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Pelosi’s visit was a wake up call for China: Appeasing the US will never work

By Timur Fomenko | Samizdat | August 10, 2022

China’s announcement that it was suspending eight channels for cooperation and dialogue with the US following House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taipei appears to mark a break with the country’s previously overly indulgent approach to Washington’s caprice. The Americans’ reaction, meanwhile, was as predictable as it was revealing.

Washington unsurprisingly condemned the cutting of ties and insisted it did nothing wrong in giving the go-ahead for Pelosi’s visit.

Such a reaction might tell us a few things about US President Joe Biden’s China policy as a whole. In short, it can be described as ‘having your cake and eating it’. The US believes it can get away with treating China as an enemy in most areas but still selectively solicit cooperation in the pursuit of US interests in others. This stems from the unilateralist nature of American foreign policy, which strives to maximize its own advantages at all costs and never offer concessions in negotiations with adversaries.

But finally, the US went too far, and China has made clear that it has now had enough. Cooperation can now only be conditional on respecting China’s core interests. Some say this has been long overdue.

Why so? Because for a long time, China was perhaps way too patient with the United States. As Washington continually meted out malice, Beijing still believed the relationship could somehow be salvaged, repaired or rekindled, and kept showing the Americans good will they didn’t deserve.

China believed engagement was the answer. This is a product of the country’s post-Deng Xiaoping foreign policy doctrine, which above all emphasizes stability and taking only calculated risks. China reasoned that its development and rise would be jeopardized if it confronted the hegemon that sought to contain it.

This idea was great in the 1980s and 1990s, when China was not a threat to the US, and the Americans believed it was destined to liberalize. But that ‘end of history’ world doesn’t exist anymore.

And China has been slow to respond to that – meaning that its foreign-policy assumptions have recently led it to make strategic missteps again and again. During the first year of the Trump administration, Beijing decided to engage with Trump and give him what he wanted on the issue of North Korea, rolling out the red carpet for him in the Forbidden City, believing it would temper the feared anti-China turn his administration had promised previously.

It didn’t work. Once Trump got what he wanted from Xi on North Korea sanctions, he commenced his anti-China foreign policy the following year in 2018. He unleashed the trade war, he blacklisted Huawei and scores of other Chinese companies, while his administration rolled out the Xinjiang narrative to taint China’s engagement with the West.

But China still held firm to engagement, focusing on negotiating a trade deal with Trump. This seemed to work in January 2020. Then Covid-19 came, hitting the US hard, and the Trump administration’s hostility to China went off the charts. The opportunity was taken to permanently shift US foreign policy into an adversarial cold-war mode.

What did Beijing do? Seeing an election on the horizon, it waited. Trump after all, the Chinese reasoned, was just a bad spell, erratic and destabilizing, and the US surely would become reasonable again once he was gone. They decided to wait him out and pursue an all-out effort to engage Biden instead, again hoping to rekindle the relationship.

It was wrong again. The Biden administration not only immediately embraced Trump’s entire foreign policy but actually expanded it. China attempted to engage, but nothing changed and displays of relentless hostility continued. Every meeting the Biden administration pursued with China was accompanied by an announcement of new sanctions both before and after it.

The American rendering of China as new cold-war style adversary was now a permanent consensus and feature of US foreign policy that goes far beyond one man. Worse still, Washington began to ‘multilateralize’ this approach and co-opt allies into joining in.

China, of course, knew this but was naïve or too optimistic in believing the reality could be averted. It was not until late 2021 that it began to ‘wake up’ to this new normal. Yet, it has taken until Pelosi’s Taiwan trip for China to find the strength to come out with “we can no longer have business as usual” but even then, some people still think the Chinese are bluffing, prompting an online meme described as “China’s final warning,” which was a form of ridicule the Soviet Union used against China for issuing ‘final warnings’ it never followed up on.

Yet there is nonetheless a sense that this time things are different. China’s military exercises have been relentless, with claims that they will become ‘the new normal’. That’s because even if China has been duly lenient with the US in the past, it now sees Washington as taking the liberty to trample on the commitments it had taken on to normalize its relationship with Beijing.

