of the southern border, but rather, to build the Chinese military bases that will be used to defend the Mexican government from the US military.

DISCUSS ON SG