Tag Archives: China

China Might “Be There Tomorrow” – Warns Chinese State Pundit In Dire Taiwan, Ukraine Comparison, by Tyler Durden

Posted on February 24, 2022 | Leave a comment

Has the Russian invasion of Ukraine given China any ideas about Taiwan? From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:

Update(11:28am): The influential former editor and current commentator for China’s state-run English daily Global Times issued a shocking comment hours into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. 

Hu Xijin weighed in on Thursday’s PLA fighter jet breach of Taiwan’s air defense identification zone by saying “Get used to it. There may be more PLA aircraft fly[ing] there tomorrow.”

While the prominent state-linked English language pundit is known for trolling the West and denouncing Washington policy in Taiwan and the South China Sea broadly, he also typically echoes the thinking of top CCP officials in Beijing.

Did he just warn the West that China is about to move on Taiwan – at a “perfect storm” moment that all eyes are on the war in Ukraine? Did Putin just set the example for near-term Chinese military action? 

* * *

Taiwan was quick to issue official statement vehemently condemning Russia’s early morning launch of war on Ukraine. Foreign ministry spokeswoman Joanne Ou denounced the attack on Ukraine’s sovereignty, at a tense moment that Beijing continues to eye Taiwan as its own territory. 

“Ukrainian cities like Kyiv has been attacked by gunfire, leading to fears of a full-scale war between Russia and Ukraine,” she said. “We call on all sides to respect Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, and oppose the use of violence or coercion to change the status quo.”

At the same time China’s initial reaction noticeably failed to condemn the invasion, with the Chinese foreign ministry calling for all sides to “exercise restraint” – while ultimately castigating the United States for “fueling fire” in the build-up of tensions.

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What Accounts for Putin’s Assertiveness on Ukraine? By Ray McGovern

Posted on February 22, 2022 | Leave a comment

Putin is tired of U.S. and European blather and he’s got China in his corner. From Ray McGovern at antiwar.com:

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s well choreographed decision yesterday to recognize the independence of the pro-Russian Ukrainian provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk points to two key realities: (1) Putin despairs of persuading U.S. allies, Germany and France, to press Ukraine to honor its commitments under the Minsk accords that provide for regional autonomy as well as a ceasefire; and (2) Putin feels assured of very strong backing from China (as long as he is not stupid enough to invade Ukraine).

What about this China factor? Why do Western pundits/savants pay so little heed to this game-changer? It should not require my half-century of studying/reporting on Russia-China relations to notice that China and Russia have never been so strategically close as now. Putin and Xi have done their part to demonstrate that. Why cannot most Western pundits and savants see it and recognize the implications?

There are, happily, notable exceptions – for example, Edward Wong’s Bond Between China and Russia Alarms US and Europe Amid Ukraine Crisis.

Wong writes of Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s speech on Feb. 21 in Munich: “It was the latest instance of what Western officials say is China taking a bold new swing at the United States and its allies by wading into European security issues to explicitly back Russia.” Wong includes quotes from a PR person, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby, and a true expert on China, former prime minister of Australia Kevin Rudd.

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Reality Always Wins, by The Zman

Posted on February 16, 2022 | Leave a comment

Reality is always the benchmark for hypotheses and all other assertions. From The Zman at takimag.com:

One of the many excellent uses of reality is that it can be used to test ideological and political theories. No matter how good the idea seems in the lab, the only way to know if it will work is to give it a go in the real world. The best example of this is the seventy-year social experiment called communism. The acolytes of Karl Marx tried to prove that the human condition was nothing more than a social construct.

Granted, reality can be a cruel master. No one really knows how many people Stalin murdered while getting the experiment going. The best guess is tens of millions died under Soviet communism. Then you have the Asian experience. The Black Book of Communism puts the number at 94 million. It is a good reminder that reality can remain stubborn longer than the ideologues can pile corpses.

It looks like the rulers of the Global American Empire are ready to put their favored ideology to the test in the real world. Multiculturalism is pretty much a religion with the ruling classes, despite the fact that most of them live like white nationalists. For them, “diversity is our strength” is not just a marketing slogan. They really think that diversity in all of its forms is the key to creating a global paradise.