If China is forced to back away from its lines in the sand, it becomes an enormous loss of face and political prestige. While economics have also been a primary consideration of China’s foreign policy, the pendulum is now swinging towards the realization that the US has to be confronted, rather than simply lived with. It doesn’t respect China’s interests, only its own.

Therefore, how can dialogue and engagement be unconditional? So far, this bilateral relationship has functioned only on the premise of “Hi China, we hate you, we’re going to accuse you of genocide, we’re going to blacklist your companies, we’re going to build military alliances against you, break our commitments on Taiwan… oh, please help us on climate change… nothing in return.” And China’s patience is apparently at its end.

August 10, 2022 Posted by | Economics | , | Leave a comment

US to Conduct Military Operations in Chinese Claimed Waters

By Kyle Anzalone | The Libertarian Institute | August 9, 2022

Amid unprecedented Chinese military drills surrounding Taiwan, a top defense official said the US will carry out Taiwan Strait transits and freedom of navigation operations (FONOPs) in waters claimed by China.

Colin Kahl, the undersecretary for defense policy, said the Navy is expected to send warships on FONOPS in the coming days. “We will continue to stand by our allies and partners. So even as China tries to kind of chip away at the status quo, our policy is to maintain the status quo with [a] free and open Indo-Pacific which frankly, is what I think most of the countries in the region would prefer,” Kahl said.

Beijing routinely denounces FONOPs and Taiwan Strait transits as the US meddling in China’s internal affairs. The US has increased its military activity in the region under the Biden administration, leading to increased tensions with Xi’s government.

Beijing has carried out several military exercises in the waters around Taiwan since US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi made a high-profile visit to Taipei last week. China views the trip by Pelosi as a violation of the ‘One China’ policy that has been the foundation of the Washington-Beijing relationship for decades.

China currently has 13 warships in waters off Taiwan’s shores. Beijing has taken several other unprecedented steps like sending warplanes over the median line in the Taiwan Strait and firing missiles over Taiwan. A Chinese defense official warned the drills could become real military operations at any point.

Taiwan has responded to Beijing’s war games with its own military drills. Taipei kicked off two days of military exercises involving 700 troops firing live rounds.

Despite the increased Chinese military activity targeting Taiwan, both Pelosi and Kahl defended the Speaker’s trip to Taipei. On Tuesday, Pelosi said the visit was “absolutely” worth it and Kahl claimed, “Legislatures from around the world go to Taiwan. Our Congress is an independent body of our government. Nothing about the visit and visit change one iota of the US government’s policy toward Taiwan or towards China.”

August 10, 2022 Posted by | Militarism | , | Leave a comment

Pelosi’s Taiwan Trip Exposes Foolishness of Interventionism

By Ron Paul | August 8, 2022

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s “surprise” trip to Taiwan last week should be “Exhibit A” as to why interventionism is dangerous, deadly, and dumb. Though she claimed her visit won some sort of victory for democracy over autocracy, the stopover achieved nothing of the sort. It was a pointless gesture that brought us closer to military conflict with zero benefits.

As Col. Doug Macgregor said of Pelosi’s trip on a recent episode of Tucker Carlson Tonight, “statesmanship involves advancing American interests at the least cost to the American people. None of that is in play here. … Posturing is not statesmanship.”

Pelosi’s trip was no outlier. Such counterproductive posturing is much celebrated by both parties in Washington. Neoconservative Senators Bob Menendez and Lindsey Graham were thrilled with Pelosi’s stop in Taipei and used it as a springboard to push for new legislation that would essentially declare war on China by declaring Taiwan a “major non-NATO ally.”

The “one China” policy that, while perhaps not perfect, has kept the peace for more than 40 years is to be scrapped and replaced with one sure to provoke a war. Who benefits?

Foolishly taking the US to the brink of war with Russia over Ukraine is evidently not enough for Washington’s bipartisan warmongering class. Risking a nuclear war on two fronts, with both Russia and China, is apparently the only way for Washington to show the rest of the world it’s serious.

The Washington Post’s neoconservative columnist Josh Rogin accurately captures the mindset in Washington DC with a recent article titled, “The skeptics are wrong: The US can confront both China and Russia.”

For Washington’s foreign policy “experts,” those of us who don’t believe a war with both Russia and China is a great idea are written off as “skeptics.” Count me as one of the skeptics!

