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

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Chapter Eighteen: The Chinese Communist Party’s Global Ambitions(Part I) (https://howthespecter.mp3mp4pdf.net/2019/03/05/chapter-eighteen-the-chinese-communist-partys-global-ambitionspart-i/)


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​Table of ContentsIntroduction
1. The Chinese Communist Party’s Ambition to Replace the United States and Dominate the World
a. The CCP Has Always Aimed for World Domination
b. World Domination Requires Defeating the United States
c. The CCP Has a Multi-Pronged Strategy to Subvert and Contain the United States
d. The CCP Incites Anti-US Hatred to Prepare for War With America
e. The CCP No Longer Conceals Its Intentions in the Sino-US Relationship
2. Communist China’s Strategies for World Domination
a. One Belt, One Road Initiative Is Territorial Expansion Masked as Globalization
b. The CCP’s Great Periphery Strategy Aims to Exclude the US From the Asia-Pacific Region
c. Divide and Conquer in Europe Serves to Create a Split With the United States
d. The CCP Exports the ‘Chinese Model’ to Colonize Africa
e. Advancing Into Latin America Encroaches on America’s Backyard
f. Communist China Flaunts Its Military Ambitions
References

Introduction
The beginning of the twentieth century saw the Soviet communists seize power in Russia through violent force. The success of this revolution, in turn, paved the way for the communist specter’s primary actor — the Chinese Communist Party.
The CCP was established in 1921 by agents of the Far Eastern branch of the Communist International. Over the several decades that followed, the Soviet Union played a major role on the world stage, confronting the Western democratic camp in the Cold War. Westerners took the Soviet Union and its satellite communist regimes in Eastern Europe to be the archetypical communist adversary. Meanwhile, the CCP regime had ample time for its establishment and maturation.
The Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, leaving the CCP regime alone on the world stage. Communist China took a new, non-confrontational approach, enticing the rest of the world to engage with its capitalist market economy while retaining a totalitarian political system. Therefore, many Western scholars, entrepreneurs, and politicians did not regard the CCP as a communist party, but rather considered it a variant at most .
This could not be further from the truth. The CCP has brought the defining characteristics of communist ideology — deceit, malice, and struggle — to the apex, creating a regime that employs the most pernicious and insidious methods of political intrigue developed over thousands of years of human history. The CCP seduces people with profits, controls them with power, and deceives them with lies. It has cultivated its demonic technique to the point of mastery.
China is home to five thousand years of history and a splendid traditional heritage, which have earned that ancient land and its people respect and admiration from people around the world. The CCP has capitalized on these positive sentiments. After seizing power and taking the Chinese people captive, it muddled the concepts of the Chinese nation and the CCP regime. It presented its ambitions under the camouflage of China’s “peaceful rise,” making it difficult for the international community to understand its true motives.
But the essential nature of the CCP has never changed. The Party’s strategy of economic engagement is simply to use the “nutrition of the capitalist body” [1] to strengthen its own socialist body, to stabilize its rule, and realize its ambitions, rather than to enable China to see true prosperity and strength. In practice, its methods disregard basic moral ethics and universal values.
The countries that mankind has founded exist on the basis of their founders’ wisdom and faith in the Divine. Human society must follow the standards of conduct laid down by the Creator: to maintain high moral character, protect the right to private property, and adhere to universal values. The economic development of a normal society needs to be supported by corresponding moral standards.
But the CCP’s Party-state has followed a diametrically opposite path, creating a fast-rising economic abomination that has encouraged severe moral degeneracy. The evil specter’s motivation for arranging China’s “economic miracle” is simple: Without economic strength, the CCP regime would have no persuasive influence with which to dictate its terms to the world. These arrangements are not to benefit China or the Chinese, but to play on people’s worship of money and wealth so that the world will align with the CCP in economic cooperation and international affairs.
Internally, the Communist Party rules through tyranny and the most ruthless aspects of the capitalist system. It rewards evil and and punishes good, making the worst individuals into society’s most successful. Its policies magnify the evil side of human nature, using atheism to create a state of utter degeneracy in which people have no moral qualms.
When operating abroad, the CCP regime advocates the ideology of “Chinese characteristics,” meaning communism, and offers powerful economic incentives as a lure to have the people of the free world let down their guard, abandon moral principle, and turn a blind eye to the CCP’s vast abuses of human rights and its persecution of religion. Many politicians and corporations in Western countries have betrayed their values and compromised themselves in the face of profit, aligning themselves with the CCP’s practices.
Western countries hope they can help the CCP make a peaceful transformation, but while China has indeed undergone a degree of superficial modernization and westernization, the Party never changed its underlying nature. Over the past few decades, the practical result of engagement has seen the CCP successfully and peacefully undermine the moral obligations of the United States and corrupt the public will.
The CCP is the main arm of communism and thus the greatest threat worldwide. The communist specter’s aim in strengthening the global power of the CCP is to spread its poison to all corners of the earth and ultimately to have people betray tradition and the Divine. Even if the Party’s schemes for world domination are not directly successful, it will still have achieved the underlying purpose: to part people from their moral values. It does this by tempting people with economic interests, manipulating them with financial traps, infiltrating their political systems, intimidating them with military force, and confusing them with its propaganda.
Faced with such great danger, we must carefully examine the CCP regime’s ambition, strategy, tactics, and goals.
1. The Chinese Communist Party’s Ambition to Replace the US and Dominate the World
a. The CCP Has Always Aimed for World Domination
The CCP is not satisfied with being a regional power. It wants to control the world. This is determined by the Party’s inbuilt characteristic of tyranny. By its very nature, the Communist Party opposes heaven, earth, and tradition; it resorts to violence to smash the “old world” and aims to destroy all states, nations, and classes with the feigned goal of “liberating all humanity.” Its unchanging mission is one of constant expansion until the world is united under communist ideology. Its doctrines and practice are by definition globalist.
But because traditional culture was once quite powerful, communism has at times had to adopt a gradual and roundabout approach. In the Soviet Union, Stalin claimed the need for “socialism in one country;” more recently, the CCP has adopted “socialism with Chinese characteristics.”
Unlike the political parties that share power or hold power by rotation in Western democracies, the CCP has uncontested authority. It sets its strategic goals in the scope of decades or centuries. A few years after the Party established itself in 1949, it rolled out the slogan “surpass Britain and catch up to America” that prefaced the Great Leap Forward. Later, owing to unfavorable domestic and international situations, the CCP assumed a low profile for decades.
After the Tiananmen Massacre, the international community boycotted the Chinese regime. In response, the Party evaluated the situation and concluded that it was still unable to compete directly with the United States. Therefore, it took the path of hiding its strengths and biding its time, rather than attempting to take the lead on the international stage. This was not because the CCP had changed its goals, but because it adopts different strategies according to the circumstances in its struggle to ultimately establish world hegemony.
It can be said that the communist specter used the ancient Chinese strategic feint of “openly repairing the plank roads while secretly advancing via the hidden route of Chencang.” The first communist superpower was the Soviet Union, but its ultimate role ended up being to aid the rise and maturation of the Chinese communist regime.
b. World Domination Requires Defeating the United States
Since World War I, the United States has been the most powerful country on earth and serves to maintain international order. Any country that wants to overturn this order must bring down the United States, so in terms of overall strategic considerations, America is the CCP’s main enemy. This has been the case for decades, and the Party has never stopped preparing for an all-out offensive against the United States.
In his book The Hundred-Year Marathon: China’s Secret Strategy to Replace America as the Global Superpower, Michael Pillsbury wrote that China has a long-term strategy to subvert the U.S.-led world economic and political order and to replace it with communism by 2049, the one-hundredth anniversary of the Communist Party’s rise to power in China. Pillsbury notes that in the TV series Silent Contest, produced by the National Defense University of China, the ambition to compete with the United States is laid out clearly: The CCP’s process of realizing its “great cause” of dominating the world “will inevitably run into constant wear-and-tear and struggle with the U.S. hegemonic system.” “It is a centennial contest, not to be shifted by the human will.” [2]
The CCP’s global strategy is centered on countering the United States. Arthur Waldron, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania and a China expert, stated at a Senate hearing in 2004 that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army is the only army in the world that is dedicated for anti-U.S. operations. [3] In fact, apart from the PLA, most of the CCP’s diplomatic relations and international activities have the United States as their direct or indirect target.
c. The CCP Has a Multi-Pronged Strategy to Subvert and Contain the United States
The CCP has taken a comprehensive approach toward succeeding in its attempt to dominate the world. In ideology, it competes with the United States and other countries where there is freedom and democracy. It uses forced technology transfers and intellectual-property theft to close the tech gap and boost its economic confidence. Militarily, it engages in a silent rivalry against the United States by means of asymmetrical and “unrestricted warfare” in places like the South China Sea. It backs North Korea, Iran, and other rogue regimes to impede the United States and NATO.
In diplomacy, the CCP regime has promoted its “great peripheral strategy” and the One Belt, One Road plan. It has very quickly expanded its international influence, including neighboring countries as well as countries in Europe, Africa, Oceania, and Latin America, in an attempt to build an international coalition, develop a Chinese-led sphere, and isolate the United States.
The CCP has multiple methods to accomplish these goals. It established the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in 1996, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank in 2015, and the “16+1” cooperation with Central and Eastern European countries in 2012. It cooperates keenly as part of the five BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa), and vigorously promotes internationalization of its currency. It seeks to control the formulation of industrial standards (such as those used for the proposed 5G cellular networks) and to dominate public discourse.
The CCP regime has taken advantage of the democracy and freedom of the press that exist in the United States and other Western countries to carry out united front operations, spread propaganda, and engage in espionage. This is its attempt to manipulate the United States as much as possible and impose bloodless change from within.
Using these tactics, CCP agents bribe U.S. government officials, congressmen, diplomats, and retired military officers. The Party uses economic interests to guide American capitalists to lobby for the Chinese communists and to influence U.S. policy on China. It forces high-tech companies to cooperate with the CCP’s internet censorship and Great Firewall, coerces and incentivizes many in the overseas Chinese communities to serve as fifth columnists, and infiltrates Western think tanks and academic departments. It manipulates these institutions into exercising self-censorship on sensitive topics, effectively adopting the stand of the Communist Party. Chinese companies, which are controlled or influenced by the CCP, have been investing heavily in Hollywood.
While developing its influence in various countries to envelop and contain the United States on one hand, on the other, it establishes hidden strongholds on American soil so that it can undermine the United States from within. It has built an extensive network of agents and has fostered splits in U.S. society, posing a serious internal threat.
d. The CCP Incites Anti-U.S. Hatred to Prepare for War With America
The CCP’s ideology runs on hatred. The patriotism it promotes entails hating Japan, hating Taiwan, hating Tibetans, hating the ethnic minorities of Xinjiang, hating religious believers, hating dissidents, and most importantly, hating the United States. There is a saying among Chinese netizens: “For small problems, blame Japan, and for big ones, blame the United States.” This means that by inciting hatred against foreign foes, the Party helps smooth over public outrage during a crisis.
Before the Chinese communists seized power, they repeatedly praised the United States for its friendship with China and for the American democratic system. However, after the CCP set up its regime, it immediately took advantage of the suffering China had undergone in modern history, as well as the eagerness of the people to have a strong nation. The CCP painted itself as China’s savior by stoking hatred against America and other foreign countries.
In fact, the CCP does not care about the lives and deaths of the Chinese people, nor does it care about China’s territorial integrity or the sustainable long-term development of the Chinese nation. It is impossible to describe the evilness of how the CCP has persecuted the Chinese people, betrayed China’s sovereignty, destroyed Chinese morality and traditional culture, and squandered China’s future.

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Chapter Eighteen The Chinese Communist Party’s Global Ambitions (Part II) (https://howthespecter.mp3mp4pdf.net/2019/03/05/chapter-eighteen-the-chinese-communist-partys-global-ambitions-part-ii/)





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Table of Contents
3. ‘Unrestricted Warfare’ With Chinese Communist Characteristics
a. The CCP Promotes Party Culture Worldwide
b. United Front Work Aims to Disintegrate the Free World From Within
c. Unrestricted Economic Warfare Is the CCP’s Heavy Weaponry
d. The CCP Uses the Masses for Espionage
e. Unrestricted Warfare Takes Many Forms
4. The ‘China Model’ and Its Destructive Impact
5. Lessons Learned and the Way Out
a. The Policy of Appeasement Was a Grave Mistake
b. Why Did the West Get China Wrong?
c. What Is the Way Out?
References
3. ‘Unrestricted Warfare’ With Chinese Communist Characteristics
In the process of realizing its global ambitions, the CCP recognizes no moral limitations and obeys no laws. As discussed in the Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party, the history of the CCP’s founding is a process of gradually perfecting the evilness found through history, both in China and around the world, including the Party’s nine inherited traits: “evil, deceit, incitement, unleashing the scum of society, espionage, robbery, fighting, elimination, and control.”[1] These traits are seen everywhere through the CCP’s process of global expansion, and the Party has continually enhanced and strengthened its techniques and their malignancy. The CCP’s “unrestricted warfare” is a concentrated expression of these evil traits and an important part of its success.
The idea of unrestricted warfare has always run through the CCP’s military practices. In 1999, two Chinese colonels officially used the term “unrestricted warfare” in their theoretical military work. As the name implies, unrestricted warfare has these characteristics: “a war beyond all boundaries and limits,” “forcing the enemy to accept one’s own interests by all means, including methods of force and non-force, military and non-military, killing and non-killing.” “The means are all-inclusive, information is omnipresent, the battlefield is everywhere” — “beyond all political, historical, cultural, and moral restraints.”[2]
Unrestricted warfare means that “all weapons and technologies can be used at will; it means that all the boundaries between the worlds of war and non-war, military and non-military are broken.” It utilizes methods that span nations and any particular sphere of activity. Finance, trade, the media, international law, outer space, and more are all potential battlefields. Weapons include hacking, terrorism, biochemical warfare, ecological warfare, atomic warfare, electronic warfare, drugs, intelligence, smuggling, psychological warfare, ideology, sanctions, and so on.[3]
The authors of Unrestricted Warfare believe that “the generalization of war” is the inevitable direction of the future and that every field must be militarized. They believe that a large number of nonmilitary personnel who do not wear military uniforms are the key to unrestricted warfare. The government must quickly prepare for combat in all invisible fields of war.[4]
Many people refer to various professional or social environments as “battlefields” by way of metaphor, but for the CCP, it means war in a very real sense. All fields are battlefields because the CCP is in a state of war at all times, and everyone is a combatant. All conflicts are regarded as struggles of life and death. Slight problems are magnified to be questions of principle or ideology, and the whole country is mobilized as if in war to meet the CCP’s goals.
In the 1940s, during the Chinese Civil War, the CCP used economic warfare to harm the economy of the Nationalist government (Kuomintang) of the Republic of China and make it collapse. The Party used espionage to obtain the Kuomintang’s military plans even before the KMT’s own troops received them, and used numerous conspiracies while communist armies fought on the battlefield. The CCP still uses these unrestricted means today, yet on an even larger and broader scale. Unrestricted warfare means breaking all conventional rules and moral restraints. This leaves most Westerners, Western governments, and companies unable to understand how the CCP acts, much less compete with it.
The CCP implements unrestricted warfare in numerous fields, using many seemingly mundane means to achieve its goals:
Exporting Party culture and lies to the world through foreign propaganda
Controlling global media and carrying out ideological unrestricted warfare
Using fame, honey traps, human relationships, bribery, and despotic power to unite the leaders of the United Nations, important political figures of various countries, experts in think tanks and academic circles, tycoons, and influential people from all walks of life to cultivate friendships to support the CCP and help it through crises
Supporting, inciting, and allying with rogue regimes to distract the United States and Western governments
Using trade diplomacy to make free countries compete against one another, with the market of more than one billion Chinese as bait
Deepening economic integration and interdependency to tie up other countries
Violating WTO trade rules
Making false reform commitments to accumulate trade surplus and foreign exchange reserves
Using the fruits of capitalism to fatten the body of socialism
Using the market, foreign exchange, and financial resources as weapons to suppress human rights through economic unrestricted warfare and to force other countries to abandon moral responsibility and universal values
Forcing Chinese working abroad in private enterprises to steal information from developed countries
Making hostages of China’s citizens and those of other countries
a. The CCP Promotes Party Culture Worldwide
When a branch of China’s state-run broadcaster was established in London, nearly six thousand people applied for ninety positions that required reporting news from China’s perspective. The CCP encountered an enviable problem: too many applicants.[5] People’s eagerness to work for the CCP’s mouthpiece reflects the decline of the Western media industry and the threat that the CCP’s foreign propaganda poses to the world.
The World’s Largest Propaganda Machine
Mao Zedong once demanded that Xinhua News Agency “control the earth and let the whole world hear our voices.”[6] The CCP is now able to achieve what it could not achieve in the past.
After the 2008 financial crisis, Western media faced their own financial and business crises. The CCP seized the opportunity to deploy its “great external propaganda” campaign. The People’s Daily, China Daily, Xinhua News Agency, China Central Television (CCTV), China Radio International (CRI), and other CCP mouthpieces set up newspaper boxes, radio stations, and television stations around the world.
Chang Ping, former news director of the major Chinese newspaper Southern Weekend, said that since 2009, the Chinese regime allocated 45 billion yuan (US$6.52 billion) to the “national strategy for external propaganda in public relations and publicity.” According to Chinese media sources, the 45 billion yuan was only a small part of the total expenditure that had been publicized.[7] BBC estimated in 2016 that the CCP spends $10 billion a year on propaganda.[8] In March 2018, the CCP integrated CCTV, CRI, and China National Radio to establish the China Media Group, also called Voice of China, led by the Propaganda Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China. It has become the largest propaganda machine in the world.
Xinhua rented a giant billboard in Times Square in New York City to advertise the Communist Party. In 2016, the CCP changed the name of CCTV overseas to CGTN (China Global Television Network).
The CCP’s foreign propaganda attempts to advance with the times. Overseas stations implement a localization strategy, recruiting mainly local reporters and presenters. A photo of Xi Jinping’s video interview with CCTV stationed in the United States shows that 90 percent of the journalists are not Chinese.[9] The content of the programs is transferred from China to foreign countries, and the reporters are hired locally. China’s state-run media thus produces local packaging in the target country — using local faces and voices, but spouting the Communist Party’s thinking and conflating the CCP with China. It uses locals abroad to spread the CCP’s stories and the CCP’s voice — not China’s true stories and not the voice of the Chinese people.
This is the character of the CCP’s external propaganda push. The CCP also provides scholarships to younger generations of international journalists, including in the areas of food and education, so they can get trained or study in China, and at the same time be instilled with the CCP’s view of journalism.
Along with the economic colonization of Africa, CCP media has also reached all corners of Africa. The China-based television and media group StarTimes Media Group is now operating in thirty countries on the African continent and claims to be “the fastest growing and most influential digital TV operator in Africa.” A taxi driver in Uganda said, “More and more Africans understand Chinese society by watching contemporary Chinese TV dramas.”[10]
CCP propaganda has largely been unsuccessful due to a lack of credibility. However, making foreign media the spokesperson of the CCP’s media, ruthlessly attacking the media and individuals who criticize the CCP, and forcing everyone to support the CCP are all part of the recipe of the CCP’s external propaganda campaign.
Turning Media All Over the World Into Xinhua News Agency
In 2015, the foreign ministers of ten countries condemned the CCP for building artificial islands in the controversial South China Sea. At this time, a radio station in the Western suburbs of Washington, D.C., sounded a different note. Not only did it not mention the CCP’s reclamation activities, but it claimed that external forces had attempted to fabricate the facts and aggravate tensions in the South China Sea.[11] This station, called WCRW, voices a great deal of content expressing the position of the CCP — and curiously, it runs no advertising. Its only customer is a Los Angeles company, G&E Studio Inc., itself 60 percent controlled by China Radio International (CRI) in Beijing. G&E has at least fifteen similar stations running in the United States, covering not only Washington, D.C., but also Los Angeles, Salt Lake City, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Houston, Honolulu, Portland, and Vancouver, among others.
The Chinese Communist Party’s mouthpiece, China Radio International (CRI), relies on a local company registered under the name of a Chinese-American. With controlling shares, it uses local U.S. radio stations to promote CCP propaganda. The biggest benefit of this operation, and the apparent reason for it, is to conceal the role of the CCP. In order to maximally mislead the audience, listeners are made to feel that Americans themselves are expressing their support for the CCP.
In 2015, CRI ran thirty-three such stations in at least fourteen countries. By 2018, CRI had fifty-eight stations in thirty-five countries.[12] Because the control and operations are carried out through the use of local Chinese companies, it seems that democratic countries are helpless to do anything about the situation legally, although many people are unhappy with the Party’s hidden propaganda. The CCP’s external propaganda push has taken advantage of the loopholes in democratic societies. In the name of democracy, the CCP advocates for dictatorship and attempts to manipulate the audience into adopting its views by exploiting loopholes in the laws of free societies. Thus, in the name of democracy, it aims at destroying democracy.
The China Daily‘s inserts, which in Chinese are summed up with the phrase “making a voyage on a borrowed ship,” are another important part of the CCP’s external propaganda campaign. China Daily publishes a Chinese news insert in The Washington Post and uses a layout style that can give readers the impression that it’s The Washington Post’s content.[13] In addition to The Washington Post, the CCP has struck similar deals with over thirty newspapers, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Daily Telegraph, and Le Figaro. The word “advertising” on the insert is placed in an inconspicuous location, and readers can easily mistake the material for the newspapers’ own content.
On September 23, 2018, the China Daily also inserted four pages of advertisements that looked like ordinary news and commentary in the local Iowa newspaper Des Moines Register. The material attacked the U.S. president, and some called it an attempt to influence the midterm elections.[14]
The Communist Party excels in controlling overseas Chinese media. Through coercion and enticement, the CCP has recruited a large number of Chinese-language media, including some founded by Taiwanese with a previously strong tradition of anti-communism. The CCP-sponsored World Chinese Media Forum is used as a platform to communicate the party’s instructions to Chinese media around the world. On September 10, 2017, the Ninth World Chinese Media Forum was held in Fuzhou. More than 460 overseas Chinese media executives from over sixty countries and regions on five continents attended the meeting.
An example of the impact of this media-control work can be found in the reporting of a California-based Chinese-language media outlet that amplifies CCP propaganda in the Western press. During the CCP’s Nineteenth National Congress, this media outlet’s lengthy reports were almost identical to those published by official Party media.[15]
During the Umbrella Movement protests in Hong Kong in 2014, the Overseas Chinese Media Association controlled by the CCP, with more than 160 media members, urgently organized 142 pro-China media outlets in Asia, Europe, Africa, the United States, and Australia to publish the “Safeguarding Hong Kong Declaration” supporting the CCP’s perspective. The extent and efficacy of the regime’s media penetration overseas has surprised the outside world.[16]
Suppressing opposing voices is another aspect of CCP overseas propaganda operations. The Party threatens journalists who expose them with visa denials and other forms of harassment, leading them to self-censor. The result is that there are few global media corporations that take a completely independent stance on the CCP without regard to consequences imposed by the regime.
There are several ways a scoundrel might make others view him in a more positive light. One way would be to start from within, abandon evil, become good, and stop being a scoundrel. Other people would then over time naturally come to recognize the transformation. The second way would be to begin exerting pressure on others, trying to brainwash them into not recognizing the scoundrel for what he is. Finally, a scoundrel might even mount the most audacious plan, and attempt to use manipulation, lies, gaslighting, and brainwashing to turn everyone else into scoundrels too. This would offer the greatest protection.
The CCP has used both the second and third methods simultaneously over decades. It employs a variety of large-scale propaganda activities to target foreigners, changing the minds of people to make them think that the CCP is no scoundrel at all. In some cases it’s even able to pull them into the mire, turning them into scoundrels along with the Party. Through extensive investments and shrewd operations, the Party has now established a worldwide system for creating alliances, isolating enemies, and turning neutrals into sympathizers or scoundrels.
Brainwashing Through Culture, Literature, and Art
Cultural brainwashing is an important tool for the CCP’s destruction of traditional Chinese culture. In recent years, the Party has advertised its commitment to restoring traditional culture, but as discussed in previous chapters of this book, this wave of supposed restoration of traditional culture has in fact left out the soul of tradition, replacing it with a fake version infused with deviant Party culture. This has not only deceived the world, but has also further devastated traditional culture.
On top of that, in order to further influence the world, one of the key elements of the Party’s external propaganda is to export so-called traditional Chinese culture as defined by the CCP, and to use traditional Chinese customs and practices to whitewash the CCP. This is another form of perception manipulation, or brainwashing. A typical example of this project is the Confucius Institute.
According to incomplete statistics, as of the end of 2017, the CCP had established 525 Confucius Institutes (targeting colleges and universities) in 146 countries and opened 1,113 Confucius Classrooms (targeting elementary and secondary schools).[17] The Confucius Institute’s funds come from Hanban, which is affiliated with the CCP’s United Front Work Department. The use of funds is supervised by personnel from the CCP’s embassies and consulates. Confucius Institutes subvert important academic principles of autonomy and freedom of inquiry, aim to promote the CCP’s version of events, distort the history of China, and omit the CCP’s appalling human rights record. In some Confucius Institute classrooms, quotations of Mao Zedong are hung on the wall. On the surface, Confucius Institutes claim to teach Chinese culture, but in fact they promote communist doctrine and transmit Party culture.
In addition to offering cultural and language courses, Confucius Institutes also distort history and even organize protests against activities the CCP believes threaten its rule. For example, speakers have been invited who repeated CCP lies about Tibet. Others claimed the Korean War was triggered because the U.S.military bombed Chinese villages, and that the Party was forced to send troops.[18
The U.S. Government’s National Defense Authorization Act of 2019, adopted in 2018, includes a strongly worded condemnation of the CCP’s attempts to influence U.S. public opinion, especially “media, cultural institutions, businesses, and academic and political groups.” The Act explicitly prohibits any National Defense funds from being given to Chinese-language departments in U.S. universities where there is a Confucius Institute.[19]
From September to October 2011, Chinese authorities dispatched a song-and-dance troupe of three hundred performers to the Kennedy Center for the Arts in Washington, D.C., where the CCP staged its violent communist dance-drama Red Detachment of Women. In September 2016, in Los Angeles, a high-profile concert was held to commemorate the eightieth anniversary of the victory of the Red Army’s Long March. At the same time, in Australia, the performance Red Songs Concert to Commemorate the 40th Anniversary of Mao Zedong’s Death was held at the Sydney and Melbourne city halls. Local Chinese organizations in Australia protested and were finally able to stop the show. In 2017, the CCP sent the Red Detachment of Women performance to Australia, and in 2018, staged another violent communist dance-drama, Red Guards on Honghu Lake, in Sydney and Melbourne.
When it comes to information warfare, the CCP’s totalitarian regime occupies the high ground compared to democratic regimes: The Party blocks media from all democratic countries, but is able to insert its state-run media in democratic societies. The CCP prevents media from democratic countries from adding inserts to its media, but the CCP can insert its own content into the media from democratic societies, or it simply acquires them when convenient. CCP media serve the Party first and foremost, and Western journalists will never have executive roles. The CCP can, however, send its own undercover people into Western media or train foreigners into being mouthpiece reporters for the Party’s media. As long as the West still regards the CCP media as legitimate, the West will continue to lose in the information war. In 2018, the U.S. Department of Justice ordered Xinhua News Agency and China Global TV Network to register as foreign agents in the United States. It was a correct step, but is still far from sufficient — the problem is the lack of reciprocity in the first place.


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Chapter Seventeen： Globalization: Communism at Its Core


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Table of Contents

Introduction

1. Globalization and Communism

2. Economic Globalization
a. Globalization Spawns Communist-Style Economics
b. Globalization Fosters Communism in Developing Countries
c. Globalization Creates Wealth Polarization, Enabling Communist Ideology
d. Opposition to Globalization Furthers Communist Ideology
e. Western Capitalism Has Nourished the Chinese Communist Party

3. Political Globalization
a. The UN Has Expanded Communist Political Power
b. Communist Ideology Has Subverted the UN’s Human Rights Ideals
c. Globalization Promotes Communist Political Ideas
d. World Government Leads to Totalitarianism

4. Cultural Globalization: A Means of Corrupting Humanity
a. Cultural Globalization Destroys Traditions
b. Developed Western Countries Export Anti-Traditional Culture
c. Multinational Corporations Spread Deviant Culture
d. The UN Spreads Distorted Values

Conclusion

References


Introduction

Beginning in the Renaissance, human history entered a period of dramatic change. The Industrial Revolution that began at the end of the eighteenth century greatly increased productivity. The national power of each country went through tremendous changes, and the structure of global order went through radical changes. At the same time, social structures, thought, and religious traditions also saw dramatic shifts. Orthodox faiths went into decline, human morality began to deteriorate, societies became disordered, and human behavior lost universal standards for judgement. These historical conditions saw the birth of communism.

After Russia’s Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, the Communist International, known as the Third International, attempted to export communist revolution to the world. The Communist Party of the United States was founded in 1919, and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was founded in 1921. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, a global economic depression further motivated communist ideologues. The world’s political and economic ideologies began a leftward turn, the Soviet Union gained a firm foothold, and the CCP seized the opportunity to develop.

In 1949, more than a decade later, the CCP usurped China, and violent communism became ascendant. The Soviet Union and the CCP had together seized dozens of countries and one-third of the world’s population, forming a confrontation against the Western world. The Cold War that followed lasted half a century.

While violent communism threatens all mankind, most people in the Western free world neglect the non-violent communist factors developing quietly in their own societies. Besides the infiltration by the Soviet Union, all manner of para-communist ideologies and movements within the West — including outright communists, the Fabian Society, and the Social Democrats, among others — have penetrated government, the business world, and educational and cultural circles.

The counterculture movement in the West during the 1960s, as well as China’s Cultural Revolution, were brought about by communist elements. After the 1970s, rebellious youths in the West launched “the long march through the institutions,” an attempt to erode traditional culture from within and seize social and cultural leadership. In just over a decade, they achieved daunting success.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the disintegration of the Soviet Union, some people cheered the end of that stage of history and the end of communist ideology, while others worried about a clash of civilizations. But few realized that communism was taking on new forms and guises in its attempt to control the world. Its new banner is globalization.

With the Industrial Revolution and the development of science and technology, the movements of people and the changes in economics, politics, science and technology, and culture have become far more frequent. Today, modern telecommunications, transportation, computers, and digital networks have shrunk geographies and effaced boundaries that had stood for thousands of years. The world seems to have become small, and the interactions and exchanges between countries is unprecedented. The world has become more and more a unity. This strengthening of global collaboration is a natural result of technological development, the expansion of production, and migration. This kind of globalization is the result of a natural historical process.

read more (https://howthespecter.mp3mp4pdf.net/2019/02/13/chapter-seventeen-globalization-communism-at-its-core/)

[jimnyc]

I'm starting to think that you're just a spamoholic full of your own words trying to paste them anywhere they will allow it.

[Et Soh]

https://youtu.be/F4zKr3ERLXU
http://mp3mp4pdf.net/media/sm100.mp3

The earth is the living environment of mankind, providing food, resources, and conditions for development. It has allowed humanity to prosper for thousands of years.


Humanity interacts closely with the natural environment. Both traditional Chinese and Western culture emphasize the benign symbiotic relationship between man and nature. As the ancient Chinese philosopher Dong Zhongshu writes in Luxuriant Dew of the Spring and Autumn Annals, “Everything on earth was created for the benefit of man.” [1] The meaning is that the purpose of the Creator was to offer conditions for humanity to live, and all things on earth may be used by man. At the same time, people must follow the principles of heaven and earth in their lives, and thus use everything in moderation and proactively maintain and safeguard the natural environment in which human beings are to live.


Western traditional culture states that the Creator provides the natural environment for human beings and asks them to manage it. Thus, man should cherish and make good use of the natural environment. In the philosophy of traditional Chinese culture, there is a balance between everything, as well as the imperative to avoid harm. The Confucian Doctrine of the Mean states: “It is this same system of laws by which all created things are produced and develop themselves each in its order and system without injuring one another; that the operations of Nature take their course without conflict or confusion. …” [2]


The Chinese ancients valued protection of the environment. According to historical records, at the time of Yu the Great: “In the three months of the spring, people didn’t take axes to the forest so the forest could flourish. In the three months of the summer, people didn’t put nets to rivers so fishes could breed.” [3]


Zengzi, a Confucian scholar, wrote: “Wood could only be cut down in the right seasons and animals only slaughtered at the right time.” [4] These show the traditional Chinese idea of moderation in all things and of cherishing and protecting the natural environment.


After the industrial revolution, industrial pollution caused severe ecological damage, and Western societies began to become aware of the issue. After environmental protection laws and standards were implemented, pollution was effectively treated, and the environment greatly improved. In the process, public awareness of environmental protection grew enormously, and it was widely acknowledged that environmental protection is a proper goal.


We must distinguish between several ideas: environmental protection, environmental movements, and environmentalism. Environmental protection, as the name indicates, is the protection of the environment. Since the beginning of human civilization, people have understood the need to protect the environment, and this had nothing to do with any particular political ideology.


The environmental movement is a social and political movement for environmental issues. Its primary goal is to change environmental policies and public thinking and habits through mass movements, media influence, and political agitation. Environmentalism is a philosophy and ideology emphasizing the need for protecting the environment and the harmonious coexistence between human society and the natural ecology. The motivations behind environmental protection and environmentalism are not the same as communism — but communists excel at hijacking mass movements and manipulating them to their advantage. Thus we see that from the beginning of modern environmentalism, communists have systematically gone about co-opting the movement.


The issues surrounding environmentalism today are extremely complex: The movement has used sensational rhetoric and people’s genuine desire to protect the environment to create a global political movement. Many participants are well-meaning, have a sense of justice, and truly care about the future of mankind.


However, what many don’t recognize is how communists use environmentalism to claim a moral high ground to promote their own agenda. This is how environmental protection becomes highly politicized, made extreme, and even turned into a pseudo religion — but one without traditional moral foundations. Misleading propaganda and various mandatory political measures have become dominant, turning environmentalism into a kind of communism-lite.


From Chapter 16: The Communism Behind Environmentalism

[Et Soh]

https://youtu.be/KwJdH19KhqE
https://mp3mp4pdf.net/media/sm101.mp3



After the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Eastern European communist bloc, communists began sowing their factors in both Eastern and Western societies and also sought to establish a tightly controlled global government.


In order to achieve this goal, communism must create or use an “enemy” that threatens all mankind and intimidates the public around the world into handing over both individual liberty and state sovereignty. Creating a global panic about looming environmental and ecological disasters almost appears an inevitable route to achieving this goal.


The Three Stages of Environmentalism


The formation and development of the environmental movement is inextricably linked to communism. Specifically, its development has gone through three stages. The first stage is the theoretical gestation period, which can be counted from the publication of the Communist Manifesto by Marx and Engels in 1848 to the first Earth Day in 1970.


At the beginning of this stage, Marx and his disciples did not regard environmentalism as the focus of their theoretical discourse, but Marxist atheism and materialism were naturally consistent with the main tendency of environmentalism. Marx declared that capitalism is opposed to nature (that is, the environment). Marx’s disciples devised the term “ecosystem,” and quietly included environmentalism in certain subjects where it was set to ferment.


In the last decade of this phase, from 1960 to 1970, two best-selling books — Silent Spring (1962) and Population Bomb (1968) — appeared in the United States. Environmentalism entered the public arena under the guise of “environmental protection.”


The landmark event at the beginning of the second phase was the first Earth Day held in 1970, with the United Nations shortly after, in 1972, holding the first U.N. Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm. At this stage, a battery of organizations were rapidly formed and their activities increased. In the United States and Europe, they pushed governments with propaganda, protests, and activism under the guise of scientific research, legislation, meetings, and so on.


At the macro level, the counterculture of the 1960s functioned almost like a military parade of communist elements in the West. They took the stage by co-opting the civil rights and anti-war movements, and then quickly spread to other forms of anti-capitalist battles, including the feminist movement, the homosexual movement, and more.


After the 1970s, after the anti-Vietnam war movement ebbed, communist ideas began their process of institutionalization called “the long march through the institutions,” while also flooding into feminism and environmentalism — and this is the root cause of the upsurge in environmentalist ideology and agitation.