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Turmoil Will Continue Until a Modified Global Order Emerges, by Alastair Crooke

Posted on February 9, 2022 | Leave a comment

Whatever the U.S. government does with Ukraine, it will end up strengthening the Russia-China partnership and their domination of Eurasia. From Alastair Crooke at strategic-culture.org:

Ukraine has morphed – unexpectedly – from the Washington perspective from an ‘useful distraction’ to becoming Biden’s dilemma.

“What will we do if the West does not listen to reason?”, noted Sergei Lavrov. “Well, the President of Russia has already said ‘what’ [it will do]”. “If our attempts to come to terms on mutually acceptable principles of ensuring security in Europe fail to produce the desired result, we will take response measures. Asked directly what these measures might be, he [Putin] said: they could come in all shapes and sizes”. Russia had previously announced that absent a satisfactory western response, then Russia would lay aside the language of diplomacy – and resort to unspecified “military-technical” measures – incrementally ratchetting pain on NATO and the U.S.

It is unlikely that Moscow ever entertained any grand illusions about their ‘non-ultimatum’ ultimatum. The documents were never intended ‘to lure’ the West into ad aeternam negotiations. The point is that Moscow had already decided to break in a fundamental way with the West. What is afoot is today is the manifestation of that earlier decision.

The crux of Russia’s complaints about its eroding security have little to do with Ukraine per se but are rooted in the Washington hawks’ obsession with Russia, and their desire to cut Putin (and Russia) down to size – an aim which has been the hallmark of U.S. policy since the Yeltsin years. The Victoria Nuland clique could never accept Russia rising to become a significant power in Europe – possibly eclipsing the U.S.’ control over Europe.

If they were not intended as a basis for negotiations, what then were Russia’s treaty drafts about? It seems that they were about Russia and China coming down off the fence. This is much more important than many appreciate. It marks the beginning of a period of rising tensions (and maybe clashes), until a modified Global Order emerges.

The ‘non-ultimatums’ primarily were intended to draw out, and make explicit in the public sphere, America’s refusal to concede the validity to Moscow’s point that its own security interests are of no lesser significance than those of Ukraine and Georgia; that one state’s security interests cannot be augmented at the expense of another (i.e. the indivisibility of security).

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America’s Real Adversaries Are Its European and Other Allies, by Michael Hudson

Posted on February 9, 2022 | Leave a comment

The U.S. government does not want to see Europe drawn into the Russian-Chinese Eurasian orbit. From Michael Hudson at unz.com:

The U.S. aim is to keep them from trading with China and Russia

The Iron Curtain of the 1940s and ‘50s was ostensibly designed to isolate Russia from Western Europe – to keep out Communist ideology and military penetration. Today’s sanctions regime is aimed inward, to prevent America’s NATO and other Western allies from opening up more trade and investment with Russia and China. The aim is not so much to isolate Russia and China as to hold these allies firmly within America’s own economic orbit. Allies are to forego the benefits of importing Russian gas and Chinese products, buying much higher-priced U.S. LNG and other exports, capped by more U.S. arms.

The sanctions that U.S. diplomats are insisting that their allies impose against trade with Russia and China are aimed ostensibly at deterring a military buildup. But such a buildup cannot really be the main Russian and Chinese concern. They have much more to gain by offering mutual economic benefits to the West. So the underlying question is whether Europe will find its advantage in replacing U.S. exports with Russian and Chinese supplies and the associated mutual economic linkages.

What worries American diplomats is that Germany, other NATO nations and countries along the Belt and Road route understand the gains that can be made by opening up peaceful trade and investment. If there is no Russian or Chinese plan to invade or bomb them, what is the need for NATO? What is the need for such heavy purchases of U.S. military hardware by America’s affluent allies? And if there is no inherently adversarial relationship, why do foreign countries need to sacrifice their own trade and financial interests by relying exclusively on U.S. exporters and investors?

These are the concerns that have prompted French President Macron to call forth the ghost of Charles de Gaulle and urge Europe to turn away from what he calls NATO’s “brain-dead” Cold War and break with the pro-U.S. trade arrangements that are imposing rising costs on Europe while denying it potential gains from trade with Eurasia. Even Germany is balking at demands that it freeze by this coming March by going without Russian gas.