During the Cold War there were times of heightened tension, but even in the darkest days the idea that nuclear war with China and the Soviet Union could be a solution was held only by a few madmen. Now, with the ideological struggles of the Cold War a decades-old memory, such an argument makes even less sense. Yet this is what Washington is selling.

The US fighting a proxy war with Russia through Ukraine and Nancy Pelosi provoking China nearly to the point of war over Taiwan is meant to show the world how tough we are. In reality, it demonstrates the opposite. The drunken man in a bar challenging everyone to a fight is not tough. He’s foolish. He has nothing to gain and everything to lose from his display of bravado.

That is interventionism at its core: a foolish policy that provokes nothing but anger overseas, benefits no one in the US except the special interests, and leaves the rest of us much poorer and worse off.

There may be plenty to criticize about China’s government and policies. They are far from perfect, particularly in protection of civil liberties. But have we already forgotten that our own government shut down the country for two years over a virus, and then forced a huge number of Americans to take an experimental shot that is proving to be as worthless as it is dangerous? Let’s look at the log in our own eye before we start lobbing missiles overseas.

Copyright © 2022 by RonPaul Institute

August 8, 2022 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

The Intricate Fight for Africa: the Legacy of the Soviet Union vs. Western Colonialism

By Ramzy Baroud | MEMO | August 6, 2022

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s recent tour in Africa was meant to be a game changer, not only in terms of Russia’s relations with the continent, but in the global power struggle involving the US, Europe, China, India, Turkiye and others.

Many media reports and analyses placed Lavrov’s visit to Egypt, the Republic of Congo, Uganda and Ethiopia within the obvious political context of the Russia-Ukraine war. The British Guardian’s Jason Burka summed up Lavrov’s visit in these words: “Lavrov is seeking to convince African leaders and, to a much lesser extent, ordinary people that Moscow cannot be blamed either for the conflict or the food crisis.”

Though true, there is more at stake.

Africa’s importance to the geostrategic tug of war is not a new phenomenon. Western governments, think tanks and media reports have, for long, allocated much attention to Africa due to China’s and Russia’s successes in altering the foreign policy map of many African countries. For years, the West has been playing catch up, but with limited success.

The Economist discussed ‘the new scramble for Africa’ in a May 2019 article, which reported on “governments and businesses from all around the world” who are “rushing” to the continent in search of “vast opportunities” awaiting them there. Between 2010 and 2016, 320 foreign embassies were opened in Africa which, according to the magazine, is “probably the biggest embassy-building boom, anywhere, ever.”

Though China has often been portrayed as a country seeking economic opportunities only, the nature and evolution of Beijing’s relations with Africa prove otherwise. Beijing is reportedly the biggest supplier of arms to sub-Saharan Africa, and its defence technology permeates almost the entire continent. In 2017, China established its first military base in Djibouti in the Horn of Africa.

Russia’s military influence in Africa is also growing exponentially, and Moscow’s power is challenging that of France, the US and others in various strategic spaces, mainly in the East Africa regions.

But, unlike the US and other western states, countries like China, Russia and India have been cautious as they attempt to strike the perfect balance between military engagement, economic development and political language.

Quartz Africa reported that trade between Africa and China “rose to a record high” in 2021. The jump was massive: 35 per cent between 2020 and 2021, reaching a total of $254 billion.

Now that Covid-19 restrictions have been largely lifted, trade between Africa and China is likely to soar to astronomical levels in the coming years. Keeping in mind the economic slump and potential recession in the West, Beijing’s economic expansion is unlikely to slow down, despite the obvious frustration of Washington, London and Brussels. It ought to be said that China is already Africa’s largest trade partner, and by far.

Russia-China-Africa’s strong ties are paying dividends on the international stage. Nearly half of the abstentions in the vote on United Nations Resolution ES-11/1 on 2 March, condemning Russia’s military action in Ukraine, came from Africa alone. Eritrea voted against it. This attests to Russia’s ability to foster new alliances on the continent. It also demonstrates the influence of China – Russia’s main ally in the current geopolitical tussle – as well.

Yet, there is more to Africa’s position than mere interest in military hardware and trade expansion. History is most critical.

In the first ‘scramble for Africa’, Europe sliced up and divided the continent into colonies and areas of influence. The exploitation and brutalisation that followed remain one of the most sordid chapters in modern human history.