One of the most important forces that shouldered the banner of environmentalism in the 1970s were the hippies, the backbone of the counterculture. In fact, communism was in the process of repackaging itself under the banner of environmentalism after its failure in the Cold War, with the intent to introduce global communism under any other name.


The third phase began on the eve of the end of the Cold War. In 1988, the United Nations set up the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and the concept of global warming began to enter the political realm. On the eve of the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990, an international environmental conference was held in Moscow. In his speech, the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, advocated the establishment of an international environmental monitoring system, signed a covenant to protect “unique environmental zones,” expressed support for U.N. environmental programs, and called for a follow-up conference (held in June 1992 in Brazil).


Almost all Western environmentalists accepted these proposals. Global warming became the main enemy of mankind for environmentalists at this stage. Propaganda that used environmental protection as an excuse for heavy-handed policies suddenly escalated, and the number and scale of environmental laws and regulations proliferated rapidly.


Environmentalism has become the main tool for restricting the freedom of citizens around the world, depriving nations of sovereignty, and limiting and fighting against the free societies of the West. The result was that after the end of the Cold War, the former communists of the Soviet Union, as well as the communists and their fellow travelers in the West, all started afresh to join the environmental protection movement. Environmentalism emerged as a force on the world stage and increasingly began to take on a communist color.


From Chapter 16: The Communism Behind Environmentalism

12037
Environmentalism emerged as a force on the world stage…

12038
…and increasingly began to take on a communist color.

[Elessar]

I'm starting to think that you're just a spamoholic full of your own words trying to paste them anywhere they will allow it.

Yes, and a Troll.

[jimnyc]

Yes, and a Troll.

Yup, shall we Ned Stark him? Or give him a taste of what Joffrey had? :)

[Et Soh]

https://youtu.be/OfJQP6pk_IA


[He shouted]
…You called all of us "cockroaches"!
That's what Hitler called, before he massacred, the Jews!
You are planning for another Holocaust! This is massacre!
What Martin Luther King Jr. said: Injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere!
You had the opportunity to show the world what a civilized China can be.
But, you know what, you had failed badly!
We want freedom and freedom is what we will get!
Give me liberty! Or give me death!
Because Hong Kong is the Land of Braves!
We are brave!

[Et Soh]

https://youtu.be/Le_rfTdayLs


Information, in current Pandemic, has become a matter of life or death for the innocent general public. But the evil CCP regime is using it as a weapon to strengthen its political power both domestically and overseas. To expose CCP’s crime is to save lives and Humanity.

[Gunny]

Look who's back:rolleyes: Mr One-sided Conversation. Been a member since 2018 and racked up a "whopping" 20 posts; none, of which are responses to other members.

[High_Plains_Drifter]

Another DUMP 'N RUN troll.

Probably a bot. Find somewhere on the internet to dump their propaganda and then move along, period, no discussion, just dump their crap and run.

Aggravating bastards.

[Et Soh]

[QUOTE:]Giacomino Nicolazzo
Giacomino Nicolazzo is one of Italy’s most beloved writers. Born and raised in Central Pennsylvania, today he lives in a small village in Lombardy where he writes his books. TIA received this article from one of our readers, who asked us to disseminate it.
Montecalvo, Lombardy, Italy – March 24, 2020 – As I sit here in my involuntary isolation, it was just reported that overnight 743 more people died and 5,249 new cases have been reported. This brings the total cases of infection to 69,176 and the body count to 6,820. We take relief in knowing that 8,326 people have recovered so far. (Numbers as of 3/24, 8:30 pm in Italy.)
https://www.traditioninaction.org/HotTopics/HTimages_g-k/I099_137_Nic.jpg

Author Giacomino Nicolazzo
Most towns here in Italy, from the upper reaches of the Alps to the ancient shores of Sicilia and Sardenia, while not deserted, are closer to being ghost towns than the bustling centers of tourism, business and daily life they were just a few weeks ago.
Stores and shops have been shuttered. Restaurants and coffee shops no longer serve customers. Schools, universities, sporting arenas… even our museums and theaters…all closed. Even the Vatican City has closed its gates and armed patrols monitor the 20-foot-tall walls that protect it!
Streets and roads are now empty for as far as the eye can see. Normally they would be filled with crazed Italian drivers in tiny cars and scooters (the ones that sound like demonic insects) darting here and there, reaching the limits of centrifugal force on our roundabouts. In the plazas of our towns and cities, there are now officially more pigeons than people.
Many of us know someone who has been infected and recovered. Some of us know someone who did not recover…now they are dead. But everyone knows someone who has been affected by this microscopic monster in one way or another.
Sixty million of us are in lockdown… it is like a war zone here. We are being held prisoner in our own homes by an unseen enemy that sneaked in unnoticed…by most of us. As you will read in just a few more minutes, there were those who knew something like this was coming… or at least they should have.
So, who is to blame? With all this craziness swirling like a whirlpool at our feet, I just had to find the blame answer. And so I have spent my free time (of which I have a lot in these days) digging and researching. I was literally shocked to discover how this has come to be.
I am not going to bore you with talk of Patient ‘0’ who spread it to Patient ‘1’ and how mathematics efficiently explains the rapid expansion of infection. No… I am going to tell you how (as I see it) the virus came to Italy.
It has everything to do with communists. Allow me to explain.
https://www.traditioninaction.org/HotTopics/HTimages_g-k/I099_137_Ren.jpg
Matteo Renzi sold Florence & Italy to Communist China



Beginning in about 2014, Matteo Renzi, the imbecile ex-mayor of Firenze (Florence) acting as the leader of the Partito Democratico (synonymous with the Italian Communist party), somehow managed to get himself elected as Italy’s Prime Minister. To give you a proper frame of reference, Matteo Renzi was so far left, he would make Barack Obama look like Barry Goldwater!
…..
[UNQUOTE]
https://www.traditioninaction.org/HotTopics/i99ht_137_Ita.html
[Et Soh:]Most would believe this virus is blind in its path of spread, infection and killing. However, looking closely, one may be shocked at the evidence suggesting that, on one hand, pro-communist entities, be it a person or a state, seem more prone to get the virus, and on the other hand, the virus seems to avoid anti-communist entities. I’ll soon quote a leaked Chinese local document showing that over 75% of the dead virus-victims were non-elderly Party members. Does He have His own agenda, perhaps?

[tailfins]

I'm starting to think that you're just a spamoholic full of your own words trying to paste them anywhere they will allow it.

I would be more charitable and suggest someone who is REALLY angry with the Communist system who wants to shout it from the mountaintops. I understand and sympathize with such anger. Intellectually knowing about it is one thing, it becomes much more real when you know people who have been stomped on by a Communist boot.

It's also possible that his command of the English language isn't sufficient to engage in a two way conversation.

[Drummond]

I would be more charitable and suggest someone who is REALLY angry with the Communist system who wants to shout it from the mountaintops. I understand and sympathize with such anger. Intellectually knowing about it is one thing, it becomes much more real when you know people who have been stomped on by a Communist boot.

It's also possible that his command of the English language isn't sufficient to engage in a two way conversation.

This begs the question, then ... does this person (?) understand what is being posted ? You'd have to believe the answer is 'yes'.

It should therefore follow that, however simple the conversation might be, at least basic discussion comments could be left. If you're right, then I'm sure that there are members here who'd make an effort to adjust to what was required.

No. It's inconceivable that anyone would confidently post such lengthy pieces, without knowing their meaning. Discussion has to be possible. So, where is it ?

[Et Soh]

Is Beijing Weaponizing Your DNA?


https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2020/07/02/GettyImages-1609411-700x420.jpg (https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2020/07/02/GettyImages-1609411-1200x758.jpg)

A digital representation of the human genome at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City on Aug. 15, 2001. Each color represents one the four chemical components of DNA. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)




Is Beijing Weaponizing Your DNA?


Why is a US DNA-processing firm sharing Americans’ DNA with China? The answer is staggering.

James Gorrie
Writer


December 6, 2021


Epoch Times Commentary

If you’ve had a COVID-19 test, there’s a good possibility that the folks in the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) have your DNA (https://www.theepochtimes.com/t-dna).

If so, they probably know more about your health and DNA vulnerabilities (https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2019/08/chinas-military-pursuing-biotech/159167/) than you do. The implications of that are disturbing, to say the least.

The company contracted to conduct the COVID-19 tests is Fulgent Genetics, a nationwide DNA sequencing and disease testing firm. According to the firm’s website (https://fulgentgenetics.com/), its stated mission is, “developing flexible and affordable genetic testing that improves the everyday lives of those around us.”

Apparently, we are to believe that Fulgent Genetics is here to improve all of our lives.


Deep Ties to China (https://www.theepochtimes.com/t-china)


On Nov. 29, the Office of the Sheriff of Los Angeles County posted a letter (https://www.dailynews.com/2021/11/30/la-county-sheriffs-department-shuns-covid-19-testing-provider-over-china-ties/) to the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors. That letter stated that the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department would not be participating in the COVID-19 testing with Fulgent Genetics.

The letter explained that the Federal Bureau of Investigations’ (FBI) Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate had warned Sheriff Alex Villanueva’s office of the risk that DNA samples, from the COVID-19 tests that Fulgent Genetics was to provide, would “likely be shared with the Republic of China.”

Villanueva also said at a press briefing (https://www.dailynews.com/2021/11/30/la-county-sheriffs-department-shuns-covid-19-testing-provider-over-china-ties/)that “Fulgent had strong ties with BGI, WuXP, and Huawei Technology, all of which are linked to the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, the People’s Republic of China State Council and are under the control of the PRC.”

Questions Abound


Several questions come to mind. Who or what is the Fulgent Genetics corporation?
Why would an American company wish to provide American DNA samples?
Why on Earth would China even want DNA samples from Americans?
For what purpose?
How many American DNA samples do they have already?
And most importantly, what does our DNA have to do with the FBI’s concern with weapons of mass destruction (WMD) from China?

The answers to these and other questions on the stuff of dystopian worst-case scenarios are discussed below. But first, some background on Fulgent Genetics.

Who Is Fulgent Genetics?


The firm was founded in 2011 by Ming Hsieh, chairman of the board of directors, president, and chief executive officer, and James Xie, chief operating officer. Hsieh has served as a trustee at Fudan University in China since 2011. Xie received his Bachelor’s degree in engineering from Chongqing University in China in 1987. Perhaps not surprisingly, both men have deep ties (https://fulgentgenetics.gcs-web.com/leadership/management) to China.

And apparently, Fulgent has been sharing Americans’ DNA from coast to coast with China. As noted in Villanueva’s statement, it’s not the only PLA proxy (https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/health-china-bgi-dna/) company engaged in harvesting Americans’ genetic material. There are others as well, and millions upon millions of people’s DNA from America and many other places in the world have been sent to China.

This is where things get very dark in the weapons of mass destruction department. China wants to create a biowarfare (https://www.theepochtimes.com/t-biowarfare) WMD that targets your DNA.

A New, Dark Era of Biowarfare Is Here


Biowarfare isn’t a new thing; it has been used throughout history (https://www.military.com/daily-news/opinions/2021/03/23/will-genomics-become-next-arena-of-china-us-military-competition.html). In the 4th century B.C., Scythian archers infected their arrows by dipping them in decomposed bodies. In the 14th century, the Tartars catapulted plague-infected dead bodies into the lines of their enemies at the siege of Kaffa. And in World War II, the Imperial Japanese Army bombed Chinese cities with plague-laden fleas.

But these “old school” forms of biowarfare are child’s play compared to the latest DNA-based bioweapons technology that leverages artificial intelligence (AI) and genomics. We are entering a new and very risky era.

Biowarfare and DNA Manipulation


Just as AI and genomics enable DNA manipulation to help the human body fight all kinds of diseases, this same technology can also be used to create unique pathogens that only impact specific people. DNA-specific weapons can target a race, a gender, or even a family or individual with a specific DNA structure.

This isn’t just a possibility—it’s a probability (https://www.sundayguardianlive.com/news/data-genetic-manipulation-race-specific-bioweapons-not-impossibility), if not already a reality (http://d/%E4%B8%8B%E8%BC%89/Fulgent,%20it%20would%20appear,%20is%20an%20agent% 20of%20the%20CCP%20and%20an%20enemy%20of%20the%20U .S). What’s more, at least in theory, there’s no blowback to DNA-specific bioweapons because they harm only people with specified DNA characteristics. China’s access to Americans’ DNA is unquestionably a national security concern (https://thediplomat.com/2017/08/the-great-us-china-biotechnology-and-artificial-intelligence-race/).

US Versus China in ‘Death Race 2035’


Some estimates say that the winner(s) of the bioweapon arms race will be determined (https://thediplomat.com/2017/08/the-great-us-china-biotechnology-and-artificial-intelligence-race/) by the year 2035. It may well be much sooner. In the race to create highly effective, targetable, and lethal biological weapons, the United States and China are neck and neck. Both nations have invested big money in AI and genomics. Each wants to take the lead in creating these super DNA-based bioweapons.

Like all arms races, whichever nation develops the ability to launch a biological attack without fear of blowback will be in the power position. Not a happy picture, but it’s reality (https://www.21stcentech.com/nations-world-turning-biology-bio-weapons/).

But just being able to launch a deadly, highly targeted or even WMD bio attack isn’t enough. The survival of a nation also depends on its ability to defend against one. Like nuclear retaliation strategy (second strike capability) is meant to deter a first strike, a nation’s biowarfare retaliation ability may be a critical factor in deterring such attacks.

Unfortunately, AI and genomics make creating potentially thousands of genetically-modified lethal pathogens easy. On the flip side, immunizing whole populations, or even a small number of people, against thousands of newly-created pathogens is impossible; at least at this moment.

Biowarfare Technology Goes Viral


Predictably, the rapid spread of information itself is a problem. The internet has made it impossible to contain most secrets. If a technology exists, for the right price, it will be made available to the bad guys. Or, in the case of the PLA and Chinese scientific community, it will be developed and—if current experience with the CCP virus (https://www.theepochtimes.com/giving-the-right-name-to-the-virus-causing-a-worldwide-pandemic-2_3277200.html) is an indicator—deployed in full.

This reality does not bode well for limiting the access and use of a new and dangerous bioweapons by China, or any other adversaries of the United States. If Fulgent and others are helping China develop DNA-targeted pathogens against Americans, there are no easy answers to such a threat, nor are there any good ones. But seizing all materials, data, and assets, and prosecuting such firms would be a start.

James R. Gorrie is the author of “The China Crisis” (Wiley, 2013) and writes on his blog, TheBananaRepublican.com. He is based in Southern California.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/is-bei...a_4134462.html (https://www.theepochtimes.com/is-beijing-weaponizing-your-dna_4134462.html)

eReading (https://mp3mp4pdf.net/ereading/):

Red Dragon Menacing (III) – On CCP’s All-Out Aggression Against Humanity(3)

PDF(preview) (https://mp3mp4pdf.net/RDM3-3.pdf)(3.97M); ePub (https://mp3mp4pdf.net/RDM3-3.epub)(4.22M); MOBI (https://mp3mp4pdf.net/RDM3-3.mobi)(4.05M)

[Et Soh]

Pax Americana Unravels at the Feet of China
https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2021/10/24/2021-10-23T085913Z_1_LYNXMPEH9M02I_RTROPTP_4_RUSSIA-CHINA-DRILLS-700x420.jpg (https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2021/10/24/2021-10-23T085913Z_1_LYNXMPEH9M02I_RTROPTP_4_RUSSIA-CHINA-DRILLS-1200x675.jpg)

A group of naval vessels from Russia and China conduct a joint maritime military patrol in the waters of the Pacific Ocean, in this still image taken from video released on Oct. 23, 2021. (Russian Defence Ministry/Handout via Reuters)


Pax Americana Unravels at the Feet of China


Beijing and allies erode the peace in East Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and East Asia


Anders Corr

December 9, 2021

Epoch Times News Analysis

mp3Audio (http://mp3mp4pdf.net/media/unravel.mp3)


The news is coming fast and hard of peace and stability eroding globally in a manner that benefits Beijing’s attempts at global destabilization to make a path for its increasing control.

As the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) seeks to break apart the American-led order, including that of the United Nations that Washington developed after World War II, Beijing makes the destabilized countries—previously free, sovereign, and independent—more easily digestible into a new and emerging Chinese-led global order.

The CCP will repurpose, not destroy, the U.N. bureaucracy while disposing of its ideals of freedom, diversity, and democracy. But first it needs to destabilize and reorient the global geography of sovereign states that America spearheaded and protected from the 1940s to the present.

Beijing’s destabilization of international politics depends upon coordinated action by its allies.



China (https://www.theepochtimes.com/t-china)’s ally Russia (https://www.wsj.com/articles/three-potential-crises-unfold-on-the-world-stage-11638799161) is building troops opposite Ukraine for an invasion. Those troops appear to be growing toward a massive 175,000-person army. This destabilization of East Europe distracts some of the global public’s attention from Beijing, which is being freed to more easily attack Taiwan. Analysts predict that Putin could be ready for an invasion by early 2022, but the West is so frequently surprised by authoritarian powers, including Putin’s invasion of Crimea, that we should prepare ourselves for an even earlier surprise attack.

Iran (https://www.wsj.com/articles/three-potential-crises-unfold-on-the-world-stage-11638799161) and its allies, including most importantly China, are stronger relative to the United States and allies than they were in 2015 when the first Iran nuclear non-proliferation pact was agreed. Since then, Beijing increased its influence in Tehran, including by purchasing 700,000 barrels of Iranian oil in 2018 when Washington reimposed sanctions. A friend in need is a friend indeed.

Expect the terms of future Iranian nuclear negotiations to be worse for America and allies, which could lead to no new agreement, or tip Israel into preemptive war against Iran to stop it going nuclear. An Iranian-Israeli war would likely pull in the United States and Saudi Arabia, a major distraction for not only America but our allies. Iran, one of the biggest supporters of global terrorism, would likely increase this asymmetric strategy of terrorism, where it has an advantage, and the Chinese regime could then more easily attack Taiwan without serious repercussions due to the geopolitical confusion that ensues.

North Korea (https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/north-korea-kim-pope-francis/2021/12/04/126f552c-4a56-11ec-beca-3cc7103bd814_story.html)’s Kim Jong Un is resisting U.S. and South Korean calls for a formal end to the Korean War, has collapsed nuclear talks with the United States, and refused talks with the South. The latter’s Roman Catholic leader, Moon Jae-in, is so desperate for peace that he is turning to Pope Francis for help. The chances of the Pope changing Pyongyang, which relentlessly persecutes believers and is ruled by a family that likens itself to gods, is worse than zero. A Papal intervention could make things worse, for example, by Kim using a visit to burnish North Korea’s image.


https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2021/10/21/415b69b497dc212488f71f8199de621d-600x400.jpg (https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2021/10/21/415b69b497dc212488f71f8199de621d-1200x800.jpg)

A ballistic missile launched from a submarine in North Korea, on Oct. 19, 2021. (Korean Central News Agency/Korea News Service via AP)


The CCP (https://www.wsj.com/articles/three-potential-crises-unfold-on-the-world-stage-11638799161) is leading this rogue’s gallery of nations and directly threatening war against democratic Taiwan. Xi Jinping is openly planning to take control of the island democracy during his tenure as General Secretary of the CCP. Meanwhile, new Chinese national security and data laws (https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-data-security-law-ships-ports-court-cases-universities-11638803230) are being implemented that have extraterritorial effect, meaning that laws made in Beijing apply in New York City, for example.

Case in point: the Wall Street Journal (https://www.wsj.com/articles/hong-kong-china-wsj-threat-election-legco-democracy-freedom-protest-ccp-11638575014) got a warning on Dec. 5 from the Hong Kong government that the newspaper was in violation of the National Security Law for an article the Journal wrote about, regarding the breakdown of what little democracy Hong Kong had after Beijing’s takeover.

But the Chinese military is already operating far afield from East Asia, and seeks new military bases in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in the Middle East and Equatorial Guinea (https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-seeks-first-military-base-on-africas-atlantic-coast-u-s-intelligence-finds-11638726327) on the Atlantic coast of Africa. These will augment its already-existing base in Djibouti. The UAE halted construction when the United States discovered it and confronted the UAE government, but Equatorial Guinea is resisting similar diplomatic overtures. The CCP’s plans for an Atlantic naval base in Equatorial Guinea continue.

A Chinese military base on Africa’s east coast will put it within striking distance of the American East Coast, increasing pressure on Washington to buckle to China’s military threats in the future. Expect Beijing to seek other military bases, overt and covert, in the 100 commercial ports it has already constructed around Africa. These are a threat to global shipping through the Mediterranean and around the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa, and will put Beijing in greater control of the oil and shipping resources of the Middle East.

The magnitude, quantity, and speed of geopolitical change is so enormous due to Beijing’s increased economic power, diplomatic assertiveness, and military aggression, that the threat of war is increasing substantially. America and its former world order, wrongly thought to be unipolar after the breakup of the Soviet Union in the 1990s, is at a moment of truth.

We must draw red lines and accept the increased risk of war with not only China, but its allies Russia (https://www.theepochtimes.com/t-russia), Iran, and North Korea—or give into a slow erosion of American and allied democratic power globally. Without the protection of the United States, democracy, freedom, peace, and civilizational diversity could soon be a thing of the past. This dire truth must now be confronted. There is no time to lose, because time is on Beijing’s side, and Beijing’s side is that of totalitarianism.

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/pax-am...a_4142821.html (https://www.theepochtimes.com/pax-americana-unravels-at-the-feet-of-china_4142821.html)

[Hot Dogger]

The kind of Maoist Communism which I feel the OP alludes to is practically gone in China, Mao was installed by the CIA and that sort of rule has now become a moot point. What's happening today between China and the world is simply competition, survival of the fittest and nothing more. China actually has no goal of invading any other nation, but rather by trade and investment holding sway.

The United States moved a great deal of its industry to China under the guise of "green ecology" so in order to advance the NWO's agenda of One World Government here in North America. China is of course now part of the NWO, particularly after USAMRIID and Wuhan established relations in the 1980s so as to be "at one" in their goals of depopulation and eugenics.

I think it was about 1,300 years ago, China at that time could've conquered the entire world, but the Han Dynasty I think it was, stopped that advancement, where China has remained essentially a cohesive nation ever since.

[Et Soh]

https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2021/12/08/6969157-700x420.jpeg (https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2021/12/08/6969157-1200x800.jpeg)



Marines stand at attention as the sailors render honors to the USS Arizona Memorial during the 80th Anniversary Pearl Harbor Remembrance on Dec. 7, 2021. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Jeremy Lemmon Jr.)


The Next Sneak Attack



Morgan Deane
December 11, 2021

Epoch Times Commentary
Audio (https://mp3mp4pdf.net/media/nextattack.mp3) PDF (http://mp3mp4pdf.net/nextattack.pdf)

As Americans honor Pearl Harbor (https://www.theepochtimes.com/t-pearl-harbor), they must be aware of the potential for another one. The Chinese regime’s history and doctrine favor sneak attacks.

The United States recently celebrated the 80th anniversary of Pearl Harbor. Americans should take a moment to consider why surprise attacks happen and how a Chinese sneak attack might appear. There is a theoretical basis, followed by recent history and doctrinal statements, that suggest Americans should be concerned, though not panicked, about a potential sneak attack.

History


As I’ve discussed before, China (https://www.theepochtimes.com/t-china) has a history of preemptive strikes (https://www.theepochtimes.com/when-active-defense-is-preemptive-war-the-2021-us-defense-report-on-china_4098000.html) since 1949. Its neighboring countries received one. The Chinese communists (Chicoms) attacked American forces in Korea in 1950. A few years later, they seized islands that belonged to Taiwan—in what is now called the Taiwan Crisis. It was only the timely intervention of American forces in the Taiwan Strait that prevented the Chicoms from seizing the rest of Taiwan. Just a few years after that, the Chicoms sought to readjust its borders with India in a short offensive strike in 1962. They targeted their allies, the Soviet Union, in 1969. In this case, there was another border dispute, and the area was militarized by both sides when Chinese commandos preemptively seized disputed islands in the Ussuri River.

Finally, the Chicoms fought a short but inconclusive war with Vietnam in 1979. Again, this was an offensive preemptive strike that ended with China confirming the transfer of key territory along its border. In addition to actual wars, the Chicoms have used force to intimidate their neighbors in the South China Sea.



In short, the Chinese regime has often fought offensive wars with each of its neighbors by utilizing a key strategic signature. There would be a great deal of tension where it claimed territory was unjustly stolen from China. It often initially assumed a defensive posture, but then used preemptive offensive strikes at the operational and tactical level to achieve victory. Then it defended the territory and waited for a ceasefire. This was seen most recently in the border skirmish with India last year.

Theory


As I discuss in my book, “Decisive Battles in Chinese History (https://www.amzn.com/dp/B07G3D6NN3),” there is a strain of preemptive thought going back to Sun Tzu’s (also “Sunzi”) warnings. His writing is the most accessible of Chinese military thought, and it suggests that an overwhelming attack that induces a psychological collapse of the enemy is a preferred form of warfare. Sun Tzu admonished that the “highest realization of warfare is to attack the enemy’s plans.” And “subjugating the enemy’s army without fighting is the true pinnacle of excellence.”

When the army unleashes its plan, it should be successful and as easily victorious as a torrent of water unleashed from a dam, a bolt released from a crossbow, or a stone rolling down a mountain. He concludes that “one who knows the enemy and knows himself will not be endangered in a hundred engagements.”

One of the problems with the “Seven Military Classics” and Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War” is that, much like the Bible, it is a collection of writings that have been redacted over time that can be used to support different positions. There are also many competing authors with different and sometimes directly contradictory theories (https://www.amzn.com/gp/product/B09MHFVQ4D) about warfare. This leads to a good deal of debate about the exact nature of Sun Tzu’s advice, but this still has influence in modern Chinese thought.

The Chinese regime has not forgotten this heritage in its modern objectives and training manuals. Mainland China’s National Defense (http://www.cdsndu.org/html_en/to_xygk_orderNo=2701&superOrderNo=2700.html) emphasizes “rapid assaults” using a variety of orthodox and unorthodox methods, such as cyberattacks or using new technology in drone swarms. U.S. defense analysts (https://media.defense.gov/2021/Nov/03/2002885874/-1/-1/0/2021-CMPR-FINAL.PDF) warn that the “PRC [People’s Republic of China] continues to pursue [the ability] to fight and win short duration [conflicts].” The first principle of the Chinese Air Force (https://ndupress.ndu.edu/Publications/Article/577507/sun-tzu-in-contemporary-chinese-strategy/) is securing initiative through offensive operations.

Next Attack


There is a theoretical basis for the attack supported by China’s recent history (https://www.theepochtimes.com/when-active-defense-is-preemptive-war-the-2021-us-defense-report-on-china_4098000.html). But what might that look like in the next war?

This conflict could look like several different things. Using the new “carrier killing” and hypersonic missiles launched by more advanced fighters, the Chicoms could overwhelm and surprise American forces, such as the U.S. Seventh Fleet stationed in Japan.
https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2021/04/28/GettyImages-486281114-1200x800.jpeg (https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2021/04/28/GettyImages-486281114-1200x800.jpeg)
Chinese military vehicles carrying DF-21D anti-ship ballistic missiles, potentially capable of sinking a U.S. Nimitz-class aircraft carrier in a single strike, drive past the Tiananmen Gate during a military parade in Beijing, China, on Sept. 3, 2015. (Andy Wong/Pool/Getty Images)


The launching of hundreds of missiles within mere minutes to a theater with forces at fewer alerts than those in the South China Sea could be decisive. The new risk-averse public led by an administration in Washington that clearly doesn’t want war, and refused to do much against Russian aggression in Ukraine (https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/russia-ukraine-invasion/2021/12/03/98a3760e-546b-11ec-8769-2f4ecdf7a2ad_story.html), could then prompt Beijing to look for a quick settlement and resolution. This essentially means that China would win a conflict in one strike. Like the advice of Sun Tzu, the attack would show a knowledge of Chicom forces, American disposition, and the ability to deliver a quick, stunning blow that “attacks the mind” and the enemy’s plans (for example, by striking a ship in port), and could win a war without a single soldier firing a bullet.

In a fictional global war of 2030 (https://nationalinterest.org/blog/reboot/what-would-war-2030-between-china-and-united-states-look-165549), the attack would begin after tension in the South China Sea through the Chinese regime’s malware and cyberattacks at the stroke of midnight on Black Friday. Mainland Chinese supercomputers then black out American satellites: U.S. countermeasures, such as drone strikes, fall harmless into the sea as their navigation systems are corrupted. Starting to panic, the U.S. Navy tries to counter-attack, but launch codes on Zumwalt-class Destroyers tasked with destroying the enemy’s satellites no longer work.

The U.S. Navy then has difficulty sailing through the narrow passages in the South China Sea without its navigational computers. By this point, the Chicoms start sending missiles to knock out communication satellites and ground the high-tech fighters, like the F35 that rely on complex data. With American fleets rudderless, flights grounded, and communication in disarray, Russia and China assume direct control of disputed territory across the world. And by the time the United States gains its war footing, it is presented with a fait accompli from the Chinese regime. Again, using new and unexpected technology, the Chicoms cripple the United States in a lightning war that subjugates the enemy army without fighting, and without a single death.

Conclusion


We must keep in mind that the United States has significant advantages in technology, training, and countermeasures to the above strategies that suggest a need to avoid overstating the Chinese advantage. But the Chicoms have a recent history and doctrine of preemptive attacks that make it worth considering and preparing for.



Morgan Deane is a former U.S. Marine, a military historian, and a freelance author. He studied military history at Kings College London and Norwich University. Morgan works as a professor of military history at the American Public University. He is a prolific author whose writings include “Decisive Battles in Chinese History,” “Dragon’s Claws with Feet of Clay: A Primer on Modern Chinese Strategy,” and the forthcoming, “Beyond Sunzi: Classical Chinese Debates on War and Government.” His military analysis has been published in Real Clear Defense and Strategy Bridge, among other publications.


https://www.theepochtimes.com/the-ne...k_4146994.html (https://www.theepochtimes.com/the-next-sneak-attack_4146994.html)

[Et Soh]

https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2021/12/09/Congress-AP21337540471131-700x420.jpg (https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2021/12/09/Congress-AP21337540471131-1200x800.jpg)

Light from the morning sun illuminates the Capitol in Washington on Dec. 3, 2021. (J. Scott Applewhite/AP Photo)


Beijing Threatens Congress


SENATOR SCHUMER’S BILL MAKES BEIJING SEE RED


Milton Ezrati

December 13, 2021

Epoch Times News Analysis PDF (https://mp3mp4pdf.net/congress.pdf) Audio (https://mp3mp4pdf.net/media/congress.mp3)

00:00

00:00
While Chinese leader Xi Jinping and U.S. President Joe Biden have talked (albeit remotely) about improving relations between their two countries, a new Sino-American battle has started.

On one side is the Foreign Affairs Committee of the National People’s Congress (China (https://www.theepochtimes.com/t-china)’s rubber-stamp legislature), others in Beijing, and China’s Ambassador to the United States, Qin Gang. On the other side are Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and many in the U.S. Congress.

The issue is Schumer’s massive U.S. Innovation and Competition Act (USICA). The senator has put it forward as a cudgel with which to beat China on trade, technology, and cybersecurity attacks, among other things. The Chinese side has made it clear that if this bill becomes law, Beijing will retaliate.

Schumer’s massive bill (2,276 pages) passed the Senate in June 2021. It has yet to pass the House of Representatives. It very much reflects the growing anti-China sentiment in Congress, on both sides of the aisle, and gathers under its umbrella several smaller bills that had already been introduced. Prominent among these are the Endless Frontiers Act, originally put forward by Sen. Todd Young (R–Ind.), and the Meeting the Chinese Challenge Act, originally put forward by Senators Sherrod Brown (R–Ohio) and Pat Toomey (R-Pa).



The composite bill, not surprisingly, has a great variety of provisions. Among them, it would insist on “buy American.” It would ban to the extent legally possible the purchase of Chinese-made drones and electric vehicles, and forbid any government server to connect to a Chinese social network such as TikTok. It would include measures to thwart cybersecurity attacks on any U.S. government agency and mandatory sanctions in response to any Chinese cybersecurity attacks, as well as any state-sponsored thefts of intellectual property and technology. It is estimated to affect some $250 billion in trade and economic activity generally.

Beijing has vowed to retaliate should the bill become law. China’s Foreign Affairs Committee has described the USICA as an attempt to “contain China’s development under the banner of innovation and competition.” Though Beijing has yet to divulge how it would retaliate, few doubt, given its actions in the past, that it would hesitate to do so. Few, however, expect tariffs.

After the strains China suffered during the 2019 “trade war” between China and the Trump White House, the last thing Beijing wants is to move matters in that direction. And given the tough line taken by U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai in her recent talks with Vice Premier Liu He, Beijing knows that Washington could take that path again. China hands suspect that Beijing’s response would target exports of parts needed by domestic U.S. manufacturers.

While the nature of the threats remains vague, China’s Washington embassy has swung into action. Ambassador Qin Gang has expressed his outrage and that of his government. He has identified some 260 bills in Congress that he describes as having “negative China content.” He has summed them up, singling out the USICA, as an attempt to “hijack China-U.S. relations and gravely damage America’s own interests.” He has also marshalled his staff to lobby (threaten?) all U.S. firms of significance, but especially those that already have interests in China, to defeat Schumer’s bill and other pieces of legislation like it.

All this anxiety may go nowhere. The bill still waits a vote in the House, and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has yet to indicate when or even if such a vote will take place. Congress has a great deal of business to complete, so this issue may wait quite a while to get her attention, much less the attention of Biden.

Indeed, should it pass the House and arrive at the president’s desk, there are no assurances that he will sign it into law. He has at times talked tough on China, but its wide range of provisions could easily run afoul of other administration initiatives or important cabinet secretaries. Still, it does seem as though Congress has the proverbial bit in its teeth when it comes to China, and with the mid-term election looming in 2022, all politicians will take note of the public’s clear anti-China feeling.



Milton Ezrati is a contributing editor at The National Interest, an affiliate of the Center for the Study of Human Capital at the University at Buffalo (SUNY), and chief economist for Vested, a New York-based communications firm. Before joining Vested, he served as chief market strategist and economist for Lord, Abbett & Co. He also writes frequently for City Journal and blogs regularly for Forbes. His latest book is “Thirty Tomorrows: The Next Three Decades of Globalization, Demographics, and How We Will Live.”


https://www.theepochtimes.com/beijin...s_4152657.html (https://www.theepochtimes.com/beijing-threatens-congress_4152657.html)

[Et Soh]

https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2018/10/18/GettyImages-543146154-700x420.jpg (https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2018/10/18/GettyImages-543146154-1200x778.jpg)

Chinese-chartered merchant ship Cosco Shipping Panama crosses the new Agua Clara Locks during the inauguration of the expansion of the Panama Canal in this undated file photo. China is continuing its push to displace U.S. influence in the region, and already has put parts of the Panama Canal under its control. (Rodrigo Arangua/AFP/Getty Images)


China Makes Economic Inroads in America’s Backyard


Beijing’s influence grows in Latin America and the Caribbean
Antonio Graceffo

December 14, 2021

Epoch Times News Analysis
Audio (https://mp3mp4pdf.net/media/backyard.mp3) PDF (http://mp3mp4pdf.net/backyard.pdf)


Through investment, trade, and diplomatic coercion, the Chinese regime is steadily expanding its influence into America’s backyard—Latin America (https://www.theepochtimes.com/t-latin-america) and the Caribbean (LAC).

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) became one step closer to isolating Taiwan when Nicaragua (https://www.theepochtimes.com/t-nicaragua) recently announced that it switched diplomatic allegiance (https://www.thenews.com.pk/print/915755-nicaragua-switches-diplomatic-recognition-from-taiwan-to-china#:~:text=Managua%3A%20Nicaragua%20switched%20 diplomatic%20allegiance,vowed%20to%20one%20day%20s eize.) from Taipei to Beijing. This leaves Taiwan with only 14 allied nations. Its strongest ally, of course, is the United States. The CCP seeks to displace the United States as the world leader even in its own backyard, in Central and South America and the Caribbean.

