The Chinese Communist Party’s Global Ambitions (Part I)

[tailfins]

Fizz

[Et Soh]

“There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen” —Vladimir Ilyich Lenin In certain aspects, China’s early “handling” of the Wuhan Coronavirus outbreak–in particular, its draconian lockdowns–set the tone for the erosion of civil liberties continuing across the world in the name of “pandemic response.” In this episode, I’m joined by veteran journalist and ‘The Epoch Times’ contributor, Lee Smith. We look at the mechanisms by which Western “democracies” have been steered towards negating the rights of citizens, and the Chinese Communist Party’s hand in this. “If you treat your populations like an occupied people, they will come to treat you like an occupying power.” What consequences await those governments and “leaders” who continue to override the rights of the people they’re intended to serve?

[Et Soh]

Not Only Russia, but China Is to Blame for Threats Against Ukraine



Beijing is coordinating with Moscow and backing it economically


Anders Corr


January 25, 2022; Updated January 26, 2022



Epoch Times News Analysis


Any Russian invasion of Ukraine will depend upon economic depth in China, and diplomatic appeasement by Germany and France. Beijing is likely encouraging Moscow to invade, which serves the purposes of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

While NATO should be pivoting to address the China threat, Russia is using 100,000 troops on the border with Ukraine to pressure NATO for “legally binding security guarantees” that Ukraine will not join the alliance.

Moscow seeks the withdrawal of NATO military infrastructure to 1997 positions, when the two powers signed an agreement. These are impossible demands that would mean rolling back democracy in Eastern Europe, and the expansion of Beijing and Moscow’s illiberal influence globally. If NATO appeases Russia by abandoning Ukraine today, China will double down on its demand for Taiwan tomorrow. Giving into a bully only encourages the others.



Already, some Eastern European countries are vetoing the European Union’s measures against Beijing’s human rights abuse and territorial aggression, including in the South China Sea. Germany and France, which are weaker on China and Russia than is President Joe Biden, are looking for diplomatic escapes that require throwing Ukraine under the bus.

For example, Germany opposes letting Estonia gift Soviet-made artillery pieces to Ukraine, because they were based in East Germany at reunification, from which they were sent to Finland, and then Estonia. As noted by The Wall Street Journal, “Germany’s refusal could be read by Moscow as another sign of division in the West’s ranks.”

This is not the time for division among democracies. Estonia should hand the howitzers over to Ukraine anyway, accompanied by a speech about Germany’s cowardice.

Russia’s military buildup is already visibly distracting and disuniting NATO alliance members. Biden mistakenly revealed that NATO members recently disagree on the proper response to various types of Russian invasion.

But sanctions, at least, are sure. Any deeper border incursions past what Putin already took—Crimea and effectively, the Donbass region of Eastern Ukraine—will turn Vladimir Putin and his cronies into not just the leaders of a rogue state, as currently, but into absolute pariahs.

Even democratic allies that are not being tough enough on Russia and China are losing esteem. A Washington Post editorial by historian Katja Hoyer has a title that says it all: “Germany has become a weak link in NATO’s line of defense.” Hoyer argues that “Germany cannot be depended upon when it comes to imposing sanctions on Russia.”

Sanctions will send Russia deeper into China’s cold embrace, which has swallowed so many countries after they egregiously break international law, for example, through genocide or the invasion of neighboring countries. Thereafter entirely dependent upon trade with China to evade Western sanctions, they all but lose their sovereignty.

Burma (commonly known as Myanmar), North Korea, Cambodia, Laos, Venezuela, and increasingly, Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, the Philippines, and Russia are falling into Beijing’s orbit through too much illiberal trade.

A redirection of Russian trade from the United States and Europe to China is already occurring, and provides evidence for Russians and the world that Beijing stands behind Moscow’s aggression.



People walk past a wall decorated with a mural of Moscow’s Red Square, in Beijing on Dec. 8, 2021. (Jade Gao/AFP via Getty Images)

In 2021, according to a report by Dimitri Simes in the Nikkei Asia Review, annual trade increased between Russia and China by over 35 percent, to a record of over $146 billion. The two countries plan to add another $200 billion in trade by 2024.

But Russia’s economy is approximately one-tenth that of China, and its trade with the country is lopsided, giving Beijing the upper hand economically and, therefore, politically.

While approximately 40 percent of Russia’s trade has over the years been with the European Union, this has not yielded similar political influence for Europe because democracies shy away from economic bullying. The CCP, on the other hand, is a checkbook diplomacy impresario.

Putin is already showing his fealty to Beijing by attending its disgraced Winter Olympics, dubbed the “Genocide Games” by human rights advocates. The Biden administration is wisely instituting an Olympic diplomatic boycott, honored by many of our most important allies.

There are unfortunate exceptions. The Polish president is one of the few U.S. allied heads of state to fink and attend, putting into question his allegiance to democracy over profits to be made in China.

Xi Jinping is coercing Putin to ski the same fake slopes, by delaying high-profile deals for signature in Beijing, including the final contract for a natural gas pipeline, called the Power of Siberia-2, that will further connect the two illiberal behemoths.

As noted by Simes, “Analysts say the standoff between Russia and the West over Ukraine, which could bring new sanctions against Moscow, is likely to tighten the Kremlin’s bond with Beijing even more.”

Nikkei quotes international relations professor Artyom Lukin, at a university in Russia, as saying that “Putin likely received some guarantees from Xi that if a crisis erupts over Ukraine and the West imposes major sanctions against Russia, then China will stand shoulder to shoulder with Russia.”

Chris Devonshire-Ellis, of an Asia investment advisory firm, told the outlet, “If further trade sanctions are placed on Russia, Moscow will need to increase Russia’s sourcing capabilities elsewhere, with China being one avenue.”

Russia has, since 2010, increasingly depended on China for energy exports, including through two pipelines costing $80 billion, and a $13 billion gas processing plant.



Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin attend a signing ceremony for a monumental, multi-decade gas supply contract in Shanghai on May 21, 2014. (Alexey Druzhinin/AFP via Getty Images)

If Russia invades Ukraine, U.S. and allied sanctions should be immediate and tough, including against Putin, his closest associates, Russia’s biggest business people, all of their immediate families, the country’s sovereign debt, access to the SWIFT international banking system and U.S. technology, the top Chinese companies doing business in Russia, and the Nord Stream-2 energy pipeline to Germany.[More see PDF]


https://www.theepochtimes.com/not-on...e_4230722.html

eReading:

Red Dragon Menacing (III) – On CCP’s All-Out Aggression Against Humanity(5)
PDF(preview)(3.46M); ePub(3.35M); MOBI(3.14M)

[Et Soh]

An Interpol logo shows at Interpol’s Global Complex for Innovation in Singapore on Sept. 30, 2014. (Edgar Su/Reuters)


Kick China Out of Interpol



Interpol must come clean on Hong Kong

Anders Corr


February 20, 2022

Commentary PDF Audio


Interpol is supposed to be a respected international police organization, for collaboration to nab murderers and rapists. But when the world’s worst criminals get control, it starts to look closer to terrorism or the mafia.

That is the sorry state of international policing as Interpol refuses to help Hongkongers who are fleeing persecution from Beijing’s so-called National Security Law (NSL). Interpol should publicly reaffirm the safety of Hong Kong human rights advocates who fear its politicized arrest warrants, called “red notices.”

The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) 2020 NSL is horrible and broadly worded, according to Amnesty International, and has global extraterritorial effect. The law applies globally to anyone of any citizenship who organizes peaceful protests anywhere, for example, on Chinese human rights issues. Beijing can use its influence to get Interpol to issue red notices against anyone who violates the NSL—chilling freedom of speech everywhere.



Did you attend a human rights protest on Hong Kong, or against the Uyghur genocide, and then go to Portugal for vacation? Watch out—Interpol could have you on a list and arrest you when you land with your Hawaiian shorts and Vinho Verde in hand.