What the Economist refers to as the ‘second scramble for Africa’ during the Cold War era was the Soviet Union’s attempt to demolish the existing colonial and neo-colonial paradigms established by western countries throughout the centuries.

The collapse of the Soviet Union over three decades ago changed this dynamic, resulting in an inevitable Russian retreat and the return to the uncontested western dominance. That status quo did not last for long, however, as China and, eventually, Russia, India, Turkiye, Arab countries and others began challenging western supremacy.

Lavrov and his African counterparts fully understand this context. Though Russia is no longer a Communist state, Lavrov was keen on referencing the Soviet era, thus the unique rapport Moscow has with Africa, in his speeches. For example, ahead of his visit to Congo, Lavrov said in an interview that Russia had “long-standing good relations with Africa since the days of the Soviet Union.”

Such language cannot be simply designated as opportunistic or merely compelled by political urgency. It is part of a complex discourse and rooted superstructure, indicating that Moscow – along with Beijing – is preparing for a long-term geopolitical confrontation in Africa.

Considering the West’s harrowing colonial past, and Russia’s historic association with various liberation movements on the continent, many African states, intelligentsias and ordinary people are eager to break free from the grip of western hegemony.

August 6, 2022 Posted by | Aletho News | , , | Leave a comment

Beijing Cancels Meeting Between Chinese, US Defense Officials

Samizdat – August 5, 2022

Beijing has cancelled a meeting between Chinese and US defense officials following US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s recent visit to Taiwan.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry announced that Beijing has decided to cancel bilateral working meetings between US and Chinese defense officials and halt cooperation between the two countries on maritime safety.

The Foreign Ministry also said that China temporarily suspends cooperation with the United States on issues such as repatriation of illegal migrants, judicial assistance, transnational crime, and climate change.

On August 2, US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi arrived in Taiwan on a trip she claimed shows the US’ unwavering commitment to the island, as Reuters put it.

Pelosi’s visit, however, was met with outrage from China, as Beijing regards the island as an inalienable part of the country.

On August 4, shortly after Pelosi’s departure from the island, China launched live fire drills in several areas around Taiwan.

The United States officially supports Mainland China’s claim to the island.

August 5, 2022 Posted by | Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

‘US-led effort to isolate Russia failed’

Samizdat – August 5, 2022

The US-led drive to isolate Russia through sanctions has not succeeded, as half the countries in the Group of Twenty leading global economies refused to sign on, Bloomberg reported on Friday.

According to the publication, senior officials from leading Western nations are surprised by the lack of support within the wider G20, despite their efforts to make the case for restrictions against Russia.

Argentina, Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, and Turkey have not joined the sanctions that were adopted by the US, UK, EU, and their allies Australia, Canada, Japan, and South Korea. Some nations, like China and South Africa, have openly criticized the restrictions. The G20 nations account for around 85% of global economic output.

According to Bloomberg, the reasons for the lack of support include strong trade ties, historical affinities to Moscow, and a distrust of former colonial powers.

August 5, 2022 Posted by | Economics | , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

China to test hypersonic missiles in Taiwan blockade drill

Samizdat | August 3, 2022

The large-scale military drills Beijing has launched near Taiwan in response to US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to the island involve the “use of advanced weapons,” including state-of-the-art hypersonic DF-17 missiles, according to the state-run Global Times newspaper.

The ongoing exercises entail a “joint blockade, sea assault and land and air combat trainings,” the outlet reported on Wednesday, adding that Chinese J-20 stealth fighter jets were also taking part in the war games.

Even before the main stage of the exercise kicked off on Thursday, Global Times called them “unprecedented,” adding that Chinese missiles were expected to “fly over the island of Taiwan for the first time.” People’s Liberation Army (PLA) forces are also expected to enter the area within 12 nautical miles of the island, and could potentially surround the island “entirely,” it added, citing military “experts.”

The Chinese Armed Forces Eastern Theater Command said on Wednesday that the forces involved in the exercise had already conducted “realistic combat-oriented” drills to the north, southwest and southeast of the island.

The drills are expected to run at least until Sunday noon, Xinhua News Agency reported, adding that they will involve “live-fire drills in six large maritime areas and their air space surrounding the island of Taiwan.”