Currently, China (https://www.theepochtimes.com/t-china) leads in trade with Africa and parts of Asia. China is still lagging (https://www.voanews.com/a/quietly-vying-with-us-china-boosts-trade-investments-in-latin-america-/6253011.html) behind the United States in the Americas, but the gap is steadily closing. In 2009, Chinese investment only accounted for 4 percent of new projects in Latin America. By 2019, the number had increased to 6.8 percent. The United States, by contrast, accounts for about 22 percent (https://www.voanews.com/a/quietly-vying-with-us-china-boosts-trade-investments-in-latin-america-/6253011.html) of all financing. In some countries, however, Chinese investment is more prominent. China only began investing in Chile (https://www.voanews.com/a/quietly-vying-with-us-china-boosts-trade-investments-in-latin-america-/6253011.html) five years ago, but has become the nation’s number one source of capital.

China’s share of mergers and acquisitions in Latin America was 2.4 percent in 2009, but had grown to 16.3 percent (https://www.voanews.com/a/quietly-vying-with-us-china-boosts-trade-investments-in-latin-america-/6253011.html) in 2019. This places China second only to the United States. Trade experienced a similar growth pattern. In 2000, China’s trade with the region was $16 billion (https://www.voanews.com/a/quietly-vying-with-us-china-boosts-trade-investments-in-latin-america-/6253011.html). Now it is over $400 billion.



During the turmoil of leftist revolutions in Latin America, in the 1980s, a number of LAC countries switched diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to China, including Bolivia, Nicaragua, and Uruguay. Nicaragua switched in 1985, and again in 1990 and 2020. Other LAC countries switched for financial and political reasons, such as the Bahamas in 1997, Dominica in 2004, Grenada in 2005, Costa Rica in 2007, and El Salvador 2018.

The United States handed over the Panama Canal to the Panamanians in 1999 (https://history.state.gov/milestones/1977-1980/panama-canal), and the Panama Canal Zone ceased to be U.S. territory. In the same year, the Chinese firm Hutchison-Whampoa was granted the right to operate ports on both the Atlantic and Pacific (https://theglobalamericans.org/2021/04/chinas-advance-in-panama-an-update/) sides of the Canal. Panama was the first country in LAC to sign on to China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Even before Panama’s recognition of China, Beijing had won contracts to have container ports on the Canal (https://www.heritage.org/americas/commentary/chinese-challenge-panama) run by Chinese state-owned companies.

Between 2008 and 2016 (https://theglobalamericans.org/2017/06/panamas-recognition-prc-strategic-implications-recommendations-u-s/), China and Taiwan had a truce on courting Latin American and developing countries to switch their recognition. The African nation of Gambia had offered to switch recognition to Beijing, but China refused, observing the truce. When pro-independence candidate Tsai Ing-wen was elected as Taiwan’s president in 2016, China accepted Gambia’s offer (https://theglobalamericans.org/2017/06/panamas-recognition-prc-strategic-implications-recommendations-u-s/). In addition, Sao Tome and Principe, another small African nation, switched its diplomatic allegiance to Beijing in the same year.
https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2018/12/03/china-gambia-1200x800.jpg (https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2018/12/03/china-gambia-1200x800.jpg)Gambia’s President Adama Barrow walks with Chinese leader Xi Jinping during a welcoming ceremony at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Dec. 21, 2017. The two countries re-established diplomatic relations in 2016. (Nicolas Asfouri/AFP/Getty Images)

Countries that switched their allegiance from Taiwan to China received incentives (https://theglobalamericans.org/2017/06/panamas-recognition-prc-strategic-implications-recommendations-u-s/) such as loans, investments, infrastructure, roads, sports stadiums, clinics, and access to the Chinese market. Costa Rica, for example, obtained its sports stadium immediately after switching to China in 2007.

In 2017, Panama severed (https://www.csis.org/analysis/key-decision-point-coming-panama-canal) diplomatic ties with Taiwan. Just before the change, China Landbridge Group began construction on the Panama Colon Container Port on Panama’s Margarita Island, a $1 billion deepwater port and logistics complex. Then-President Juan Carlos Varela kept the decision secret, only notifying the United States within an hour before the official announcement (https://theglobalamericans.org/2018/09/the-evolution-of-panama-prc-relations-since-recognition-and-their-strategic-implications-for-the-u-s-and-the-region/).

One year later, Chinese leader Xi Jinping visited Panama and the two countries signed 19 cooperation agreements (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-panama-china/panama-china-sign-accords-on-xi-visit-after-diplomatic-ties-start-idUSKBN1O22PE) regarding trade, infrastructure, banking, tourism, education, as well as an extradition treaty.

In 2018, the Dominican Republic and El Salvador also switched allegiance to Beijing. The Dominican Republic was offered a $3.1 billion package of investments and loans (https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-05-02/taiwan-dumped-by-dominican-republic-in-a-blow-to-taiwan/9718578) for infrastructure projects, freeways, and a natural gas power plant.

Before the switch, the Dominican Republic was already China’s second largest trading (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/01/world/asia/taiwan-dominican-republic-recognize.html) partner in the region, with trade of $2 billion. By 2020, trade between the two nations had increased to about $2.4 billion (https://oec.world/en/profile/bilateral-country/chn/partner/dom), with the Dominican Republic running a severe trade deficit with China of nearly $2 billion.

Taiwan’s remaining friends in the Americas include Belize, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Paraguay, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. Meanwhile, 19 countries in Latin America (https://theglobalamericans.org/2021/04/chinas-advance-in-panama-an-update/) and the Caribbean have joined China’s BRI. Additionally, Beijing has signed a “strategic partnership” with 10 other nations in the region.

Switching diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to China often means a cut in aid from (https://theglobalamericans.org/2017/06/panamas-recognition-prc-strategic-implications-recommendations-u-s/) the United States. The CCP, however, are so adept at writing checks that the loss is hardly felt. To increase U.S. influence in the Americas and to counter the CCP, the United States must have meaningful engagement with the LAC countries, helping them to increase their GDP. In 2013, then-Vice President Joe Biden said that the United States might be interested in joining the Pacific Alliance (https://alianzapacifico.net/en/what-is-the-pacific-alliance/) as an adviser. The alliance is a trade pact between Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru.

The United States, along with the other Group of 7 nations, are planning the “Build Back (https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/06/12/fact-sheet-president-biden-and-g7-leaders-launch-build-back-better-world-b3w-partnership/) Better World” program, an infrastructure funding vehicle for developing countries that would compete with the BRI.

While Taiwan is losing diplomatic ties in LAC, the United States is strengthening its support for Taiwan, even stationing U.S. soldiers on the island—under both the Trump and Biden administrations (https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/4355230). The Chinese regime is definitely gaining ground, but the United States retains its primacy in the region—in particular, when it comes to the Panama Canal.

The importance of the Panama Canal has increased during the COVID-19 pandemic, as the United States has pushed for reshoring or close-shoring of supply chains. The United States remains the primary user (https://www.csis.org/analysis/key-decision-point-coming-panama-canal), accounting for 66 percent of the cargo. China, by contrast, accounts for only 13 percent of Canal traffic. However, China is the largest user of the Colón Free Trade Zone.

The United States is still ahead, but U.S. foreign policy needs to be targeted at countering CCP encroachment in the Americas.



Antonio Graceffo, Ph.D., has spent over 20 years in Asia. He is a graduate of Shanghai University of Sport and holds a China-MBA from Shanghai Jiaotong University. Antonio works as an economics professor and China economic analyst, writing for various international media. Some of his books on China include “Beyond the Belt and Road: China’s Global Economic Expansion” and “A Short Course on the Chinese Economy.”


https://www.theepochtimes.com/china-...d_4154515.html (https://www.theepochtimes.com/china-makes-economic-inroads-in-americas-backyard_4154515.html)

[Et Soh]

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A Chinese PLA J-16 fighter jet flies in an undisclosed location in a file photo. (Taiwan Ministry of Defense via AP)




Don’t Be Distracted by the Ukraine, the Main Event Is China



John Mills

December 16, 2021

Epoch Times Commentary
Audio (https://mp3mp4pdf.net/media/chinanotukraine.mp3) PDF (https://mp3mp4pdf.net/chinanotukraine.pdf)

We’re barely re-learning what’s going on in the Ukraine (https://www.theepochtimes.com/t-ukraine) and Neocon megaphone Republican Senator Roger Wicker (https://www.newsweek.com/russia-joe-biden-nuclear-attack-ukraine-roger-wicker-1657182) has already charged to the ramparts and declared the need for nuclear strikes on Russia regarding the Ukraine border tensions with Russia.

I’m not sure I ever have seen such a bellicose statement based on such little information and likely lame intelligence community assessments. I would suggest Senator Wicker has made a teensy bit of an inappropriate jump to a conclusion that has immense gravity. I think many would support the tenet or imperative that United States leaders be more restrained and reserved with comments on first use of nuclear weapons.

I’m a former career member in the uniformed military and senior civil service in the U.S. Government, with almost 40 years of service from the height of the Cold War to today’s Great Power showdown with China (https://www.theepochtimes.com/t-china). I’ve been in combat, cold war, and deterrence operations. Some of it was with conventional units, some with special operations, and some as a senior staff officer. I fully embrace President Donald J. Trump’s declaration of putting an end to forever wars advanced by the swamp. At first, I didn’t understand the full gravity and meaning of the comment by DJT, but I after a while, the depth and meaning of the “Forever War” moniker sunk in. Trump was right (again).

There are many in the beltway that root for forever wars with no purpose and no defined outcome. And to be clear—Trump is not an isolationist. America First is not isolationism. It advocates deep engagements with foreign partners who must, however, share in the burden. Senator Wicker’s comments are not America First—they are a dangerous step backward.



If Biden and the swamp were serious about Putin and China, they’d unleash the three core strengths of America to bankrupt Russia and deter China. Using the Energy, Food, and American Dollar Instruments of American Power would quickly squelch Russian and Chinese Adventurism and allow the American military to properly posture for deterrence (and action if necessary).

A Post-Olympic Surprise by China?


China’s accelerated mimicry over the last year of the American Military Sealift Command (https://sealiftcommand.com/) and the National Defense Reserve Fleet (https://www.maritime.dot.gov/national-defense-reserve-fleet) were the key indicators I have been waiting for to see if China was serious about demonstrating the ability to generate and project force. The key operative expression is the obscure term, “Joint Logistics Over the Shore (JLOTS).”

Sorry to sound like such a Joint Staff and Office of the Secretary of Defense planner wonk but demonstrating JLOTS is the red flag and alarm bell. Where did China learn the JLOTS concept? Did they once again break and enter Department of Defense and Intelligence Community networks? Was this another dastardly and horrendous Office of Personnel Management Breach (https://www.csoonline.com/article/3318238/the-opm-hack-explained-bad-security-practices-meet-chinas-captain-america.html) where Chinese National Security Agency equivalents broke into U.S. Government networks?

The answer: No. They simply surfed the internet, searched, found, studied, and mimicked the American naval JLOT documents (https://onlinepubs.trb.org/onlinepubs/archive/conferences/2001SummerPorts/Session5Adams.pdf). I’ve said this before, I’ll say it again – the Chinese intelligence community reads and studies everything we put out. So maybe we should put out documents that are meant to mislead the Chinese military planners. Just a thought.

The last year has seen an acceleration of public Chinese JLOTS demonstrations (https://www.defensenews.com/naval/2021/08/04/china-reportedly-converted-civilian-ferries-for-amphibious-assault-operations/), a sharp rise in Chinese naval warship construction, a fervor over new silo construction for nuclear missiles, and a quickening pace of large-scale challenges to Taiwan (https://www.theepochtimes.com/t-taiwan) airspace by swarms of Chinese combat aircraft. The Chinese military is feeling it’s oats and is building confidence in operational art. China is moving far beyond a “parade” military, to a military that can generate and project force afar—a rare operational art that only America has demonstrated over and over.

The key question now is when will this Chinese operational art be translated into action, action, action as Steve Bannon likes to quip? I think a time of immense danger is in the immediate aftermath of the withering Winter Olympics in Beijing that wrap up in late February 2022.

Totalitarians revel and relish in the propaganda opportunity of an Olympics. It makes them feel good about themselves. Sochi was a brilliant cover for Putin’s 2014 initial invasion (https://www.forbes.com/sites/laursonpieler/2014/03/17/the-ukraine-after-sochi-lessons-on-hard-power-and-soft-power/?sh=41086a95cdf8) of the Ukraine. Perhaps Putin might warm up the Ukraine immediately after the Beijing Olympics to distract the world, which would be brilliant double cover for China striking to the East. The Chinese seem to prefer probing southern Taiwan and the Taiwan-Philippine’s gap to the open Pacific. China now is in desperate need of chips from Taiwan, so I assert China is looking far beyond Taiwan if China initiates conflict.

90 Days to ‘De-Woke’ the U.S. Military


The American military is large, well trained, well equipped, and has deep operational relationship with several key powers in Asia to include Japan (which likely explains China’s preference to stay away from the northern approach to Taiwan), Australia, India, Canada, South Korea, and European nations like the United Kingdom and France who are also projecting naval force into the zone of possible conflict.

The U.S. military is incredible, but appears to act like King Theoden from the Lord of the Rings trilogy, under the cancerous spell of Woke-ism and Critical Race Theory. (https://www.charismamag.com/life/culture/50559-the-reawakening-of-america-who-has-bewitched-we-the-people)We have about 90 days—let’s hope that Grima’s spell on the U.S. military and the rest of America is broken soon.



Colonel (Ret.) John Mills is a national security professional with service in five eras: Cold War, Peace Dividend, War on Terror, World in Chaos, and now—Great Power Competition. He is the former director of cybersecurity policy, strategy, and international affairs at the Department of Defense. ColonelRETJohn on GETTR, Daily Missive on Telegram.


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A giant portrait of Chinese leader Xi Jinping is carried atop a float at parade to celebrate the 70th Anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party’s ruling at Tiananmen Square in Beijing, China, on Oct. 1, 2019. (Kevin Frayer/Getty Images)


Drifting Toward a Catastrophic American Defeat


Newt Gingrich
December 16, 2021

Epoch Times Commentary
Audio (https://mp3mp4pdf.net/media/defeat.mp3) PDF (https://mp3mp4pdf.net/defeat.pdf)


The United States is drifting toward a catastrophic defeat.

I am talking about a defeat which will eliminate our freedom and permanently subordinate America to Communist China (https://www.theepochtimes.com/t-china) and its demands for absolute control and obedience.

You may think this vision is alarmist, but look at the Chinese Communist Party (https://www.theepochtimes.com/t-chinese-communist-party)’s control of Hong Kong, abuses in Tibet, and Uyghur genocide in Xinjiang.

For that matter, look at the giant, wealthy American companies that already kowtow to the Chinese Communist Party’s demands and adjust their language and behaviors to placate Beijing.



After pressure from China, Disney removed an episode of “The Simpsons” (https://nypost.com/2021/12/13/gop-rips-disney-over-scrubbing-of-simpsons-china-episode/) from its streaming services in Hong Kong over a reference to the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. Nike and Coca-Cola lobbied against legislation (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/29/business/economy/nike-coca-cola-xinjiang-forced-labor-bill.html) to ban imports of goods made with forced labor in China. JPMorgan Chase has expanded its business in China—despite known, serious data security and national security risks. And remember the turmoil (https://www.businessinsider.com/nba-china-feud-timeline-daryl-morey-tweet-hong-kong-protests-2019-10#several-of-the-rockets-sponsors-and-partners-announced-that-they-would-no-longer-broadcast-games-4) when Houston Rockets General Manager Daryl Morey tweeted support for democracy in Hong Kong. The NBA and players went into a tailspin of shameless apology and censorship on China’s behalf. It was disgusting.

Some American billionaires have made so much money in collaboration with Communist China that they prioritize padding their pockets over American values and national security interests.

Similarly, a defeated America would be subordinated to the Chinese Communist dictatorship. Our words, behaviors, and institutions would constantly be molded to appease the paranoid dictatorship in Beijing.

Despite the extraordinary consequences of defeat, the American system is gradually drifting into a national security system that will clearly lose a major war with Communist China.

Don’t take my word for it.

Major American military leaders are already sounding alarms.

As The Epoch Times reported (https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_app/us-space-force-general-warns-china-is-advancing-space-capabilities-at-twice-the-speed-of-us_4140723.html) this month, U.S. Space Force Gen. David Thompson warned that, “China could overtake the United States in terms of space capabilities by 2030 if America doesn’t speed up its development.

“The fact that in essence, on average, they are building and fielding and updating their space capabilities at twice the rate we are. … If we don’t start accelerating our development and delivery capabilities, they will exceed us. And 2030 is not an unreasonable estimate.”

Despite this growing threat in space, when Vice President Kamala Harris chaired the administration’s first meeting of the National Space Council this month, there was not a single military issue discussed.

Beyond the rising vulnerabilities in space (and generals have reported that Russia and China engage the United States in space virtually every day) there is also a general crisis of our defense capabilities.

As Business Insider reported “The US military is changing the way it fights after it ‘failed miserably (https://www.businessinsider.com/us-military-failed-miserably-in-war-game-changing-warfighting-strategy-2021-7)’ in a war game against an aggressive adversary who knew its playbook.”

Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. John Hyten warned in a July conference: “Without overstating the issue, it failed miserably.”

Hyten explained that the wargame, which simulated a conflict with China over Taiwan, involved an adversary which had studied American conflict and warfighting for two decades. As he put it the fictional China “just ran rings around us. They knew exactly what we were going to do before we did it, and they took advantage of it.”

The real Communist China has similarly studied our military strategies, “with probably even more focus, with larger numbers,” Hyten warned. As he put it, we have to make serious changes because our ability to overmatch rival powers including China was “shrinking fast.”

Admirals who have led the American Pacific military commitment have also been vocal about the failure of our current systems.

According to The Guardian, now retired Admiral Philip Davidson, who was the 25th
Commander of the United States Indo-Pacific Command, said in March (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/mar/10/china-could-invade-taiwan-in-next-six-years-top-us-admiral-warns) that a serious fight over Taiwan could come in the next six years.

“I worry that they’re [China] accelerating their ambitions to supplant the United States and our leadership role in the rules-based international order … by 2050,” Davidson said

When retired four-star Admiral James Stavridis was interviewed by the Asahi Shimbun (https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/14362039) in June about his new novel, “2034: A Novel of the Next World War,” he reinforced the sense of growing Chinese capabilities.

“When I began writing the novel, it was set in the middle of the century, roughly 2050. But the more I researched and the more I applied my analysis to the situation, the closer the date was set. Many of my friends, very senior officers in the military, both active duty and retired, and senior policymakers have complimented me on the book. Still, they have said, ‘You wrote a great novel, but you’ve got one big thing wrong. And that is the date.’ Many believe that the date of a U.S.-China confrontation will be sooner.”

As a final example of American vulnerability, James Kitfield reported in Yahoo News in March (https://www.yahoo.com/now/were-going-to-lose-fast-us-air-force-held-a-war-game-that-started-with-a-chinese-biological-attack-170003936.html) on a highly classified simulated conflict with China which started with a Chinese biological weapon attack, continued with a massive invasion disguised as a routine exercise, and culminated with devastating missile strikes against our Indo-Pacific bases and warships and Taiwan itself. Needless to say, America lost that one, too.

The National Defense Authorization Act, which is now passing through Congress, simply does not address the scale of change we need to ensure America could defeat China militarily.

The Pentagon and intelligence community’s distracting focus on creating a woke force rather than a war-winning force is further weakening America.

We need a full-blown investigation into the requirements for victory over China—and a commitment to undertake every reform needed in defense, education, capital markets, supply chains, manufacturing, and other areas to ensure American safety and freedom.

Anything short of a complete rethinking of our capabilities and the challenge of the Chinese Communist Party’s system-wide effort to become the world’s dominant superpower may well lead to our defeat in a much shorter time than anyone thinks possible.

Our freedoms and our physical safety are at stake. This should become a major focus for 2022 and 2024.

From Gingrich360.com



Newt Gingrich, a Republican, served as House speaker from 1995 to 1999 and ran as a presidential candidate in 2012.


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The U.S. Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency’s Falcon Hypersonic Test Vehicle emerges from its rocket nose cone and prepares to re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere, in this illustration. (Courtesy of DARPA)


Defending Taiwan: Think Globally and ‘Look Up’


Grant Newsham

December 9, 2021; Updated December 13, 2021

Epoch Times Commentary Audio (https://mp3mp4pdf.net/media/tglu.mp3) PDF (https://mp3mp4pdf.net/tglu.pdf)

U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said last week that Chinese air force movements toward Taiwan (https://www.theepochtimes.com/t-taiwan) look like “rehearsals” for an invasion (https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2021/12/06/2003769091). It is good that America’s military leadership is finally realizing that Xi Jinping is serious when he says he will use force, if necessary, to seize Taiwan.

Yet, in recent years whenever the U.S. military has “war-gamed” a fight with China (https://www.theepochtimes.com/t-china) over Taiwan, the Americans reportedly have “failed miserably (https://www.defenseone.com/policy/2021/07/it-failed-miserably-after-wargaming-loss-joint-chiefs-are-overhauling-how-us-military-will-fight/184050/).”

But there are war games and there are war games.

Depending on how you construct the scenario, things might turn out better for the United States.



You see, if the fight is confined to Taiwan and the surrounding area, the Chinese have a big advantage. They can deploy far more ships than the U.S. Navy can, and the same goes for aircraft. Chinese land-based missile and anti-aircraft batteries will further make things difficult for U.S. forces trying to “get in close” to help Taiwan. One doesn’t envy a U.S. destroyer skipper who has two-dozen supersonic anti-ship missiles coming his way and arriving in 90 seconds.

And the People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force’s ballistic missiles, which is able to hit moving targets at sea, will give U.S. aircraft carriers much to worry about. The missiles are nicknamed “carrier killers” for a reason. U.S. bases in Japan and Guam, from which American forces will be deploying to aid Taiwan, will also be getting Chinese missile attention.

This just covers a few of the problems facing U.S. forces and the Americans can, of course, strike some blows of their own.

But if it’s just a fight between the Americans and the Chinese, and it takes place right around Taiwan, then the Americans will have a hard time.

However, expand the battlefield, say, to include the entire globe, and the United States’ prospects improve considerably.

Here’s why:
China does not produce enough food to feed itself, nor does it have enough energy or natural resources to power its economy. That’s why the Chinese buy up Brazilian and Ukrainian farmland, Australian milk companies, and American pork producers. The same goes for Chinese oil concessions in Iran, Iraq, and Venezuela; and mines in Africa and South America.
https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2020/12/14/GettyImages-1210432538-1200x800.jpg (https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2020/12/14/GettyImages-1210432538-1200x800.jpg)Food trucks wait to enter China near Muse, close to the Chinese border in Shan state, Burma (Myanmar) on April 20, 2020. (Phyo Maung Maung/AFP via Getty Images)

China not only depends on seamless (and long) supply lines to import commodities and raw materials, but it also depends on the same supply lines to export manufactured products that earn vital foreign exchange—and keep people employed and the economy humming.

If the Americans (and their allies and partners) “expand the battlefield” and cut off China from its overseas “assets,” as one Western expert puts it: “without these commodities arriving in China from around the world, the China we know and the Chinese know will not exist … it will be 1.4 billion persons desperate for food, energy, commodities, natural resources.”

So if the United States musters the fortitude needed to impound or sink Chinese shipping and clamp down on air transport in and out of China, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) will be in dire straits.

The People’s Liberation Army (PLA), despite carrying out the biggest, fastest defense buildup in history—including progress toward a “blue-water” global navy—over the last 20 years, still cannot defend China’s overseas assets. And it will probably be another decade before PLA global power projection capabilities can do so.

Compounding Beijing’s problems, China is also vulnerable to U.S. financial sanctions that exclude China from the U.S. dollar network. And Washington might also prohibit U.S. corporate business dealings with China.

So while Beijing might like its prospects in a straight up (and confined) fight to seize Taiwan, it is extremely vulnerable if the United States and other free nations “decouple” China from its overseas assets—and the convertible currency and inward foreign investment and trade that powers the Chinese economy.

But the Americans should not breathe easy.
https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2021/11/02/GettyImages-1235898128_web-1200x750.jpg (https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2021/11/02/GettyImages-1235898128_web-1200x750.jpg)A Long March-2F carrier rocket, carrying the Shenzhou-13 spacecraft with the second crew of three astronauts to China’s new space station, lifts off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the Gobi desert in northwest China early on Oct. 16, 2021. (STR/AFP via Getty Images)

If China can seize the high ground in outer space and the upper atmosphere—and threaten the United States with a surprise (and undefendable) nuclear attack, as well as blinding U.S. forces by taking out their satellites—it might be able to checkmate the Americans. At that point, America’s existing conventional advantages, both kinetic and non-kinetic, won’t matter much.

China’s recent tests of hypersonic delivery vehicles and the so-called FOBS (Fractional Orbital Bombardment System) give the American’s plenty to worry about in this regard. These are hard to track and to defend against—not least as they allow nuclear warheads to be launched from directions where U.S. anti-missile systems aren’t looking.

And, in a further move to dominate the high ground, the Chinese (and the Russians) are aiming for offensive operations against U.S. satellites on which America’s defense depends. They have, in fact, already started interfering with U.S. space assets (https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/11/30/space-race-china-david-thompson/).

Earlier this year, the commander of the U.S. Space Command, General James Dickinson, stated (https://www.theregister.com/2021/04/21/the_legit_real_star_wars/) in a congressional hearing:

“China is building military space capabilities rapidly, including sensing and communication systems and numerous anti-satellite weapons. … Similarly concerning, Russia’s published military doctrine calls for the employment of weapons to hold us and allied space assets at risk.”

In his written testimony, Dickinson added:

“One notable object is the Shijian-17, a Chinese satellite with a robotic arm. Space-based robotic arm technology could be used in a future system for grappling other satellites. China also has multiple ground-based laser systems of varying power levels that could blind or damage satellite systems. China will attempt to hold US space assets at risk while using its own space capabilities to support its military objectives and overall national security goals.”

So far, the Americans are apparently just playing defense in outer space—rather than building up the offensive capability to do to the Chinese (and the Russians) what they are planning to do to them—and more. According to one observer, Team Biden’s response so far is “finger wagging and scolding.” Not exactly a winning approach.

One imagines a scenario where Beijing makes its move on Taiwan and tells Washington to “stand back”—and that includes sanctions and attacks on China’s supply lines—or it will face “blinding” and nuclear attack “from above.”

This is, of course, something of a poker game if things reach this point. The Chinese might be bluffing, or they might not. And it will take a certain type of American president to call their bluff. But whoever it is, if the Chinese get “the high ground,” there will be a number of people telling the president that “Taiwan isn’t worth it” and to “let it go.”

So, while the current focus is on Taiwan and conventional hardware and capabilities needed to deter a Chinese assault, the United States will do well to prepare to “expand the battlefield” and hit China where it is most vulnerable.

But the United States also needs to “look up” and do what is necessary to dominate outer space and counter China’s hypersonic and FOBS capabilities that potentially “checkmate” America’s earthbound advantages.

Not surprisingly, America’s military leadership knew of China’s developing hypersonic capabilities some years back and, by and large, ignored it.

One hopes they do better this time.



Grant Newsham is a retired U.S. Marine officer and a former U.S. diplomat and business executive who lived and worked for many years in the Asia/Pacific region. He served as a reserve head of intelligence for Marine Forces Pacific, and was the U.S. Marine attaché, U.S. Embassy Tokyo on two occasions. He is a senior fellow with the Center for Security Policy.



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Paramilitary police officers patrol in a shopping area on the closing day of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) in Beijing on May 27, 2020. (Greg Baker/AFP via Getty Images)


Beijing Uses Police and Security Training to Infiltrate Foreign Countries


Antonio Graceffo
December 17, 2021

Epoch Times News Analysis
Audio (https://mp3mp4pdf.net/media/training.mp3) PDF (https://mp3mp4pdf.net/training.pdf)


Beijing is exporting its brand of justice around the globe through a series of law enforcement exchanges and by offering training and equipment.

In 2011, the government of Ecuador installed a countrywide Chinese-designed (https://sv.usembassy.gov/made-in-china-exported-to-the-world/) surveillance system, financed by Chinese loans in exchange for oil. Today, crime is still rampant, but the police and internal intelligence community can monitor anyone they wish.

With the brutal crackdowns in Hong Kong and the most advanced digital surveillance technology control measures in Xinjiang, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP (https://www.theepochtimes.com/t-ccp)) is an expert in exploiting public security (https://www.theepochtimes.com/t-security) forces for the means of repression.

Under Chinese leader Xi Jinping, the CCP’s control over civil society has expanded, with the creation of the Central National Security Commission (https://www.prcleader.org/greitens) and the National Supervision Commission, as well as the increased use of technology as a tool of social control. The Central National Security Commission reports directly to the CCP and is tasked with “overall national security” guarding against both external and internal security threats. Additionally, one of the primary reasons for the creation of the security commission was to improve intelligence sharing (https://www.prcleader.org/greitens) across military, intelligence, and public security apparatuses.



The CCP’s 2015 “Military Strategy” white paper stated that the security of China (https://news.usni.org/2015/05/26/document-chinas-military-strategy) is linked to the security of the world. And this has been China (https://www.theepochtimes.com/t-china)’s justification for extending the reach of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), the Ministry of State Security (China’s spy agency), and the People’s Armed Police beyond China’s borders.

These government agencies are not only trying to secure China’s safety by combating terrorists and criminals, but also furthering Beijing’s surveillance and intelligence-gathering capabilities. Additionally, the CCP is using police training and material aid as a form of diplomacy, to co-opt foreign governments, to win friends, and to place pro-China officers in high positions in foreign security forces.

Beijing is working to position itself as an international security partner (https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2021/01/15/extending-the-long-arm-of-the-law-chinas-international-law-enforcement-drive/), while expanding the mandate of its own security forces, as well as facilitating espionage and intelligence gathering. Over the past 15 years, the CCP has steadily expanded the overseas security role of the PLA through participating in peacekeeping, disaster response, and counterterrorism operations around the world.
https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2017/06/26/GettyImages-607710368-1200x844.jpg (https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2017/06/26/GettyImages-607710368-1200x844.jpg)Chinese soldiers stand at attention during Peace Mission-2016 joint military exercises of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in the Edelweiss training area in Balykchy, Kyrgyzstan, on Sept. 19, 2016. (Vyacheslav Oseledko/AFP/Getty Images)

Another white paper on China’s military strategy outlined the extra-territorial mandates of the PLA, such as protecting China’s overseas interests (http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2015-05/26/content_20820628_3.htm), emergency extractions, and support for national economic (http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2015-05/26/content_20820628_2.htm) development. The paper also called for the PLA to strengthen international security cooperation in geographic locations where China is heavily invested.

The Public Security International Cooperation Work Conference of 2017 similarly called for the “internationalization of public security work, (https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2021/01/15/extending-the-long-arm-of-the-law-chinas-international-law-enforcement-drive/)” as well as the establishment of an international “law enforcement security cooperation (https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2021/01/15/extending-the-long-arm-of-the-law-chinas-international-law-enforcement-drive/) system with Chinese characteristics.”

China conducted police training in Liberia (https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/04/30/chinas-belt-road-initiative-invests-african-infrastructure-african-military-police-forces/) in 2014. Foreign law enforcement officials are offered police training in China. The police academy in Shandong Province holds a yearly training course for African law enforcement (https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2021/01/15/extending-the-long-arm-of-the-law-chinas-international-law-enforcement-drive/) officers. The Yunnan Police College, in Kunming, has a Chinese association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Law Enforcement Academy, which provides free training and education to law enforcement officers from ASEAN. The Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau has cooperation agreements with 10 cities in Central Asia, and the bureau also hosts international police symposiums for foreign officers.

Beijing supports major Chinese manufacturers (https://www.privacyshield.gov/article?id=Guatemala-Safety-and-Security) of cameras, video recorders, and security equipment, with tax benefits and loans from state-owned banks to fund overseas security projects. These financial incentives reduce costs, making it easier for Chinese security firms to win contracts in nations around the world. China is willing to sell this technology to repressive regimes (https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/12/15/1042142/chinese-company-tiandy-video-surveillance-iran/).

Iran adopted the Chinese social credit (https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/12/15/1042142/chinese-company-tiandy-video-surveillance-iran/) system, in a bid to monitor and control the financial and social behavior of its citizens. In 2010, the country signed a $130 million deal with ZTE, a Chinese partially state-owned tech company, to install a surveillance system on the government-managed telephone and internet networks.

In Africa, Huawei security technology (https://www.wsj.com/articles/huawei-technicians-helped-african-governments-spy-on-political-opponents-11565793017) is being used to spy on political opponents, undermining democracy. China and Bolivia signed a deal to build an integrated command and control (https://www.efe.com/efe/english/world/china-bolivia-sign-strategic-partnership-agreement/50000262-3654039) system for subregional security, financed by Export-Import Bank of China. In Jamaica, China donated equipment to the police force (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/08/world/americas/china-caribbean.html). In Quintuco, Argentina, the PLA built a $50 million satellite and space mission control station with international surveillance (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/28/world/americas/china-latin-america.html?action=click&module=RelatedLinks&pgtype=Article) and listening capabilities.

In Ecuador, more than 3,000 public security (https://sv.usembassy.gov/made-in-china-exported-to-the-world/) officers, in 16 monitoring centers, review footage from 4,300 cameras as part of a video surveillance and control system set up by China. The footage is not only reviewed by the police, but is also sent to the nation’s internal intelligence forces, which has a history of monitoring, threatening, and disappearing political rivals.

Chinese-made intelligence monitoring (https://sv.usembassy.gov/made-in-china-exported-to-the-world/) systems are now being used by 18 countries. Thirty-six countries have received China’s training in “public opinion (https://sv.usembassy.gov/made-in-china-exported-to-the-world/) guidance.” In addition to video monitoring, these systems allow security officials to track phones and some are now adding facial recognition features.

China’s growing security cooperation in Africa and Latin America poses a threat to U.S. interests (https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/04/30/chinas-belt-road-initiative-invests-african-infrastructure-african-military-police-forces/) in those regions. Additionally, it undermines the quality of democracy, giving dictators better means to control their populace.

Antonio Graceffo, Ph.D., has spent over 20 years in Asia. He is a graduate of Shanghai University of Sport and holds a China-MBA from Shanghai Jiaotong University. Antonio works as an economics professor and China economic analyst, writing for various international media. Some of his books on China include “Beyond the Belt and Road: China’s Global Economic Expansion” and “A Short Course on the Chinese Economy.”



https://www.theepochtimes.com/beijin...s_4161229.html (https://www.theepochtimes.com/beijing-uses-police-and-security-training-to-infiltrate-foreign-countries_4161229.html)

[Juicer66]

I'm starting to think that you're just a spamoholic full of your own words trying to paste them anywhere they will allow it.


Or we could also talk about Comprehension classes no longer being taught in America and many other places and coupled with a serous decline in attention span .

Among the majority , Brain Clouding will cause further aggravation and complete mental dislocation .

[Juicer66]

This begs the question, then ... does this person (?) understand what is being posted ? You'd have to believe the answer is 'yes'.

It should therefore follow that, however simple the conversation might be, at least basic discussion comments could be left. If you're right, then I'm sure that there are members here who'd make an effort to adjust to what was required.

No. It's inconceivable that anyone would confidently post such lengthy pieces, without knowing their meaning. Discussion has to be possible. So, where is it ?

They are all vaxxed . So that is the end of it .


What our dear OP needs to do is concentrate the sermon into :-

The weakened US military led by a crackpot C in C --who is a dementia sufferer--- are completely hog tied and can only make strange noises , pretending they know what is happening and being able to adequately respond .
The rest of the world watches open mouthed hoping the professional losers do not start a war that will finish them and a lot of others .

[jimnyc]

Or we could also talk about Comprehension classes no longer being taught in America and many other places and coupled with a serous decline in attention span .

Among the majority , Brain Clouding will cause further aggravation and complete mental dislocation .