The Portuguese authorities, who have an extradition treaty with China, could then send you for prosecution in a Beijing court. Surprise. Vacation over.

On Jan. 13, 16 Hongkongers and their supporters signed an open letter to the Interpol General Secretariat. They wrote, “Most of us have been forced to flee Hong Kong after the imposition of the National Security Law, which essentially created a set of political crimes.”

“Our only real crime is standing up for the fundamental human rights and liberties enshrined in the [U.N.] Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” signed in 1948 by China, Britain, the United States, and most other countries at the time.

One of the letter signatories from Hong Kong, Simon Cheng, claims to have been tortured while detained by the Chinese regime. He was at the time a British Consulate employee in Hong Kong.

Simon Cheng (front left) and Finn Lau (center) in a march commemorating the two-year anniversary of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement in London on June 12, 2021. (Yanning Qi/The Epoch Times)

The British Foreign Office warned another British citizen, Luke de Pulford, that he risked extradition to Hong Kong for prosecution.

According to the letter’s authors, the Chinese regime in 2021 increased its talk of “going after” the activists, including through Interpol. “Most of us undersigned have been confirmed as being wanted or having an arrest warrant on us, based on the National Security Law,” they wrote. “Others have been implicated in court documents or in State-aligned media publications.”

The signatories are likely the “tip of the iceberg,” as they noted, given tens of thousands of human rights advocates who fled Hong Kong since Beijing’s suppression of pro-democracy protesters and free media in that city.

“The constant threat and uncertainty of a potential arrest as China expands its long-arm policing efforts by both legal and illegal means, creates a profound chilling effect striking at the heart of fundamental liberties such as the freedom of expression and movement everywhere,” they wrote.

The letter signatories give the example of the Uyghur Idris Hasan, targeted by a China-initiated Interpol red notice in 2017. Hasan was detained and is currently facing deportation from Morocco. The notice was apparently issued in violation of Interpol’s own rules and review processes. If extradited to China, he could be detained in a “reeducation” camp, subjected to forced labor, tortured, forcefully sterilized, or killed.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is conducting at least one genocide—maybe three if one includes the persecution of Falun Gong and Tibetans. The CCP rules through force rather than democratic election. It conducts fear campaigns against anyone who complains. The CCP should be considered a terrorist organization by U.S. law, as argued by Teng Biao, a respected University of Chicago academic, and Terri Marsh, an international human rights lawyer.

This is the country with which Interpol, and its member states, continue to sully themselves by continuing to treat the CCP’s China as a legitimate member of the international system.

In 2018, Interpol was led by Meng Hongwei, a Chinese police official answerable to the Beijing regime. When he ran afoul of CCP leader Xi Jinping, he himself was arrested on a trip to China. Beijing is now targeting Meng’s wife and twin boys, who the French police are thankfully providing with 24-hour protection.

Meng Hongwei, former president of Interpol, gives an address at the opening of the Interpol World Congress in Singapore on July 4, 2017. (Roslan Rahman/AFP/Getty Images)

In November, China’s Hu Binchen was elected as one of Interpol’s 13 executive committee members. Hu is a senior police official answerable to Beijing. The organization elected an official from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) as its president at the same time. The official, Ahmed Naser Al-Raisi, is accused of overseeing torture against a UAE human rights defender as well as against two Britons.

The UAE has long cooperated with China through extraditions of Uyghurs back to China. One report claims that Chinese police are detaining Uyghurs in a black jail on UAE territory. The UAE is a Belt and Road country, and has extensive trade with the totalitarian country.

Cheng argues that Interpol should cancel any red notices it may have issued against human rights defenders, and confess publicly to having issued them.

The Wall Street Journal editorial board argues that America is not doing enough to protect those wrongly targeted by Interpol. While the State Department did say that “we will continue to stand with Hong Kongers as they respond to Beijing’s assault on their freedoms,” according to the Journal, these are just words. The U.S. government has not directly addressed the serious allegations of Beijing’s abuse of Interpol.

“The Biden Administration should push Interpol for a public response,” the Journal wrote. “If not, Hong Kongers might find out they’re a target only after it’s too late. Meanwhile, they will be living in fear, which is exactly what China wants.”

The Journal is right to demand at least this much from the Biden administration. But even this is a band-aid solution that fails to address the ultimate cause of the problem.

America must do more.

The CCP is closer to a mafia or terrorist organization than to a legitimate political party in control of a legitimate state apparatus. It is absolutely wrong to allow for it to control or even influence decision-making at the highest levels of international policing.

China should be kicked off Interpol until it gets its house in order, including an immediate cessation of the genocide and what may seem impossible but what should be demanded in accordance with the U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights: Beijing must begin to actively support democratization and human rights reforms within China itself.
(More See PDF Audio)



eReadings:The Genocide Games PDF(preview3.94M); ePu(3.21M);MOBI(2.62M)

[jimnyc]

An Interpol logo shows at Interpol’s Global Complex for Innovation in Singapore on Sept. 30, 2014.

Just quoted the above as I have to quote something.

So Et Soh or Soh Et or whatever the fu** your name is.

Seriously, what is your intent here? You obviously never stick around for discussion or debate on what you post. You seemingly make the same posts n quite a few other places on the internet (to say it lightly). And then additionally your stuff is posted on mp3mp4pdf website aka "State of Mankind". I know that what you are doing is spamming to that/your website. Not working though, trust me.

But my question is - are you not capable of backing up your own written bullshit? Or just don't want to? Seems you just want to post stories of crap.

[Et Soh]

​Gordon Chang: Russia’s Ukraine Invasion Could Trigger World War III, As China Projects Militarily

Full Video(00:29:41)

Crossroads

Crossroads
JOSHUA PHILIPP

Russia has launched a full scale military invasion of Ukraine. The United States is sanctioning the two separatist regions of Donetsk and Lugansk, as well as Russia for their actions. Meanwhile, the Chinese communist regime is threatening to forcefully take Taiwan, and has signed a “No Limits” pact with Russia that declared no areas of cooperation between the two countries will be off the table. Questions now rest on how the United States and other nations will respond. According to Gordon Chang, author of “The Coming Collapse of China,” the situation could easily spiral into a third world war, with the Chinese regime already projecting its military ambitions over Taiwan and beyond.

[tailfins]

Just quoted the above as I have to quote something.

So Et Soh or Soh Et or whatever the fu** your name is.

Seriously, what is your intent here? You obviously never stick around for discussion or debate on what you post. You seemingly make the same posts n quite a few other places on the internet (to say it lightly). And then additionally your stuff is posted on mp3mp4pdf website aka "State of Mankind". I know that what you are doing is spamming to that/your website. Not working though, trust me.

But my question is - are you not capable of backing up your own written bullshit? Or just don't want to? Seems you just want to post stories of crap.

I took the liberty to run your post through a translator. Maybe this will get your point across:

只是引用了上面的內容，因為我必須引用一些東西。

所以 Et Soh 或 Soh Et 或任何你的名字。

說真的，你在這裡的意圖是什麼？顯然，您從不就您發布的內容進行討論或辯論。您似乎在互聯網上的許多其他地 方發布了相同的帖子（輕描淡寫）。然後另外你的東西被張貼在 mp3mp4pdf 網站又名“人類狀態”上。我知道您正在向該/您的網站發送垃圾郵件。雖然不工作，相信我。

但我的問題是——你不能支持你自己寫的廢話嗎？還是只是不想？看來你只是想發布廢話的故事

[Et Soh]

China’s Ballooning Defense Budget


Military delegates stand in formation after the commemoration of the 110th anniversary of the Xinhai Revolution, in Beijing, China, on Oct. 9, 2021. (Noel Celis/AFP via Getty Images)

Beijing leads an arms race in Asia that could spark war over Taiwan


Anders Corr
March 7, 2022 Updated: March 8, 2022

News Analysis Audio PDF

China’s defense budget will likely increase by approximately 7.1 percent this year, more than last year and the year before, and more than its expected GDP increase.