The DF-17 missiles mentioned by Global Times on Wednesday were first publicly demonstrated in action by the Chinese military on July 31, 2022. At that time, an official video celebrating the 95th anniversary of the PLA’s founding featured a launch of what the Chinese media described as a missile resembling the “aircraft carrier killer.”

DF-17, which stands for Dongfeng (East Wind), is said to be using a hypersonic glider as its warhead, which flies five times faster than the speed of sound and has an “unpredictable trajectory.” According to the Global Times, the missile is particularly good at hitting “slowly moving targets” like aircraft carriers.

The news comes as tensions around Taiwan are running high. On Tuesday, Nancy Pelosi visited the island that Beijing considers part of China’s sovereign territory. The House speaker, who is the third in line to the US presidency, has become the highest-ranking American official to do so since 1997. China previously repeatedly protested the move, calling it a provocation.

Beijing reacted to the trip by launching military exercises around Taiwan and warning the US that Pelosi’s visit would have “severe impact” on bilateral relations between Beijing and Washington.

Since 1949, Taiwan has been governed by nationalists defeated in the Chinese civil war, who evacuated from the mainland with US help. The government in Taipei calls itself the Republic of China (ROC) and never officially declared independence. Washington maintains close unofficial ties with the island and sells weapons to Taipei, despite officially recognizing Beijing as the sole legitimate authority in China.

August 4, 2022 Posted by | Aletho News | | Leave a comment

Pelosi’s Taiwan visit has shown China diplomacy doesn’t work – now all bets are off

By Scott Ritter | Samizdat | August 4, 2022

In March of this year, Chinese President Xi Jinping chastised US President Joe Biden on Ukraine, noting that “it took two hands to clap” (a reference to the role played by the US in fomenting the Russia-Ukraine crisis), and declaring “He who tied the bell to the Tiger must take it off,” a Chinese aphorism which basically said it was up to the US to fix the problems it was responsible for instigating.

During that same conversation, President Xi likewise took his American counterpart to task for statements made by US officials–including Biden himself–which suggested that the United States was drifting away from its historical commitment to the ‘One China’ policy regarding Taiwan that had underpinned US-Sino relations for decades. Xi noted that the “direct cause” of the current strain on relations is that “some people on the US side have not followed through on the important common understanding reached by us.”

The US, Xi added, has failed to deliver on virtually all of its promises to China regarding the avoidance of conflict, simultaneously promulgating deep-seated notions of China as an “imagined enemy” while sending the wrong signal to “Taiwan independence” forces, something Xi characterized as “very dangerous.” Continuation of such a policy direction would, the president noted, have a “disruptive impact” on China-US relations.

On August 2, the Speaker of the US House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, made an unannounced stop in Taiwan. This trip was made despite concerted warnings on the part of China that her visit would “lead to egregious political impact,” and that the Chinese military would “not sit idly by” if Pelosi landed in Taipei. The visit of Pelosi, number two in the line of succession to the Presidency of the United States, is a deliberately provocative move which appears to have been done independent of coordination with the State Department, the Department of Defense, or the White House.

I, together with other former US intelligence and national security officials, had advised President Biden to curtail her visit out of concern that it would set in motion events which could result in a Chinese invasion of Taiwan and direct US-Chinese military confrontation. The White House refused to interfere with what it deemed the operation of a separate branch of government.

There can be little doubt that China did everything in its power short of shooting Pelosi’s plane down to dissuade the Speaker of the House to forgo her Taiwan visit. From the standpoint of national credibility, China literally put it all on the line. For China to do nothing in the face of what is an obvious provocation on the part of the US, through Pelosi, is not a probable outcome.

The question now is what will China do? The current diplomacy card has, for all intents and purposes, been exhausted. While China has imposed certain economic sanctions on Taiwan, the reality is the sanctions card, as wielded by China, is insufficient to the task of responding to the Pelosi provocation.

This leaves a military response.

China has already engaged in an unprecedented mobilization of military resources, by some accounts assembling more than 40 brigades, along with significant air defense and ballistic missile forces, hundreds of aircraft, and scores of ships. By rough calculation, this amounts to some 250,000 troops, and it doesn’t appear as if the mobilization is complete. China has announced that it will be holding live fire exercises around the periphery of Taiwan, including some that encroach on what Taiwan considers to be its sovereign space, running from August 4, the day after Pelosi’s departure from Taiwan, through August 7.