Tsk, Tsk. I see you haven't learned and are still looking to :poke: away. Let's see if Jim will continue to put up with it.

I don't think so. I'm not playing your games. Sorry.

Hopefully you will back off with your BS in 48.

[Et Soh]

https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2021/09/21/blinken_lithuania-700x420.jpg (https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2021/09/21/blinken_lithuania-1200x720.jpg)

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken (right) speaks with Lithuania’s Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis in the Benjamin Franklin Room of the State Department ahead of a meeting in Washington, on Sept. 15, 2021. (Mandel Ngan/Pool/AFP via Getty Images)


China’s Economic Attack on Lithuania Requires a Joint US-EU Defense


Beijing is also targeting Germany, France, and Sweden
Anders Corr

December 21, 2021

Epoch Times News Analysis Audio (https://mp3mp4pdf.net/media/attacklithu.mp3) PDF (https://mp3mp4pdf.net/attacklithu.pdf)

Beijing (https://www.theepochtimes.com/t-beijing) has reacted against Lithuania (https://www.theepochtimes.com/t-lithuania)’s upgrade to its Taiwan (https://www.theepochtimes.com/t-taiwan) relations with extended trade and diplomatic sanctions against the Baltic country. The move is so severe and unprecedented that it provoked reactions (https://www.ft.com/content/15119be1-3d57-4769-8f82-ff8cb36a668b) from not only the United States (https://www.reuters.com/business/lithuania-get-us-trade-support-it-faces-china-fury-over-taiwan-2021-11-19/), Britain, and European Union, but a German business group that has deep financial ties to China.

Behind the uproar was Lithuania’s courageous decision (https://www.ft.com/content/0ebaa7c7-761d-445e-b3e4-f5d2c9b4768f) in November to allow Taiwan to open a de facto consulate in Lithuania’s capital city of Vilnius. The office uses (https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18034/lithuania-china) the name “Taiwan” rather than Taiwan’s capital city of “Taipei.” The former more accurately reflects the island democracy’s sovereignty than the “Taipei” used in the United States and elsewhere in Europe.

Last year, Lithuania withdrew (https://www.politico.eu/article/china-trade-attack-on-lithuania-exposes-eu-powerlessness/) from China’s “17+1” diplomatic forum of Central and East European countries, and Lithuania’s ruling coalition agreed (https://www.independent.co.uk/asia/china/china-lithuania-car-continental-taiwan-b1977983.html) to support “those fighting for freedom” in Taiwan.

Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis said (https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18034/lithuania-china) he will not attend the Beijing Winter Olympics.



Lithuania, a country of nearly 3 million, regained its independence from the Soviet Union in 1990, which in part explains the country’s fierce defense of democracy relative to most of the rest of the world.

Beijing’s Backlash Against Lithuania


In response to Lithuania’s growing resistance, Beijing effectively banned (https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18034/lithuania-china) imports from the Baltic country on Dec. 1, and demanded that international corporations sever ties with Lithuania or be denied access to the Chinese market.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) expelled (https://apnews.com/article/lifestyle-travel-china-taiwan-tsai-ing-wen-7412c3a2420b3ec0ed41fe4c72c82afb) Lithuania’s ambassador to China in November, withdrew its own from Vilnius, and recently attempted to illegally downgrade the Lithuanian Embassy in Beijing.

According to Bloomberg (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-12-16/china-rejects-lithuania-s-claims-over-beijing-embassy-security), “China had pressured the Baltic nation to change its embassy’s name to the Office of the Charge d‘Affaires, according to Lithuania’s Foreign Ministry, a label that doesn’t exist in international law and one that would effectively downgrade its diplomatic status.”

Landsbergis said: “This is still our embassy, which has never changed its name. Any change of name must be done on [a] bilateral basis. Unilateral changes are not recognized by international law.”

Beijing most recently demanded that Lithuanian diplomats return (https://news.err.ee/1608439292/estonian-mfa-china-s-pressure-on-lithuania-unacceptable) their identification cards.

Alarmed at their possible loss of diplomatic immunity and concerned for their safety, Lithuania recalled its diplomats from China on Dec. 15 (https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3159973/china-eu-annual-summit-pushed-back-until-next-year-trade-and) for consultations. Nineteen (https://news.err.ee/1608439292/estonian-mfa-china-s-pressure-on-lithuania-unacceptable) of them and their dependents consequently departed. The embassy now works virtually.
https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2021/12/16/GettyImages-1234601804-1200x800-1-600x400.jpg (https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2021/12/16/GettyImages-1234601804-1200x800-1-1200x800.jpg)The Lithuanian Embassy in Beijing, China, on Aug. 10, 2021. (Jade Gao/AFP via Getty Images)

According to Arnoldas Pranckevičius (https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18034/lithuania-china), Lithuania’s vice minister of Foreign Affairs, “China is trying to make an example out of us—a negative example—so that other countries do not follow our path. Therefore, it is a matter of principle how the Western community, the United States, and European Union react.”

Support for Lithuania Is Growing Too Slowly


The United States, Britain (https://news.trust.org/item/20211215175910-lpu8k/), Estonia (https://news.err.ee/1608439292/estonian-mfa-china-s-pressure-on-lithuania-unacceptable), and of course Taiwan have all supported Lithuania in its dispute with China. But, so far, the EU has reacted (https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18034/lithuania-china) only weakly, in large part due to Germany and France’s economic ties with China, and apparent reluctance to use the bloc in defense of Europe’s smaller countries.

In response to Beijing’s economic sanctions against Lithuania, the EU began gathering evidence to bring China to the World Trade Organization (WTO) for violation of international trade rules, but that could take months.

And the WTO effort could eventually be scuttled, as some companies will not want Brussels to take strong action against Beijing. According to the Financial Times, “many companies fear that if they complain they will be shut out of China completely.”

Beijing Doubles Down Against Lithuania


China’s nationalist media has weighed in on the dispute. According to the state-controlled Global Times (https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18034/lithuania-china) tabloid, “we have no intention to deny that economic and trade cooperation between Lithuania and China will be affected after China downgraded its diplomatic relations with Lithuania to the level of chargé d’affaires, the lowest rank of diplomatic representative, over the latter’s breach of the One-China principle. Make no mistake that any country that provokes China’s core interests is bound to find itself on the receiving end of countermeasures.”

Beijing’s reaction could have been worse. In 2018, Beijing effectively kidnapped (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/25/meng-wanzhou-and-the-two-michaels-a-timeline) two prominent Canadians to pressure the North American country over the detention of Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer of Chinese tech giant Huawei. The two Canadians, Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, were kept in harsh conditions for over 1,000 days, until Meng was returned to China.
https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2020/06/19/korvig-spavor.jpg (https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2020/06/19/korvig-spavor-1200x800.jpg)(L-R) Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig, two Canadians who were detained in China following the arrest of Meng Wanzhou in Canada on a U.S. extradition request. (AP Photo)

Over this time, Beijing lied about there being no relationship between the detention of the “two Michaels” and the Meng arrest. Yet Spavor and Kovrig were arrested, and released, within days of the same happening to Meng.

The Chinese regime has likewise denied pressuring international corporations to sever ties with Lithuania, but has indicated as much by saying that Chinese companies no longer trust Lithuania.

“I heard that many Chinese companies no longer regard Lithuania as a trustworthy partner,” a Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson said. “Lithuania has to look at itself for the reason why Lithuanian companies are facing difficulties in trade and economic cooperation in China.”

Beijing Extends Sanctions to Germany, France, and
Sweden


The CCP’s trade sanctions have quietly extended to pressure German, French, and Swedish companies with supply chains that reach Lithuania.

According to Politico (https://www.politico.eu/article/china-trade-attack-on-lithuania-exposes-eu-powerlessness/) sources, “two German companies in the auto industry had parts stopped at Chinese ports in recent days because they were manufactured in Lithuania. Some of these components could take years to be replaced with trusted alternative suppliers. … French and Swedish firms are also reportedly facing similar problems because Lithuanian products form part of their supply chain.”

Consequently, some international companies have canceled (https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18034/lithuania-china) contracts with Lithuanian suppliers.

Over the longer term, others will increasingly reevaluate the wisdom of relying on Chinese markets and manufacturing.

“Lithuania’s direct trade with China is relatively small,” according to the Gatestone Institute. “The country exported €300 million worth of goods to China in 2020, less than 1% of its total exports. It is, however, home to hundreds of companies that make products for multinationals that sell to China.”

This includes Lithuanian components in German cars, for example. The German industry is pushing (https://www.ft.com/content/15119be1-3d57-4769-8f82-ff8cb36a668b) its business lobby, BDI, into the desperate position of publicly criticizing both Lithuania and Beijing for the dispute.

German companies, which depend on the relatively low-wage industry of Lithuania, will also consider transshipment of Lithuanian components through other countries. Continental and Hella are two major German corporations that rely (https://www.ft.com/content/15119be1-3d57-4769-8f82-ff8cb36a668b) on Lithuanian labor and are getting pressured by Beijing through denial of imports or exports. Similar denials are also affecting smaller German companies.

“Continental, which has operations in 58 countries, is considering shipping products from Lithuania via other countries … in order to avoid further the Chinese blockade,” according to a Financial Times source.

BDI criticized (https://www.ft.com/content/15119be1-3d57-4769-8f82-ff8cb36a668b) Beijing for its “own goal,” revealing even in its public criticism that the group is advising the CCP on how best to achieve what the business group should realize are Beijing’s illiberal ends.

BDI went further to tangentially criticize the victim, Lithuania, for being “out of step” with EU policy.

The German industry’s awkward attempt to find a middle path between dictatorship and democracy is explained by Germany’s 2020 trade with China. This amounted to €213 billion (about $247 billion) in goods alone, Germany’s largest with any country.

Beijing’s Threat to International Law and the Equal Sovereignty of States


By criticizing Lithuania, the German industry is weighing in on the side of autocracy and the status quo of massive China trade at the expense of democracy in Taiwan and the freedom of countries, like Lithuania, to support democracy globally. This will push the EU into pressuring not only Beijing, but Lithuania, thus furthering the occlusion of small democracies by big power politics.

China’s state media reflects this unequal approach to international politics, describing (https://www.politico.eu/article/china-trade-attack-on-lithuania-exposes-eu-powerlessness/) Lithuania as “a mouse or even just a flea under the feet of fighting elephants.”

Even large democratic blocs like the EU, of which Lithuania is a member, are in a weak position relative to Beijing.

According to Politico (https://www.politico.eu/article/china-trade-attack-on-lithuania-exposes-eu-powerlessness/), “for the world’s biggest trade bloc, its usual trade defense instruments such as safeguards or anti-dumping measures do not cover the gray economic zone in which China is targeting Lithuania. The EU also doesn’t have a bilateral trade agreement with China through which it could remedy the tensions.”

The EU’s coordination failures and lack of defensive instruments will necessitate either caving to Beijing, or a strengthening of the EU, both of which result in a concentration of power in what are becoming superpower capitals.

EU Trade Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis has proposed as much in his anti-coercion instrument “designed to tackle exactly this [China-Lithuania] type of geopolitically motivated trade tensions,” according to Politico, and which would allow “the EU to strike back against trade challengers via goods, services and intellectual property rights.”
https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2021/12/08/Europe_Trade_China_21342491518495-600x400.jpg (https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2021/12/08/Europe_Trade_China_21342491518495-1200x800.jpg)EU Trade Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis speaks during a press conference at the Europa building in Brussels, on Dec. 7, 2021. (Olivier Matthys/AP Photo)

But Brussels, Paris, and Berlin are all more cautious (https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18034/lithuania-china) about opposing Beijing publicly, than are smaller states in the EU—including Czechia, Lithuania, Slovenia, and Slovakia—that want EU protection against Beijing’s pressure. Thus the EU is stymied by the vetoes of its biggest economies.

The WTO is likewise paralyzed and illiberal due to the accession of China in 2001.

Beijing Forces Global Political Polarization and a Concentration of Power


The China-Lithuania dispute and its necessary remedies are tragic examples of the concentration of power at the international level, as Lithuania retreats from its independent representation in Beijing to rely on the EU, whose remedies are contrary to the political independence of its component parts. The EU has a relatively illiberal position, compared to Lithuania, on the issue of Taiwan’s sovereignty and democracy.

Trade sanctions meted out by Beijing have similarities to what it might have done years ago to foreign corporations that refer to Taiwan as a country rather than a city or province of China. This indicates how Beijing views the status of not only Taiwan, but other small countries globally. They are either with Beijing, or against it, due to their recognition of Taiwan. Those in the latter category must necessarily be subordinated to Beijing’s goals of hegemony.

The best defense of Lithuania, Taiwan, and democracy generally is for the EU to overcome its paralysis and work together with the United States to impose counter-sanctions on China directly, completely bypassing the slow-moving WTO. International organizations that include China have proven to be failures for democracies given Beijing’s growing influence, veto, and breaking of international norms.



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...e_4164991.html (https://www.theepochtimes.com/chinas-economic-attack-on-lithuania-requires-a-joint-us-eu-defense_4164991.html)

[Et Soh]

https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2021/12/15/wuhan-lab-1200x675-700x420.jpg (https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2021/12/15/wuhan-lab-1200x675-1200x675.jpg)

The P4 laboratory on the campus of the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China, on May 13, 2020. (Hector Retamal/AFP via Getty Images)


China’s Use of Weapons of Mass Destruction Against the World


Bradley A. Thayer

December 22, 2021

Epoch Times Commentary

Audio (https://mp3mp4pdf.net/media/wmd.mp3) PDF (https://mp3mp4pdf.net/wmd.pdf)

Nuclear, biological, and chemical (NBC) weapons were considered weapons of mass destruction (WMD) during the Cold War. Later, radiological weapons were generally considered to be another form of WMD.

Each of these weapons had a horrific effect: they could kill large numbers of people and so norms prohibiting their use were established and have mostly held. Nuclear weapons have not been used since 1945, and biological weapons not used since the Japanese military’s Unit 731 employed them in China (https://www.theepochtimes.com/t-china) against civilians and other allied prisoners of war during the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945).

While chemical weapons were used in Syria’s civil war, there has not been widespread use of chemicals or toxins in interstate warfare since World War I and Italy’s employment in Ethiopia in the Second Italo-Ethiopian War from 1935 to 1936. Despite allegations of their use and their considerable stockpiles, WMD were not used by the superpowers during the Cold War or after.

Each of these examples was conscious and deliberate employment by a state. But the world should also consider the effect of covert or inadvertent use of WMD, or employment due to negligence and, thus, a violation of a state’s duty to police its territory and its responsibility for what occurs within its borders.
These forms of WMD use should also be prohibited with the strongest sanctions enacted if the norm is violated. It is time to update the world’s understanding of WMD to acknowledge that WMD have been employed de facto and without repercussions. One example of this was the 1979 anthrax leak from a military research facility in Sverdlovsk (now Yekaterinburg) in the Soviet Union. Over 66 Soviet citizens were killed by their own government and scores more made ill. The Soviets were never held to account for this inadvertent WMD use. Nor were they for another, more infamous case—the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster. The legacy of which remains.

Despite common perception, WMDs are being used now against the United States by China. Beijing has conducted a current and far more disastrous use of WMD than the United States’ Soviet enemy.

Opioid Epidemic


First, the opioid (https://www.theepochtimes.com/t-opioid) epidemic has killed and disrupted the lives of tens of millions in the United States alone. Rather than an epidemic, it should be considered a chemical weapons attack. Precursor chemicals are shipped from China to the cartels to Mexico to be transported into the United States and around the world. The Chinese regime, firms, and the cartels should be held to account for employment of WMD. Immediate sanctions and other punishments should be employed against them and China itself for its unwillingness to police its territory, govern its export, and thus provide implicit approval of WMD use against America.
https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2021/12/16/201009-H-DO456-0001.jpg (https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2021/12/16/201009-H-DO456-0001.jpg)

U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers at the Otay Mesa commercial facility seized more than 3,100 pounds of methamphetamine, fentanyl powder, fentanyl pills, and heroin on Oct. 9, 2020. (DEA)

COVID-19


Second, the COVID-19 pandemic is a case of covert or inadvertent use of WMD by the Chinese regime against its own citizens, the United States, and the rest of the world. Thus far, over 5 million people have died, millions have lasting health effects from the virus, tens of millions more have been made ill, and there has been major and sustained disruption to people’s lives, wellbeing, mental health, safety, education, and employment. Profound and lasting political, psychological, physiological, and economic effects also must be factored into account.

The Chinese regime has gotten away with two major uses of WMD with catastrophic effects on the world without penalty or even acknowledgment of WMD employment. Such use compels sanctions and sterner measures to punish Beijing and to deter future use. Regrettably, this has not happened due to the absence of awareness and the concern by many with an interest in China that these actions not be recognized for what they are.

The unwillingness to perceive the Chinese regime’s actions as WMD employment allows the continuation of the business as usual approach toward the regime by its supporters around the world, in the American elite, including on Wall Street, the U.S. political system, and the media.

To acknowledge communist China’s use of WMD would compel the recognition that it is the world’s most dangerous regime due to its intent and capabilities, as well as the world’s greatest violator of international law and norms.

To address this, much needs to be accomplished. Three steps must be taken forthwith.

First, the global media must call them for what they are: WMD attacks against civilians. This stark fact must be repeated until the world identifies these as WMD attacks that require a response.

Second, rather than focusing solely on nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons use, the norm of WMD effect and consequence must be adopted by governments, inter-governmental organizations like the United Nations, and non-governmental organizations, and China held to account by them for its use of WMD. If a state releases a pandemic by design or not, it has employed a WMD against the world, and so is culpable for the consequences and must be punished to deter future use.

Third, the U.S. government should call the attacks as WMD and trigger the full force of the government to combat the consequences of both attacks. The opioid WMD attack should be treated with equivalent energy of response as the COVID-19 WMD attack. Sanctions must be imposed upon the regime for their use against the United States and reparations made to the world’s victims. Compensation from Chinese assets in the United States and globally would be a start. The prohibition of investment in China by U.S. or other entities would be a second step. Banning Chinese entities from U.S. financial or other markets would be a third.

Strong measures are needed as not sanctioning Beijing for its WMD violations encourages it to continue its actions and to break additional norms, including against nuclear use. The Chinese regime owes the world compensation and the international community is going to have to compel payment of the debt.

Bradley A. Thayer is a founding member of the Committee on Present Danger China and is the co-author of “How China Sees the World: Han-Centrism and the Balance of Power in International Politics.”



https://www.theepochtimes.com/chinas...d_4170557.html (https://www.theepochtimes.com/chinas-use-of-weapons-of-mass-destruction-against-the-world_4170557.html)

[Et Soh]

https://www.christianityboard.com/proxy.php?image=https%3A%2F%2Fimg.theepochtimes.co m%2Fassets%2Fuploads%2F2017%2F11%2F26%2FGettyImage s-483783024-700x420.jpg&hash=4005a168029bfa037ce400a05afc8783 (https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2017/11/26/GettyImages-483783024-1200x802.jpg)
A Chinese yuan currency sign with two arrows through it, pictured outside a bank branch in Shanghai on August 13, 2015. (Johannes Eisele/AFP/Getty Images)

The Risks of CCP China’s Digital Yuan Are Understated: Part I

J.G Collins
December 21, 2021
Epoch Times Commentary Audio (https://mp3mp4pdf.net/media/digitalyuan1.mp3)PDF (https://mp3mp4pdf.net/digitalyuan1.pdf)


This is the first of a two-part article articulating the risks of CCP (https://www.theepochtimes.com/t-ccp) China’s new digital yuan (https://www.theepochtimes.com/t-digital-yuan), the e-CNY.

Part I details the risks to people and businesses in CCP China.

Part II (https://communismexposed.mp3mp4pdf.net/2021/12/22/598/) addresses the geopolitical and geostrategic risks of the digital yuan to other nations and Western-style democracies.



GCHQ, the UK’s intelligence, security, and cyber agency, according to its website, recently warned of the dangers of CCP China’s new digital currency, the e-CNY.
In an interview with the Financial Times the week of Dec. 5, Sir Jeremy Fleming, the GCHQ chief said e-CNY “gives them the ability . . . to be able to exercise control over what is conducted on those digital currencies” and to “surveil transactions.”

Surveillance and Control
In a July white paper from a Peoples’ Bank of China (PBOC) working group tasked to evaluate progress on the e-CNY, the authors talk about “managed anonymity,” an Orwellian phrase that they say “follows the principle of ‘anonymity for small value and traceable for high value.’” Then adds, “it is necessary to guard against the misuse of e-CNY in illegal and criminal activities, such as tele-fraud, internet gambling, money laundering, and tax evasion.” But PBOC has told the foreign Deutsche Banks (https://www.db.com/news/detail/20210714-digital-yuan-what-is-it-and-how-does-it-work)that transactions between payers and payees can be anonymous.

The PBOC will treat the e-CNY as what economists call “M0” (M-zero), the measure of coin currency, physical paper, and central bank reserves. This is important because, as M0, it will effectively be the equivalent of cash in your pocket or purse. e-CNY will only be able to earn interest if it is deposited in one of CCP China’s state-owned banks.

Given the costs of printing, distributing, and protecting physical cash, one could safely assume that physical currency will ultimately disappear from CCP China, and PBOC cites those costs as a principal reason for adopting e-CNY.

That all seems relatively benign, but one would be naive to not question e-CNY given the CCP’s unrelenting efforts to surveil, control, and limit the freedoms and human rights of the people in China.

The irony of the PBOC advancing a Central Bank Digital Currency (or “CBDC”) is that CCP China already has a number of “private” (or as private as one can be under the jackboot of the CCP) fintech (https://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/fintech.asp) payment platforms like Alipay and WeChatPay.

So why is CCP China being a pathfinder on CBDC, fintech that a number of countries are pursuing? While, incidentally, prohibiting private cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Etherium, etc.

In a word, control.

In China, people will undoubtedly have their social credit scores (https://www.wired.co.uk/article/china-social-credit-system-explained)linked to their spending. The CCP will be able to collect fines and penalties without due process; they’ll simply debit offenders’ e-CNY accounts by accessing their “wallets.” (A wallet (https://www.coinbase.com/learn/crypto-basics/what-is-a-crypto-wallet) is one’s private key code to access cryptos, but one can readily surmise that e-CNY wallets, which will be tied to CCP China-owned banks, won’t be private, despite PBOC assurances to the contrary.)

The e-CNY will also cow companies into submission. While the PBOC says it will “guard against the misuse of e-CNY in illegal and criminal activities,” make no mistake: if your business or the leadership of your business–or perhaps, an employee of your business–offends the CCP, be assured: your business will be denied access to revenues and will be blocked from being able to obtain e-CNY. If e-CNY becomes the predominant currency in CCP China, that means you are out of business unless you can survive in a barter economy.

As with Huawei (https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/12/14/huawei-surveillance-china/), e-CNY will give the CCP greater ability to surveil, control, and, when beneficial, silence the Laobaixing (https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-19990467) or “old 100 names;” the common people of China who suffer under the Party’s obsessive denial of the personal freedoms that people who live in Western-style democracies take for granted.

Our Chinese friends who live under the thumb of the CCP should resist e-CNY by all available means: barter, scrip, or personal credit ledgers at the town or neighborhood level. While doing so will ultimately be hopeless, widespread resistance to e-CNY will help build opposition to the CCP and their fetish to know everything about everyone.

Advocates of freedom and free people around the world would applaud. And it might even make the CCP re-think its obsession.


The Risks of CCP China’s Digital Yuan Are Understated: Part I (https://www.theepochtimes.com/the-risks-of-ccp-chinas-digital-yuan-are-understated-part-i_4170009.html)

[Et Soh]

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Arrangement of various world currencies including Chinese yuan, U.S. dollar, Euro, British pound, pictured on Jan. 25, 2011. (Kacper Pempel/Illustration/Reuters)

The Risks of CCP China’s Digital Yuan Are Understated: Part II
J.G. Collins
December 22, 2021


Epoch Times Commentary Audio (https://mp3mp4pdf.net/media/digitalyuan2.mp3) PDF (https://mp3mp4pdf.net/digitalyuan2.pdf)

This is the second of a two-part article articulating the risks of CCP (https://www.theepochtimes.com/t-ccp) China’s new digital yuan (https://www.theepochtimes.com/t-digital-yuan), the e-CNY.

Part I (https://communismexposed.mp3mp4pdf.net/2021/12/21/594/) details the risk to people and businesses in CCP China.

This Part II addresses the geopolitical and geostrategic risks of the digital yuan to other nations and Western-style democracies.




The power the CCP will exercise from e-CNY that I described in Part I won’t be limited to the borders of CCP China.

There is a bigger, looming, threat, and it’s global.

CCP China’s “Belt and Road Initiative” (BRI) is intended to spread commercial and geopolitical influence in Central, South, and Southeast Asia, as well as into Europe and the Middle East.

For less developed economies, e-CNY may be a godsend that allows access to payment and banking services, but it’s also a Trojan Horse. While payments can be transferred far more easily in, say, the desolate areas of Afghanistan, they can also be monitored, controlled, and prohibited.

So if the e-CNY becomes the preferred—or only—currency in your remote part of the world where the CCP is engaged in the BRI, it can sanction behavior via the e-CNY. If you or your local community object to seizing farmland for a BRI development, good luck surviving without what may be your only means of paying or receiving money. You’ll be under the same CCP thumb of control as the common Chinese people.

But the larger risk is to the global economy.

One can easily imagine the CCP eventually pushing OPEC and individual oil-producing nations to price their oil in e-CNY and bypass the petrodollar (https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/petrodollars.asp), which has been a critical element of U.S. economic power and foreign policy for nearly half a century. Since many of the countries with which the United States has had disputes, and for which it has imposed sanctions, sit atop oceans of oil, the e-CNY would be an attractive incentive for them to price their oil in CNY.

Most oil-producing nations, including most OPEC nations, price their oil in U.S. dollars (USD).

Consequently, nearly every country keeps USD reserves for oil payments and to otherwise participate in the U.S. economy. But those dollars aren’t sitting in a vault; they’re recycled back to the United States as investments, often in U.S. Treasury securities. They help fund our exorbitant deficits and debt. (Even CCP China funds our debt, returning the USD we use to pay for their exports back to the USA as Treasurys, real estate, and equity investments.)

Were the CCP to succeed in undermining the petrodollar, it would likely significantly reduce the demand for USD and increase demand for CNY. Instead of the USD being the world’s reserve currency (https://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/reservecurrency.asp), a position it has held since 1944, it would fall back to be among one of several “reserve” currencies, including the euro, the CNY, and the JPY. Theoretically, having achieved an advanced standing as a reserve currency, it’s possible—even likely—that CCP China could then further consolidate CNY’s status by setting the prices for rare earths or even its everyday exports of things like toys, computers, etc. in CNY. (To give you a peek at the world where multiple currencies reign alongside the USD, when President Obama’s then-novice treasury secretary, Tim Geithner, said (https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/geithner-dollar-remarks-create-panic/) in 2009 that he was open to a basket of currencies replacing the USD as the world’s reserve currency, the dollar tumbled in moments before Treasury walked Geithner’s comments back.)

If a good portion of global USD demand disappears because oil starts to be priced in e-CNY, and CCP China further capitalizes from there on its standing as a leading world reserve currency, the United States would have to raise its interest rates to lure foreign investment in our debt securities or, perhaps, devalue the dollar, which would significantly boost inflation.

Finally, from a geostrategic perspective, the rise of the e-CNY as a reserve currency would allow countries subject to sanctions by the USA or international institutions, like Nato, the EU, or the U.N., to avoid them.

That’s because those sanctions are usually administered by SWIFT, the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, based in Brussels. It’s how funds move around the world. But e-CNY allows anyone with an internet connection to transfer value. The world’s ability to affect the plans of bad actors—often friendly with CCP China—would be significantly hindered, and national and global security risks increased.

Beware
CCP China hopes to introduce the e-CNY as an international currency during the Winter Olympics this coming February.

Three U.S. senators have requested (https://www.blackburn.senate.gov/services/files/95810475-939F-48C7-BDCE-5137DBBCECF2) the U.S. Olympic Committee to prohibit U.S. Olympic Team members from using it, drawing a rebuke (https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3141744/china-digital-currency-us-athletes-should-be-banned-using-e) from CCP China authorities. The free Western-style democracies that have joined the diplomatic boycott (https://www.nytimes.com/article/diplomatic-boycott-olympics.html) of the 2022 Winter Olympics should follow the senators’ request, as should the U.S. Olympic Committee: Do not submit to pressure, or accept the convenience, of using the e-CNY during the Olympics; avoid it entirely.

If that cannot be done (i.e., if the only payment option in the Olympic Village is e-CNY), then Olympians should be provided single-use telephones by their respective national Olympic committees, loaded with an e-CNY per diem, to be used exclusively for e-CNY spending. The phones should then be returned to the committees and destroyed at the end of the Olympics to prohibit further CCP surveillance of the athletes.

Fighting Back
Federal Reserve Chair Jay Powell, the Federal Reserve, Congress, and President Joe Biden should move with all deliberate speed to finalize an e-USD that can compete head-to-head with the e-CNY. Research has been underway between the Fed and MIT (https://dci.mit.edu/building-a-hypothetical-cbdc), but that should be addressed with the same urgency of the Space Race or the Missile Gap of the early 1960s.

The United States also needs to get a handle on its deficits by cutting the costs of government, eliminating lucrative—and blatantly unfair—tax loopholes, such as the tax treatment of carried interest (https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/carriedinterest.asp) and the home mortgage interest deduction (https://taxfoundation.org/home-mortgage-interest-deduction/) (which only a handful of other countries permit).

It is vital for the United States economy and for our national security that we continue as the global currency hegemon, whether that be in greenbacks, bank accounts, or a USD CBDC. The United States should lead Nato, in partnership with the EU, Japan, South Korea, Australia, India, and the other Western-style democracies to contain the spread of e-CNY.

Our future—and the future of the free world—depends on it.

The Risks of CCP China’s Digital Yuan Are Understated: Part II (https://www.theepochtimes.com/the-risks-of-ccp-chinas-digital-yuan-are-understated-part-ii_4170446.html)

[Et Soh]

https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2019/04/01/xiafrica-700x420.jpg (https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2019/04/01/xiafrica-1200x800.jpg)

Chinese leader Xi Jinping poses with African leaders, including Malawi’s President Arthur Peter Mutharika (2nd row, 2nd right), during the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation in Beijing, China, on Sept. 3, 2018. (How Hwee Young/AFP/Getty Images)


China Now Controls Africa



John Mac Ghlionn

December 23, 2021

Epoch Times Commentary Audio (https://mp3mp4pdf.net/media/ccpcafrica.mp3) PDF (https://mp3mp4pdf.net/ccpcafrica.pdf)

When we think of colonialism, we tend to think of men like Christopher Columbus and Charles Du Gaulle; and countries like France, Portugal, and Spain. In other words, we tend to think of colonialism in the past tense, as something that occurred long, long ago.

Today, however, millions of people (https://www.wionews.com/world/these-17-territories-around-the-world-are-still-under-colonial-rule-404052) across the globe still live under colonial rule. Some will scratch their heads and ask how? But, it’s important to note, colonialism looks a little different today. It’s less explicit, less violent, and less obvious.

In Africa (https://www.theepochtimes.com/t-africa), let’s call it “colonialism with Chinese characteristics.”

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is busy constructing bridges, ports, roads, and state-of-the-art facilities (https://librarylearningspace.com/china-build-africas-biggest-university-library-tanzania/) in Africa. These projects come with a significant price, and that price is freedom.



Of the 54 countries in Africa, 45 have already signed up to the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI (https://www.theepochtimes.com/t-bri)). This year, Congo became the 45th African member. (https://www.mfa.gov.cn/ce/ceis/eng/zgwj/t1845182.htm) Shortly after signing on the dotted line, the largest country in sub-Saharan Africa entered into an “unconscionable” mining deal (https://www.reuters.com/business/congos-6-bln-china-mining-deal-unconscionable-says-draft-report-2021-10-08/) with Beijing. Congo is the world’s leading producer of minerals like metal, cobalt, and copper. Sadly, the Chinese regime now controls the country’s mining industry.

The BRI saddles members with unimaginable levels of debt. In November, The Diplomat’s Mercy Kuo (https://thediplomat.com/2021/11/chinas-bri-lending-385-billion-in-hidden-debts/) warned that, ever since the BRI was launched back in 2013, “China (https://www.theepochtimes.com/t-china) has outspent the U.S. on a more than 2-to-1 basis.” However, it “has done so with debt rather than aid, maintaining a 31-to-1 ratio of loans to grants.”

To compound matters, Kuo found “that the average [recipient] government is now underreporting its actual and potential repayment obligations to China by an amount equivalent to 5.8 percent of its GDP.”

Not surprisingly, a number of BRI participant countries are experiencing a sense of “buyer’s remorse.” Why wouldn’t they? More than one-third of BRI infrastructure projects have “encountered major implementation problems—such as corruption scandals, labor violations, environmental hazards, and public protests,” noted Kuo. Moreover, “project suspensions and cancellations are on the rise.”

Kuo’s findings are backed up by a recent study (https://www.aiddata.org/blog/aiddatas-new-dataset-of-13-427-chinese-development-projects-worth-843-billion-reveals-major-increase-in-hidden-debt-and-belt-and-road-initiative-implementation-problems) carried out by AidData, a research lab at the College of William and Mary’s Global Research Institute. According to Bradley Parks, AidData’s executive director and a co-author of the report, unreported debts alone “are worth approximately $385 billion.” The hidden debt problem, he warned, is likely to get considerably worse.

What does all of this mean for Africa? In short, nothing good.

Take Equatorial Guinea, for example, a country heavily indebted to Beijing. (https://www.afdb.org/en/countries/central-africa/equatorial-guinea/equatorial-guinea-economic-outlook) The CCP is currently attempting to build its first permanent military base in the West African country, according to American intelligence reports (https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-seeks-first-military-base-on-africas-atlantic-coast-u-s-intelligence-finds-11638726327). The small nation, home to just 1.4 million people, has an abundance of offshore oil reserves—a fact not lost on the CCP. According to Maj. Gen. Andrew Rohling (https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-seeks-first-military-base-on-africas-atlantic-coast-u-s-intelligence-finds-11638726327), the new base will allow China to establish “naval presence on the Atlantic” and directly compete with the United States.

Even countries not signed up to the BRI cannot avoid the ominous shadow of the CCP. China has invested (https://www.orfonline.org/research/chinas-belt-and-road-initiative-implications-in-africa/) in 52 out of the 54 African countries; 49 of the 54 countries (more than 90 percent) have signed memoranda of understanding (MoUs) with Beijing. These MoUs are the equivalent of entering into a Faustian bargain. By accepting large sums of money from Beijing, African countries have allowed the CCP to enter their backyards and exploit their resources.

https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2018/08/01/GettyImages-1004466678-1-1200x757.jpg (https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2018/08/01/GettyImages-1004466678-1-1200x757.jpg)Chinese leader Xi Jinping inspects a military honor guard during his official state visit at the Union Building in Pretoria, South Africa, on July 24, 2018. (Phill Magakoe/AFP/Getty Images)


Who Controls the Money Controls the Future


China’s investments in Africa are strategic. Going forward, to do business with Beijing, one will have little option but to use e-CNY, China’s new digital currency.

Last year, Huawei unveiled the Mate 40, a smartphone that comes with a pre-installed e-wallet (https://chinaafricaproject.com/2020/11/02/chinas-cryptocurrency-now-has-a-foothold-in-places-like-africa-with-the-introduction-of-huaweis-latest-phone/) that uses China’s digital currency. Soon after the unveiling, the CCP started putting the phones in the hands of millions of Africans.

As researchers at the Lowy Institute noted (https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/china-s-digital-currency-next-stop-africa#:~:text=It%20appears%20that%20China's%20sec ondary,the%20yuan%20more%20easily%20convertible.), it appears that China’s “secondary focus may very well be Africa—with an eye towards disrupting the global financial system.”