Beijing is apparently on the warpath, even as U.S. defense budgets have declined over 10 percent over the last decade, and could decline further under President Joe Biden.

The numbers that the regime provides for its defense spending, approximately $229 billion this year, are not trusted by most serious defense analysts and many diplomats. They expect the real numbers to be much higher. The same goes for China’s self-reporting of how many nuclear weapons it has, considered by military experts to be grossly underreported.


The Danger of a PLA Surprise Attack


Like Putin’s war in Ukraine, be prepared for an unfortunate surprise. Eastern Europe wasn’t engulfed in war when Moscow claimed it was just a series of military exercises. Then came Feb. 24’s attack on democracy that shook the world.

China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is fast on the Russian military’s heels. The PLA is developing and building nuclear warheads, hardened missile silos, hypersonic missiles, stealth fighter jets, aircraft carriers, and amphibious landing craft, which the regime is apparently planning to use to conquer Taiwan, the South China Sea, Japan’s Senkaku Islands, and large swathes of Indian territory in the Himalayan mountains.

If they take these territories, it will only whet Beijing’s thirst for more.

The regime funds more fundamental defense-related science and technology development that some analysts suspect includes banned chemical and biological weapons.

Beijing, Moscow, and Pyongyang are already making veiled threats, with weapons of mass destruction, against the United States and allies like Australia, the Philippines, Taiwan, and Japan.

Much of Beijing’s defense spending is geared to defeat the U.S., British, Australian, Japanese, Taiwanese, and Indian militaries—all are actively working, sometimes well together and sometimes not, to defend their territories and allies.


A satellite picture shows a carrier target in Ruoqiang, Xinjiang, China, on Oct. 20, 2021. (Satellite Image ©2021 Maxar Technologies/Handout via Reuters)


America Forced to Forward Deploy to Asia


The U.S. military has been forced by Beijing’s belligerence to forward deploy to the Taiwan Strait, South China Sea, South Korea, and Japan to defend these areas from China, Russia, and North Korea, which never really ended their belligerent approach after North Korea’s 1950 attack on South Korea. That Korean War that resulted has never officially ended. The Armistice of 1953 is just a pause in hostilities.

The two main defense groupings that Beijing has set itself against are AUKUS, composed of Australia, the United Kingdom, and United States, and the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (the “Quad”), composed of the United States, Japan, Australia, and India. These are defensive alliances that grew, reluctantly, out of the increasing need in recent years to improve deterrence against Beijing.

China Leads Global Defense Spending Increases


China’s total increase of 7.1 percent in defense spending for 2022 is in line with its approximate 7 percent to 8 percent increases between 2016 and 2021. Between 2012 and 2015, the increases were even higher, at between approximately 10 percent and 12 percent, if China’s official figures are any indication.

This year’s Chinese defense budget increase is well above Beijing’s targeted economic growth of approximately 5.5 percent. China’s economic growth has fallen from its recent high in 2007 of 14.2 percent to 2.3 percent in 2020, according to the regime’s self-reporting. Yet its defense spending continues a meteoric rise, compared to its neighbors.

The notion that a dictatorship’s defense expenditure growth should be at or above its GDP growth only makes sense if the regime is seeking the territory of neighbors. That growth then fuels arms races, which is currently the consequence in Asia.

While the global average change in defense expenditures in 2021 was negative 1.8 percent, Asian military spending increased an average of 2.8 percent. An analysis of relative defense expenditures shows that China is the main aggressor and leading this sorry trend.

Between 2010 and 2020, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, North American defense budgets fell by almost 11 percent, while Central and East Asian defense budgets grew by 60 percent. Southeast and South Asian defense budgets grew by approximately 40 percent, and European defense budgets grew by about 14 percent.

As a percent of GDP, U.S. defense budgets have decreased from a high in 1967 of 9.4 percent to 3.4 percent in 2019. Yet China’s propaganda consistently paints the United States as the aggressor.

Instead of seeing the American peace dividend as an opportunity to de-escalate global military tensions, Beijing and Moscow have trumpeted the “decline of America” and seen it as an opportunity to grab territory from neighbors.

A screenshot of a June 2, 2020 video created by Beijing officials touting China’s military preparedness against Taiwan. (Screenshot via Facebook)


As a result, the United States may have to abandon its post-1972 attempts at peace and engagement, which is a dangerous necessity in the era of nuclear weapons.

The likely U.S. defense budget for 2023 will exceed $770 billion, driven just a bit higher year-over-year, even under a Democratic administration. The need to protect democracy in both Europe and Asia simultaneously is severely straining America’s patience and the U.S. economy, which is sinking further into debt. In 2020, U.S. government debt reached almost $28 trillion.

The debt could eventually force the United States into relinquishing its role, since World War II, as a global guarantor of peace. This would be severely destabilizing, and force allies to increase their defense budgets significantly, or get taken over by Moscow and Beijing in the decades to come. Or the United States could seek alternative revenue sources for its provision of the global public good of security, for example, through a global tax of 30 percent on China’s $4.6 trillion in annual trade.

The Primary Threat to Taiwan


Taiwan appears to be the main object of Beijing’s aggression, perhaps because it illustrates, for the world, the economic success that China could be if Beijing chose the path of democracy. Given the importance of Taiwan to the potential democratization of China, we cannot afford to be caught flat-footed as in Ukraine.

We must be ready to match and exceed anything that Beijing has to throw at this island democracy, which former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo visited this month. He rightly said that the country should be recognized for what it is—a sovereign and independent state.

It should also benefit from an official defense agreement with the United States, forward deployment of U.S. and allied troops on the ground, as well as an independent nuclear deterrent. We must pull out all the stops for Taiwan’s defense. It is that important to the future of global democracy.

Yet the same cowardice in Washington, which led to a failure of deterrence in Ukraine, is leading to a non-recognition of Taiwan that opens the way for Beijing’s aggression. That would more surely draw us into war than a policy of peace through strength taken now, while we still can.

The sooner we strengthen democracy’s defenses in Taiwan, the Senkakus, and the South China Sea, the better, as China’s defense spending increases yearly. The longer we wait, the more powerful the PLA is, and the harder it will be to recognize Taiwan or other objects of Beijing’s aggression as more than a region that, like Hong Kong and Crimea, has been brought under the thumb of the dictators and is being used against democracy, instead of in its defense.

Anders Corr has a bachelor’s/master’s in political science from Yale University (2001) and a doctorate in government from Harvard University (2008). He is a principal at Corr Analytics Inc., publisher of the Journal of Political Risk, and has conducted extensive research in North America, Europe, and Asia. His latest books are “The Concentration of Power: Institutionalization, Hierarchy, and Hegemony” (2021) and “Great Powers, Grand Strategies: the New Game in the South China Sea” (2018).

https://www.theepochtimes.com/chinas...t_4320049.html

[Et Soh]

The capital of Saudi Arabia, Riyadh, on Aug. 22, 2016. (Fedor Selivanov/Shutterstock)

China Lures the Saudis Into Its Orbit


China’s budding relationship with Saudi Arabia threatens the US

Anders Corr

March 21, 2022
News Analysis Audio PDF

0000

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) is considering a major defection from its long-standing economic alliance with the United States. The likely winner would be China.

Having priced all of its oil in dollars since 1974, which has helped give the greenback massive value globally, the Saudis are softening to persuasion from Beijing, to start pricing some of its oil in yuan.

This fits the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) goal to become globally hegemonic, as oil pricing in yuan would increase the yuan’s value and decrease the value of dollars, making it harder for the United States to issue debt and export goods. Countries around the world would start dumping the dollar as a reserve currency.