There is considerable cost, both in terms of fiscal resources and political capital, attached to military exercises of this scale during times of crisis. By mobilizing this amount of military resources, China has created a “use it or lose it” situation, where the military viability of the assembled force dissipates over time. The key question that needs to be answered is will China be satisfied with simply sending a signal to Taiwan and return its forces to their respective barracks once the exercises conclude, or if the Chinese government has determined that a red line has been crossed, and as such orders its military to transition from a live fire exercise to an actual invasion.

The answer to this question may very well rest with any parallel diplomatic track China may establish with both Taiwan and the US. If both Taiwan and the US can provide meaningful reassurances that Pelosi’s visit was not reflective of current US and Taiwan policy, there may be a possibility for China to be satisfied with simply flexing its muscle.

However, the Pelosi visit is itself a byproduct of a policy trend in both the US and Taiwan built on the notion of Taiwanese independence. If this perception cannot be altered, then China is bound through its Constitution to take measures consistent with preserving Chinese sovereignty over Taiwan. This, of course, would mean war.

Let there be no doubt—Nancy Pelosi, by landing in Taiwan, tied the bell to the tiger. It is now up to Joe Biden to take it off.

The question now is whether the tiger will cooperate.

August 4, 2022 Posted by | Aletho News | , | Leave a comment

Chinese firm’s US plans paused over Pelosi

Samizdat | August 3, 2022

China’s CATL, the world’s largest battery maker, will delay a decision on building a multibillion-dollar factory in the US, due to the controversial visit by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday.

Contemporary Amperex Technology Co (CATL) was expected to announce its choice for a site in the US in the coming weeks, but will now wait until September or October, Bloomberg quoted sources familiar with the matter as saying.

It was reported in May that CATL was in the final stages of vetting locations to build electric vehicle batteries that would supply Ford, Tesla and BMW. Potential sites were said to include South Carolina and Kentucky, where those automakers have assembly plants. Locations in Mexico are also reportedly under consideration.

Tuesday’s visit to Taiwan by US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi was strongly condemned by China, which views the island as its sovereign territory. Beijing branded Taiwan and the US “destroyers of peace” on the same day.

August 3, 2022 Posted by | Economics | , | Leave a comment

Taiwan accuses Beijing of air and sea blockade

Samizdat | August 3, 2022

Taiwanese defense officials have accused Beijing of seeking to “invade” the island’s territorial waters and airspace, after China announced a series of “targeted military operations” in response to US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taipei.

Military officials claimed on Wednesday that several exclusion zones around the island, where China intends to conduct live-fire drills and other military exercises later this week, overlap with “Taiwan’s territorial space.” According to the Guardian, a military spokesman accused Beijing of violating “UN rules” with what would amount to a de facto “blockade of Taiwan’s air and sea space.”

Accusing Beijing of waging “psychological warfare on Taiwan and citizens,” Taipei vowed to “firmly defend its national security” and boost its military preparedness to the highest level, while adhering to the “principle of not asking for a war.”

Pelosi arrived in Taipei late on Tuesday despite repeated warnings from Beijing against attempting to visit territory that it regards as an integral part of China.

“The Chinese People’s Liberation Army is on high alert and will launch a series of targeted military operations to counter this, resolutely defend national sovereignty and territorial integrity, and resolutely thwart external interference and ‘Taiwan independence’ separatist attempts,” China’s Defense Ministry spokesman Wu Qian said on Tuesday night, without providing further detail.

In a separate statement, China’s Eastern Theater Command announced joint military drills off Taiwan, live-firing in the Taiwan Strait and missile test-launches in the sea east of Taiwan. According to a map shared by state media, the military drills, set to begin on Thursday, after Pelosi’s departure, will take place in six large maritime areas and their airspace all around Taiwan.

August 3, 2022 Posted by | Aletho News | , | Leave a comment

US Should Withdraw All Nuclear Weapons From Europe: China’s UN Envoy

Samizdat – 02.08.2022

“The US should withdraw all its nuclear weapons from Europe and refrain from deploying nuclear weapons in any other region,” the director-general of the Chinese Foreign Ministry’s arms control department, Fu Cong, said during the 10th Review Conference on the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons at the United Nations.