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The Year of the Tiger Starts with a Sino-Russian Bang, by Pepe Escobar

Posted on February 4, 2022 | Leave a comment

The Russians have no use for typical American foreign policy bullshit on their recent demands and the Chinese fully support them. It’s going to be an interesting year. From Pepe Escobar at unz.com:

The Year of the Black Water Tiger will start, for all practical purposes, with a Beijing bang this Friday, as Presidents Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin, after a live meeting before the initial ceremony of the Winter Olympics, will issue a joint statement on international relations.

That will represent a crucial move in the Eurasia vs. NATOstan chessboard, as the Anglo-American axis is increasingly bogged down in Desperation Row: after all, “Russian aggression” stubbornly refuses to materialize.

After an interminable wait arguably due to the lack of functionaries properly equipped to write an intelligible letter, the US/NATO combo finally concocted a predictable, jargon-drenched bureaucratese non-response “response” to the Russian demands of security guarantees.

The contents were leaked to a Spanish newspaper, a full member of NATOstan media. The leaker, according to Brussels sources, may be in Kiev by now. The Pentagon, in damage control mode, rushed to assert, “We didn’t do it”. The State Dept. said, “it’s authentic.”

Even before the leak of the non-response “response”, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov was forced to send messages to all NATO foreign ministers, including US Secretary Blinken, asking how they understand the principle of indivisibility of security – if they actually do.

Lavrov was extremely specific: “I am referring to our demands that everyone faithfully implement the agreements on the indivisibility of security that were reached within the OSCE in 1999 in Istanbul and in 2010 in Astana. These agreements provide not only for the freedom to choose alliances, but also make this freedom conditional on the need to avoid any steps that will strengthen the security of any state at the expense of infringing on the security of others.”

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China Is Undermining The US Through Elite Capture: Author, by Frank Fang and David Zhang

Posted on February 3, 2022 | 1 comment

According to author Peter Schweizer, the Chinese have been spreading copious amounts of cash among America’s political class. From Frank Fang and David Zhang at The Epoch Times via zerohedge.com:

The United States is currently traveling down a losing path in its battle against China because the communist regime has co-opted many American elites in Washington, Wall Street, corporate America, and the U.S. tech sector, warned author Peter Schweizer.

Chinese soldiers from the People’s Liberation Army wear protective masks as they march after a ceremony marking the 70th anniversary of China’s entry into the Korean War, at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China, on Oct. 23, 2020. (Kevin Frayer/Getty Images)

Schweizer, who recently released his new book “Red-Handed: How American Elites Get Rich Helping China Win,” said that his book shows how appalling it is that some of the elites have been willing to “kowtow to the regime” just so that they have access to the Chinese market.

“They should be embarrassed,” he added. “They seem to be all too happy to do the bidding for Beijing when it comes to American politics.”

Schweizer made the remarks during a recent interview with EpochTV’s “China Insider” program. He is also the president of U.S.-based think tank Government Accountability Institute.

“I think what’s important for people to keep in mind is that Beijing doesn’t have to lobby for its own interest, because there are so many powerful interests in the United States that will lobby on their behalf,” he said.

The present course will only mean that China will replace the United States as the world’s top superpower, according to Schweizer.

“Unless we start to take radical action, we will lose, there is no question in my mind,” he said. “We will lose because our elites will be happy to sell out, collect their money, and position themselves in elite positions for generations to come.”

That outcome does not necessarily mean that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) would occupy the United States, he added, but America as people know it will be very different.

“For some people who say, ‘Look, that’s not my concern,’ this should be their concern,” he said. “Life here is going to be heavily influenced by what the regime in Beijing wants.”

Washington

One of the U.S. government officials named in the book is Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), and how the longtime senator has come to the defense of the CCP while her husband, Richard Blum, reaped profits by inking business deals with Chinese firms with ties to the Chinese regime.

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China Gives Oomph to Russia’s ‘Nyet’ on NATO, by Ray McGovern

Posted on February 1, 2022 | 1 comment

Russia is a formidable military power in its own right. Ally it with China, and you’ve got an alliance with which you don’t want to mess. From Ray McGovern at antiwar.com:

Fourteen years ago today, when then-ambassador to Russia William Burns, in an IMMEDIATE cable titled “Nyet Means Nyet: Russia’s NATO Enlargement Redlines,” reported Moscow’s warning that NATO membership for Ukraine would cross a red line, the Russians could do little more than grouse. Enter from left stage Chinese President Xi Jinping last year with the shot of adrenalin Putin needed to make “Nyet” stick.