Inflationary pressure would lead to a downward spiral in the dollar’s value. This would be a long process, but Beijing is now making headway in Riyadh, the Saudi capital. The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), plus Russia, would likely follow the kingdom’s lead, and start regularly pricing oil in currencies other than the dollar.

The KSA should be resistant to the move, however, as its currency, the riyal, is pegged to the dollar, its debt is priced in dollars, and it has extensive investment in the United States.

“The Saudi central bank had assets worth $492.8 billion at the end of January, including $119 billion in U.S. Treasuries,” according to Reuters. “The government had foreign currency debt—mostly in dollars—of $101.1 billion at the end of 2021, while the Saudi sovereign wealth fund held $56 billion in U.S. equities.”

While for the above reasons analysts say a major Saudi shift to yuan pricing is unlikely, some do admit the possibility of some Saudi oil pricing in yuan, which would be water over the dam, allowing for more such pricing, and pricing in other non-dollar currencies as well. Every purchaser of oil is likely to want oil priced in its own currency if it sees the floodgates breached by Beijing.

A view shows branded oil tanks at Saudi Aramco oil facility in Abqaiq, Saudi Arabia, on Oct. 12, 2019. (Maxim Shemetov/Reuters)


If Riyadh did move away from the dollar, perhaps also to a basket of world currencies, as was proposed decades ago, it would therefore be a major global change in oil pricing. The cause would not only be China’s rise, but the Biden administration’s deteriorating relations with the KSA, which throughout the Cold War helped the United States and its allies through oil policies that attempted to stabilize the price and maintain the flow.

After the 1979 revolution in Iran, which turned it anti-Western, the Saudis and most other Arab countries remained staunchly allied to the United States. Riyadh supported Washington throughout the Cold War, Iraq wars, and during the Afghanistan war. The United States also supported the Saudis during this period, defending the country, along with its Kuwait ally, from the Iraqi threat.

The Trump administration attempted to maintain a positive relationship with Saudi Arabia, visiting for photo shoots with the aging king, selling jets, and avoiding all questions of the country’s human rights abuse, including in the Yemen War, which is fought by Houthis backed by Iran. Almost no mention was made of the 2018 killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, Turkey.
US President Donald Trump (L) and Saudi Arabia’s King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud gesture during a signing ceremony at the Saudi Royal Court in Riyadh on May 20, 2017. (Mandelngan/AFP/Getty Images)


Democrats made much of this non-confrontational approach to the Saudis. But the Biden administration’s shift to a more confrontational stance is having negative second- and third-order effects on America’s weightier and less avoidable conflict with Beijing.

President Joe Biden has been publicly critical of Saudi Arabia’s de facto leader, the Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud (also known as MBS). Perhaps due to the alleged human rights violations, Biden refuses to deal with the prince directly, instead demanding to deal with his 86-year-old father, King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud, who has already passed the baton.

This is insulting to the prince and other powerful Saudis, who are snubbing Biden. MBS himself is looking away from Washington and refusing to take the phone calls of Biden, who desperately wants him to increase the flow of oil to bring it down from its astronomical $110 per barrel.

Riyadh is pointedly prioritizing other diplomacy, including with Beijing, Moscow, London, and Tokyo. The United States did manage to send a security adviser to Riyadh on March 15, including to discuss Yemen, and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson flew in the following day. For damage control, the latter described Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, which is also increasingly close to Beijing, as “key international partners” in weaning the world from Russia’s oil and gas. On March 17, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida also begged for lower oil prices through an increase of Saudi supply.

MBS must realize that he has the world’s richest democracies over a barrel. He visited Beijing in 2019 and 2022, and invited Chinese leader Xi Jinping to visit Saudi Arabia this year. He has given tacit support for Beijing’s treatment of the Uyghurs, and for building a “strategic” partnership with the totalitarian behemoth.

Biden’s failure to effectively distinguish between authoritarian allies and adversaries in the overarching conflict with Beijing likely hurt his relationship with the Saudis.

His December summit of democracies and identification of authoritarianism as the “defining challenge” of the era is true, but saying so publicly could hasten a counter-alliance of autocrats, including our traditional allies, the Saudis. Beijing is now working hard to make this anti-democratic coalition a reality by bringing Riyadh into the CCP’s orbit.

By effectively binning U.S. allies—who admittedly have their human rights problems but are very regional—in with America’s most dangerous adversaries, led by a genocidal Beijing that aspires to global hegemony, the Biden administration needlessly drove the former towards the latter.

Anders Corr has a bachelor’s/master’s in political science from Yale University (2001) and a doctorate in government from Harvard University (2008). He is a principal at Corr Analytics Inc., publisher of the Journal of Political Risk, and has conducted extensive research in North America, Europe, and Asia. His latest books are “The Concentration of Power: Institutionalization, Hierarchy, and Hegemony” (2021) and “Great Powers, Grand Strategies: the New Game in the South China Sea” (2018).


https://vs1.youmaker.com/assets/2022...9&duration=375

[Et Soh]

Tesla’s China-made Model 3 vehicles are seen during a delivery event at its factory in Shanghai, China, on Jan. 7, 2020. (Aly Song/Reuters)

Tesla and SpaceX Are Apparently Compromised by China


A China critic may have lost his Senate seat as a result

Anders Corr

March 23, 2022 Updated: March 24, 2022

News Analysis Audio PDF


Elon Musk and his companies, Tesla and SpaceX, are under scrutiny for their billion-dollar links to China and their CEO’s political support for the totalitarian country. Some of that support comes in the same breath as his denigration of the United States.

While the freedom that America gives business is legendary in attracting capital and helps American soft power, Beijing does no such thing. Instead, it requires major political and technological concessions from companies that want access to the massive Chinese market. The political concessions can include opaque campaign donations that remove China’s top critics from elected positions in the United States.

This sets up a dynamic in which American politicians and businesses have little to lose when publicly snubbing Washington and everything to gain by embracing the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), including by looking the other way while technology transfers to Chinese companies that could eventually out-compete Americans on the price of labor and depth of China’s supply chains.

This is the China in which Tesla and SpaceX, both of which are supposed to be patriotic American companies, are operating today. Some of the technology that China seeks, which SpaceX possesses, is even classified.

The foreign suppliers upon which SpaceX relies, according to a March 20 Wall Street Journal article, could have ties to China, which would be a relatively easy way for Beijing to steal sensitive technologies that likely have major military and economic uses. Indeed, one of China’s new rockets looks suspiciously like the SpaceX Starship.

Likewise, China seeks Tesla’s advanced battery technology. “Tesla has developed advanced battery packets sought by the Chinese, and China has adopted a less-expensive battery technology championed by Mr. Musk,” according to the article’s authors, Brody Mullins and Susan Pulliam.

They note that U.S. lawmakers are concerned about Musk’s close links to China. They should be concerned. Musk and his two companies appear to be hiding something. They did not respond to the Journal’s requests for comment.

SpaceX could be partially owned by China, as was Tesla, last we heard. When China’s Tencent bought 5 percent of Tesla in 2017, Musk tweeted, “glad to have Tencent as an investor and advisor to Tesla.” In other words, a CCP-controlled company is advising Musk.

A Falcon 9 rocket carrying two astronauts launches at the Kennedy Space Center, Cape Canaveral, Fla., on May 30, 2020. (SpaceX via Getty Images)


Tencent and the Chinese embassy refused to answer Journal questions. The White House failed to respond to a Journal question about security risks from Musk’s ties to Beijing.

What is everybody hiding with all this silence?

The CCP has a massive lever over Musk, which is its gatekeeper power over one of Tesla’s largest markets: China.

According to the Journal, this is “thanks in large part to support of China’s Communist Party and Mr. Xi. Chinese authorities gave Mr. Musk low-interest loans, cheap land, and other incentives for a Shanghai facility that opened in 2019 where Tesla vehicles and battery packs are assembled.”