He went on to say China is ready to cooperate with all countries to strengthen the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT).

“This April President Xi Jinping proposed a global security initiative … Guided by the initiative, China is ready to join hands with all countries to continuously strengthen the universality, authority and effectiveness of the NPT to inject stability and certainty into this era of turbulence and transformation and make a new contribution to world peace, stability and prosperity,” Fu said.

Notably, Fu further stressed that Beijing does not compete with other states in the quantity of nuclear weapons and is committed to the principle of no first use.

“China will under no circumstances be the first to use nuclear weapons,” he said.

The envoy added that China keeps its nuclear stockpile at a minimum level to ensure the protection of national security and does not compete with other countries in numbers and capabilities in this area.

Earlier, Russian President Vladimir Putin said in a greeting to the conference that Moscow always abides by the wording and spirit of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, noting that there could never be winners in a nuclear war and that it should never be started.

For his part, US President Joe Biden emphasized that Washington is now prepared to collaborate with Russia on talks to forge a new nuclear arms limitation agreement that would take the place of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (also dubbed “New START”), which is scheduled to end in 2026.

However, the proposal was met with skepticism by Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy chairman of the Russian Security Council. The former president wondered in a Telegram post whether Russia “even need it,” since the world “has changed.”

Then, he claimed that although things are far worse now than they were during the Cold War, Russia is not to blame.

August 3, 2022 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

China to speed up Taiwan reunification process with comprehensive action

By Yang Sheng | Global Times | August 2, 2022

US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is expected to arrive on the island of Taiwan on Tuesday night according to foreign media reports, with rising concerns and opposition over her trip within the island and increasing military activities by the Chinese mainland, the Taiwan authorities and the US military in the region. Analysts from both sides of the Taiwan Straits said this risky move will totally change the situation in the region, while the mainland will more actively dominate and speed up the reunification process with comprehensive measures including military and political actions, and these actions will let the US and the secessionist Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) authorities feel the pain.

There are many options on the table for China to speed up the reunification process. These could include striking Taiwan military targets, just as the PLA did in the previous Taiwan Straits crisis, pushing new legislation for  national reunification, sending military aircraft and vessels to enter the island’s “airspace” and “water areas” controlled by the Taiwan authorities and ending the tacit cease-fire with the Taiwan military.

Whether Pelosi can make her trip to Taiwan happen or not, there is no reason for China to be nervous, because such a political show will not change the overwhelming advantages, especially the military one, held by the mainland against the Taiwan authorities and the US in the region. Nor will the trip provide any possibility of “Taiwan independence,” and it cannot change the unshakable hard fact that Taiwan is part of China, said experts, noting that what China needs to do is to use this incident to maximize its advantage and keep pushing the reunification process.

Hua Chunying, a spokesperson of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said at a routine press conference on Tuesday that “it was the US who takes the provocative action first and has caused the escalation of Taiwan Straits tension. The US should and must take full responsibility for this.”

Military preparations

Both aircraft carriers of the PLA Navy have reportedly moved out from their homeports respectively amid Pelosi’s possible visit to the island of Taiwan, which media reported could happen on Tuesday evening.

The aircraft carrier Liaoning on Sunday embarked on a voyage from its homeport in Qingdao, East China’s Shandong Province, and the aircraft carrier Shandong on Monday set out from its homeport in Sanya, South China’s Hainan Province, accompanied by a Type 075 amphibious assault ship, media on the island of Taiwan reported on Tuesday.

Foreign commercial satellite imageries obtained by the Global Times on Tuesday also show that the aircraft carrier Liaoning was not in its homeport on Sunday, a Type 075 amphibious assault ship was sailing in the South China Sea on Sunday, and the aircraft carrier Shandong was sailing in the South China Sea on Monday.

Some analysts said that as Pelosi’s aircraft may enter Taiwan’s self-claimed “air defense identification zone” along the east coast of Taiwan after departing Malaysia, the Chinese mainland vessels appeared earlier to get into position and are closely monitoring Pelosi’s route.