Is the CCP using Africa, the world’s fastest growing continent, to reshape the international balance of power? The answer appears to be yes. Not only is Africa the world’s fastest-growing continent, it’s the youngest; 60 percent of Africa’s population is under the age of 25 (https://www.citiesalliance.org/newsroom/news/cities-alliance-news/%20burgeoning-africa-youth-population-potential-or-challenge%20#:~:text=Almost%2060%%20of%20Africa's% 20population,a%20challenge%20for%20the%20continent .).

In recent years, the Nigerian capital of Lagos, home to the fastest growing economy in Africa, has seen an influx of Chinese investments (https://www.vanguardngr.com/2021/06/cpcs-centenary-direct-chinese-investment-in-nigeria-others-hit-3bn/). The two countries enjoy an apparently unbreakable bond (although Nigeria is heavily indebted (https://www.legit.ng/business-economy/economy/1445243-10-percent-nigerias-debts-country-china-nigerian-owes-n7000/) to Beijing), with China now looking to establish banks in the megacity. What is occurring in Nigeria should be seen as an attempt to control the entire financial narrative (https://thediplomat.com/2021/10/why-is-china-looking-to-establish-banks-in-nigeria/) across the entire continent of Africa.

Not only is the CCP reshaping the financial narrative, it’s also reshaping the military one. According to a recent report, titled “China’s military education and Commonwealth countries (https://www.civitas.org.uk/publications/discussion-paper-chinas-military-education-and-commonwealth-countries/),” several African nations, including Ghana and Tanzania, have opened CCP-sponsored, “politico-military schools.” These establishments, according to analysts Radomir Tylecote and Henri Rossano, should be understood in the context of Beijing’s growing efforts to gain even greater levels of control over developing countries. Not surprisingly, as the report shows, a large number of the countries participating in these programs are also members of China’s BRI.


A Continent Conquered


In less than a decade, China has essentially conquered a continent of 1.2 billion people, a continent with an abundance of natural resources (https://miningafrica.net/natural-resources-in-africa/), including diamonds, sugar, salt, gold, iron, cobalt, uranium, copper, bauxite, silver, petroleum, and cocoa beans.

As the colonization of an entire continent was occurring, the United States and the European Union simply sat back and did nothing. One can’t help but feel that their latest projects, the ‘Build Back Better’ (https://www.voanews.com/a/build-back-better-world-to-launch-50-projects-white-house-says/6307433.html) and Global Gateway (https://www.aninews.in/news/world/asia/eus-global-gateway-to-challenge-chinas-bri20210929112642/) initiatives, are destined to fail. The CCP has an eight-year head start on Washington and Brussels, with the majority of African countries heavily indebted to Beijing.
The sad fact is this: Even if African countries want to leave the BRI, many of them can’t.

If in doubt, let me point you in the direction of Uganda, a country whose debt stands at $18 billion (http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/africa/2021-04/14/c_139879570.htm), almost 50 percent of its GDP. The country owes most of this debt to China. Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni recently sent a delegation to Beijing to renegotiate the outstanding debt. However, as Nigeria’s Punch Newspaper reported (https://punchng.com/uganda-loss-of-international-airport-to-china/), “the request was turned down,” with the CCP refusing “to allow any alteration in the original terms of the loan agreement.” What does this mean for the East African nation? It’s likely that the Ugandan government will have to “forfeit the Entebbe International Airport”—the country’s only airport.

China’s “financial assistance” is little more than predatory lending, with collateral in case of loan default (https://www.news9live.com/world/china/chinas-debt-trap-dragon-swallows-up-another-country-its-uganda-now-137101) coming in many forms, including international airports. What we are witnessing is death by a thousand cuts—an entire continent being swallowed up by the communists in Beijing. Considering Xi Jinping recently promised to invest another $10 billion (https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/chinas-xi-pledges-10-bln-credit-line-african-financial-institutions-2021-11-29/) in Africa over the next three years, expect the Chinese assault to continue.



John Mac Ghlionn is a researcher and essayist. His work has been published by the likes of the New York Post, Sydney Morning Herald, Newsweek, National Review, The Spectator US, and other respectable outlets. He is also a psychosocial specialist, with a keen interest in social dysfunction and media manipulation.



https://www.theepochtimes.com/china-...a_4165363.html (https://www.theepochtimes.com/china-now-controls-africa_4165363.html)


eReading: (https://mp3mp4pdf.net/ereading/)

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[Gunny]

So, anyone besides me notice this bot was silent for quite awhile until Cruella Deville triggered his reaction to traffic that has nothing to do with what's going on?

[Et Soh]

https://youtu.be/80HYrjoqaVw

Is the Chinese Communist Party Orchestrating the New Global Wave of COVID-19 Lockdowns?




https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2021/03/18/TXTavatar.jpg (https://www.theepochtimes.com/c-counterpunch)

Counterpunch
Trevor Loudon

Cities across the world are now undergoing a new wave of lockdowns due to the coronavirus. But are these new—and in some cases draconian—lockdown (https://www.theepochtimes.com/t-lockdown) policies actually a result of the Chinese regime using its network of communist parties, politicians, and scientists to orchestrate the whole thing?

Using Britain as an example, Trevor Loudon (https://www.theepochtimes.com/t-trevor-loudon) exposes how the Communist Party of China uses lockdowns.

[jimnyc]

So, anyone besides me notice this bot was silent for quite awhile until Cruella Deville triggered his reaction to traffic that has nothing to do with what's going on?

I am not so sure this one is a bot, although could very well be using software to auto-post somehow. I think it's someone with an obsession, that is also obsessed with his own writing and thinks he is a great author, but is delusional. When he makes these posts he goes around and posts them on as many boards as possible, and mainly gets ignored everywhere. This leads to the thoughts of a bot, but still not sure yet.

[Gunny]

I am not so sure this one is a bot, although could very well be using software to auto-post somehow. I think it's someone with an obsession, that is also obsessed with his own writing and thinks he is a great author, but is delusional. When he makes these posts he goes around and posts them on as many boards as possible, and mainly gets ignored everywhere. This leads to the thoughts of a bot, but still not sure yet.

To clarify: I didn't mean "bot" literally. IIRC, this clown came out of his closet one time to display a rather nasty persona. I don't use it nor have I looked for it, but isn't there a "toy" on here (board) where you are notified if someone responds to your thread/posts? I was thinking more along those lines.

I wonder does this guy think anyone actually reads his novels? (No offense to anyone that does :)) I see a whole page of scribble with each post and the topic better at least catch my attention or I'm not bothering.

[Et Soh]

https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2021/12/27/china-israel-700x420.jpg (https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2021/12/27/china-israel-1200x800.jpg)

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang (4nd-L) meets with Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (3nd-R) at the Great Hall of the People on in Beijing, China, on March 20, 2017. (Lintao Zhang/Pool/Getty Images)


How Israel, a Close Ally of the US, Became a Close Ally of China


John Mac Ghlionn

December 27, 2021

Epoch Times Commentary
Audio (https://mp3mp4pdf.net/media/isreal.mp3) PDF (https://mp3mp4pdf.net/isreal.pdf)

The United States and Israel (https://www.theepochtimes.com/t-israel) appear to be close allies. However, things aren’t always as they seem. As Israel cozies up to China (https://www.theepochtimes.com/t-china), that once “unbreakable bond” between the United States and Israel looks increasingly fragile.

In 1948, the United States became the first country to officially recognize the new State of Israel (https://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/us-israel#:~:text=At%20midnight%20on%20May%2014,on%20 January%2031%2C%201949).); seven decades on, the Trump administration made history by recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. According to the U.S. Department of State (https://www.state.gov/u-s-relations-with-israel/), “Israel has no greater friend than the United States.” The two countries’ unbreakable bond “has never been stronger,” or so we’re told.

Can Beijing sever the bond once and for all?

In a speech, delivered in 2017, Benjamin Netanyahu, then the most important man in Israel, waxed lyrical about a “marriage made in heaven.” The politician was not speaking about his wife, nor was he speaking about the United States. He was speaking about Israel’s marriage to China. A marriage of convenience rather than love, no doubt. A marriage nonetheless.



Xi Jinping also has as a soft spot for Israel and Isaac Herzog, the country’s president. Xi recently invited Herzog (https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-israel-s-herzog-china-s-xi-discuss-iran-abraham-accords-in-historic-phone-call-1.10393721) to visit Beijing next year, to mark the 30th anniversary of the establishment of normal diplomatic ties between the two countries. The marriage, it appears, is growing stronger by the day.

According to research published by the RAND corporation (https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR2641.html), an American think tank, since 2000, China and Israel have started to form stronger relations. From diplomacy to trade, infrastructure to research, China continues to invest heavily in Israel. Chinese tourists now flock to Israel in record numbers, according to the BBC (http://www.bbc.com/storyworks/travel/china-where-your-dreams-fly/special-relationship-israel-biz-booms-in-china).

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP (https://www.theepochtimes.com/t-ccp)), however, is not really interested in seeing the sights; it’s far more interested in seeing the science. More specifically, it’s interested in seeing Israel’s advanced technology, as the RAND paper revealed.

https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2018/10/29/GettyImages-israel-china-wang-qishan-1052925344-600x400.jpg (https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2018/10/29/GettyImages-israel-china-wang-qishan-1052925344-1200x799.jpg)
Chinese Vice Chair Wang Qishan during his tour with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of the Israeli Innovation Summit in Jerusalem on Oct. 24, 2018. (Ariel Schalit/AFP/Getty Images)

Why is Israel interested in China? Again, according to RAND, this interest stems from the Israeli government’s desire to “expand its diplomatic and economic ties with the world’s fastest growing major economy.” Israel’s leaders wish to diversify the country’s “export markets and investments,” even though China firmly supports Iran (https://www.mei.edu/publications/making-sense-iran-china-strategic-agreement), a country that would love nothing more than to see Israel wiped off the face of the planet (https://old.iranintl.com/en/iran-in-brief/proposed-bill-irans-parliament-calls-israels-destruction).

Earlier this year, Beijing signed a 25-year strategic agreement with Tehran. How can a friend of Iran also be a friend of Israel? Then again, how can a friend of the United States (Israel) be a friend of China?

The second question can be answered with one word: money. Today, the bilateral trade relationship between Beijing and Jerusalem is worth $10 billion. Twenty-eight years ago, it was worth just $50 million (https://jamestown.org/program/recent-trends-in-sino-israeli-relations-bely-lasting-warm-ties/).

All Eyes on Technology


The quickly developing field of quantum computing, according to tech experts (https://www.nextgov.com/emerging-tech/2021/11/report-china-may-steal-encrypted-government-data-now-decrypt-quantum-computers-later/187020/), will have “far-reaching” and potentially “disruptive” influences. In the United States, there are genuine fears that the CCP will use quantum technology to steal (https://www.zdnet.com/article/chinese-hackers-could-steal-data-now-and-crack-it-with-quantum-computers-later-warns-report/) sensitive data from its citizens as well as various branches of government.

It will come as little surprise, then, to find out that Israel, China’s new best friend, is one of the leaders in quantum tech.

According to a recent Bloomberg Innovation Index (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-02-03/south-korea-leads-world-in-innovation-u-s-drops-out-of-top-10), Israel, a country with the same population as New York City, is now the seventh most innovative nation in the world. The United States, it’s important to note, is no longer in the top 10. In Silicon Wadi, Israel’s version of Silicon Valley, more than 5,000 different companies can be found, many of them dedicated to all things tech. Of the 18 countries in the Middle East, Israel boasts the largest number of start-ups (https://www.telekom.com/en/company/details/off-to-silicon-wadi--362260) per capita. A number of these start-ups carry out research in the areas of artificial intelligence, biotechnology, and quantum computing—a fact that is not lost (https://zeenews.india.com/world/growing-chinese-influence-in-israeli-technology-sector-us-asks-israel-to-decrease-its-ties-with-china-2310852.html) on the CCP.

Since 2019, according to a recent Physics Today (https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/full/10.1063/PT.3.4898) report, the number of Israeli firms working in quantum tech has “surged from 5 to 30,” with the “Israeli army, air force, and intelligence community” forming the “backbone” of the burgeoning industry.

As the Rand report warned, the CCP’s investment in Israeli technology “could lead to leaks of sensitive technology and cyberespionage.”

Don’t be surprised if the CCP uses Israel’s quantum knowledge to attack its American foes. After all, Israeli spyware has already been used to target U.S. officials (https://www.dw.com/en/israeli-pegasus-spyware-used-to-spy-on-us-officials-reports/a-60015869), and Beijing appears to have Jerusalem in its proverbial back pocket.

As Neville Teller, an expert on Middle Eastern politics, recently wrote (https://www.jpost.com/opinion/should-israel-act-on-chinas-threat-688483), the question for the Israeli government “is how far it should go in embracing China as a business partner, given American suspicions about China’s true motives. Are all such Chinese investments pieces in a vast jigsaw designed to secure China’s unassailable political and economic global supremacy?”

The answer to that question, Mr Teller, is a resounding yes.

Israel, a country that acts as a bridge between three different continents (http://home.snu.edu/~hculbert/bridge.htm)—Asia, Africa, and Europe—appears to be a key component in Beijing’s plans for world domination. One imagines that the CCP won’t stop until it destroys that “unbreakable bond” between Israel and the United States. Will it succeed? Only time will tell.



John Mac Ghlionn is a researcher and essayist. His work has been published by the likes of the New York Post, Sydney Morning Herald, Newsweek, National Review, The Spectator US, and other respectable outlets. He is also a psychosocial specialist, with a keen interest in social dysfunction and media manipulation.





https://www.theepochtimes.com/how-is...a_4173534.html (https://www.theepochtimes.com/how-israel-a-close-ally-of-the-us-became-a-close-ally-of-china_4173534.html)

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To clarify: I didn't mean "bot" literally. IIRC, this clown came out of his closet one time to display a rather nasty persona. I don't use it nor have I looked for it, but isn't there a "toy" on here (board) where you are notified if someone responds to your thread/posts? I was thinking more along those lines.

I wonder does this guy think anyone actually reads his novels? (No offense to anyone that does :)) I see a whole page of scribble with each post and the topic better at least catch my attention or I'm not bothering.


I know people like this in Cuba. I don't blame them for being upset. When a person and/or their relatives are forced to figuratively eat shit sandwiches on a regular basis, being upset like that and wanting to tell as many people as possible is understandable.

I suspect that his posting style is rooted in a deficient understanding of English.

Where is this dude posting from?

He kind of reminds me of Gustavo Diaz, a dude that works for a Home Depot in Alabama that runs DolarToday, a site that specializes in on the street exchange rates for the Venezuelan Bolivar and chronicles the abuses of the Chavistas.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DolarToday#:~:text=Its%20president%20is%20Gustavo% 20Diaz%2C%20a%20Home%20Depot%20salesman%20in%20Ala bama.


https://dolartoday.com/


Its president is Gustavo Diaz, a Home Depot (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_Depot) salesman in Alabama.[5] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DolarToday#cite_note-Kurmanaev_2016-5) According to BBC Mundo (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_Mundo), DolarToday was founded as "a form of protest against a dictatorship increasingly committed to silence and intimidate the media in Venezuela."[6] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DolarToday#cite_note-6) Up until today, the company's website publishes criticisms about the Maduro administration which the founder states "are selected by the site’s writers based in Venezuela".[1] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DolarToday#cite_note-FUSIONrebel-1)[2] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DolarToday#cite_note-AP-2)

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https://youtu.be/kMfCSvVW6IY

Anders Corr on Communist China’s Reported $275 Billion Deal with Apple and the Road to Global Tyranny




https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2020/01/31/15ef10b49d230ec5_ttl7dayc1L_TL2X.png (https://www.theepochtimes.com/c-american-thought-leaders)

American Thought Leaders
JAN JEKIELEK


“Whether it’s academia, our politics, our economics—people are being compromised.”

In this episode, we sit down with Anders Corr, publisher of the Journal of Political Risk, columnist for The Epoch Times, and author of the book, “The Concentration of Power.” We discuss the Chinese Communist Party’s alleged $275 billion secret deal with Apple in 2016, and growing threats of global tyranny.

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This post is a test.

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https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2016/07/18/AP16200289820215-700x420.jpg (https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2016/07/18/AP16200289820215-1200x702.jpg)

A Chinese missile frigate Yuncheng launches an anti-ship missile during a military exercise in the waters near south China’s Hainan Island and Paracel Islands on July 8, 2016. (Zha Chunming/Xinhua via AP)


US Should Sanction China for Jamming and Laser Attacks on Pilots


Economic sanctions would send the right message



Anders Corr

December 28, 2021

Epoch Times News Analysis
Audio (https://mp3mp4pdf.net/media/laserattack.mp3)
PDF (https://mp3mp4pdf.net/laserattack.pdf)

The Chinese military is building stronger electronic warfare facilities in the South China (https://www.theepochtimes.com/t-china) Sea.

Rapidly expanding Chinese electronic warfare (EW) facilities were revealed (https://www.csis.org/analysis/china-ramping-its-electronic-warfare-and-communications-capabilities-near-south-china-sea) by the Center For Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) on Dec. 17. The facilities, near Mumian on China’s Hainan Island, are in the South China Sea (https://www.theepochtimes.com/t-south-china-sea) region close to Vietnam.

The facilities serve as protection for the strategic island, on which are based nuclear submarines and future planned aircraft carriers for global power projection. The placement of the facilities near the eastern coast of the island helps Beijing electronically dominate the entire Gulf of Tonkin, located between China and Vietnam, as well as the northern half of Vietnam’s coastline.

“The Mumian facility is home to satellite tracking and communication (SATCOM) platforms and appears to possess systems that could be used in EW,” according to the CSIS authors, who are part of the think tank’s China Power Project and iDeas Lab.



“The site also likely plays a role in collecting signals intelligence (SIGINT), which includes any intelligence gleaned from intercepting and analyzing foreign signals or communication from satellites, radars, weapons platforms, and other electronic systems,” wrote the authors, Matthew P. Funaiole, Brian Hart, and Joseph S. Bermudez. Mr. Bermudez is a senior fellow for imagery analysis with CSIS.

The revelations about the facilities’ recent expansion are from comparing satellite imagery from 2020 to those taken about a month ago. The facilities have apparently operated, according to satellite imagery, since at least 2018.

That year, news about likely Chinese military electronic and laser attacks on American (https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/22/politics/pacific-ocean-us-military-jets-lasers-intl/index.html) and Australian (https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/may/29/australian-navy-pilots-hit-with-lasers-during-south-china-sea-military-exercise) planes increased. There was no significant American response, and the laser attacks continued in 2019 and 2020 (https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2020/02/28/pacific-fleet-chinese-destroyers-laser-targeted-us-plane/).

The new facilities at Mumian could be used to electronically buttress such attacks on U.S. and allied planes, or for the gathering of intelligence.

“Many assets in the vicinity appear dedicated to gathering communications intelligence (COMINT), a subset of SIGINT that includes the collection of communications between individuals and organizations.”

The latest installations include a SATCOM/COMINT complex with “four dish antennas (three 14 meters wide and one 4 meters wide) for SATCOM and tracking, and at least four tall tower antennas suitable for communications or EW,” according to the report.

“Distributed throughout the enlarged facility are at least 90 vehicles and trailers of various types, including a sizeable number featuring mounted antennas (configured as either a single large antenna or two smaller antennas).”

The Chinese military’s expansion of capabilities on Hainan, including EW, is already having negative effects on American pilots in the South China Sea.

According to Rick Fisher, a senior fellow at the International Assessment and Strategy Center, “the U.S. quest for electronic intelligence regarding China’s military buildup on Hainan Island was at the center of the April 1, 2001 ‘EP-3 Incident’ in which a Chinese Naval Air Force J-8II fighter collided with a U.S. Navy EP-3 electronic intelligence gathering aircraft. At that moment, China was in the early stages of building a new nuclear missile submarine base at Yalong Bay on Hainan Island.”
https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2020/04/21/US-DEFENCE-NAVY-1200x800.jpg (https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2020/04/21/US-DEFENCE-NAVY-1200x800.jpg)
U.S. Navy F/A-18 Super Hornets multirole fighters and an EA-18G Growler electronic warfare aircraft (2nd R) on board USS Ronald Reagan (CVN-76) aircraft carrier as it sails in the South China Sea on its way to Singapore on Oct. 16, 2019. (Catherine Lai/AFP via Getty Images)
The Chinese military fully disassembled, and presumably attempted to copy, the EP-3’s electronic intelligence capabilities after it was downed.

“China’s People’s Liberation Army has and will continue to constantly upgrade its electronic intelligence (ELINT) and signals intelligence (SIGNIT) capabilities on Hainan Island due to its overall strategic importance for the power ambitions of the Chinese Communist Party,” wrote Fisher in an email.

“Hainan’s security is crucial for the CCP as it protects most of its nuclear ballistic missile submarines, will soon host multiple aircraft carrier battle groups for global power projection, and the Wencheng Satellite Launch Center on Hainan will be key to CCP power projection ambitions to the Moon and Mars.”

According to Australian reporting (https://www.news.com.au/technology/innovation/military/satellite-photos-reveal-worrying-antennas-in-south-china-sea/news-story/f48362e49d5e1ec82269ea2c27a12a70), the Chinese claimed in 2018 that a U.S. combat aircraft “lost control” over the South China Sea. The Chinese report said: “All the instruments in the cabin were chaotic. The fighter planes were completely out of control and could not communicate with the outside world, but they did not know what happened.”

Jamie Seidal at news.com.au wrote that China’s “claim appears to relate to a 2018 incident in which [a] US Navy EA-18G Growler aircraft from the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt reported jamming of their equipment.”

Instead of public retaliation as a show of strength, the U.S. government apparently just meekly took the blow and allowed American pilots to explain away the aggressive incident.

Pilots “said they were never put in any danger,” according to Seidal.

Grant Newsham, a former U.S. Marines colonel with extensive experience in Asia, commented that the “USA had better get serious about all this—and be ready to hit China hard.”

Newsham said that the Chinese military would “push the limits” just enough “to bother us—and even humiliate us” while disguising and brazenly denying the attack origin.

“Unfortunately, they get away with their denials—or at least we do nothing in response,” he said.

Newsham noted that after the Chinese military wounded American pilots with lasers near Djibouti (https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/03/politics/chinese-lasers-us-military-pilots-africa/index.html) and over the Pacific (https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/22/politics/pacific-ocean-us-military-jets-lasers-intl/index.html) in 2018, the United States did nothing. He called this a failure in American strategy.

A former Morgan Stanley banker, Newsham advised a correction to the failure by banning “U.S. investment in China for 6 months, or pull Bank of China’s banking license for a year.”

Newsham is right. China’s military expansion and increasing international influence both depend on its economy. So for the United States and allies to maintain a preponderance of power in the coming century requires the rapid deceleration, with the risk of collapse, of China’s growing economy.

The same strategy has been used through major economic sanctions on Russia, Iran, and North Korea.

The pin-$#@! economic sanctions on China that America has imposed so far are clearly not doing enough and need to be increased to have the necessary effect.

The United States cannot impose sanctions alone—or else Beijing would simply divert its trade and investments to Europe and the rest of the world, thus isolating the U.S. economy. The sanctions or tariffs (https://www.theepochtimes.com/a-global-china-tax-is-needed-to-defend-democracy-and-freedom-of-the-seas_4140602.html) must be agreed on a global level. Only the United States, with its powerful military, can lead these global sanctions today.

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/us-sho...s_4181027.html (https://www.theepochtimes.com/us-should-sanction-china-for-jamming-and-laser-attacks-on-pilots_4181027.html)

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If this had been an actual emergency, you would have been instructed where to tune in your area for news and official information.

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https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2021/12/29/GettyImages-1237391882-1200x800-700x420.jpg (https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2021/12/29/GettyImages-1237391882-1200x800-1200x800.jpg)

Security guards is walking in an area that is under restrictions following a recent coronavirus outbreak in Xi’an city, Shaanxi province, China, on Dec. 22, 2021. (STR/AFP via Getty Images)


Omicron Offers an Off-Ramp From Our Failed Pandemic Policy


https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2021/02/18/Jan_AvatarNew.png (https://www.theepochtimes.com/author-jan-jekielek)

Jan Jekielek
Senior Editor

December 30, 2021

Epoch Times Commentary Audio (https://mp3mp4pdf.net/media/omicrom.mp3) PDF (https://mp3mp4pdf.net/omicrom.pdf)

As the COVID-19 pandemic and the Western world’s unprecedented approach to it enters a new phase, with the Omicron variant becoming more prevalent, an opportunity presents itself to effect dramatic and much-needed changes to COVID policy.

When the global pandemic was in its early stages in early 2020, very little was known, and our leaders feared the worst. Some understood, knowing the Chinese communist party’s response to SARS1, that the regime would avoid culpability at all costs, indeed at just about ANY cost, with possibly devastating consequences. Others, facing dubious models touting millions of deaths being brandished about by supposedly eminent scientists, and with the “extreme safety” being demanded by some elements of Western societies, were likewise in a panic. Fear gripped Western societies in a way unseen in generations.

And, coupled with the Chinese regime’s extreme censorship of COVID-related data and workers, coupled with apocalyptic COVID propaganda spread by its mouthpieces and sycophants, it can be argued that the West largely threw out the tried-and-tested traditional pandemic playbook in favor of extreme top-down policies eerily similar to those the Chinese regime was celebrating. Most notably, we locked down our societies, in multiple ways, shuttering businesses and schools, with only “essential” work continuing—something we stuck with despite ample evidence pointing at the dubious nature of these policies. Basic principles of public health went out the window. Instead of fostering robust scientific debate, we censored and vilified contrarian scientists advocating for those principles, such as the authors of the Great Barrington Declaration (GBD).

In our frantic quest to find solutions, we seemingly miraculously developed vaccines to stop the virus, but enamoured by and in our rush to deploy our new miracles, we neglected key safeguards, such as collecting proper safety data. We vilified early clinicians and the therapeutic treatments they were finding success with, pushed vaccines as a panacea only to find that many didn’t want them. Then, we adopted all sorts of tyrannical policies to “encourage” adoption, even for healthy children who are at miniscule risk from the virus. We spend a year and a half breaking up society, chipping away at our most cherished basic rights, and hunkering down into tribal camps, creating a new “unclean” caste, the unvaccinated.



As early as mid-2020, Stanford public health expert Dr. Scott Atlas unambiguously documented using available data (https://thehill.com/opinion/healthcare/499394-the-covid-19-shutdown-will-cost-americans-millions-of-years-of-life) that the human cost (in terms of lives) of the lockdown policies was already greater than the human cost of the virus, and this has not changed. Millions missed critical cancer screenings and suicidal ideation in teens skyrocketed—just a tiny part of the cost. A number of studies are showing that adverse events from the new vaccines, notably myocarditis, are more serious and common than has been generally understood. Corporate media, who have largely been cheerleaders in promoting the various questionable policies, are now asking questions about whether, for example, “too many shots might actually harm the body’s ability to fight the coronavirus (https://twitter.com/nytimes/status/1474096240065449989).” Trillions have been spent for stimulus, and inflation is spiking—people are starting to feel the pain in their pocketbooks, especially the middle and working classes.

The bottom line is, there will be hell to pay. And I can’t help but remember what Governor Ron DeSantis told me when I met him in Florida, trying to understand why he had adopted the unusual, though effective, policies that he had, which we documented in “Desantis: Florida vs. Lockdowns (https://www.theepochtimes.com/exclusive-documentary-desantis-florida-vs-lockdowns_3834081.html).” He told me: “They will never admit they were wrong.”

Given the magnitude of our failure as a society in dealing with COVID, and the cardinal rule that human beings (but especially politicians) will go to gargantuan lengths to avoid responsibility, I posit that Omicron provides an off-ramp that doesn’t require admission of guilt. We need to halt the highly objectionable COVID policies being employed today, while giving up, for now, the assigning of blame.

Omicron has changed the game. With the preliminary research in, the data appears to show several things:


Omicron is more contagious than Delta and other variants
COVID vaccines seem to do little to stop Omicron infection
Remarkably, there is some evidence that Omicron is breaking through natural immunity from previous variants
Omicron is much less severe than other variants, with many scientists comparing its symptoms to the common cold
Omicron is unexpected—its high level of mutation leaves scientists asking questions


Whatever the past reality, the difference in risk from COVID infection between the vaccinated and unvaccinated now appears to be lower than it was with previous variants. Whatever the past reality, the unvaccinated are not more a danger to society than the vaccinated. As the infection goes endemic, many people will get the virus, irrespective of vaccination status or past inflection.

The obsession with asymptomatic testing for COVID can be left behind with heads held high, as can masks. Ignorance of the past power of natural immunity vs. the virus becomes a non-issue at present. And, unlike past variants, Omicron is indeed a bit of an enigma in terms of both its genetics and of how it functions.

In other words, a perfect opportunity to effect a dramatic shift in pandemic policy, for example to policies laid out in the Great Barrington Declaration and past pandemic public health standards. Vaccine mandates can be dropped in an instant, policy can indeed be “left to the states” as President Biden has suggested, and state leaders can also follow in kind.

It’s an opportunity for leaders to use the novel Omicron variant to save face, as an “off ramp” off the current authoritarian and unpopular policy track, enacting policies that will have them celebrated and also work well, helping us start to heal our society. The sooner, the better.

Jan Jekielek is a senior editor with The Epoch Times and host of the show, “American Thought Leaders.” Jan’s career has spanned academia, media, and international human rights work. In 2009 he joined The Epoch Times full time and has served in a variety of roles, including as website chief editor. He is the producer of the award-winning Holocaust documentary film “Finding Manny.”




https://www.theepochtimes.com/omicro...y_4185606.html (https://www.theepochtimes.com/omicron-offers-an-off-ramp-from-our-failed-pandemic-policy_4185606.html)






***

https://mp3mp4pdf.net/index/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/ccpmodel-300x165.png
Pandemic Reflection: The Destructive CCP Model
PDF(preview) (https://mp3mp4pdf.net/ccpmodel.pdf)(9.69M); ePub (https://mp3mp4pdf.net/ccpmodel.epub)(10.1M); MOBI (https://mp3mp4pdf.net/ccpmodel.mobi)(3.12M)

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Fizz

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https://youtu.be/0hh04s_O8H4


“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?

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https://youtu.be/bBnm15YuOvM



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 (https://www.theepochtimes.com/t-ukraine) will depend upon economic depth in China (https://www.theepochtimes.com/t-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 (https://www.theepochtimes.com/t-russia) is using 100,000 (https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/01/21/germany-has-become-weak-link-natos-line-defense/) troops on the border with Ukraine to pressure (https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/International-relations/Ukraine-crisis-looms-large-as-China-Russia-trade-tops-record-140bn) 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 (https://www.wsj.com/articles/germany-blocks-nato-ally-from-transferring-weapons-to-ukraine-11642790772) 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 (https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/01/21/germany-has-become-weak-link-natos-line-defense/) 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.


https://www.christianityboard.com/proxy.php?image=https%3A%2F%2Fimg.theepochtimes.co m%2Fassets%2Fuploads%2F2022%2F01%2F25%2Fchina-russia.jpg&hash=863b5f379ee498ba0d39f95f4a8db16e (https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2022/01/25/china-russia.jpg)
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 (https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/International-relations/Ukraine-crisis-looms-large-as-China-Russia-trade-tops-record-140bn) 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 (https://www.reuters.com/lifestyle/sports/polands-president-attend-beijing-olympics-amidst-us-boycott-2022-01-18/) 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.


https://www.christianityboard.com/proxy.php?image=https%3A%2F%2Fimg.theepochtimes.co m%2Fassets%2Fuploads%2F2014%2F05%2FGazprom49256129 9-BW-1200x816.jpg&hash=5300abc4c6a52bf4eca2b149203e7dc0 (https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2014/05/Gazprom492561299-BW-1200x816.jpg)
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://mp3mp4pdf.net/chinatoo.pdf)]


https://www.theepochtimes.com/not-on...e_4230722.html (https://www.theepochtimes.com/not-only-russia-but-china-is-to-blame-for-threats-against-ukraine_4230722.html)

eReading: (https://mp3mp4pdf.net/ereading/)

Red Dragon Menacing (III) – On CCP’s All-Out Aggression Against Humanity(5)
PDF(preview) (https://mp3mp4pdf.net/RDM3-5.pdf)(3.46M); ePub (https://mp3mp4pdf.net/RDM3-5.epub)(3.35M); MOBI (https://mp3mp4pdf.net/RDM3-5.mobi)(3.14M)

[Et Soh]

https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2021/03/04/Interpol-700x420.jpg

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 (http://mp3mp4pdf.net/interpol.pdf) Audio (https://vs1.youmaker.com/assets/2022/0220/0dd425cf-bc28-43b7-b82b-9b9c669c69aa/audio.mp3)


Interpol (https://www.theepochtimes.com/t-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 (https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2020/07/hong-kong-national-security-law-10-things-you-need-to-know/), 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 (https://www.theepochtimes.com/t-extradition) treaty with China (https://www.theepochtimes.com/t-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 (https://safeguarddefenders.com/sites/default/files/Open%20Letter%20to%20INTERPOL%20-%20Preventive%20Protection.pdf) 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 (https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/01/29/china-may-using-interpol-target-dissidents-political-opponents/), claims to have been tortured while detained by the Chinese regime. He was at the time a British Consulate employee in Hong Kong.
https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2021/06/13/Hong-Kong-Rally-London-0-600x360.jpg
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 (https://apnews.com/article/europe-china-france-lyon-china-government-b620d9229eba0dfe2617b98b4f2f7867), 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.
https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2018/10/09/GettyImages-806924826-600x399.jpg
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 (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jan/18/torture-complaint-filed-against-new-president-of-interpol#:~:text=Interpol%20secretary%20general%20 Jurgen%20Stock,in%20his%20own%20Twitter%20post.) of overseeing torture against a UAE human rights defender as well as against two Britons.

The UAE has long cooperated (https://news.sky.com/story/how-china-is-using-black-sites-in-the-uae-as-they-target-uyghurs-abroad-12536140) 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 (https://www.wsj.com/articles/hong-kong-exiles-fear-a-red-notice-interpol-beijing-china-nathan-law-ted-hui-11644439175) 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 (http://mp3mp4pdf.net/interpol.pdf) Audio (https://vs1.youmaker.com/assets/2022/0220/0dd425cf-bc28-43b7-b82b-9b9c669c69aa/audio.mp3))



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[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]

https://youtu.be/dziWs_c6PLo

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

Full Video(00:29:41) (https://mp3mp4pdf.net/media/gordon.mp4)

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

https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2022/03/07/china-military-700x420.jpg (https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2022/03/07/china-military-1200x843.jpg)
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 (https://vs1.youmaker.com/assets/2022/0307/2b901a92-15b0-4107-84e0-a41c84f9803e/audio.mp3) PDF (http://mp3mp4pdf.net/818.pdf)

China (https://www.theepochtimes.com/t-china)’s defense budget will likely increase by approximately 7.1 percent (https://www.reuters.com/markets/asia/china-defence-spending-rise-outpace-gdp-target-this-year-2022-03-05/) 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 (https://www.theepochtimes.com/t-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.

https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2021/11/08/mockup-1200x764.jpg (https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2021/11/08/mockup-1200x764.jpg)
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 (https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202203/1253877.shtml) 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 (https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/International-relations/Asia-s-military-spending-up-2.8-in-2021-bucking-1.8-global-drop), 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 (https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/The-Big-Story/Asia-s-arms-race-China-spurs-military-spending-spree), 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.

https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2020/07/11/Screen-Shot-2020-07-11-at-11.14.43-AM.jpg (https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2020/07/11/Screen-Shot-2020-07-11-at-11.14.43-AM.jpg)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 (https://www.reuters.com/world/us/exclusive-biden-seek-more-than-770-billion-2023-defense-budget-sources-say-2022-02-16/), 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 (https://www.theepochtimes.com/a-global-china-tax-is-needed-to-defend-democracy-and-freedom-of-the-seas_4140602.html).

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 (https://www.theepochtimes.com/chinas-ballooning-defense-budget_4320049.html)

[Et Soh]

https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2016/10/24/shutterstock_434724091-700x420.jpg (https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2016/10/24/shutterstock_434724091-1200x900.jpg)

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 (https://vs1.youmaker.com/assets/2022/0321/062dabae-a8d3-4556-8bc4-9dc9e1f70a59/audio.mp3) PDF (https://mp3mp4pdf.net/871.pdf)

0000
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (https://www.theepochtimes.com/t-saudi-arabia) (KSA) is considering a major defection from its long-standing economic alliance with the United States. The likely winner would be China (https://www.theepochtimes.com/t-china).