When Tesla faced financial difficulties and manufacturing shortfalls in 2018 and 2019, Chinese banks provided two loans that included a $1.4 billion figure.

Musk’s pro-CCP signaling, and disdain for the spirit of American laws that support human rights, goes on and on. On the last day of 2021, Musk opened a showroom in Xinjiang, where there is an ongoing genocide against the Uyghurs. He did it weeks after President Joe Biden signed a bill into law against forced labor from the region. Musk snubbed human rights and the president—all of America with him.

Musk has played host to China’s ambassador in the United States, including inviting him to a Tesla factory in California. Musk fawned over China’s supposed economic prosperity, which is lackluster compared to countries like Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan.

He celebrated the CCP’s 100th anniversary by tweeting, the “economic prosperity that China has achieved is truly amazing, especially in infrastructure!”

In July 2020, Musk did what should be unthinkable for anyone claiming to be a freedom-loving American. He praised China while denigrating America.

“China rocks[,] in my opinion,” he said. “People there—there’s a lot of smart, hard[-]working people … whereas I see in the United States increasingly much more complacency and entitlement.”

Musk goes beyond what sounds like CCP propaganda, however, to ensure that America remains vulnerable to China’s technology theft through high-paid lobbyists.

In 2019, a staunch China critic and former Senator Cory Gardner (R-Colo.) attempted to require, through a provision in new legislation, that NASA consider whether space-launch companies, including SpaceX, have financial ties to companies from China, according to the Journal. While the Senate Commerce Committee agreed to the provision, SpaceX lobbyists successfully killed the bill.

Gardner lost his seat in the 2020 election to John Hickenlooper, who called China a “great nation” that does not seek global dominance. Hickenlooper raised over $5.6 million in the 2020 election cycle and has close ties to the Musk family. He flew in a Musk private jet, donated to a Musk charity, and officiated at the wedding of Musk’s brother, Kimbal. He was, as a consequence, investigated over ethics concerns.

American legislative processes are too vulnerable to corrupting influence from China-linked American CEOs, who have billions of dollars worth of business riding on, making it easy for China to import their technologies and ultimately destroy their companies and shareholder value.

Meanwhile, there is what should be considered a criminal silence from bought politicians who are supposed to protect the interests of voters rather than rake in money from lobbyists and unpatriotic campaign donors. There’s too much of this omertà, which runs from the White House to China’s embassy, and through businesses like Tesla and SpaceX.

Meanwhile, like former Senator Gardner, the good guys are finishing last and losing their seats.

Citizens in free societies have a right to know who owns their biggest corporations, who is donating to which political campaigns, and what technologies they are all bleeding to the enemies of democracy. Without more transparency, the CCP will continue to outpace America and destroy our freedoms.

Anders Corr has a bachelor’s/master’s in political science from Yale University (2001) and a doctorate in government from Harvard University (2008). He is a principal at Corr Analytics Inc., publisher of the Journal of Political Risk, and has conducted extensive research in North America, Europe, and Asia. His latest books are “The Concentration of Power: Institutionalization, Hierarchy, and Hegemony” (2021) and “Great Powers, Grand Strategies: the New Game in the South China Sea” (2018).


https://www.theepochtimes.com/tesla-...a_4350398.html

[tailfins]

Tesla’s China-made Model 3 vehicles are seen during a delivery event at its factory in Shanghai, China, on Jan. 7, 2020. (Aly Song/Reuters)

Tesla and SpaceX Are Apparently Compromised by China

And this ladies and gentlemen is a prime example why mindlessness is so annoying. Most of us probably agree with the line of thinking with these posts. However, the mindlessness displayed by his posts makes him essentially not worth the bother.

[Et Soh]

China Insiders Steal Billions From US Investors


The US government, beholden to big banks, fails to protect small American investors

Anders Corr

April 8, 2022

News Analysis

Audio PDF

Use Up/Down Arrow keys to increase or decrease volume.
China’s corporate insiders are cheating small American investors of billions of dollars through advance information that enables lucrative trades just before the stock price falls.

The total losses that insiders of Chinese companies listed on American exchanges have avoided by selling prior to price drops are at least $10 billion between 2016 and the middle of 2021, according to a new study of their security filings.

Chinese company shares fell an average of 21 percent a year after the Chinese company insiders sold large quantities of stock, compared to a 2 percent rise after insiders from American companies sold. Given inflation, that American number zeros out. Not so, China’s 21 percent.


The Alibaba Case


The Wall Street Journal covered the study and used Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. as an example. In October 2020, “Alibaba’s payments affiliate, Ant Group Co., was preparing for its initial public offering, a move that would have likely increased the value of Alibaba’s one-third stake,” according to the Journal.

But Alibaba’s founder and CEO, Jack Ma, publicly criticized China’s financial regulators, who canceled the listing. Instead of rising, which the market predicted, Alibaba shares fell 8 percent on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE).

One day prior to Ma’s announcement, Sky Scraper Enterprises Ltd. sold approximately $150 million worth of Alibaba stock. An Alibaba insider controls Sky Scraper, but nobody knows his or her identity.

Whoever controls Sky Scraper, according to the Journal, which cited the Financial Times, “was one of the company’s best-paid executives in recent years and had been granted huge swaths of stock as compensation.”

This unknown Alibaba executive avoided losses totaling hundreds of millions of dollars through what appears to be insider trading. American and other investors who got caught on their back feet—because they couldn’t know the inside information no matter how much research they did—apparently got cheated.


The SEC, Big Banks, and China Collude Against Small Investors


The researchers—Robert Jackson, Bradford Lynch, and Daniel Taylor—point out that U.S. securities law actually advantages and enables China’s insiders relative to those in the United States.

“Executives and other major shareholders at American companies have to disclose their trades within two days in a filing that is posted on the Securities and Exchange Commission’s website and freely available to investors,” according to the Journal.

That deters bad behavior because American insiders do not want to appear to have acted on inside information. They don’t want to signal other market participants to sell the stock and, thus, decrease its value.


Signage is seen at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) headquarters in Washington on May 12, 2021. (Andrew Kelly/Reuters)

China’s insiders don’t have the same problem because U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) regulators treat them with kid gloves. To encourage China’s companies to list on NYSE and other U.S. exchanges in the early 1990s, regulators gave China’s companies several key preferences relative to U.S. companies.


For example, unlike American insiders, China’s insiders don’t have to report their trades in a timely and highly public manner electronically but instead can mail paper disclosures. The paper reporting may, by law, be thrown out after three months.

That preference gives China’s insiders weeks before their trades are discovered and a window of just three months for investors with a lot of time on their hands to visit the SEC offices and discover the trades. Traders typically don’t have that time, so China’s insider trades are rarely discovered and seldom signal the market in the timely manner required to shield American investors from unfair losses.

As Western institutional investors increasingly invested in China stocks since the 1990s, however, they acquired an interest in lobbying U.S. regulators to continue providing China’s companies with regulatory advantages, which kept up their Chinese stock prices.

That sordid party is ending, but addicted institutional investors are scheming an afterparty and trying to smuggle out their drugs, which are the tanking Chinese assets.


SEC Loopholes for Chinese Firms Should be Closed Immediately


The three researchers want the insider trading loophole closed, but, as usual, the SEC is dragging its feet and continues to give China’s companies a major advantage that likely bilks small American investors of billions of dollars.

There are other SEC loopholes for China’s publicly-listed companies as well. The SEC does not require the same auditing standards of Chinese companies listed on U.S. exchanges that are required of U.S. companies.

Some of these auditing loopholes are being closed through legislation rather than quick executive action, which should be the rule. The executive branch is more beholden to big bank lobbying on China than is Congress.

But even this legislation is taking years to effect. Audits are only extracted from China’s companies through the too-gradual threat of delisting, with a three-year warning. And new loopholes are being negotiated with China by the Biden administration at this very moment.