Today’s acrimony at the UN Security Council provides the latest sign of Russia’s no-holds-barred chutzpah regarding the U.S. on Ukraine, with the words of Russian UN Ambassador Vasily Nebenzia. U.S. UN Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield had accused Russia of “actions [that] strike at the very heart of the UN Charter.”

Nebenzia retorted that the U.S. is “whipping up tensions and provoking escalation.” As for invading Ukraine, Nebenzia addressed the US ambassador with these words: “You are almost pulling for this … You want it to happen. You’re waiting for it to happen, as if you want to make your words become a reality.”

Burns and Lavrov

No one is better placed to discern the significance of this change of tone than ex-ambassador Burns, who is now-CIA Director. In his Feb. 1, 2008 cable citing Lavrov’s admonitions, Burns reported that the NATO membership issue “could potentially split Ukraine in two, leading to violence or even, some claim, civil war, which would force Russia to decide whether to intervene.” Burns added: “NATO enlargement, particularly to Ukraine, remains an emotional and neuralgic issue for Russia, but strategic policy considerations also underlie strong opposition to NATO membership for Ukraine.”

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America’s Armed ‘Sentinel State’ Encirclement, by Alastair Crooke

Posted on January 28, 2022 | Leave a comment

Is the very idea of the U.S. trying to encircle China and Russia ludicrous? From Alastair Crooke at strategic-culture.org:

‘Encirclement’ and ‘containment’ effectively have become Biden’s default foreign policy, Alastair Crooke writes.

The key to China’s security riposte to the U.S. is linked to two words that go unstated in U.S. formal policy documents, but whose silent presence nevertheless suffuses and colour-washes the text of the 2022 National Defence Authorisation Act.

The term ‘containment’ never appears, neither does the word ‘encirclement’. Yet, as Professor Michael Klare writes, the Act “provides a detailed blueprint for surrounding China with a potentially suffocating network of U.S. bases, military forces, and increasingly militarized partner states. The goal is to enable Washington to barricade that country’s military inside its own territory; and potentially to cripple its economy in any future crisis”.

What the earlier patchwork of U.S. China measures lacked, until now, has been an overarching plan for curbing China’s rise, and so ensuring America’s permanent supremacy in the Indo-Pacific region: “The authors of this year’s NDAA” however, “were remarkably focused on this deficiency, and several provisions of the bill are designed to provide just such a master plan”.

These include a series of measures intended to incorporate Taiwan into the U.S. defence system surrounding China. And a requirement for the drafting of a comprehensive “grand strategy” for containing China “on every front”.

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Iran-Russia Hit Maximum Strategy, by Pepe Esobar

Posted on January 23, 2022 | Leave a comment

A lot of countries on the receiving end of U.S. hostility are making common cause together. From Pepe Escobar at unz.com:

Three ain’t a crowd: The Iran-Russia summit this week, concurrent with RIC military drills in the Sea of Oman, in advance of a Xi-Putin meeting in two weeks, suggests a rapidly-advancing strategic vision for the three Eurasian powers.

The official visit to Russia by Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, at the invitation of Vladimir Putin, generated one of the most stunning geopolitical pics of the 21st century: Raisi performing his afternoon prayers at the Kremlin.

Arguably, more than the hours of solid discussions on geopolitical, geoeconomic, energy, trade, agriculture, transportation and aerospace dossiers, this visual will be imprinted all across the Global South as a fitting symbol of the ongoing, inexorable process of Eurasian integration.

Raisi went to Sochi and Moscow ready to offer Putin essential synergy in confronting a decaying, unipolar Empire increasingly prone to irrationalism. He made it clear at the start of his three hours of discussions with Putin: our renewed relationship should not be “short-term or positional – it will be permanent and strategic.”

Putin must have relished the torrents of meaning inbuilt in one of Raisi’s statements of fact: “We have been resisting the Americans for more than 40 years.”

Yet, much more productive, was “a document on strategic cooperation” between Iran and Russia that Raisi and his team presented to Russian officials.

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