Having priced all of its oil in dollars since 1974 (https://www.wsj.com/podcasts/the-journal/as-saudi-arabia-cools-on-the-us-it-warms-to-china/46e7073c-88b3-4708-8440-e4f72c863e3f), 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 (https://www.reuters.com/world/saudi-prince-rebuked-by-west-faces-dilemma-over-russia-china-2022-03-16/) 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.

https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2020/04/23/oil-tanks-Saudi-Aramco--600x398.jpg (https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2020/04/23/oil-tanks-Saudi-Aramco--1200x797.jpg)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.
https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2019/07/20/TRUMP-SAUDI-1-600x338.jpg (https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2019/07/20/TRUMP-SAUDI-1-1200x677.jpg)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 (https://www.reuters.com/world/saudi-prince-rebuked-by-west-faces-dilemma-over-russia-china-2022-03-16/) him to increase the flow of oil to bring it down from its astronomical $110 (https://www.standard.co.uk/business/ftse-100-live-18-march-brent-crude-price-interest-rate-rises-bank-of-england-federal-reserve-b988987.html) 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 (https://www.reuters.com/world/saudi-prince-rebuked-by-west-faces-dilemma-over-russia-china-2022-03-16/) 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 (https://www.reuters.com/world/japan-pm-kishida-discussed-possible-oil-output-increase-with-saudi-arabia-2022-03-17/) 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 (https://www.reuters.com/world/saudi-prince-rebuked-by-west-faces-dilemma-over-russia-china-2022-03-16/) Chinese leader Xi Jinping to visit Saudi Arabia this year. He has given tacit support (https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/2/23/saudi-crown-prince-defends-chinas-right-to-fight-terrorism) 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 (https://www.reuters.com/world/us/biden-summit-democracy-rally-nations-against-rising-authoritarianism-2021-12-09/)” 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).


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[Et Soh]

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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 (https://mp3mp4pdf.net/media/884.mp3) PDF (http://mp3mp4pdf.net/884.pdf)


Elon Musk (https://www.theepochtimes.com/t-elon-musk) and his companies, Tesla and SpaceX (https://www.theepochtimes.com/t-spacex), are under scrutiny for their billion-dollar links to China (https://www.theepochtimes.com/t-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 (https://www.wsj.com/articles/elon-musks-business-ties-to-china-create-unease-in-washington-11647768780), 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 (https://spacenews.com/starship-lookalike-among-chinas-new-human-spaceflight-concepts/) 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.
https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2020/06/22/GettyImages-1216521433-600x400.jpg (https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2020/06/22/GettyImages-1216521433-1200x800.jpg)
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 (https://freebeacon.com/elections/hickenlooper-calls-china-a-great-nation/) China a “great nation” that does not seek global dominance. Hickenlooper raised over $5.6 million (https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:D09lRBc3NWUJ:https://www.opensecrets.org/2020-presidential-race/john-hickenlooper/candidate%3Fid%3DN00044206+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk) in the 2020 election cycle and has close ties to the Musk family. He flew (https://www.nbc11news.com/content/news/John-Hickenlooper-being-investigated-over-use-of-private-planes-while--564662011.html) 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).


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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]

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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 (https://mp3mp4pdf.net/media/931.mp3) PDF (https://mp3mp4pdf.net/931.pdf)

Use Up/Down Arrow keys to increase or decrease volume.
China (https://www.theepochtimes.com/t-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 (https://www.wsj.com/articles/chinese-executives-sell-at-the-right-time-avoiding-billions-in-losses-11649164573) 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.

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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 (https://www.wsj.com/articles/some-chinese-companies-find-workaround-to-avoid-u-s-delisting-11649158109) 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.

https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2022/04/07/China-Securities-Regulatory-Commission-1200x800.jpg (https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2022/04/07/China-Securities-Regulatory-Commission-1200x800.jpg)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 (https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/emerging-markets-suffer-98bln-outflow-march-with-big-hit-china-2022-04-05/) 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 (https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/emerging-markets-suffer-98bln-outflow-march-with-big-hit-china-2022-04-05/) 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 (https://www.theepochtimes.com/china-insiders-steal-billions-from-us-investors_4388320.html)

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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 (https://www.theepochtimes.com/t-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.

https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2022/04/19/image001-1200x875.jpg (https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2022/04/19/image001-1200x875.jpg)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.”

https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2022/04/19/image002.png (https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2022/04/19/image002.png)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.


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Pandemic Reflection: The Destructive CCP Model(II)
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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 (https://mp3mp4pdf.net/media/381.mp3) PDF (https://mp3mp4pdf.net/381.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 (https://www.theepochtimes.com/t-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 (https://www.theepochtimes.com/t-lockdowns) are also destroying the Chinese economy, as previously reported by Epoch Times here (https://www.theepochtimes.com/chinas-lockdowns-are-destroying-its-economy_4473099.html?utm_source=telegram&utm_campaign=USChinaWatch).

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 (https://www.theepochtimes.com/t-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 (https://www.wsj.com/articles/shanghai-tightens-pandemic-rules-as-beijing-calls-for-victory-over-virus-11652102133?st=ex0hjd1ra9dyq3v&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink), 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 (https://www.wsj.com/articles/mass-covid-testing-already-a-familiar-ritual-becomes-chinas-new-normal-11652607001?st=hz0cy5db91h71qx&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink) 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.

https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2022/06/02/GettyImages-1241048250-1200x798.jpg (https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2022/06/02/GettyImages-1241048250-1200x798.jpg)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 (https://twitter.com/fangshimin/status/1526339298865270785?s=20&t=4g3BcfTKkSQza3xiwyXc7w) by Fang Zhouzi (@fangshimin), a Chinese muckraker who is an opponent of pseudoscience and other fraud (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fang_Zhouzi), 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 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_Administrative_and_Law_Enforcement_Bureau)” (chéngguǎn 城管), the dreaded parapolice (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/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 (https://www.theepochtimes.com/an-inside-look-at-the-zero-covid-lockdowns-in-china_4515147.html)




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Pandemic Reflection: The Destructive CCP Model(III)
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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 (https://mp3mp4pdf.net/media/A139.mp3) PDF (https://mp3mp4pdf.net/A139.pdf)


Chinese military (https://www.theepochtimes.com/t-military) media is increasingly highlighting the threat to China (https://www.theepochtimes.com/t-china) from Elon Musk (https://www.theepochtimes.com/t-elon-musk)’s growing constellation of broadband (Wi-Fi) satellites called Starlink (https://www.theepochtimes.com/t-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 (https://www.scmp.com/topics/spacex?module=inline&pgtype=article) 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 (https://www.theepochtimes.com/t-space2).

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.


https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2021/08/20/kids-connect-to-internet-1200x800.jpg (https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2021/08/20/kids-connect-to-internet-1200x800.jpg)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.


https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2021/07/06/GettyImages-1230256214-1200x800.jpg (https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2021/07/06/GettyImages-1230256214-1200x800.jpg)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 (https://www.theepochtimes.com/can-china-shoot-down-starlink_4532714.html)

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Security personnel keep watch outside the Wuhan Institute of Virology during the visit by the World Health Organization (WHO) team tasked with investigating the origins of COVID-19, in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China, on Feb. 3, 2021. (Thomas Peter/Reuters)




Recognizing Reality: A New Study Documents the Chinese Regime’s Aggression




Bradley A. Thayer

July 5, 2022 Updated: July 6, 2022

Commentary


Audio (https://mp3mp4pdf.net/media/A207.mp3) PDF (https://mp3mp4pdf.net/A207.pdf)


In the sweep of history, there are moments in time that capture the true nature of a regime.

The great good that the United States has accomplished in international politics was well captured by the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe in the wake of World War II or the support provided to Southeast Asian nations in the wake of the 2004 Boxing Day earthquake and tsunami.

In stark contrast to the benefits the United States has provided, the Chinese regime defines the opposite. Its human rights abuses, genocide committed against Muslims in Xinjiang, and obfuscation and dissembling about the origins of COVID (https://www.theepochtimes.com/t-covid)-19, and subsequent pandemic (https://www.theepochtimes.com/t-pandemic), are indicators of the nature of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

While the world still does not know the full origins of COVID, many believe it almost certainly leaked from the laboratory in China (https://www.theepochtimes.com/t-china)’s Wuhan city. Yet, as long as Xi Jinping and his camarilla are in power, the world will never know its origins. Chinese authorities destroyed evidence of COVID’s origin and facilitated the travel of their citizens to the rest of the world. At the same time, they locked down Wuhan and failed to share information with other governments.

Beijing intentionally lied to the World Health Organization regarding person-to-person transmission, which then repeated this misinformation to health authorities worldwide with untold consequences for global health. Accordingly, epidemiologists and global health authorities will lack a complete understanding of the pandemic and the ability to prevent future ones, as well as additional adaptations of the virus that causes COVID.


https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2021/02/03/GettyImages-1199129374-1200x800.jpg (https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2021/02/03/GettyImages-1199129374-1200x800.jpg)
A laboratory technician working on samples from people to be tested for COVID-19 at the “Fire Eye” laboratory in Wuhan in China’s central Hubei Province on Feb. 6, 2020. (STR/AFP via Getty Images)

An insightful analysis that clearly and compellingly documents the Chinese regime’s responsibility for the pandemic is a new study: “The CCP is at War with America: A Team B Report on the Covid 19 Biological Warfare Attack.”

The group of analysts from the Center for Security Policy—termed the Team B III group, after the original 1976 Team B rightfully anticipated the Soviet Union’s intentions and continued Soviet arms racing and expansion, and the later 2010 Team B that addressed Islamic terrorism—have provided the complete account of Beijing’s responsibility for the pandemic.

As with their predecessors, Team B III provided an insightful analysis of the CCP’s belligerence toward the United States and the role COVID played in this aggression. One of the authors, Steven Hatfill, notes that the virus was perfectly adapted to infect humans, which is extremely curious if the virus were a product of nature.

Hatfill notes that since 2007, the Chinese regime has been conducting gain-of-function research to make the virus more lethal to humans. The hideous fruits of this labor are shown in COVID.

The study also notes the adverse and lasting economic consequences for the U.S. economy, including increasing debt, inflation, the supply chain crisis, and, of course, on the U.S. political system—most notably profound effects on the 2020 U.S. election and possible impact on 2022 and even 2024.

The study is significant not only because of its arguments, the attention called to COVID within the context of a biological weapons (BW) attack, and the empirical evidence presented, but also because of its realism. It assigns culpability for the pandemic to the Chinese regime.

Second, it places the CCP’s behavior during COVID in the context of its war against the United States and its allies. While the CCP has been at war with the United States since it came to power in 1949, the 2019 declaration of a People’s War against the United States is a more recent reminder of the regime’s unrelenting aggression against America.


https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2020/03/07/man-at-costco-1200x758.jpg (https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2020/03/07/man-at-costco-1200x758.jpg)
Customers wait in line to buy water and other supplies, fearing that COVID-19 will spread and force people to stay indoors, at a Costco in Burbank, Calif., on March 6, 2020. (Robyn Beck/AFP via Getty Images)

Third, the lack of a sufficient response from the U.S. government is that the American people have been betrayed by some of their political elites, who are corrupted by their association with the CCP.

Fourth, there is willful blindness in the U.S. government toward the nature and scope of the threat from the Chinese regime and the lack of a desire within the intelligence community to tell the truth to those in power. As a result, while the American people have a clear grasp of the China threat (https://www.theepochtimes.com/t-china-threat), the country’s elites have failed in their responsibilities to protect the country from its enemy.

Reflecting on its lasting contributions, the study has provided an accurate and realistic assessment of the motivations and actions of the Chinese regime. It compels analysts to think of the present confrontation with China, not through the lens of the last Cold War with the Soviet Union. Instead, the study lets Americans understand that this current cold war is significantly more challenging to fight for two major reasons.

First, it seems that most of the American elite are sanguine about China’s rise and see it as a partner. During the Cold War, the American elite overwhelmingly was able to assess the Soviet Union for the threat it was.

Second, the book compels us to consider the nature of the CCP’s attack against the United States. This certainly includes the military, economic, ideological, and social confrontation that defined the Cold War. But China consistently employs asymmetric means like facilitating the spread of COVID, shipping precursor chemicals to Mexico to fuel the opioid crisis, dominating the market in antibiotics, or making agricultural land purchases against the United States to weaken it and hasten its defeat.

The study’s authors deserve great credit for calling attention to the nature, scope, and urgency of the threat. The CCP is indeed at war with America, and America’s response is long overdue.

Bradley A. Thayer is a founding member of the Committee on the Present Danger: China and is the co-author of “How China Sees the World: Han-Centrism and the Balance of Power in International Politics.”


https://www.theepochtimes.com/opinio...n_4572799.html (https://www.theepochtimes.com/opinion-recognizing-reality-a-new-study-documents-the-chinese-regimes-aggression_4572799.html)

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President Joe Biden waves as he participates in a virtual meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping at the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington on Nov. 15, 2021. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)




Biden Must Walk His Talk in Asia


Canceling China’s military base in Cambodia would be a start

Anders Corr

August 17, 2022


Commentary Audio (https://vs1.youmaker.com/assets/2022/0817/d81df19d-73f2-4c7f-9674-09b02cd656eb/audio.mp3?length=4849101&duration=404) PDF (http://mp3mp4pdf.net/A307.pdf)

President Joe Biden (https://www.theepochtimes.com/t-joe-biden) reportedly agreed to a meeting (https://www.wsj.com/articles/chinas-xi-jinping-plans-to-meet-with-biden-in-first-foreign-trip-in-nearly-three-years-11660318437?mod=series_chinataiwan) with China’s dictator, Xi Jinping, to be held on the sidelines of an upcoming conference in Southeast Asia. One of two upcoming summits in November—the Group of 20 nations (G-20) summit in Indonesia and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Thailand—will be the likely location.

Biden agreed to the meeting in the context of Xi calling him (https://www.wsj.com/articles/biden-chinas-xi-talk-as-a-pelosi-trip-to-taiwan-threatens-to-inject-new-tensions-11659013042) to deliver a warning against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan. Reportedly, there was a Chinese threat against her air force plane. This raises questions about whether Biden granted Xi the meeting under duress and whether he broadcast American weakness in doing so.
It will likely burnish Xi’s public image and help him gain the third term he seeks at the upcoming Chinese Communist Party (CCP) congress. Conversely, it could make Biden look even softer than he is on China.

In agreeing to the meeting, perhaps Biden wants to get trade with China flowing again to reward his corporate backers. He has been looking for an excuse to remove the Trump administration’s tariffs on China, and a meeting with Xi could be that moment. Any improvement to China’s human rights or decrease in territorial aggression is unlikely under Xi’s leadership.

Biden’s agreement to the meeting thus indicates that he is willing to look past Xi’s genocides, including against Uyghurs (https://www.voanews.com/a/uyghur-genocide-in-china-what-we-know-about-the-republic-s-concentration-camps-/6462933.html) and the Falun Gong (https://www.jpolrisk.com/genocide-in-the-peoples-republic-of-china-violations-of-international-criminal-law-in-the-suppression-of-falun-gong/), and military threats, including against U.S. allies Japan, Taiwan, Australia, India, and the Philippines, to try for minor gains that could ultimately empower Beijing.

https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2022/06/02/2022-06-02T093425Z_1_LYNXMPEI510B0_RTROPTP_4_CHINA-RIGHTS-PARLIAMENT-1200x800.jpg (https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2022/06/02/2022-06-02T093425Z_1_LYNXMPEI510B0_RTROPTP_4_CHINA-RIGHTS-PARLIAMENT-1200x800.jpg)A perimeter fence is constructed around what is officially known as a vocational skills education center in Dabancheng in Xinjiang, China, on Sept. 4, 2018. (Thomas Peter/Reuters)

While Taiwan and India are not official allies, Biden’s repeated assertions that he would defend Taiwan militarily arguably make it a de facto ally. Likewise, planned U.S.-India joint exercises (https://edition.cnn.com/2022/08/06/india/india-us-military-exercise-line-of-actual-control-china-intl-hnk/index.html) in the Himalayan mountains near the border with China, and joint membership in the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (the “Quad”) with Australia and Japan, make the U.S.-India relationship into a de facto alliance.

Biden’s meetings in Southeast Asia, doubtless to include leaders from the region, will be a litmus test as to whether the Democrats can achieve concrete gains against the increasingly powerful regime in Beijing.

Despite significant resistance from both political parties in the United States and U.S. allies closing ranks against the CCP, Xi has demonstrated a stubborn and dangerous pursuit of what Beijing calls its “core interests (https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3145326/decoding-deliberate-ambiguity-chinas-expanding-core-interests).”

This core has expanded over the years from the original claims over Taiwan to those in Tibet, Xinjiang, Hong Kong, and Macau, as well as the regime’s authoritarian “development” model. Some ranking officials in China have also called the South and East China seas a core interest of China.

The implication is that, unlike “important” and “secondary” interests, Beijing is willing to go to war over core interests.

Both leaders will be competing for influence among Southeast Asian countries, where they could meet Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) leaders from Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, Vietnam, Burma (Myanmar), Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia, and Brunei.

ASEAN makes decisions by consensus, and two of those countries—Cambodia and Laos—have traditionally vetoed any proposals, for example from the Philippines and Vietnam, seen to go against Beijing’s interests.

Cambodia has recently gone a step further to allow the People’s Liberation Army (PLA (https://www.theepochtimes.com/t-pla)) to start building (https://www.wsj.com/articles/secret-deal-for-chinese-naval-outpost-in-cambodia-raises-u-s-fears-of-beijings-ambitions-11563732482?mod=e2tw) a military base on Cambodian territory. This should be a particular focus of Biden’s negotiations with not only Cambodia but other ASEAN members that could pressure Phnom Penh, the capital.

The base in Cambodia is the PLA’s second on foreign territory, after one approved by Xi in 2013 in Djibouti, East Africa. The Djibouti base is indicative of how the Cambodia base could be used against the United States and its allies.

https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2021/12/13/GettyImages-825399844-1200x743.jpg (https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2021/12/13/GettyImages-825399844-1200x743.jpg)This photo taken on Aug. 1, 2017, shows Chinese People’s Liberation Army personnel attending the opening ceremony of China’s new military base in Djibouti. (STR/AFP via Getty Images)

The PLA finished construction of the Djibouti base in 2017. The following year, it was used to shoot (https://www.nbcnews.com/news/africa/pentagon-accuses-chinese-blinding-djibouti-based-u-s-pilots-lasers-n871096) lasers at a U.S. air force plane, injuring two U.S. airmen. Apparently, the U.S. military did not significantly respond, bringing into question our willingness to retaliate in the face of aggression.

Both Beijing and Phnom Penh have lied (https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/06/06/cambodia-china-navy-base-ream/) about the PLA’s base construction in Cambodia, which is at the country’s Ream Naval Base on the Gulf of Thailand. Chinese military personnel at the base, parts of which are now for the exclusive use of the PLA, have gone so far as to wear Cambodian military uniforms to conceal their presence.

The base will move China toward achieving a network of global bases to support its military power projection. In addition to Cambodia and Djibouti, China is likely seeking military basing rights in Indonesia, Pakistan, Singapore, the Solomon Islands, Sri Lanka, Tanzania, and Thailand.

This network of PLA bases could support its global intelligence collection and offensive operations against the United States and its allies.

In 2021, U.S. intelligence learned that the PLA was secretly building a base in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). U.S. officials were able to pressure Abu Dhabi to halt construction. If Biden is right about the superiority of his foreign policy approach in Asia, he should be able to prove it by getting the PLA’s base in Cambodia canceled as well.

But the opposite is occurring. Perhaps due to China’s increased influence in Cambodia, or because of Democrat foreign policy weakness relative to that of Republicans, U.S.-funded facilities at the Ream Naval Base were demolished, according to a 2021 Pentagon report.

Likewise, a “Joint Vietnamese Friendship” building on the base has been removed to another location so as not to conflict with China. (Vietnam and China are in a relatively tense standoff over Beijing’s increasingly expansive maritime claims in the South China Sea.)

Biden’s trip to Southeast Asia will be a litmus test as to whether the Democrat’s foreign policy is seen as weak relative to the Republicans, or whether Biden’s ally-focused foreign policy can achieve concrete results against China.

Chief among these should be the cancellation of China’s military base in Cambodia. If all of America’s international development funding, Asia-Pacific alliances, and market power as the world’s biggest economy cannot achieve results in Cambodia, what can it achieve under the Democrats?

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/biden-...a_4667243.html (https://www.theepochtimes.com/biden-must-walk-his-talk-in-asia_4667243.html)




Red Dragon Menacing (https://communismexposed.mp3mp4pdf.net/indexes/post-index/)

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Communist China Establishes Global Presence Through Local Police Overseas Stations


https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2022/10/06/10062022-DSC03862-700x420.jpg (https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2022/10/06/10062022-DSC03862-1200x800.jpg)

The America ChangLe Association in New York on Oct. 6, 2022. An overseas Chinese police outpost in New York, called the Fuzhou Police Overseas Service Station, is located inside the association building. (Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times)



Communist China Establishes Global Presence Through Local Police Overseas Stations



Peter Dahlin (https://www.theepochtimes.com/author-peter-dahlin)
December 11, 2022

Commentary

Audio (https://mp3mp4pdf.net/media/A511.mp3) PDF (https://mp3mp4pdf.net/A511.pdf)




00:00
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is engaged in a multipronged campaign to establish its power overseas, especially over the ever-growing Chinese diaspora.

It started for real with the launch of Fox Hunt, a campaign to hunt down Party members, state functionaries, and those working in or with public entities, and it seems to have been launched following CCP leader Xi Jinping’s “anti-corruption” campaign.

The message being sent is clear: You will not be safe just because you leave China (https://www.theepochtimes.com/t-china). At the same time, and growing in strength since, the CCP’s United Front Work Department has been hard at work co-opting local Chinese media organizations around Asia, Australia, North America, and Europe. In Australia, about 95 percent or more of all local Chinese language media toe the Party line.

With the migration from China increasing and the number of asylum seekers having shot up almost 800 percent since Xi took power in 2012, it is not surprising that the Chinese regime is working hard to establish a clear presence overseas. The latest development of this campaign is the establishment of overseas Chinese police (https://www.theepochtimes.com/t-police) service stations.

When Safeguard Defenders first exposed this operation with its “110 Overseas (https://safeguarddefenders.com/en/blog/230000-policing-expands)” investigation, some 54 stations had been identified, mostly in Western countries, and are run by two local police jurisdictions. New information continues to trickle in, and on Dec. 4, the Spain-based human rights NGO released a follow-up investigation—“Patrol and Persuade (https://safeguarddefenders.com/en/blog/patrol-and-persuade-follow-110-overseas-investigation)”—and the number of stations now identified has reached over 100, with several more police jurisdictions in China running such stations. The purpose is becoming more apparent, with one such jurisdiction claiming it was “using overseas Chinese to govern overseas Chinese.”

In fact, since first revealing this information, additional stations in both New York and Los Angeles have been uncovered, as well as in Vancouver and one unknown location in Canada, bringing the total number of stations in the United States and Canada to eight—but the actual number is likely higher.


Fox Hunt


The international manhunt for high-value targets, Fox Hunt, is carried out by the Ministry of Public Security (MPS) under the leadership of the CCP’s “anti-corruption” watchdog, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI).

https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2022/12/09/FBI-Fox-Hunt-GettyImages-1229326342-1200x800.jpg (https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2022/12/09/FBI-Fox-Hunt-GettyImages-1229326342-1200x800.jpg)

FBI Director Christopher Wray attends a virtual news conference at the Department of Justice in Washington on Oct. 28, 2020. Eight people have been arrested as part of “Operation Fox Hunt,” an effort by the Chinese regime to threaten people to return to China. (Sarah Silbiger/Getty Images)

At the Party Congress in late October, the CCDI presented new data showing that since its start in 2014—a consequence of Xi’s domestic “anti-corruption” campaign—Fox Hunt has successfully forced over 11,000 Chinese nationals back to China, several thousand of whom returned during the pandemic. Methods range from using extraditions (https://safeguarddefenders.com/en/blog/hide-and-seek-major-report-chinas-extradition-campaign) and INTERPOL red notices (https://safeguarddefenders.com/en/blog/chinas-use-interpol-exposed-new-report), although very rare, to the more common involuntary return methods (https://safeguarddefenders.com/en/blog/involuntary-returns-report-exposes-long-arm-policing-overseas), such as “persuasion” by going after family members living in China, sending agents abroad to harass and intimidate targeted individuals in their new home country, and kidnappings.

So far, some 84 cases of these stations playing a role in “persuasion” operations to force people back to China against their will have been identified. This reveals that the Chinese regime lied about the purpose of these stations, claiming that they assist the local diaspora community in renewing driver’s licenses and other minor administrative tasks.

To stop these stations from operating, and to ensure that the activities themselves do not continue to go unnoticed in a different form, a number of steps need to be taken.

Overseas Chinese Police Service Stations


The stations, which, as far as is known, started appearing in 2016 and expanded in 2018—in direct contravention of Beijing’s statement that these stations were established, without the host country’s knowledge or approval—to assist Chinese citizens during the pandemic.

The way it works is that police in a certain jurisdiction—particularly those that have seen significant emigration, such as Fuzhou—reach out to local trade or cultural associations in those cities and areas where many people from the city or region happen to live. Chinese emigration, after all, tends to be group-oriented; if many from Fuzhou have settled in one region, others who emigrate tend to want to go to those places for a support network, shared language, culture, and food.

The police will thus approach an existing association and ask them to take on the task of running the stations. Here is when things get a bit more complicated. As these are run by local police, the stations vary significantly in their appearance. In some cases, like in Budapest and Dublin, they will establish a proper office, hang out signage and plaques declaring they are overseas police service stations—always without informing the host country government, and have a more strict physical presence. In other cases, the office of the association itself will be used, while the address and phone number announced will go to a front, which can be an auto mechanic, as in Porto, Portugal, a convenience store, like in Toronto, Canada, or a restaurant, as in Glasgow, Scotland.

Similar operations also exist around Asia and particularly Africa, but such establishments are done in public, with the full cooperation of the host government; otherwise, the operations are strikingly similar to the clandestine stations in the democratic world.

To understand the overall purpose and the role they play, this quote from the Nantong is illustrative: “At present, representatives of overseas Chinese and overseas students have been hired in the United States, Australia, South Korea and other places as overseas liaison officers to cooperate with domestic officers both internally and externally.”

https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2022/10/26/rsz_id13838307-dsc00066-1200x900.jpg (https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2022/10/26/rsz_id13838307-dsc00066-1200x900.jpg)

A Chinese state media outlet lists this single-story commercial building in Markham, Ont., as one of three overseas Chinese police stations in Canada. Human rights NGO Safeguard Defenders said the outposts in the Greater Toronto Area are part of the first batch of Fuzhou overseas police service stations. (Michelle Hu/The Epoch Times)

Here alone, without going into the use of such stations to assist police back in China with “persuasion” operations of targets China wants to be returned, a number of issues arise. As the Netherlands, Ireland, and Canada have shown, they consider the establishment of such stations, regardless of their duty, to be illegal and in violation of the Vienna convention. All three countries have ordered them to shut down. The fact that they have been established secretly—without informing host governments and their presence is almost only known in the Chinese language–has allowed them to operate undetected for so long.

The associations that actually run the stations, per command from the local police jurisdictions, are also in breach of administrative regulations. Any association needs to be registered, and Safeguard Defenders believes most of them are, as they have existed for a long time. However, they are not registered to perform these duties or act in any way as a liaison for the Chinese police or government. Hence, regulatory action can and must be taken against any association found to violate administrative regulations.

More importantly, to avoid simply shutting down the stations, only for their actual activities to be carried out clandestinely, via, for example, United Front Work Department-affiliated associations, means that security service needs to launch a formal investigation, and where evidence allows, bring forth criminal charges.

That some 84 cases of “persuasion” operations have been carried out, including two cases related to Fox Hunt operations, is likely just the tip of the iceberg. The targets are often low-profile and low-value targets, and if returned, they are rarely heard from; if they refuse, they likely go silent. Finding such cases is very hard, and dedicated investigations are required. Safeguard Defenders sees such cases in Canada, Portugal, Sweden, Scotland, and the United States. But in many other countries, they are being treated merely as a political issue via the foreign ministries—this is not enough and risks allowing the activities to continue.

Since Safeguard Defenders’ initial investigation, several more stations have been identified in the United States and Canada. An initial investigation by security police has already identified many others, at least in Europe. Further investigation will reveal more and is an essential step forward.

After Safeguard Defenders exposed one case of such “persuasion” operations carried out by one of the stations in Madrid, Spain, the Chinese foreign ministry responded by saying that “bilateral treaties [extraditions] are cumbersome,” and that some European countries turn down such requests–offering this as an excuse for why it found it acceptable to carry out such “persuasion” operations nonetheless. And that is despite Spain maintaining an extradition treaty with China and often approving such requests.

In the United States, the FBI, in late October, unsealed two more indictments concerning Fox Hunt operations in the country, as well as in Canada, bringing the total number of known indictments to three. This is a very positive step, but with China claiming to have successfully concluded over 11,000 of them, it is a drop of water in a large sea. No other country has so far undertaken any similar action. Since Beijing claims to have persuaded 230,000 people to return to China between April 2021 and July 2022 alone—and only related to those wanted for fraud and related crimes—it is hard not to assume that such persuasion operations are carried out on a large scale not just in the United States and Canada, but also in Europe and elsewhere.

On the plus side, the websites of these associations that run the stations often post incriminating information, and tracking down the individuals hired or appointed to run the stations is relatively straightforward. That the police back in China sometimes feel the need to publicize their work to secure the approval of their superiors also help, as open source research using Chinese police bulletins, police newspaper, and local media can be very helpful.

Ordering the stations to shut down by explicitly stating they violate the law, launching formal investigations into the operations of these stations, and filing criminal charges where possible while evaluating the legality of the associations’ registration are all key steps to move forward. Until such is done, the Chinese diaspora across the United States, Canada, and elsewhere will live in fear, be unable to speak out freely, and be denied their democratic rights in their new homeland. For them, it is a matter of basic democratic freedoms that are being denied to them due to communist China’s growing presence overseas, where these stations are yet another tool in “using overseas Chinese to govern overseas Chinese.”

Peter Dahlin is the founder of the NGO Safeguard Defenders and the co-founder of the Beijing-based Chinese NGO China Action (2007–2016). He is the author of “Trial By Media,” and contributor to “The People’s Republic of the Disappeared.” He lived in Beijing from 2007, until detained and placed in a secret jail in 2016, subsequently deported and banned. Prior to living in China, he worked for the Swedish government with gender equality issues, and now lives in Madrid, Spain.


https://www.theepochtimes.com/commun...s_4914412.html (https://www.theepochtimes.com/communist-china-establishes-global-presence-through-local-police-overseas-stations_4914412.html)





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China Trolls the World
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WHO team members Marion Koopmans (L), Peter Daszak (3rd R), and Peter Ben Embarek (2nd R) pose for a picture in Wuhan, a city in central China’s Hubei Province on Feb. 10, 2021. (Hector Retamal/AFP via Getty Images)


Thinking About China (https://www.theepochtimes.com/c-thinking-about-china)
China Trolls the World



Jeffrey A. Tucker (https://www.theepochtimes.com/author-jeffrey-a-tucker)
December 26, 2022

Commentary

Audio (https://mp3mp4pdf.net/mgz/A546.mp3) PDF (https://mp3mp4pdf.net/A546.pdf)

And then just like that, COVID controls are gone in China (https://www.theepochtimes.com/t-china). So far as we can tell, it has all come to an end, without explanation and of course without apology. For almost 3 years now, China has faced random and draconian lockdowns and testing requirements, complete with extreme quarantines, all based on the myth that a respiratory pathogen can be controlled by a powerful government.

In many ways, Chinese leader Xi Jinping regarded his use of these methods as his greatest triumph. He punished people in the CCP (https://www.theepochtimes.com/t-ccp) who raised doubts. He incentivized many local officials to lie about cases and deaths. He bragged publicly and privately about his glorious achievement. All except for one thing: it didn’t actually work.

So far as we can tell, the policy end was forced on Xi because it became too expensive. Local governments were running out of money for mass and frequent testing. The population was becoming very restless, even protesting in the streets, which is risky in China beyond anything people in the West can imagine.

Plus, it’s possible that Xi feels politically safe enough to do this now, whereas he did not six months ago. In addition, even if he cannot claim to have stopped COVID, he can at least take credit for having trolled the entire planet Earth to destroy their own economies. Even if China’s GDP took a huge hit, he inspired most governments of the world to undermine human rights, violate privacy, engage in massive censorship, and demoralize their populations.

The trolling began in January 2020 with a series of fake videos that gave a wildly incorrect impression of the deadliness of the disease. Bots were spamming the world with videos of people dropping dead in the streets, hospitals overwhelmed, and terror in the population. The gullible West believed it all and began to prepare for the onslaught in case the virus made its way here, which it did.

Then the CCP locked down Wuhan for a few weeks and claimed that it had magically made the virus disappear. It invited a delegation from the World Health Organization, which came to Wuhan and other countries in mid-February. Among them were representatives from the United States, UK, and Europe. They released a disgusting report (https://brownstone.org/articles/what-happened-on-the-junket-to-china-in-february-2020/) that said:

“Achieving China’s exceptional coverage with and adherence to these containment measures has only been possible due to the deep commitment of the Chinese people to collective action in the face of this common threat. At a community level this is reflected in the remarkable solidarity of provinces and cities in support of the most vulnerable populations and communities. Despite ongoing outbreaks in their own areas, Governors and Mayors have continued to send thousands of health care workers and tons of vital PPE supplies into Hubei province and Wuhan city.

“At the individual level, the Chinese people have reacted to this outbreak with courage and conviction. They have accepted and adhered to the starkest of containment measures—whether the suspension of public gatherings, the month-long ‘stay at home’ advisories or prohibitions on travel. Throughout an intensive 9-days of site visits across China, in frank discussions from the level of local community mobilizers and frontline health care providers to top scientists, Governors and Mayors, the Joint Mission was struck by the sincerity and dedication that each brings to this COVID-19 (https://www.theepochtimes.com/t-covid-19) response.”

Those words are nothing short of treason. And the United States signed off on it, as if the lying Communist Party knew more about mitigating a respiratory pathogen, a mild one for most of the population, better than trained scientists in the U.S. who had actually studied this. Anthony Fauci’s own deputy assistant was on the trip and bragged about the China response. This favorable report echoed the previous words of Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus of the WHO who had told (https://brownstone.org/articles/the-china-model-unravels-in-shanghai/) the world that China is “setting a new standard.”

In a matter of weeks, most of the world had adopted the tactics of destruction that China itself has now abandoned. And what do the disease mitigators have to say for themselves now? They are trying to pretend like it never happened, even as whole social orders have been traumatized beyond anything previously imaginable.

And what of China today? The whole population has a vast immunity debt to pay, which will mean massive sickness for the better part of a year. You might say: oh this was smart because now the variant on the loose in the world is more mild. But please get this straight: what is a mild versus what is a serious variant is largely contingent on pre-existing and acquired immunity. A pathogen that you and I might shake off in a day or two could kill a member of a native tribe in an Amazon rainforest who had never been previously exposed.

So after two years of trying to suppress this virus, China is going to face a very hard time in the coming year. But of course under the Chinese political system, no one will pay the price for this economic and public health disaster. Xi and the CCP will continue to rule and pretend that they did everything right.

One might think that this situation would amount to a complete humiliation for the likes of Fauci and the NIH, not to mention dozens of U.S. agencies that were involved in this fiasco, to say nothing of the hundreds of governments around the world that went along with the ridiculous and evil CCP methods of virus control. But we are not seeing it, and that is simply because the whole of the Western media played along with this and denounced anyone who resisted the absurdities.