Due to the threat of delisting, the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) is proposing that it jointly investigate with U.S. and other authorities, which would give it influence on decisions and a patina of respectability that it does not deserve as a democratically unaccountable authority. It would also provide plenty of opportunities for Beijing officials to attempt to corrupt American SEC officials who are supposed to be laser-focused on integrity.

A sign of the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) is seen at its headquarters in Beijing, China, on Nov. 16, 2020. (VCG via Getty Images)


There is a more significant political reason for the proposal as well. “China doesn’t want to be seen as making concessions just to the U.S.,” a China financial analyst told the Wall Street Journal. Thus, China’s regulators are negotiating face-saving measures for Beijing and advantages for Chinese companies that they don’t deserve, given their lack of transparency.

The CSRC should be told in no uncertain terms to pound sand. U.S. authorities should investigate China’s companies listed on U.S. exchanges.

Yet the Biden administration is showing weakness. China’s companies could
hire Western auditors that subcontract key work to Chinese auditors without checking the work closely. This auditing chain that relies on auditors in China—who are beholden to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and unreachable by American and other democratic authorities—will be unreliable and should be forbidden by the SEC.

As usual, the devil is in the details.
All of these loopholes and bargaining by the Biden administration give as much time and space as possible to U.S. banks to unravel their positions, even as their research departments publicly claim that China assets are underpriced. Small American investors, who do not have the time to do the research, have paid the price.

Last month, according to Institute of International Finance (IIF) data, $11.2 billion flowed out of China bonds, and $6.3 billion flowed out of China stocks. It is an “unprecedented dynamic that suggests a market rotation” away from China, according to the IIF.

Compare that to emerging markets ex-China, which saw $10.8 billion flow into debt and an outflow of less than $400 million from stocks, according to the IIF data. Emerging markets ex-China means emerging markets except for China.


Stronger US Government Action Needed


U.S. loopholes that give China’s companies and insiders advantages are an obvious mistake of current and past administrations since the early 1990s—none of which fixed the problem, despite years of China’s economic and military growth into an existential threat to both the United States and democracy more generally.

The political influence of the big banks, all of which are deeply invested in China, is mainly to blame. So the researchers are right—inside trading loopholes for China’s companies should be closed immediately.

But much more is needed.
Even if the SEC closes all loopholes and preferences that favor China, China’s insiders could continue to trade on inside information and escape legal consequences if they are far from American law enforcement. That China’s insiders are beyond American law—and the law of other democracies—needs to be corrected.

Anyone caught insider trading anywhere in the world, if outside the reach of law enforcement in democracies, should at minimum be subject to individualized economic and visa sanctions by democratic governments. This is absolutely necessary for democratic accountability, the rule of law, fair treatment of small investors, and the smooth functioning of international markets.


Anders Corr has a bachelor’s/master’s in political science from Yale University (2001) and a doctorate in government from Harvard University (2008). He is a principal at Corr Analytics Inc., publisher of the Journal of Political Risk, and has conducted extensive research in North America, Europe, and Asia. His latest books are “The Concentration of Power: Institutionalization, Hierarchy, and Hegemony” (2021) and “Great Powers, Grand Strategies: the New Game in the South China Sea” (2018).


https://www.theepochtimes.com/china-...s_4388320.html

[Et Soh]

A transit officer, wearing protective gear, controls access to a tunnel in the direction of Shanghai’s Pudong district in lockdown on March 28, 2022.(Hector Retamal/AFP via Getty Images)


We Followed the Directives of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China



Steve Keen

April 20, 2022

Commentary

The horrific scenes in Shanghai in the last few weeks, as residents face starvation because of the way China’s Zero-COVID policy is being enforced, reminded me of my first trip to China over forty years ago, when I ran a conference between Australian and Chinese journalists in November 1981.

Figure 1: A photo of the participants in the “Sino-Australian Press Seminar” that I organized on behalf of the Australia-China Council and the All-China Journalists’ Association. I’m the young man with a beard in the front row. (Steve Keen)

The seminar itself was a fascinating experience, but the key issue which today’s catastrophe brings to mind was a bizarre pair of economic statistics. Just before the Australian delegation departed for Beijing, China announced that light industry output had risen by 17 percent in the previous year—but heavy industry output had fallen by 7 percent.

This pair of numbers simply didn’t make sense. Light industry—bicycles, lights, consumer goods in general—requires inputs from heavy industry—steel, cement, etc. How on earth could light industry rise so much while heavy industry fell? Getting to the bottom of this conundrum was a key objective for the seven Australian journalists who attended this conference.

Our Chinese counterparts at the seminar couldn’t give a satisfactory explanation, but the subsequent tour finally provided an answer; one which I believe is relevant to the heavy-handed way in which China is enforcing its anti-COVID lockdown today.


To every question we asked of virtually anyone, the first answer was the quote that headlines this article: “We followed the directives of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China.” If you asked someone what they had for breakfast, that’s what they’d first say, before mentioning Congee or Dòujiāng. This obsequious reply became key to my understanding of the China that Mao created.

The answer to our statistical conundrum was provided by an official whose title was translated to us as the “Economic Boss of Shanghai.” He gave us that stock standard answer to our question: “We followed the directives of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China.”

After it, one of the journalists asked him “But what does that mean?” He elaborated that “the Central Committee sent out a directive to promote light industry.” Someone else followed up with “So, what did you do?” His answer, translated for us by our wonderful guides, remains etched into my brain over four decades later: “We stripped heavy industry factories and turned them into light industry.”

Good grief. That is no way to manage an economy. Why on earth was that done?

It came down to how one survived a totalitarian regime when one was actually part of it. The Central Committee of the Communist Party was all-powerful, but it was also factionalized. One faction would be dominant, and its orders would be transmitted from its 300 or so members to the 30 million members of the Communist Party itself as a slogan—like “promote light industry”—rather than a detailed set of plans, because communications were primitive, as were the education levels of the recipients of the orders.


These orders would inevitably lead to catastrophes, and the only way that the hapless enforcers of these orders could protect their butts from the inevitable backlash was to carry them out to the letter. Then, if you were to be punished, so would be the people who gave them to you—the dominant faction in the Central Committee itself. As an underling, you would survive, while the consequences of the failure would play out in the endless factional battles within the Central Committee.

So, if the directive was to “promote grain,” local officials would order the peasants to pull up legume crops and plant grain instead. One year later, there would be bountiful grain, but not enough protein, and children would be born with Kwashiorkor, the protein deficiency disease—as we observed in Sichuan province on that tour. The consequence of the dominant Central Committee faction being pro-grain was not a balanced emphasis upon legumes, but local officials ordering peasants to dig up legume crops and planting grain instead.

The peasants, who had no choice but to obey the “promote grain” orders, would rise up when their newborn children paid the consequences, the revolt would percolate up the Communist Party system, the dominance of factions would swap, the new directive would be “promote legumes,” grain crops would be dug up and replaced with legumes, and a year later there would be a famine.

This crazy cycle of command, catastrophe, and reaction is what ultimately led to Deng Xiaoping’s pragmatic overthrow of the Gang of Four. But the dominance of the Central Committee remains, and with it, the same excessive adherence to its directives seems afoot in Shanghai. So, because the Central Committee has decided upon a zero tolerance approach to COVID, doors are welded shut rather than locked, and all because the best defense to criticism when the policy causes catastrophe continues to be that “We followed the directives of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China.”

Figure 2: The Australian journalists stroll through Tiananmen Square in November 1981. (Steve Keen)

Professor Keen is a distinguished research fellow at University College London, an author, and has received the Revere Award from the Real World Economics Review. His main research interests are developing the complex systems approach to macroeconomics and the economics of climate change. He has entered politics as the lead candidate in New South Wales for the new Australian political party The New Liberals. His main research interests are developing the complex systems approach to macroeconomics, and the economics of climate change. In an unusual step for a retired academic, he has entered politics as the lead candidate in New South Wales for the new Australian political party The New Liberals.


https://www.theepochtimes.com/we-fol...a_4407750.html





eReading:

Pandemic Reflection: The Destructive CCP Model(II)
PDF(preview)(6.08M); ePub(5.32M); MOBI(3.55M)

[Et Soh]

A worker in a protective suit walks on a closed bridge during the lockdown in Shanghai, China, on May 18, 2022. (Reuters/Aly Song/File Photo)


An Inside Look at the ‘Zero-COVID’ Lockdowns in China



The lockdowns serve the CCP’s purposes while demoralizing Chinese citizens

Stu Cvrk

June 8, 2022

Commentary

Audio PDF



State-run Chinese media have been trumpeting the supposedly glorious efforts of Chinese public health officials—with their local security enforcers in the background—in containing the spread of COVID-19 in Chinese cities under the umbrella of the Xi Jinping’s grand “Zero-COVID” policy.

The continuous agitprop on this subject serves several purposes for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP): (1) convincing the Chinese people and the world that the totalitarian “zero-COVID” that is ruining Chinese lives actually works; (2) propagating the fear porn message to the world that the “pandemic” is still ongoing; (3) keeping a lid on any domestic dissent, especially in Shanghai, leading up to the expected approval of Xi’s continued leadership status at the upcoming 20th National Congress of the CCP; and (4) camouflaging Chinese economic woes through purposeful interruption of global supply chains that adversely affects the world economy.

The CCP appears to be playing some high-stakes poker in pursuit of these purposes because, whether intended or not, the “zero-COVID” lockdowns are also destroying the Chinese economy, as previously reported by Epoch Times here.

The eyes gaze at the endless stream of “zero-COVID” headlines that reinforce the CCP propaganda purposes behind “zero COVID.” Some recent examples include the following:

• “Experts: Anti-COVID strategy works” (China Daily)
• “Dropping dynamic zero-COVID approach in China could cause 1.55 million deaths: study” (China Daily)
• “Shanghai records lowest daily tally since March 24, may need fight at community level ‘till June 8’” (Global Times)
• “China’s zero-covid will be proven beneficial for world economy” (Global Times)
• “Racing against time and virus, China merits global confidence” (People’s Daily)
• “Dynamic zero-COVID approach, China’s choice to safeguard lives, underpin economic growth” (China Daily)

Ad nauseum. Regarding that last item, does the CCP seriously believe that “Zero COVID” is “China’s choice”? Read on.

What do lockdowns really mean to average Chinese citizens who have to endure them?

As The Wall Street Journal reported on May 10, if a single person in an apartment building tests positive, people in the entire building need to be isolated while the infected person and all occupants of that apartment are moved to centralized quarantine facilities.

The Journal further reported on May 15 that mass testing is now the norm, with negative tests required to complete simple daily activities such as buying groceries or riding the subway. Imagine having under that regimen day after day!

To summarize what the harsh lockdowns mean for average citizens: lockdowns initiated at any time without advance notice; restriction to one’s living quarters (including being physically locked in); being sent to a quarantine facility if testing positive; limited or no access to hospitals for routine medical procedures and urgent care; reduced availability to food supplies (some may be government-provided and some mass-ordered for delivery if fortunate); and “escape” from home quarantine authorized only for mandatory daily COVID tests.

A security worker locks a door with a chain in a neighborhood under a COVID-19 lockdown in the Jing’an district of Shanghai on June 2, 2022. (Hector Retamal/AFP via Getty Images)

Is the patience of the people wearing thin into the eighth week of the lockdowns in Shanghai and other Chinese cities?

A video tweeted on May 16 by Fang Zhouzi (@fangshimin), a Chinese muckraker who is an opponent of pseudoscience and other fraud, provides striking evidence of discord. In it, two groups of people clad in biosafety suits attack each other outside what is probably an apartment building.

While the context of the confrontation is unclear, a logical deduction is that the situation had something to do with the “zero-COVID” lockdown enforcement, given that everyone in the video was clothed in a biosafety suit. Some informed speculation is provided below, courtesy of a friend who is fluent in Chinese and has routine communications with long-time Chinese friends on the mainland. He described the situation as “a mess” (yī tuán luàn一團亂). And given that the Chinese population is seething over the continuing lockdowns, the likelihood is high that this sort of incident is probably happening elsewhere.

First of all, my friend has frequently referred to Chinese medical personnel wearing biosafety suits by the term “big white” (dàbái 大白). These people were all health workers at the start of the pandemic in China. Since the brutal Shanghai lockdowns began, many “zero-COVID” enforcers were dressed in white hazmat suits with blue stripes.

As time passed and the lockdowns became institutionalized and the procedures more brutal, a considerable portion of the “big white” morphed into enforcers, including “urban management” (chéngguǎn 城管), the dreaded parapolice who plague Chinese cities. That’s truly disturbing since the latter—in years past—were infamous for beating to death fruit sellers on the streets and people who resisted having their homes demolished (“chāi 拆”) during forced urban renewal and expansion projects.

The incredible video clip from Fang Zhouzi provides a template for what’s almost certainly happening in China regularly these days: the police are beating “the people,” and there’s strife between hostile groups of individuals who want—as reflected by their dress, behavior, and equipment/accouterments—to be viewed as carrying out the wishes of some authority.

Here’s some speculation from one of his friends in China on the video. He only heard “the police hit someone” (警察打人了) from spectators (maybe the one taking the video, who was then harshly criticized in the comments for being a coward and not daring to join the fight). Some comments suggest that the people in blue were real guards, whereas those in white were the ones being quarantined. It seems the blues are police as they were beating the white.

Next is some speculation from an “ardent patriot of the People’s Republic of China,” who views the video as a confrontation between blue-clad community association representatives and white uniformed hospital/health workers who want to enter the community to do their “zero-COVID” activities. According to this person, the clash took place at the entrance to a “community” (xiǎoqū 小区).

The people in white robes are from the “medical system” (医疗系统). They are nurses, doctors, and medical people–generally outsiders to a community but higher in the hierarchical system regarding regulations and commands. The people in blue robes are from the “community work system” (社区工作系统) or “street office” (街道办事处). They are usually “public servants” (公务员 ) who were selected (or volunteered) to serve the community. In normal times, they would mediate quarrels between two families; they would be familiar with everybody who lives in the community, and if you run into them, they’d say “hi” to you and ask how you’re doing, or they would be in charge of all kinds of community/condominium affairs.

So, in short, this seems most likely to be a “battle” at the entrance of a certain community between “insiders” and “outsiders.” The “insiders” wear blue. Their job is to serve the community, and some of the blue robes may be representatives of the residents in the community that they work for. So they speak for the community. The “outsiders” wear white. They are medicare workers dispatched from hospitals. They don’t care about any individual community; they care about the COVID situation in general, and they visit every community.

Therefore, the scenario looks like the white-robed “medicare outsiders” want to come inside a certain community—perhaps to seal people’s doors with “quarantine tape,” or maybe to keep building a wall, or doing other things. The blue-robed “community service insiders” want to prevent them from entering, and so they keep pushing them out—perhaps they’ve already been quarantined too long and just gained their freedom, or they wanted to protect a particular family from being carried away to the “square cabin hospital” (方舱医院) or a quarantine facility, or for some other reasons.

At the end of the video, you can see that two white-robed people were lying on the ground, beaten by the blue-robed ones. Those beaten white robes may also be a reason for swarms of white robes wanting to come inside. Maybe it’s not so much about the quarantine, but simply they wanted to save their own people.


Concluding Comments


Most Americans and other Westerners are entirely ignorant of the draconian “zero-COVID” lockdown measures being implemented in many Chinese cities. All individual liberties and freedoms are sacrificed for what the CCP arbitrarily conveys as the “common good of the Chinese people” (a typical CCP euphemism).