Not only that: Xi and the CCP have managed to bring practices to the West with which we have been previously unfamiliar. Only three years ago, a person in a mask would have been regarded as a danger and probably a robber. No one ever wore them but perhaps crazy people or surgeons standing over open bodies, or perhaps miners wanting to filter the air. Regular people would never wear a mask in the normal course of life. Somehow we survived.

But today, we see between 10 and 50 percent of the population masking up despite the lack of any evidence that they achieve anything to stop the spread of a respiratory pathogen. Not to put too fine a point on it but the holes in the mask are vastly larger than the virus itself. Wearing them is nothing short of a superstition and a tacit homage to Xi Jinping. It is not the way of the West!

Also we are careening fast into a world of vaccine passports. Why do you suppose that the United States retains them for visitors from other countries? It is because certain elites want to hold on to some vestige of control in hopes of implementing them here on the way toward a China-style social credit system. This is also why social media censorship survives everywhere except Twitter among the major platforms.

Despite all the failures, the CCP has something to be proud of from its COVID response. It utterly and completely flopped as a measure to control a virus but it did troll the entire planet earth but for a few nations to go along with its totalitarian measures, thus reducing economic growth for the whole world and giving China a leg up in its struggle to be the world’s leading superpower. The complete failure of a policy then becomes its greatest moment of success.

And even today, we see nothing like honesty from any ruling-class elites on what they did to freedom here and all over the world. Meanwhile, China seems to have given up its battle for Zero COVID, just washing its hands of the whole operation as if it never happened. Very clever.

We in the West need to get wise as to what happened. There should be hearings and some kind of justice for those who went along. We need retractions of lying interviews and articles plus some kind of coming to terms instead of continued coverup about what happened. Finally, we need the complete elimination of all censorship and controls that came about over three years. The only way to beat tyranny is with the practice of freedom. We need to embrace that now before it is too late.

Jeffrey A. Tucker is the founder and president of the Brownstone Institute (https://brownstone.org/), and the author of many thousands of articles in the scholarly and popular press, as well as 10 books in five languages, most recently “Liberty or Lockdown.” He is also the editor of The Best of Mises. He writes a daily column on economics for The Epoch Times and speaks widely on the topics of economics, technology, social philosophy, and culture.

Website (https://brownstone.org/author/jeffrey-tucker/)


https://www.theepochtimes.com/china-...d_4943740.html (https://www.theepochtimes.com/china-trolls-the-world_4943740.html)





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CCP Proves ‘Climate’ Fight Not Really About Climate

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A worker uses a torch to cut steel pipes near the coal-powered Datang International Zhangjiakou Power Station at Zhangjiakou, in China’s northern Hebei Province on Nov. 12, 2021. (Greg Baker/AFP via Getty Images)

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CCP Proves ‘Climate’ Fight Not Really About Climate


Alex Newman (https://www.theepochtimes.com/author-alex-newman)
January 10, 2023

Commentary Audio (https://mp3mp4pdf.net/mgz/A565.mp3) PDF (https://mp3mp4pdf.net/A565.pdf)

You don’t have to be a climate scientist to know the ringleaders of the “climate change (https://www.theepochtimes.com/t-climate-change)” bandwagon don’t truly believe the narrative they’re selling.

And it’s not just because they jet around the world in private jets to lecture you about your car and your hamburgers.

In fact, if the people at the top bought into the notion that human emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) are really “pollution” producing a “climate crisis,” they would be doing exactly the opposite of what they’re actually doing.

Examining climate policy and communist China proves the point.

Consider the UN Paris Agreement (https://www.theepochtimes.com/t-paris-agreement). Negotiated at the 21st Conference of the Parties (COP21) in Paris in 2015, the global deal calls on national governments to make their own national pledges about what they force on their populations to combat the alleged “climate crisis.”

Under the deal, the Obama administration unilaterally pledged to slash CO2 emissions in the United States by more than 25 percent by 2025. This was to be imposed on Americans through executive orders and federal regulations to avoid involving Congress. Other Western governments made similar promises.

The Chinese communist regime, by contrast, was already emitting far more CO2 than the United States and now spews more than the entire Western world combined by far—and yet it pledged only to keep increasing its emissions for the next 15 years. Seriously.

In its submission to the UN (pdf (https://www4.unfccc.int/sites/submissions/INDC/Published%20Documents/China/1/China's%20INDC%20-%20on%2030%20June%202015.pdf)), the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) agreed “to achieve the peaking of carbon dioxide emissions around 2030.”

In other words, the regime proudly announced to the world that its CO2 output would continue to grow for at least 15 years, at which point nobody will even remember the Paris pledges.

When I asked members of the Chinese delegation for comment at the UN summit, instead of responding, they sent one of their minions to follow me around the conference and take pictures of me, something I promptly reported to UN security and the French police.

It’s a good thing for the CCP that nobody will remember its promises by 2030, because virtually every analyst who has looked at the regime’s coal-fired power-plant construction binge has acknowledged there’s no way its emissions will “peak” by 2030. Communist promises have never been worth the paper they’re printed on anyway, as history has shown.

The CCP wasn’t kidding about increasing its emissions, though: Beijing is currently bringing more coal-fired power plants online just between now and 2025 than the United States has in total.

According to Global Energy Monitor’s February 2021 briefing (pdf (https://globalenergymonitor.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/China-Dominates-2020-Coal-Development.pdf)), the CCP built more than three times as much coal-power capacity as the rest of the world combined in 2020. And it already has about half of all the world’s coal power capacity, according to Global Energy Monitor’s “Boom and Bust 2020: Tracking the Global Coal Plant Pipeline (https://energyandcleanair.org/publications/boom-and-bust-2020-tracking-the-global-coal-plant-pipeline/).”

Already, China emits more than twice as much CO2 as the United States, according to data (https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/china?country=CHN~USA) from the Global Carbon Project. Its emissions are rising meteorically even as U.S. emissions and emissions from other Western nations continue to plunge.

In 2021, Americans released about 5 billion tons of CO2, while China released about 11.5 billion. If current trends continue, the CCP may release more CO2 than the rest of the world combined in the not-too-distant future.

Think about this. If one was truly concerned about CO2 emissions producing “climate hell,” as world leaders claimed at the latest UN “climate” summit in Egypt that I attended, they would be panicking, not celebrating.


Moving Production


Again, all of the production being moved out of the West and into China will result in vastly more CO2 entering the atmosphere than if that production had remained in the United States, Canada, or Europe.

And yet, Western governments, tax-funded climate activists, UN leaders, and their media allies all celebrated and continue to celebrate the Paris Agreement and subsequent follow-ups as a huge success in saving the climate.

Perhaps Donald Trump was on to something when, in 2012, he wrote on Twitter (https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/265895292191248385?lang=en), “The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.”

That’s exactly what happened, of course, as electricity rates got pushed higher and higher over time. In 1975, electricity was averaging around 3 cents per kilowatt hour, helping U.S. industry remain competitive globally. By 2010, thanks in part to Obama’s policies, it had tripled (https://www.statista.com/statistics/200199/residential-sector-electricity-prices-in-the-us-since-1975/). And by 2021, it was approaching 15 cents.

For perspective, electricity prices in China are about half that.

There are many reasons for the shifting of production from the United States to China—many of them directly related to U.S. policy—but one key factor has been the cost of energy.

Yet higher energy prices were openly touted as a policy objective by Obama. As he with the San Francisco Chronicle, “under my plan … electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.”

Later that year, he expressed similar sentiments as gas prices soared to around $4, saying only that he would have “preferred” a “gradual adjustment” instead.

Faced with higher labor costs and a tougher regulatory environment, American companies and entrepreneurs were already struggling to keep production in the United States amid a rigged global trading regime benefiting the CCP at America’s expense.

Soaring energy costs in many cases pushed firms over the edge, forcing them to shift production to China or shut down in the face of Chinese competition.

Again, if you truly believe CO2 is pollution, the worst possible outcome of “climate” negotiations would be to transfer even more production to China, where CO2 emissions per unit of economic production are massively higher.

But this is precisely the result of the much-celebrated UN “climate” process.

The shift into so-called “renewable energy” being engineered by the Biden administration and federal policymakers has been and will continue to be a huge boon to the CCP, too—and not just because it will force prices higher while making the U.S. energy grid more unstable.

Almost 80 percent of solar cells produced in 2019 were made in China, according to Bloomberg data (pdf (https://csis-website-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/Solar%20PV%20Case%20Study%20-%20BloombergNEF.pdf?wDUUlXhfxWtA0lLU66HdshX539MvZH DI)). The CCP dominates production in the wind sector and battery industries as well. It also controls the supply chain for rare-earth materials needed to produce all of these “green energy” products.

The U.S. government, for its part, is offering massive subsidies to these CCP-dominated industrial sectors while forcing Americans into dependence on them through regulations, mandates, subsidies, and other policies. How this is supposed to help the environment is never made clear.

For some perspective on the economic carnage inflicted on America by Obama’s Paris scheme, which he claimed was an “executive agreement” and thus not subject to Senate ratification as required by the Constitution, the Heritage Foundation crunched the numbers in a 2016 (https://www.heritage.org/environment/report/consequences-paris-protocol-devastating-economic-costs-essentially-zero) study.

Among other findings, the conservative-leaning think tank said Obama’s Paris pledges would increase electricity costs for a family of four between 13 and 20 percent annually while vaporizing almost half a million jobs, including around 200,000 in manufacturing.

That damage translates to about $20,000 in lost income for American families by 2035 and a reduction in GDP of over $2.5 trillion.


Who Benefits?


Who benefits from all this? Certainly not the “climate.” Again, shipping U.S. industry to China will result in more CO2 in the atmosphere, not less. And in any case, based on the UN’s own debunked “models,” complete elimination of all U.S. CO2 emissions would result in virtually no reduction in global temperatures.

According to a peer-reviewed paper by Dr. Bjorn Lomborg (https://www.lomborg.com/press-release-research-reveals-negligible-impact-of-paris-climate-promises) published in the Global Policy journal, even if all the significant pledges made in Paris were fulfilled, global temperatures would be just 0.05 degrees C (0.086 degrees F) cooler by 2100—a statistically insignificant rounding error.

The big winner, of course, was the CCP, which has been laughing all the way to the bank as it absorbs the factories, jobs, and wealth production that U.S. and other Western authorities are shutting down to “save the climate.”

This appears to be deliberate, as statements by leading officials in the Obama administration and the UN have made clear.

Obama’s “Science Czar” John Holdren openly advocated a de-industrialization of the United States in his 1973 book “Human Ecology.”

“A massive campaign must be launched to restore a high-quality environment in North America and to de-develop the United States,” Holdren and his co-authors wrote. “De-development means bringing our economic system (especially patterns of consumption) into line with the realities of ecology.”

Then consider seemingly bizarre comments (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-01-13/top-global-emitter-china-best-on-climate-change-figueres-says) made by then-UN Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change Christiana Figueres.

Speaking to Bloomberg a few months after Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau expressed his unsettling admiration for the CCP (https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/justin-trudeau-s-foolish-china-remarks-spark-anger-1.2421351), Figueres claimed that the regime in Beijing—overseeing about one third of global CO2 output—was “doing it right” on climate policy.

In separate comments while pushing for major climate policies, Figueres also suggested the goal of “climate” policy was really economic transformation.

“This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the Industrial Revolution,” she said (https://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/energy-environment/232229-the-climate-comintern-speaks/) on Feb. 4, 2015.

Five years before those comments, one of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s top officials, Ottmar Edenhofer, revealed a similar agenda in comments (https://web.archive.org/web/20101229105715/http://www.thegwpf.org/ipcc-news/1877-ipcc-official-climate-policy-is-redistributing-the-worlds-wealth.html) to Germany’s NZZ Online.

“One must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy,” he said. “One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore.”

Wealth redistribution? Changing the economic model of the world? De-developing the United States? And here Americans are being told this is about “saving the climate.”

Remember, too, that when Trump withdrew from the Paris agreement, climate alarmists from around the world declared that Beijing was the new global “leader” of the effort to save the climate (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/nov/22/donald-trump-success-helps-china-emerge-as-global-climate-leader)—the same regime that oversees the most CO2 emissions, is building coal plants faster than they can be counted, and that promised to keep increasing CO2 emissions until 2030.

If this is really about saving the climate from CO2, how can the CCP be the new leader? It’s beyond absurd.

Despite all this, the Biden administration continues to intensify (https://www.state.gov/u-s-china-joint-glasgow-declaration-on-enhancing-climate-action-in-the-2020s/) “cooperation” on “climate action” and the Paris Agreement with Beijing, no doubt causing amusement and joy among members of the CCP’s Politburo.

It’s not just China that benefits. In fact, congressional researchers that state-backed Russian energy interests were funding U.S. “green” groups opposed to U.S. energy via a shell company in Bermuda called Klein Ltd.

The regime in Venezuela, too, is laughing all the way to the bank as the Biden administration sabotages U.S. energy and begs the Maduro dictatorship to send oil to America (https://www.reuters.com/world/us/exclusive-washington-pins-easing-venezuela-sanctions-direct-oil-supply-us-2022-03-09/).

To be clear, I don’t begrudge the CO2 emissions of China or anyone else. In fact, many scientists have told me that more of this “gas of life” would be enormously beneficial for the planet and humanity.

Retired Princeton physics professor Dr. William Happer, who served as Trump’s climate adviser, told me years ago at a climate conference we both spoke at that the planet needed more CO2 and that plants were designed to live in an atmosphere with quite a bit more CO2 than the planet currently has.

Plus, human emissions of CO2 make up a fraction of 1 percent of all the so-called “greenhouse gases” present naturally in the atmosphere.

To summarize, if one truly believes that CO2 is bad for the climate, shipping U.S. production and industry to China is the worst possible way to deal with it. Logically, then, the policymakers behind this must have an ulterior motive.

Of course, the CCP loves the Paris deal: They do nothing but build more coal plants to power the industries and factories fleeing America for China as the U.S. government forces the United States to commit economic suicide.

This isn’t just an economic or “climate” issue, either. As the United States is “de-developed,” the economic destruction produces a major threat to national security. A strong military can’t be funded without a strong economy, obviously.

It’s time for lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives to shut down the administration’s “climate” policies that do nothing but expand CCP CO2 emissions and harm the United States.

Alex Newman is a freelance contributor. Newman is an award-winning international journalist, educator, author, and consultant who co-wrote the book “Crimes of the Educators: How Utopians Are Using Government Schools to Destroy America’s Children.” He is the executive director of Public School Exit, serves as CEO of Liberty Sentinel Media, and writes for diverse publications in the United States and abroad.

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[Et Soh]

China’s Tragedy of Errors: Pandemic Redux


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Medical workers arrive with a patient on a stretcher at a fever clinic in Beijing on Dec. 9, 2022. (Kevin Frayer/Getty Images)



Thinking About China (https://www.theepochtimes.com/c-thinking-about-china)
China’s Tragedy of Errors: Pandemic Redux



Ilana Freedman (https://www.theepochtimes.com/author-ilana-freedman)
January 23, 2023

Commentary

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When communist China unleashed the COVID-19 virus on the rest of the world in the winter of 2020, it knew what it was doing. Wuhan, a major industrial city of 11 million people and the capital of Hubei Province, was ground zero for the pandemic. In a level-four laboratory used by the communist Chinese military to develop bioweapons and pursue gain-of-function research, a new virus was released—likely by accident—and opened a Pandora’s Box.

By mid-January 2020, the city was overwhelmed with people who were sick and dying from the virus, and the crematoria were running 24/7. China reported only 3,299 coronavirus-related deaths, with most taking place in Wuhan, the epicenter of the global pandemic. But one crematorium in Wuhan alone received two shipments of 5,000 urns over the course of two days, and overall, the massive number of orders for burial urns ran into the tens of thousands. The government’s reported numbers of deaths were ridiculously low.

From Jan. 3, 2020, to Jan. 11, 2023, China reported to the World Health Organization (WHO) that there had been 10,803,226 confirmed cases of COVID-19, with 33,343 deaths. Yet by mid-January 2023, estimates from multiple cities throughout China suggest that they are experiencing as many as 10,000 COVID-19 deaths daily—per city. An internal estimate was leaked from the government that 250 million people in China may have caught COVID-19 in the first 20 days of December alone. Another leak reported that on Dec. 21, 37 million people were newly infected with COVID-19 across China on that day alone. Compare that to the official number of 3,049 new infections that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) reported for that day. Another report suggested that more than 75 percent of the population is already infected.

The death toll in China was purposely underreported from the beginning. In 2020 alone, the WHO estimated the death toll at 1,813,188 COVID-19 deaths. China claimed approximately 30,000. But the real death toll in China was actually much larger. One startling fact was the disappearance of 21 million cell phones, which every Chinese citizen is required to carry. Did this reveal a much greater death toll than China was willing to admit?

This new epidemic in China raises all the old questions again. Only this time, WHO and governments, now facing the possibility of a new pandemic, are demanding more openness from China. Finally, on Jan. 14, 2023, Chinese officials responded to accusations of lack of transparency. They reported that 60,000 people had died from COVID-19 in just over a month. That still doesn’t match the numbers they have been sharing in private meetings, but it is undoubtedly closer to the truth.

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Hospital workers wheel a body on a gurney in the busy emergency room at a hospital in Beijing on Jan. 2, 2023. (Getty Images)

Learning From Experience, or Not


At the end of January 2020, months after the first infections in Wuhan had brought the city to its knees and just before the Lunar New Year (a long holiday for Chinese citizens, who normally use the time to travel), the CCP intentionally allowed 5 million residents of Wuhan to travel before locking down the entire city, cutting off all roads, trains, and planes in and out of Wuhan. Five million people, many of whom were carrying the virus, were allowed to leave Wuhan and travel internationally to expose the rest of the world to COVID-19, while at home, the CCP confined the remaining residents of Hubei Province to their homes.

This was a crime against humanity that has never been addressed. Chairman Xi Jinping unleashed a deadly virus that could kill millions of people. And that is exactly what happened. The virus spread like wildfire, racing around the globe to virtually every country. An incomplete number provided by the WHO for the COVID-19 deaths during the first round of the pandemic (2020–2021) exceeded 3 million. Still, as of Jan. 15, 2023, estimates of total COVID-related deaths (except in China, whose official numbers have been highly suspect from the beginning) exceeded 6,731,000 people.

It could have been a lot worse, but it was bad enough. The Spanish Flu of 1918, caused by an H1N1 virus, is thought to have killed between 50 million and 100 million people worldwide. This was during the First World War, and it was the war itself and the massive transfer of troops from country to country that accounted for the high number of deaths from this pandemic. By contrast, an analysis by WHO suggests that COVID–related deaths worldwide have been between 16 million and 28.2 million. This number is only an estimate because China, with its population of 1.4 billion, has been massively undercounting its COVID-19 casualties.

China’s Pandora’s Box Has Come Back to Haunt Its Creator


The shutdown of Wuhan in January 2020 was the beginning of the zero-COVID (https://www.theepochtimes.com/t-zero-covid) policy that kept people locked in their homes for months on end, if even one case of COVID-19 appeared in cities of millions. One case could trigger widespread food shortages, medicine, and other essentials. The people were subjected to repeated testing, and homes were commandeered for some, while the residents were forcibly sent to quarantine centers that housed hundreds.

This ended abruptly in December 2022, when a raging apartment fire in the city of Urumqi in China’s Xinjiang region triggered demonstrations in major cities throughout China. That fire killed 10 people, including a three-year-old child. It took firefighters three hours to put the fire out because the government blockade of the building prevented them from getting close to the flames.

The news of the fire spread rapidly, and within hours, the demonstrators were in the streets, demanding the end of the lockdowns and calling for the CCP and Xi Jinping to step down. The demonstrations were unprecedented in a country that had been locked down by a tyrannical government for two years. It worked, but the cure was as bad as the disease.

Within days, the CCP lifted the lockdown completely, and the people were once again free to leave their homes and go about their lives. But because of the lockdowns, a majority of the population had not been exposed to the virus, and new variants struck the Chinese people with a vengeance. The predominant strains of the Omicron variant that are now ravaging the population, BA.5.2 and BF.7, now represent 97.5 percent of the infected population. But unlike the variant now spreading in the United States, this one is deadly to people with no prior exposure or immunity.

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Funeral workers load bodies into vans to be taken for cremation at a busy local funeral home in Shanghai, China, on Jan. 13, 2023. (Kevin Frayer/Getty Images)

As expected, the Chinese authorities claimed that daily COVID-19 deaths were in single digits, but reports coming out of China told a different story. Satellite pictures have captured images of the long lines of hearses in every city, and crematoria have reported being overwhelmed by the flood of incoming dead bodies. Sick patients crowd hospital hallways where bodies line the walls, and there seems to be no end to the dying.

Needless to say, as the virus continues to spiral out of control, China is in a critical situation and is still trying to figure out what to do about it. Xi has been uncharacteristically quiet on the subject, but his policies continue to be Machiavellian. His zero-COVID policy, which he was so proud and so adamant about keeping in place only a month ago, is now in shambles. The street demonstrations that called for his removal must have been a humiliation in a country where saving face is paramount. But this is far from the end of Xi. He still has enormous power, and senior members of his party are rallying around him. But his policies spell great danger to the rest of the world.

China has now reopened to foreign tourists, and travelers can enter the country without quarantine. All they need is a negative PCR result within 48 hours before departure. China also restarted its visa-free policy, which means one can travel to China without applying for a new visa. In other words, China is not only making it easy for the Chinese to travel abroad, but it is also encouraging foreign travelers to come to China.

Even more chilling is the news that after releasing the Chinese people from the long COVID-19 lockdowns, Xi also opened up the Chinese ports for international travel at precisely the same time as he did in 2020. The Chinese New Year falls on Jan. 22 this year, and celebrations culminate with the Lantern Festival on Feb. 5. China is reopening its ports and has begun reissuing passports. This is exactly the same time that 5 million people from Wuhan left the city in 2020 to travel internationally. And once again, they are carrying a dangerous virus.

Xi has learned nothing from recent history. But one question remains: Will the cruelty that Xi continues to inflict on the world turn back on him and destroy the very power structure that he has worked so hard to build? Will his massive mistakes come back to haunt him and bring down his dream of world supremacy? Or will the power infrastructure he created protect him and allow him to destroy the world?

The CCP is about to unleash another pandemic on the world, and this one may be far more lethal than the last. Closing national borders to all Chinese travelers and preventing our own from traveling to China would seem to be only common sense. It must be done—immediately. But the world seems uncommonly devoid of anything approaching such basic wisdom. If so, it’s time to prepare for another storm.

Ilana Freedman is an intelligence analyst with more than thirty years in the field. Ilana has authored hundreds of articles on global threats and the geopolitical landscape. She has written four books on Islamic terrorism, and is currently working on a comprehensive volume on the rise and fall of China.


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Is the West Too Gullible When It Comes to China


The CCP is not a normal law-abiding government




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Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese meets China’s President Xi Jinping in a bilateral meeting during the 2022 G20 summit in Nusa Dua, Bali, Indonesia, Australia, on Nov. 15, 2022. (AAP Image/Mick Tsikas)


David Flint contributor (https://www.theepochtimes.com/author-david-flint)
January 25, 2023Updated: January 26, 2023


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The controversy over Prince Harry wearing a Nazi uniform to a party was repeated recently when a 40-year-old prominent Australian politician, Dominic Perrottet, revealed (https://www.theepochtimes.com/nsw-premiers-apologizes-for-21st-birthday-nazi-costume-before-state-election_4982649.html) that he had worn a Nazi uniform to his 21st birthday party.

A newspaper reader wondered if people would be so outraged if someone had worn a Mao uniform. A good point.

Since President Richard Nixon’s 1971 visit to Beijing, preceded by the Australian opposition leader Gough Whitlam, the overwhelming approach of Western leaders has been to treat the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) as just another normal law-abiding government. They also often treat communist leaders, including the mass murderer Mao Zedong (https://www.theepochtimes.com/t-mao-zedong), with respect and, at times, even awe.

When Mao died in 1976, Australia’s Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser and opposition leader Gough Whitlam led the Australian House of Representatives in the condolence motion that no one, even for a moment, had ever thought appropriate for those other mass-murderers, Stalin and Hitler.

Indeed, when the head of the Irish government Taoiseach Éamon de Valera, called on the German ambassador in 1945 to express his condolences on Hitler’s suicide, this was greeted with widespread international commendation.

What was it about Mao? It was surely not that he murdered more than anyone else. Was it that big business and its political allies realised that by exploiting the downtrodden Chinese and slave labour and with a consequently rising domestic market, a fortune could be made?

Losing their manufacturing, handing over intellectual property or even having it stolen, or becoming dependent on the communists was, apparently, of no concern.

‘Law-Abiding’ Isn’t in Beijing’s Vocabulary


Relations between Australia and Beijing spiralled downwards in 2020 when the previous centre-right Liberal-National Morrison government dared call for an international investigation into the origin of COVID-19.

After all, the world had suffered drastic consequences following the release of what seems to be an experimental virus produced in a Wuhan military laboratory assisted by funding (https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_app/fauci-refuses-to-stop-funding-chinese-research-with-us-tax-dollars_4541209.html) from Dr. Anthony Fauci, such research being forbidden in the United States.


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Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and chief medical advisor to U.S. President Joe Biden, during a hearing in Washington on May 17, 2022. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Added to this was the shocking failure of Beijing to warn airlines, other countries and the World Health Organization of the travel of large numbers across the world at the conclusion of the 2020 Lunar New Year.

An inquiry into this is still needed and should obviously extend to assessing liability for the massive damages suffered.

Each state should then be able to recoup some decent contribution towards those damages from CCP-controlled assets in its jurisdiction.

As to questions of proof, when dealing with recalcitrant law-breaking communists, we can obtain some valuable assistance from the 1947 World Court Corfu Channel Case between the UK and Albania.

Beijing already has a poor record in observing international law, as demonstrated by the 2016 South China Sea Case before the Hague Tribunal, which had ruled that Communist China could not use rocky outcrops—some exposed only at low tide—as the basis for territorial claims against the Philippines.

Rather than insisting on Beijing observing this judgement, President Barack Obama unwisely compromised by accepting Xi’s promise not to militarise the South China Sea.

In imposing sanctions on Australia, Beijing remains in massive breach of international trade law. But the fact that we are dealing with law-breakers does not mean that an international inquiry of interested powers should not go ahead. It would be wrong to assume that damages could not be recovered.

For this purpose, Australia should encourage other countries, especially our close allies, to legislate to allow damages established under a specified inquiry to be available to be recouped from assets under the control of the CCP.

Good legal drafting could ensure that separate proof of the accessibility of assets in each case should not be necessary and that, in the interim, assets are frozen.

Of course, the communists will retaliate, but they are already doing this for no more than Australia’s suggesting an international inquiry.


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Basket of live western rock lobsters in Fremantle in Western Australia. (Trevor Collens/Getty Images)

And why should the people of countries such as Australia, who have suffered so terribly from the unilateral actions of the communists in developing a dangerous virus, in its escape and in not warning of its dangers, especially in the early period?

How Did the West Become so Dependent?


Now, the current prime minister, Anthony Albanese, appears to want to curry favour with the communists.

First, he, initially at least, declined to follow our closest allies in imposing testing on those travelling from China where the authorities could not be relied on to be truthful as to the state of the virus.

Then, boasting that Australia and China are “talking again,” he said: “We are undoing so much of the damage done by the LNP government.”

So, is he saying that the opposition is to blame for COVID and the trade boycott or just for the trade boycott? Is he saying the former government should not have asked for an independent inquiry?

At the last G20 meeting, the prime minister was allowed to shake Xi’s hand while the illicit trade sanctions stayed in place.

Then, he seemed elated when the foreign minister, Penny Wong, was permitted to go to Beijing to pay her respects to one of the regime’s apparatchiks again while the illicit trade sanctions stayed in place.


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Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong (L) meets with Australian Ambassador to China Graham Fletcher at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse in Beijing, China, on Dec. 21, 2022. (AAP Image/Lukas Coch)

Now, he seems to be waiting for a summons from Beijing when the communists will possibly abandon some of their illegal sanctions, but only because they have proven counter-productive.

When it comes to Beijing, a far too common weakness among Western ruling elites is that they seem to have learnt nothing from Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain. At least Chamberlain realised his error.

The Western ruling classes are still trying to treat the brutal Beijing dictatorship as a normal government, and they are still letting their countries become dependent on the dictatorship, just as the German ruling class became dependent on Russia for energy.

So, how could so many in the West be so gullible as to make us so dependent on the communists?

According to some reports, Henry Kissinger actually realised at the time of the 1971 visit that the communists would turn on the U.S. once they had the economic and military capacity to do so.

Gough Whitlam was even more accommodating to the monster, abandoning Taiwan well before the Americans did, at least diplomatically, in 1979.

President Bill Clinton’s unconditional admission of Beijing to the World Trade Organization in 2000 led to the transfer of manufacturing jobs away from the U.S., the forced transfer and theft of IP, and continuing and serious breaches of trade law.

We saw recently how tenuous the hold of the dictatorship is when the Chinese people revolted against the Maoist lockdown policy that was copied, unwisely, by Western politicians.

At some stage, probably sooner than later, communist China will follow the Soviet Union into oblivion, and the Chinese people will be liberated as they deserve.

True leadership emerges occasionally in the West where those of the calibre of Churchill, Reagan, and Thatcher not only make the West great. They do not allow dictators to ride roughshod over the West nor the West to become dependent on them.
David Flint is an emeritus professor of law, known for his leadership of Australians for Constitutional Monarchy and for his tenure as head of the Australian Broadcasting Authority. He is also a former chairman of the Australian Press Council and the World Association of Press Councils.


https://www.theepochtimes.com/is-the...a_5008971.html (https://www.theepochtimes.com/is-the-west-too-gullible-when-it-comes-to-china_5008971.html)


Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party Podcasts:
mp3 (https://mp3mp4pdf.net/ninecommp3.xml) mp4 (https://mp3mp4pdf.net/ninecommp4.xml) PDF (https://mp3mp4pdf.net/ninecompdf.xml)

[Et Soh]

COVID and the 3 Tests of Compliance

https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2023/02/09/Shutterstock_1176799666-700x420.jpg (https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2023/02/09/Shutterstock_1176799666-1200x703.jpg)

(GrandeDuc/Shutterstock)




Jeffrey A. Tucker (https://www.theepochtimes.com/author-jeffrey-a-tucker)
February 9, 2023




Commentary

Audio (https://mp3mp4pdf.net/mgz/e0210pan1.mp3) PDF (https://mp3mp4pdf.net/e0210pan1.pdf)


Jesus in the wilderness faced three temptations from the Devil himself: material comfort, fame, and power. Needless to say, he declined every temptation and passed all three trials.

So too did the couple seeking to enter the order of virtue in Mozart’s “The Magic Flute.” They blasted right through the tests of silence, isolation, and fear. In the opera, much celebration ensues.

Fairy tales too are often framed by three chances. The Miller’s daughter is given three chances to guess Rumpelstiltskin’s name, for example, and I’m sure you can think of other instances.

The final movement of the 6th “Tragic” Symphony by Gustav Mahler features three hammer blows, the third of which was later removed by the composer for superstitious reasons: the fear that the third signifies death. To this day, audiences wait in anticipation to see if the conductor will motion the percussionist to deploy the third or not. When he does not, the blow is even more conspicuous in its absence.

And here we are in year three of the times after the pandemic response sent our lives and those of billions into extraordinary upheaval. To most of us, it seems like a crazy blur of edicts, propaganda, revelations, fear, confusion, division, and shock, so much so that it is hard to keep the history straight. Indeed, many people just want everything forgotten or at least completely mis-remembered.

Daily, we are bombarded by fake history that we know is wrong. We lived through it. Brownstone (https://brownstone.org/) has been accumulating all the receipts: the emails, speeches, edits, threats, impositions, demands, and so on. In the face of all this attempted revisionism, it’s hard to keep one’s bearing.

One way to think about these last three years is a succession of compliance tests: how much liberty and good sense are we willing to surrender to the regime and on what terms? The policies seem to be constructed for just that purpose.

As if to fit the model, they came in three great waves: lockdowns (https://www.theepochtimes.com/t-lockdowns), masks, and vaccine mandates (https://www.theepochtimes.com/t-vaccine-mandates). Let’s examine all three stages and reflect on their demands and terms. It begins to make sense, at least from the point of view of those in control.

Lockdowns


“Thank goodness for the lockdowns; this will end the pandemic.”

The lockdowns hit us hard from mid-March 2020 and onward, imposed as if they were a conventional response to a circulating new pathogen, though they literally had no precedent in history. They were sweeping, closing churches, schools, small and medium-sized businesses, civic clubs like AA, bars and restaurants plus gyms, and even venues that host weddings and funerals. Many states imposed stay-at-home orders. The entire workforce was divided between essential and nonessential, while medical services were reserved for only COVID cases and other extreme emergencies while everything else was shut.

All of this was based on the astonishing announcement (https://brownstone.org/articles/the-day-anthony-fauci-wrecked-american-freedom/) by the Trump administration: “Governors should close schools in communities that are near areas of community transmission” and “bars, restaurants, food courts, gyms, and other indoor and outdoor venues where groups of people congregate should be closed.”

At the March 16, 2020, press conference, not one reporter asked a critical question. Even if this was only for two weeks, as was promised, how is any of this compatible with law and the Bill of Rights? How is it that bureaucracies, without any vote of any legislature, can simply “shut down” an entire country? It was completely bizarre, so much so that most people figured that there had to be some legitimate underlying rationale.

Not everyone went along. Some hair salons, bars, and churches remained open but found themselves pilloried by the media. Then the cops arrived, even SWAT teams, closing them by force. The kids had to stay home too, and moms and dads were forced to leave the workforce to care for them at home, splitting their days pretending to work on Zoom calls while their children pretended to be in school on Zoom too. It was a massive crush of technology and everyone had to adapt.

There was nowhere to go and most American towns suddenly looked like ghost towns. President Trump announced that it would surely all be over by Easter but this itself was something of a shock: Easter was more than two weeks away, so his announcement amounted to extension of lockdowns. His advisers Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx seized the moment and successfully talked Trump into another full 30 days of lockdowns.

These weeks were excruciating. Many if not most people knew that there was something very wrong but it was unclear what. We could no longer meet with friends and neighbors to discuss. Plus many people in our online communities seemed to be all in on the lockdowns, fully believing that this was the way to control and eventually stop a pandemic.

And yet there we were, all of us living in this surreal scene, asked to believe the implausible and give up what we loved the most by deference to a handful of people who said that they knew more than we knew. Those who did not do the right thing were considered horrid and unscientific, insufficiently credulous toward our betters.

Masks


“Thank goodness for masks; this will end the lockdowns.”

In these early days, there was no thought put into universal masking. It was never part of our history. There was a moment during the 1918 pandemic that one city tried masks but not only did it not work; it produced a massive political revolt. Not since then had masks for the general population ever been tried. Plenty of countries in the Far East had used masks to filter out smog on bad days but that problem had never been something that affected the US enough to make them a norm.

Plus, in those days, the experts told everyone not to bother with them. The masks should be saved for medical personnel. In any case, they don’t really work to control the spread of viruses like this. They are not the equivalent of using condoms to avoid infection from AIDS. A respiratory virus is something else entirely, and we are a people informed by evidence and science. The evidence was nowhere in sight that masks achieve any real purpose.

Practically overnight, that advice changed. Part of the deal was that masks were the key to getting out of lockdown. We could leave our home again if only we would wear a mask. For those who don’t like lockdown, now is your chance to leave it behind. You only needed to comply with this second round of edicts. The first round, true, was pretty rough, but who can object to putting a cloth on your face? Surely no one. As Bill Gates said, we wear pants so why not cover our faces too? It only makes sense.

People went along, and we went through a whole season or two in which we did not see smiles. Even the children had their faces covered. If you desire to breathe freely, you could fully expect to be denounced by strangers for daring to reject the demands of authorities. You could get thrown off a plane, and put on a list never to travel again. The hate was apparent everywhere, even in outdoor markets where gatekeepers would sternly instruct you slap that cloth on your face.

Those who resisted the masking demands were—like those who refused the lockdowns—regarded as miscreants and political rebels. I personally found the whole demand of masking to be so preposterous (masking has long been a sign of subservience) that I spoke out against them, only to find myself attacked viciously in many public forums as a grandma killer and a disease spreader. And this came from from venues that previously had celebrated civil liberties (https://www.theepochtimes.com/t-civil-liberties).

This demand for masking was later nationalized once the Biden administration took over. It was to be 100 days of masking to defeat the virus. But by now no one believed anything coming from Washington. We knew for sure that the claim that it was only for 100 days—why 100?—was propaganda.

It eventually took a major court case to end the mask mandate for all travel: buses, trains, and planes. Even that is still being litigated to this day, as the Biden administration claims it has the power to impose such an order by virtue of the quarantine power of the federal government, first granted in 1944.

Looking back, the deal was pretty obvious: you can get out of lockdowns by masking. If you don’t like complying with the first round of tests, here is another test for you: comply with this and all your kvetching about lockdowns can come to an end. Just go along! What kind of pathology do you have to keep from continuing to indulge this pointlessly rebellious habit? You are probably a conspiracy theorist or QAnon or hanging around people from the radical right.

Just do what you are told and then everything will be fine. Things are not fine because you irrationally cling to your “freedumb.”

Of course, the government broke the deal. Masking didn’t really end the restrictions. They continued on anyway. And many are still with us, even the track-and-trace surveillance and restrictions on movement. The signs that demand we socially distance still festoon airports and malls even if everyone ignores them.

Vaccines


“Thank goodness for the vaccines; they will end the lockdowns and the masks.”

Eventually, there came a third test of compliance. This time it was more explicit: if you don’t like lockdowns and masking, the way out is pretty simple: get the shot. If you get the shot, you can travel around freely and you can even take off your mask. This is the way we end this pandemic but there must be broad compliance. Everyone authorized to get the vaccine under the “emergency use authorization” should do it.

New York City shut down to everyone but the vaccinated. Refuseniks could not go to restaurants, bars, theaters, libraries, or any other public house. Boston and New Orleans followed suit. The mayors said that they were keeping the city safe and reviving the economy because the only way to avoid getting COVID was to be around only vaccinated people. We were further told that the unvaccinated were prolonging the pandemic. Their patience was running thin: get the jab or lose your job.

Many had to get it, and thousands were fired for refusing. Millions were displaced because of all this. And this only intensified the campaign, which was then extended to children. Then came the booster and the bivalent. All the while, the news concerning their effectiveness got grimmer. It did not stop transmission, thus removing all “public health” rationale behind the mandates. Moreover, it did not stop infection. You would get COVID anyway. In fact, by virtue of immunity imprinting, you could be even more vulnerable.

The thinking behind the third hammer blow turned out to be a lie too. Your decision to surrender your bodily autonomy to the vaccine that did work did not gain back your freedom any more than the mask or the lockdowns did. All three compliance demands, each predicated on the idea that it would make the virus go away and gain back rights and liberties, turned out to be ruses of one sort or another.

Crucially, the new demand came with the promise that if you just believe in and comply with the newest thing, the older thing that you hated will go away. So what’s the problem? Just give in to this new thing and all will be well.

And yet the vaccine mandate was the most egregious by some measures. If lockdowns were the war, the vaccine mandate was conscription. It took hold of your own body and demanded you allow—via a needle in your skin—in a government-funded and indemnified potion about which you knew nothing. It was the equivalent of drafting young people out of their prime to kill and be killed in a foreign land, and we know how that has ended for states that have tried it: not only riots but revolutions.

So the third test for many was the very act that flipped the switch in many people’s minds. It was a bridge too far and the act that caused millions to rethink everything about the pandemic response and their compliance all along. Even for those who went along with it, the bitterness remains and grows.

From legend and literature, this is how things usually are presented, not with one inviting temptation to go along but rather with three chances to comply, each with assurance that all will be well if we just give up our recalcitrant desire to think and act for ourselves. At each stage, every one of us faces enormous pressure, and not just from government but also from family, friends, and coworkers.

“If you are the Son of God, command that these stones become bread” ~ material comfort
“If You are the Son of God, throw yourself down” ~ fame and social approval
“All these things I will give you if you will fall down and worship me” ~ power

The three tests in this case turned out to be more like the hammer blows in Mahler’s symphony, signifiers of disaster and death, in this case pertaining to our rights and liberties.

Sure enough, even now, the remnants of all three are still with us. There are still capacity restrictions in place as remnants of the original lockdowns. Masks are still required in many cities and venues. And the vaccine mandates are still being enforced. And the pandemic emergency is still in place and will be for several more months.

Just as one is ending, you can be sure that another is beginning. The New York Times just sounded the alarm about H5N1 bird flu, which they say could kill half of humanity if it crosses over from birds to humans. And we can be certain that the three trials will be visited upon us again.

Have we learned? What will be our response in the next round of trials?

From the Brownstone Institute (https://brownstone.org/articles/covid-and-the-three-tests-of-compliance/)


Jeffrey A. Tucker is the founder and president of the Brownstone Institute (https://brownstone.org/), and the author of many thousands of articles in the scholarly and popular press, as well as 10 books in five languages, most recently “Liberty or Lockdown.” He is also the editor of The Best of Mises. He writes a daily column on economics for The Epoch Times and speaks widely on the topics of economics, technology, social philosophy, and culture.


https://www.theepochtimes.com/covid-...e_5046458.html (https://www.theepochtimes.com/covid-and-the-3-tests-of-compliance_5046458.html)

The Ominous CCP Factor & Destructive CCP Model
Podcasts: MP3 (https://mp3mp4pdf.net/pandemic-theccpfactormp3.xml) MP4 (https://mp3mp4pdf.net/pandemic-theccpfactormp4.xml) PDF (https://mp3mp4pdf.net/pandemic-theccpfactorpdf.xml)

Audio Playlist (https://mp3mp4pdf.net/2022/12/22/audio-playlist-the-ominous-ccp-factor/)

[Et Soh]

Owning America

The CCP’s security and intelligence agents have had access to the highest levels of the US government for decades

https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2023/02/16/GettyImages-1454470635-700x420.jpg (https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2023/02/16/GettyImages-1454470635-1200x800.jpg)

The sun sets over the U.S. Capitol building in Washington on Jan. 5, 2023. (Nathan Howard/Getty Images)


By James Gorrie (https://www.theepochtimes.com/author-james-gorrie)
February 23, 2023


Commentary Audio (https://mp3mp4pdf.net/mgz/e0224own.mp3) PDF (http://mp3mp4pdf.net/e0224own.pdf)


Who would’ve imagined that a Chinese military surveillance balloon (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-64564549) could cross the North American continent from Alaska to beyond the Atlantic coast of South Carolina unmolested by American military response?

But that’s exactly what happened under the Biden administration. Given the Biden family’s alleged extensive business ties (https://nypost.com/2023/02/16/biden-says-press-impolite-stomps-off-over-familys-china-biz/) to China (https://www.grassley.senate.gov/news/news-releases/fbi-possesses-significant-impactful-voluminous-evidence-of-potential-criminality-in-biden-family-business-arrangements), it shouldn’t surprise anyone.

One can’t help but wonder, if that balloon had been of Russian origin rather than Chinese, would it have gotten the Nord Stream 2 pipeline treatment (https://www.theepochtimes.com/john-kirby-denies-allegation-white-house-blew-up-nord-stream-pipelines_5070926.html?ea_src=ai&ea_med=search) as soon as it crossed into Alaskan airspace?

CCP (https://www.theepochtimes.com/t-ccp) Deeply Embedded in America


By all appearances, China can do what it wants with minimal, if any, U.S. response. The inescapable fact is that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its intelligence arm, the Ministry of State Security (MSS), are deeply embedded in our media, political, and military establishments.

Why wouldn’t they be?

The United States has been the primary target of the CCP for a long time. Contrary to what the Council on Foreign Relations (https://www.cfr.org/article/chinas-growing-attempts-influence-us-politics) (CFR) would have us believe in a recent piece that “Beijing’s heightened efforts in the United States are relatively new,” it just isn’t so. The CCP has been running freely in the United States for decades, successfully targeting the highest levels of the American government (https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/campfin/background.htm).

It may be old news, but given current events, it bears repeating.

Clinton Administration and China


The Clinton administration is allegedly responsible (https://capitalresearch.org/article/flashback-bill-clinton-gave-china-missile-technology/) for much of the technological advancements the Chinese have made over the past 25 years. In exchange for millions of dollars in alleged illegal campaign funding provided to the 1996 Clinton campaign (https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/campfin/background.htm) by China’s military and intelligence services, then-President Bill Clinton (https://www.theepochtimes.com/t-bill-clinton) gave Beijing access to technologies that enabled China’s rapid ascent into a nuclear-armed adversary of the United States.

Clinton allegedly relaxed security (https://capitalresearch.org/article/flashback-bill-clinton-gave-china-missile-technology/) measures that allowed Chinese agents access to multiple militarily significant technologies. According to The Wall Street Journal in 1998, “Beijing has stolen U.S. design data for nearly all elements needed for a major nuclear attack on the U.S., such as advanced warheads, missiles, and guidance systems.”

But wait; there’s more.

https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2021/11/09/Bill-Clinton-1200x784.jpg (https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2021/11/09/Bill-Clinton-1200x784.jpg)
U.S. President Bill Clinton signs the U.S.-China Trade Relations Act of 2000 during a ceremony on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington on Oct. 10, 2000. With him are (left to right): Sen. William Roth (R-Del.), U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, U.S. Trade Ambassador Charlene Barshefsky, Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, and Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.). (Mario Tama/AFP via Getty Images)

Clinton also allegedly gave China a 20-year quantum leap (https://capitalresearch.org/article/flashback-bill-clinton-gave-china-missile-technology/) in technological advancement by waiving export bans on supercomputers that are crucial for nuclear weapons development and missile guidance systems. A Washington Post editorial noted that “in the first three quarters of 1998, nine times as many [supercomputers] were exported [to China] as during the previous seven years.”

Get the picture?

Chinese influence, if not outright control, over many of our top political leaders was in full swing by 1996. It went on from there by targeting other members of Congress (https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/campfin/background.htm) for influence and control in 1998.

But today, not only does the MSS has a long record of penetrating U.S. intelligence agencies (https://prosperousamerica.org/why-the-cia-is-increasingly-worried-about-chinas-moles/), such as the CIA (https://securityboulevard.com/2019/05/chinas-cia-penetration-jerry-lee-pleads-guilty/) and the FBI (https://news.clearancejobs.com/2020/08/18/chinas-mss-uses-alexander-ma-to-penetrate-fbi/), among others, but Beijing has also successfully hollowed out (https://moderndiplomacy.eu/2022/07/25/chinese-penetration-and-its-destruction-of-all-american-spy-networks-on-the-chinese-territory/) U.S. spy activities in China.

How that came to be is a question that’s worth pursuing on its own.

Influencing American Public Opinion and Elections


In the meantime, the CCP also enjoys unprecedented influence (https://freedomhouse.org/country/united-states/beijings-global-media-influence/2022#AVENUES-OF-INFLUENCE) over information in the United States. It dominates all Chinese-language media in the United States. It has regular “reports” published in major news outlets such as USA Today, CNN, Time magazine, the Los Angeles Times, and Foreign Policy.

Furthermore, the CCP has focused on local elections (https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/heads-fbi-mi5-issue-strong-warning-threat-west-china-rcna36976) in the United States over the past several years to gain influence at the grassroots level of American life. According to a report by the U.S. National Counterintelligence and Security Center released in July (https://www.dni.gov/files/NCSC/documents/SafeguardingOurFuture/PRC_Subnational_Influence-06-July-2022.pdf), the CCP’s focus includes governors, state legislators, and even mayors and city councils.

In short, your last local mayoral election may have been decided for you in Beijing (https://www.dni.gov/files/NCSC/documents/SafeguardingOurFuture/PRC_Subnational_Influence-06-July-2022.pdf), not in your hometown.

The implications of this kind of power are staggering.

Too Little, Too Late?


In April 2021, Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) introduced H.R.2329–Countering Chinese Communist Party Malign Influence Act. The specific purpose of the act authorizes “activities to counter globally the malign influence of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), including CCP attempts to undermine the free and open international order or the sovereignty of the United States or other countries.”

In other words, McCaul introduced the bill because such a bill is needed. But will it be enough?

It doesn’t look like it.

Recall that as president, Donald Trump withdrew U.S. funding and membership from the World Health Organization (WHO) over its deep connections to the CCP and its misguided COVID-19 policies.

But upon taking office in 2021, Biden reversed Trump’s decision (https://www.theepochtimes.com/biden-admin-negotiates-deal-to-give-who-authority-over-us-pandemic-policies_5066631.html?utm_source=Goodevening&src_src=Goodevening&utm_campaign=gv-2023-02-20&src_cmp=gv-2023-02-20&utm_medium=email&est=3dujkdjtFgP%2BI08Rp%2FGFRZ0aLp6DG7G0a9X1jQ2Bkh 9czRdJ2sj6cMhgBHgsuKpEiiM%3D), and the United States rejoined and re-funded the WHO. As of Feb. 18 this year, the Biden administration is getting ready to sign an agreement with the WHO that could effectively eliminate American sovereignty (https://www.theepochtimes.com/biden-admin-negotiates-deal-to-give-who-authority-over-us-pandemic-policies_5066631.html?utm_source=Goodevening&src_src=Goodevening&utm_campaign=gv-2023-02-20&src_cmp=gv-2023-02-20&utm_medium=email&est=3dujkdjtFgP%2BI08Rp%2FGFRZ0aLp6DG7G0a9X1jQ2Bkh 9czRdJ2sj6cMhgBHgsuKpEiiM%3D).

The reality is that the CCP’s influence over America’s leaders, institutions, and culture is not as bad as it seems.

It’s much worse (https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/heads-fbi-mi5-issue-strong-warning-threat-west-china-rcna36976).

https://www.theepochtimes.com/owning...a_5077188.html (https://www.theepochtimes.com/owning-america_5077188.html)

Red Dragon Menacing (https://mp3mp4pdf.net/audio-playlist-red-dragon-menacing/)(Playlist)

[Et Soh]

Why Legislators Should Reject the WHO’s Proposals for Pandemics

https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2023/04/04/id5171635-Shutterstock_2281613473-700x420.jpg (https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2023/04/04/id5171635-Shutterstock_2281613473-1200x703.jpg)


(Butenkov Aleksei/Shutterstock)

(https://www.theepochtimes.com/author-david-bell)
By David Bell (https://www.theepochtimes.com/author-david-bell)
April 4, 2023

Audio (https://mp3mp4pdf.net/mgz/e0405who.mp3) PDF (https://mp3mp4pdf.net/e0405who.pdf)

Commentary

Democracies and sane societies are built on rationalism and honesty. They may not always exhibit this, but these values must underpin major decisions. Without them, neither democracy nor justice are sustainable. They are replaced by a structure in which the few dictate to the many, and the excesses of feudalism, slavery, or fascism rise to dominance. This is why so many fought so hard, for so long, in defense of these ideals. People in democratic countries then elect representatives to the privileged position of guardians of their freedom.

The World Health Organization (WHO) is promoting a pandemic treaty (https://www.who.int/news-room/events/detail/2023/02/27/default-calendar/fourth-meeting-of-the-intergovernmental-negotiating-body-(inb)-for-a-who-instrument-on-pandemic-prevention-preparedness-and-response) (“CA+”), and amendments (https://apps.who.int/gb/wgihr/index.html) to the existing International Health Regulations (IHR), to increase its power during health emergencies. These proposals also broaden the scope of emergencies to include potential rather than actual harm. The draft treaty suggests a definition of “One Health” that encompasses any occurrence in the biosphere that could impact human well-being. This decision-making power will be placed in the hands of a single person, the WHO Director General. The WHO will require countries to sign on to these agreements to suppress and censor the voices of those who question the Director-General’s dictates.

The two proposals, detailed (https://brownstone.org/articles/amendments-who-ihr-annotated-guide/) elsewhere (https://brownstone.org/articles/what-the-who-is-actually-proposing/), aim to expand an international bureaucracy for health emergencies with an additional annual budget estimated by the World Bank (https://thedocs.worldbank.org/en/doc/018ab1c6b6d8305933661168af757737-0290032022/original/PPR-FIF-WB-White-Paper.pdf) at three times the WHO’s current budget (https://open.who.int/2022-23/contributors/contributor). This program is heavily backed by the WHO’s major individual and corporate sponsors, entities that will directly benefit through the commodity-centered responses that are proposed. However, it will be mainly funded by taxpayers.


This is a new model for the WHO and for public health. The WHO was originally intended (https://www.pandata.org/who-and-covid-19-re-establishing-colonialism-in-public-health/) to serve countries, not instruct them. The proposals aim to reduce individual and national decision-making power, or sovereignty, replacing this with obedience to the WHO’s recommendations. When the WHO Director-General recently suggested that the above was untrue (https://twitter.com/DrTedros/status/1638999083888136214?s=20), he was not reflecting the WHO’s proposals, but a separate, public messaging campaign. In WHO parlance, he was spreading misinformation.

Individual sovereignty and human rights were once central to public health. These concepts are commonly exercised through elected representatives, and through retention of inalienable rights of a person in decisions over their own body. Anti-fascist agreements such as the Nuremberg Code (https://www.ushmm.org/information/exhibitions/online-exhibitions/special-focus/doctors-trial/nuremberg-code) are based on this understanding. These alone are compelling reasons to oppose these WHO proposals. But there are other compelling reasons why these proposals are both ridiculous and dangerous.

Developing a Drug Cartel


Much of the WHO’s funding comes from private and corporate sponsors (https://open.who.int/2022-23/contributors/contributor), who specify how their money will be used. The companies have responsibility to their shareholders to use this relationship to increase profits, whilst individuals are directly invested in companies that will gain from the WHO’s health emergency proposals. We saw this during COVID-19 (https://www.forbes.com/sites/giacomotognini/2021/04/06/meet-the-40-new-billionaires-who-got-rich-fighting-covid-19/?sh=4761285717e5).

A lack of interest from major media, which derive their largest private advertising revenue from the same companies (https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/pfizer-vaccination-ads-news-sponsorships-research/), should not be taken as a reason to ignore it. The WHO’s sponsors seek to profit by it taking control of potentially profitable aspects of health away from representative governments, so that their products can be mandated for use more broadly, and more often.

Undoing Democracy


It is right and fair that all countries should be represented at the World Health Assembly. However, much of the world’s population lives under authoritarian governments and military dictatorships. The current WHO Director-General (https://www.who.int/director-general/biography) was a minister in a dictatorial government. This is fine for an organization that convenes meetings and names diseases. But it is obviously inappropriate for a democratic country to cede authority over its own citizens to such an entity, and to unaccountable international officials subject to conflict of interest, influences, and biases.

Public health responses should depend entirely on a population’s own values and priorities, not that of foreign dictators or their appointees. It would be stupid to give control to those espousing quite opposite values.

Obvious Incompetence


Before entrusting one’s health to others, it is essential to know that they are competent. Despite having previous evidence-based guidelines for pandemics (https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/329438/9789241516839-eng.pdf?ua=1), the WHO lost the plot disastrously with COVID-19. It supported policies that have worsened such diseases as malaria (https://www.who.int/teams/global-malaria-programme/reports/world-malaria-report-2022), tuberculosis (https://www.who.int/teams/global-tuberculosis-programme/tb-reports/global-tuberculosis-report-2022) and malnutrition, (https://www.unicef.org/press-releases/world-virtual-tinderbox-catastrophic-levels-severe-malnutrition-children) and increased debt and poverty (https://www.devex.com/news/world-bank-says-debt-crisis-in-lower-income-nations-is-alarming-102662) to lock in poorer health for the next generation. These policies increased child labor (https://www.unicef.org/media/70261/file/COVID-19-and-Child-labour-2020.pdf) and facilitated the rape of millions of girls forced into child marriage (https://data.unicef.org/resources/covid-19-a-threat-to-progress-against-child-marriage/), whilst denying formal education (https://www.unicef.org/press-releases/covid19-scale-education-loss-nearly-insurmountable-warns-unicef) to hundreds of millions of children. Sick elderly people were unable to get care, while healthy people were confined at home. They have promoted the largest upwards concentration of wealth (https://wir2022.wid.world/), and its consequent mass impoverishment (https://www.worldbank.org/en/publication/poverty-and-shared-prosperity), in history.

For the past two years, the WHO has embarked on a project to mass vaccinate 70 percent of African populations, despite half the population being under 20 years (https://blogs.worldbank.org/opendata/chart-worlds-youngest-populations-are-africa) of age so at minimal risk, and the WHO’s own study (https://gh.bmj.com/content/7/8/e008793) showing the vast majority had already had COVID-19. This program is the most expensive (https://www.republicworld.com/world-news/us-news/us-to-contribute-4-dollars-billion-to-whos-covax-scheme-g7-total-to-7-dollars-5-cents-billion.html), per year, that the WHO has ever promoted. It is now seeking powers that will enable them to repeat these types of responses, often.

Disdain for Human Rights


Countries adopting the proposed IHR amendments (https://brownstone.org/articles/amendments-who-ihr-annotated-guide/) will accept WHO recommendations as obligatory. The list covered in the IHR includes border closures and refusal of individual travel, isolation of “suspect” persons, required medical examinations and vaccination, exit screening and requirements of proof of testing. These will be imposed on a country’s own citizens when an individual in this organization sponsored by large multinational corporations and wealthy investors decides, independently, that an undefined health “threat” poses a risk to other countries.[For more see PDF]

From the Brownstone Institute (https://brownstone.org/articles/why-legislators-should-reject-whos-proposals-pandemics/)
https://www.theepochtimes.com/why-le...s_5171621.html (https://www.theepochtimes.com/why-legislators-should-reject-the-whos-proposals-for-pandemics_5171621.html)


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https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2020/04/27/20200422-COVID-19-Restaurant-Stockholm-GettyImages-1210662488-700x420.jpg (https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2020/04/27/20200422-COVID-19-Restaurant-Stockholm-GettyImages-1210662488-1200x800.jpg)
People have lunch at a restaurant in Stockholm, Sweden, on April 22, 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic. (Jonathan Nackstrand/AFP via Getty Images)




By Jonathan Miltimore (https://www.theepochtimes.com/author-jonathan-miltimore)
April 7, 2023

Commentary

Audio (https://vs1.youmaker.com/assets/2023/0407/9fc69a82-1db8-4bde-a216-27254a0430f2/audio.mp3) PDF (http://mp3mp4pdf.net/e0408nyt.pdf)


Last week The New York Times published an article that would have been unthinkable a few years ago.

“How Did No-Mandate Sweden End Up With Such an Average Pandemic?” the headline asked (https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/30/opinion/sweden-pandemic-coronavirus.html).


Times writer David Wallace-Wells doesn’t accept claims that Sweden—which drew intense criticism for refusing to go into lockdown in 2020—had the lowest excess death rate in Europe (https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/sweden-covid-and-excess-deaths-a-look-at-the-data/), with just 3.3 percent more deaths than expected, the lowest percentage among OECD countries. But he does concede that “it’s hard to argue on the basis of Sweden’s epidemiological experience that its policy course was a disastrous one.”

This might not sound like much of a concession, but it is.

The Grey Lady reported in 2020 that “Sweden Has Become the World’s Cautionary Tale” for its COVID response, and the NY Times was joined by a chorus (https://fee.org/articles/sweden-once-mocked-for-its-covid-strategy-now-has-one-of-the-lowest-covid-mortality-rates-in-europe/) of media outlets (and President Donald Trump (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-05-01/trump-s-latest-attack-on-sweden-revives-covid-19-controversy)) who alleged Sweden had “botched the pandemic” and amplified the virus.


Today we know this wasn’t the case. And though Wallace-Wells seems to begrudge Anders Tegnell—the architect of Sweden’s policy—taking a “victory lap through the media,” it’s worth pointing out that the epidemiologist received death threats (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-sweden-tegnell-idUSKBN23W22K) for his pandemic response, which looks better with each passing week.

Just how successful Sweden’s approach was is still subject to debate. While Wallace-Wells is skeptical of Swedish claims (https://www.svd.se/a/JQvVnj/anders-tegnell-efter-pandemin-overdodlighet-ger-inte-hela-svaret) that the country had the lowest excess mortality in Europe—he says the data set is imperfect and isn’t adjusted for demographics—it’s clear Sweden performed better than many lockdown nations. World Health Organization data (https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/swedens-death-rate-among-lowest-europe-despite-avoiding-strict/) he references show Swedes had an excess death rate average of 56 out of 100,000—far better than Italy (133), Germany (116), Spain (111), and the UK (109).


Whatever data one chooses, one fact is undebatable: This isn’t what modelers predicted.

It’s important to remember that one of the reasons nations went into lockdown in the first place was that Imperial College London predicted as many as 40 million people (https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/196496/coronavirus-pandemic-could-have-caused-40/) would die in nine months if the virus was left unchecked. Those same modelers predicted that Sweden would suffer 96,000 deaths (https://fee.org/articles/sweden-s-actual-covid-19-results-compared-to-what-modelers-predicted-in-april/) by July 2020 if the nation didn’t close.

That didn’t happen. (The actual death count by July 2020 was 5,700.)


So whether one accepts claims that Sweden had the lowest excess death toll in Europe or merely performed “averagely,” it’s clear modelers were horribly wrong.

While Wallace-Wells doesn’t address these modeling errors, he does highlight the ineffectiveness of government regulations, conceding that “mandates may matter somewhat less than social behavior and the disease itself—and surely less than we want to believe.”

People will continue to debate mandates, of course. They’ll point out that countries such as Finland and Norway had lower COVID mortality than Sweden, ignoring that (as Wallace-Wells also notes) these countries actually had policies less stringent (https://fee.org/articles/how-finland-and-norway-proved-sweden-s-approach-to-covid-19-works) than Sweden for much of 2020, according to Oxford’s Coronavirus Government Response Tracker. (Neighbors were apparently quick to adopt Sweden’s “lighter touch” approach.)

This doesn’t mean we don’t have clear answers, however. Early in the pandemic, I asked (https://fee.org/articles/could-sweden-s-laissez-faire-approach-to-the-coronavirus-actually-work/) a proactive question: “Could Sweden’s laissez-faire approach to the coronavirus actually work?”



Though Wallace-Wells never quite says yes, he includes a telling quote from Francois Balloux, the director of the UCL Genetics Institute and a professor of computational biology at University College London.

“What the ‘Swedish model’ really suggests is that pandemic mitigation measures can be effectively deployed in a respectful, largely non-coercive way,” writes (https://twitter.com/BallouxFrancois/status/1633243280631644163) Balloux.

This is as close to an admission of “Sorry, we were wrong” as we’re likely to see in the New York Times.

After all, the non-coercive measures Balloux mentions are precisely what proponents of Sweden’s approach, including signers of the Great Barrington Declaration (https://gbdeclaration.org/), had advocated all along. (Wallace-Wells is correct when he notes that Sweden never adopted a “let it rip” approach, as many claim.)

Sadly, most countries instead adopted highly coercive measures, even tyrannical ones (https://www.city-journal.org/australias-crazy-covid-response), believing they had the knowledge to plan society. In doing so, they ignored the warning of Nobel Prize-winning economist F.A. Hayek, who cautioned (https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/economic-sciences/1974/hayek/lecture/) that “if man is not to do more harm than good in his efforts to improve the social order, he will have to learn that in this, as in all other fields where essential complexity of an organized kind prevails, he cannot acquire the full knowledge which would make mastery of events possible.”

This is the biggest lesson of the pandemic: Central planners don’t possess the knowledge to effectively organize society, but they do possess the power to wreck the social order—quickly. This is precisely why Hayek said it was imperative that those with power approach society with humility.



Some people appear to have learned this lesson. Wallace-Wells said it’s “humbling to acknowledge” that mandates simply were unable to do what many believed they could.

Let’s hope others learn this lesson as well—and offer the Swedes and Dr. Tegnell a well-deserved apology.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/the-ne...r_5178997.html (https://www.theepochtimes.com/the-new-york-times-finally-warms-to-swedens-pandemic-response-three-years-later_5178997.html)

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EXCLUSIVE: Leaked Pentagon Report Forensically Dismantled Fauci-Led Natural Origin Study

https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2019/09/12/GettyImages-pentagon-455654967-700x420.jpg.webp (https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2019/09/12/GettyImages-pentagon-455654967-1200x904.jpg)


The U.S. Department of Defense seal is seen on the lectern in the media briefing room at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., on Dec. 12, 2013. (Paul J. Richards/AFP/Getty Images)

By Hans Mahncke (https://www.theepochtimes.com/author-hans-mahncke)
May 16, 2023 Updated: May 17, 2023

News analysis
Audio (https://vs1.youmaker.com/assets/2023/0516/42b92062-78c5-4fad-ab9d-67e8e5ad1a30/audio.mp3?length=5605101&duration=467) PDF (https://mp3mp4pdf.net/PDF/e0517fauci.pdf)


Researchers at the Department of Defense wrote a devastating takedown (https://drasticresearch.files.wordpress.com/2023/05/an-argument-against-natural-covid-19-creation-copy-2.pdf) of the Proximal Origin study, (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9) which was used by Dr. Anthony Fauci as proof that the COVID-19 virus had come from nature.


The takedown, dated May 26, 2020, was written in the form of a working paper called “Critical analysis of Andersen et al. The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2.” It was authored by Commander Jean-Paul Chretien (https://www.darpa.mil/staff/cdr-jean-paul-chretien), a Navy doctor working at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and Dr. Robert Cutlip (https://govschools.wv.gov/GHA/Documents/2022%20-%20GHA%20Student%20Handbook.pdf), a research scientist at the Defense Intelligence Agency. The paper came to light on May 15, when it was leaked to the public via virus origins search group DRASTIC (https://drasticresearch.files.wordpress.com/2023/05/an-argument-against-natural-covid-19-creation-copy-2.pdf) (Decentralized Radical Autonomous Search Team Investigating COVID-19).

The working paper forensically dismantles the natural origin case made in Proximal Origin and concludes, “The arguments that Andersen et al. use to support a natural-origin scenario for SARS-CoV-2 are based not on scientific analysis, but on unwarranted assumptions.”

The existence of this internal Pentagon paper is crucial, as it proves that government officials were well aware in the early months of the pandemic that there was no evidence in support of a natural origin of the COVID-19 virus. Additionally, given the crushing discrediting of Proximal Origin, Pentagon officials would also have been aware of Fauci’s efforts to seed a false narrative about the origin of COVID-19.

Proximal Origin was initially conceived by Fauci during a secret teleconference held on Feb. 1, 2020. The ostensible purpose (https://www.theepochtimes.com/behind-the-scenes-of-the-natural-origin-narrative_4023181.html) of the teleconference was to deflect attention from a possible lab origin of COVID-19 and to shift the focus to a natural origin theory. Fauci directed (https://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/2023.03.05-SSCP-Memo-Re.-New-Evidence.Proximal-Origin.pdf) a number of scientists, led by Kristian Andersen of Scripps Research and Robert Garry of Tulane Medical School, to pen a study that could be used to discredit the lab leak theory. Despite being directly involved (https://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/2023.03.05-SSCP-Memo-Re.-New-Evidence.Proximal-Origin.pdf) in the inception of the paper, as well as in shaping its arguments, Fauci’s role was concealed from the public. Fauci later bestowed (https://www.theepochtimes.com/scientists-who-were-instrumental-to-covid-19-natural-origins-narrative-received-over-50-million-in-niaid-funding-in-2020-2021_4220769.html) Andersen and Garry with lavish taxpayer-funded grants.

The defects in Proximal Origin were immediately noticed (https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23206190-nih_foia_56403_10272022_amended_response_redacted) by reviewers at science journal Nature. This fact only became known late last year from emails obtained via the Freedom of Information Act by independent journalist Jimmy Tobias. However, with the help (https://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/2023.03.05-SSCP-Memo-Re.-New-Evidence.Proximal-Origin.pdf) of Jeremy Farrar, who now is the chief scientist of the World Health Organization and who had helped (https://www.theepochtimes.com/behind-the-scenes-of-the-natural-origin-narrative_4023181.html) Fauci shape the natural origin narrative, Proximal Origin was accepted for publication in Nature Medicine on March 17, 2020. It boldly concluded that no “laboratory-based scenario is plausible.”


On April 17, 2020, President Donald Trump confirmed (https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/4/17/trump-aides-flirt-with-china-lab-coronavirus-conspiracy-theory) that the COVID-19 pandemic likely started in a Wuhan laboratory in China. On the same day, while attending a White House press conference, Fauci categorically dismissed the possibility of a lab origin of COVID-19, citing Proximal Origin as corroboration. Fauci feigned independence, telling reporters that he could not recall the names of the authors. What was not known at the time was that Fauci not only knew the authors well, but had personally led the effort to have Proximal Origin written.

Proximal Origin became the media’s go-to natural origin authority, repeating Fauci’s claim that the paper provided dispositive proof that COVID-19 had come out of nature. It also became the most-read (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7926455/) article on COVID-19 and one of the most cited academic papers of all time.

Yet, while the public was being told by Fauci and the media that Proximal Origin had settled the origin debate, Pentagon researchers came to a very different conclusion.


https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2023/05/10/id5256622-GettyImages-1397749551-1200x800.jpg

National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci waits for the beginning of a hearing before the Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, and Related Agencies of Senate Appropriations Committee at Dirksen Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill in Washington on May 17, 2022. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Chretien and Cutlip found that COVID-19’s features, which Proximal Origin ascribed to natural evolution, were actually “consistent with another scenario: that SARS-CoV-2 was developed in a laboratory, by methods that leading coronavirus researchers commonly use to investigate how the viruses infect cells and cause disease, assess the potential for animal coronaviruses to jump to humans, and develop drugs and vaccines.”

One of those features is COVID-19’s furin cleavage site, which makes the virus particularly infectious in humans. This feature has never been observed in any naturally occurring betacoronaviruses. Proximal Origin claimed that since this feature was not part of any known laboratory-generated virus, it had to have arisen through a “natural evolutionary process.” As Chretien and Cutlip point out, this argument is “not based on scientific analysis but on an assumption that the prior work would have been published if it had been done.”

According to the Pentagon report, a similar argument made in Proximal Origin about COVID-19’s receptor binding domain, the part of a virus that allows it to dock to cells in humans or animals, was “not a scientific argument but rather an assumption of intent and methodology for a hypothesized scientist.”

The Pentagon report also highlights a major logical flaw in Proximal Origin in that it relies on a lack of publications about particular aspects of coronavirus engineering as a reason to conclude that such engineering did not take place. For instance, Proximal Origin claims that “the genetic data irrefutably show that SARS-CoV-2 is not derived from any previously used virus backbone.” As Chretien and Cutlip point out, “The absence of a publication does not mean that the research was not done.”

In what is perhaps the most notable portion of the Chretien and Cutlip paper, the authors note the collaboration between Ralph Baric of the University of North Carolina, a pioneer of gain-of-function experiments, and Shi Zhengli, the director of the Wuhan Institute of Virology. As Chretien and Cutlip point out, Baric and Shi carried out an experiment in 2015 that mirrored how the COVID-19 virus would have been engineered in a laboratory. The direct link between the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the know-how needed to make COVID-19 was not mentioned in Proximal Origin.

While Chretien and Cutlip did not offer a definitive answer on the origin of COVID-19, they concluded that none of the arguments in Proximal Origin lessened the plausibility of a laboratory origin. Proximal Origin claimed to have done the exact opposite.

Given the sweeping nature of the takedown of Proximal Origin, the question is why the public was not told about the Pentagon’s paper, which was fully paid for by taxpayers?

Instead, the Pentagon, which was led at the time by Trump appointee Mark Esper, allowed Fauci’s false origin narrative to fester. One of the two authors, Cutlip, left the Department of Defense in 2021. The circumstances of his departure are not known. Cutlip’s bio states that he is currently a visiting professor at Fairmont State University in West Virginia. The bio also states that Cutlip was part of “the Corona Virus Task Force, providing intelligence to the President of the United States.” It is not known whether Cutlip shared his insights with either Trump or President Joe Biden.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/exclus...y_5269475.html (https://www.theepochtimes.com/exclusive-leaked-pentagon-report-forensically-dismantled-fauci-led-natural-origin-study_5269475.html)

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