There is complete stratification in Chinese society and an incredible hierarchy of officialdom that reaches down into the very living quarters of average Chinese citizens to take even the most basic of decisions away from the average Chinese. Woe be unto those brave souls who buck the system!

The most amazing insight from the above speculation about the blue-versus-white video confrontation was the blithe and unemotional attitude expressed by the supporter of the Chinese regime, who seemed to accept without concern that what transpired was a normal experience to be expected in communist China.

Heaven forbid that Americans ever experience similar complacency during future lockdowns in the United States. You just know that day is coming if the Democratic Party has its way.

Stu Cvrk retired as a captain after serving 30 years in the U.S. Navy in a variety of active and reserve capacities, with considerable operational experience in the Middle East and the Western Pacific. Through education and experience as an oceanographer and systems analyst, Cvrk is a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, where he received a classical liberal education that serves as the key foundation for his political commentary.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/an-ins...a_4515147.html




eReading:

Pandemic Reflection: The Destructive CCP Model(III)
PDF(preview)(2.87M); ePub(2.41M); MOBI(1.98M)

[Et Soh]

This video image provided by SpaceX, a SpaceX Falcon 9 mission to launch 53 Starlink satellites to low Earth orbit from Space Launch Complex 4 East (SLC-4E), takes off from Vandenberg Space Force Base, Calif., on May 13, 2022. (SpaceX via AP)




Can China Shoot Down Starlink?



Rick Fisher

June 14, 2022

Commentary


Audio PDF


Chinese military media is increasingly highlighting the threat to China from Elon Musk’s growing constellation of broadband (Wi-Fi) satellites called Starlink, with one Chinese military journal calling for China to have the capability to shoot them down.

But does China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) have that capability?

The short answer is that today, China may not be able to shoot down enough of them, but it has the potential to be able to damage large portions of this growing mega-constellation.

On May 25, South China Morning Post, Hong Kong’s former flagship English language newspaper, revealed that an April article in the Chinese journal Modern Military Technology had concluded that China “needs to be able to disable or destroy SpaceX’s Starlink satellites if they threaten national security.”

This article was worthy of coverage by the Post as one of its main missions is to help generate fear among the democracies of China’s growing military power on Earth and in space.

That same day, a full translation of the journal article was posted on the blog of former U.S. State Department official David Cowhig.

The article noted that lead author Ren Yuanzhen is affiliated with the Beijing Institute of Tracking and Telecommunications. The Post added that this institute is “under the PLA’s Strategic Support Force.”

This is important because the PLA Strategic Support Force is China’s lead military service for combat in outer space. It is also responsible for operating China’s manned and unmanned space programs.

Though it has about 2,400 satellites in low Earth orbit today, Starlink may eventually grow to over 40,000 satellites, expanding broadband internet services from 33 countries to potential global access.


Diego Guerrero, 7, and Sofia Diaz, 7, connect to the internet thanks to Starlink’s satellite antenna at the John F. Kennedy School in the village of Sotomo, outside the town of Cochamo, Los Lagos region, Chile, on Aug. 6, 2021. (Pablo Sanhueza/Reuters)

Starlink is feared by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) because it offers people around the world a means to avoid Beijing’s decades-long insidious campaign to control national internet systems by dominating their markets in computer server hardware and subsidized 5G communications software/hardware systems.

Not only does Starlink offer services that could overcome the manipulations of Chinese-made internet systems, but it would also allow countries being invaded by the Chinese regime or its main ally Russia to access a communications infrastructure capable of enabling the conduct of military operations—which happens today in Ukraine, perhaps tomorrow in Taiwan.

Even if the Chinese regime were to invade and conquer Taiwan, Starlink could provide a much more secure internet platform to help unite communities of ethnic Taiwanese around the world to sustain a virtual government-in-exile complete with a global network of embassies.

To counter Starlink, Ren wrote, “A combination of soft and hard kill methods should be adopted to make some Starlink satellites lose their functions and destroy the constellation’s operating system.”

Ren apparently noted that China’s ground-based anti-satellite (ASAT) missiles could be used, but they would cause massive debris, and the number of targets would mean the cost of attacking Starlink would be too high.

Instead, according to Ren, the objective of attacking Starlink “requires some low-cost, high-efficiency measures.” The Post noted Ren’s observation that “it would be possible for satellites carrying military payloads to be launched amid a batch of Starlink’s commercial craft.”

China has been rapidly developing laser and microwave weapons, and it is possible that the PLA Strategic Support Force could modify its new Tiangong manned space station or its prominent components, like the 6 tons of cargo carrying the Tianzhou supply ship—two of which are now docked to the Tiangong space station.

Future large modules attached to the Tiangong space station, or the Tianzhou, could carry electrically powered laser or microwave weapons capable of firing an unlimited number of “rounds” at Starlink satellites.

The Tianzhou could also be modified to carry many hundreds to a thousand small “spikes” that could be accurately aimed at passing Starlink satellites.

Today the PLA could launch up to four Tianzhou interceptor satellites on a single liquid-fuel China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) Long March-5 space launch vehicle (SLV). Still, these can only be launched from the Wenchang Satellite Launch Center on China’s Hainan Island.


People watch a Long March-8 rocket, the latest China’s Long March launch vehicle fleet, as it lifts off from the Wenchang Space Launch Center in southern China’s Hainan Province on Dec. 22, 2020. (STR/AFP via Getty Images)

Before the end of this decade, CASC will also launch its Long March-9 moon program SLV, which could also be adopted to launch up to 18 Tianzhou-based satellite interceptors—but these, too, must be launched from Hainan Island.

In the near term, however, the CASC solid-fuel Kuaizhou-21 could launch three Tianzhou-based interceptors from any location in China.

So it is possible to consider that late in this decade, the PLA Strategic Support Force could launch waves of 20 to 40 satellite interceptors based on the Tianzhou platform, or perhaps a new, slightly larger but more capable unmanned interceptor platform.

This potential capability would be in addition to more powerful and even mobile high-power laser systems deployed around China, or in a global network, perhaps smuggled into PLA-controlled satellite tracking bases such as in Argentina’s Neuquen Province or China’s many globally-deployed ships.

But even with such a potential PLA space combat threat directed at Starlink, Musk’s SpaceX corporation alone has the means to make the PLA’s task very difficult.

SpaceX corporation Falcon-9 reusable SLVs can launch payloads of 16.25 metric tons or about 53 Starlink satellites. But the SpaceX Starship reusable SLV, soon to conduct its first launch into space, has an advertised payload of 100 tons or the potential to launch over 300 Starlink satellites.

If it comes to an SLV race with China, Musk may be prepared to go the distance. In a June 5 discussion on Twitter, Musk proposed to “Build 1000+ Starships to transport life to Mars,” which, if realized, would allow more than enough to reconstitute Starlink or its successor.

Starship also allows Musk to launch large numbers of Starlink satellites into higher orbits that are more difficult and expensive for the PLA to attack.

In addition, relatively inexpensive modifications to Starlink satellites, such as adding very lightweight, highly-reflective “umbrellas” to reflect laser attacks or slight increases in the power of their electric-powered thrusters, could enable improved emergency maneuvering to avoid PLA attacks.

The fact that a researcher under the PLA’s Strategic Support Force is even writing about the enormous task of attacking Starlink-size satellite mega-constellations means that the U.S. Space Force requires the resources now to develop the sensors to track, and the weapons to counter, potential PLA ground and space-based ASAT weapons directed at all U.S. satellites.

Rick Fisher is a senior fellow at the International Assessment and Strategy Center.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/can-ch...k_4532714.html

eReading:
Red Dragon Menacing III(7) – On CCP’s All-Out Aggression Against Humanity – PDF(preview)(1.02M); ePub(411K); MOBI(556K)