A military expert who asked for anonymity told the Global Times that with the participation of the aircraft carriers, the PLA could conduct more effective intercept operations, because it will take longer for fighter jets to be launched from airports in the mainland to arrive in the areas to the east or south of Taiwan island, while the shipboard aircraft will be more flexible as long as the fleets have arrived in the relevant region.

Citing an anonymous source, Reuters reported on Tuesday that several PLA aircraft flew close to the “median line” of the Taiwan Straits on Tuesday morning, and Taiwan-based outlets said two Chinese mainland guided-missile frigates and a survey ship sailed from north to south through Yonaguni Island waters, heading east of Taiwan island.

As of Tuesday noon, flights at airports in several cities in Fujian Province, including Xiamen, Fuzhou and Quanzhou, have been partially canceled, according to Xiamen Airlines, citing air traffic control.

US military forces are also taking actions. Four US warships, including an aircraft carrier, were positioned in waters east of the island on “routine” deployments, Reuters reported on Tuesday.

Aircraft carrier the USS Ronald Reagan (CVN-76) and big deck amphibious ship USS Tripoli (LHA-7), with Marine F-35B Lighting II Joint Strike Fighters embarked, are operating in the vicinity of Taiwan, on the edge of the South China Sea, according to the August 1 edition of the USNI News Fleet and Marine Tracker.

A Pentagon spokesperson told USNI News on Monday that the ships were operating normally in the region and would not detail force protection measures for the visit of the third-highest ranking US official to the region.

Concerns within the island

But there is still a possibility that Pelosi could eventually land on the island due to complicated reasons, as Taiwan media also reported that due to security concerns, the DPP authorities once withdrew the “invitation” to Pelosi, but due to Pelosi’s pressure, the authorities eventually compromised and make arrangement for her trip.

Many Taiwan web users complained how Pelosi could be so arrogant and bossy, to force Taiwan to play in a show with her. “After the show you will go back to the US, but what about the mess you leave here in Taiwan?” said a web user.

Hung Hsiu-chu, former chairwoman of the KMT, the major opposition party within the island, said there are two different views on Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan – one group do not want Pelosi to come and do not know why she would come as this could only add conflicts for the Chinese mainland, the US and Taiwan. Another group think that if Pelosi wants to support Taiwan secessionism, she could let the House pass an act to recognize “Taiwan independence,” so why would she come to the island to create such a big mess?

Some also consider that the US is tolerating Pelosi’s risky move to test the bottom-line set by the Chinese mainland, Hung said, noting that “God bless, hopefully nothing bad will happen.”

Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport received a threatening letter on Tuesday morning which claimed that “three explosive devices have been placed at the airport to stop the US House Speaker’s visit to Taiwan,” media reported. The New Party, a pro-reunification political party in the island, and some civil society groups plan to protest at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Taipei where it is believed Pelosi will stay if she visits the island, according to media reports.

The DPP authorities and the many senior politicians are keeping silent without any high-profile preparation for welcoming Pelosi, as analysts said this reflects the high concerns within the island. Pelosi’s visit is creating great troubles but due to the weak position of the DPP authorities in front of the US, the island must cooperate and has no room to make independent decisions.

What the mainland can do

Chinese analysts said the struggle between China and the US at this point is about dignity and concrete strategic interests, but the latter is much more important, so China will not merely focus on playing a game of chicken and hawk with Pelosi, as changing the whole situation of the region is much more significant and valuable.

The Chinese mainland really knows the importance of “strategic patience,” just like when many people expected that China would crack down on the Hong Kong turmoil in 2019 with force when rioters attacked the central government’s liaison office, but the facts prove that China did not act in that way but eventually realized a land-slide victory to reinforce its governance in Hong Kong. “So this time, China will teach the US a lesson again, as it will use US mistakes to comprehensively change the Taiwan Straits situation, just as it did in Hong Kong in recent years,” said a Beijing-based senior expert on international relations who asked for anonymity.

Wang Jiangyu, a professor of law at the City University in Hong Kong, said China will use this incident to strengthen its sovereignty claim over Taiwan. “For instance, sending squadrons of military aircraft to enter the ‘airspace’ of Taiwan, or sending military vessels to enter the ‘water areas’ controlled by the Taiwan military,” he said.

These are unprecedented acts of declaring sovereignty over Taiwan, and if China can send its signal of determination to effectively contain the provocations made by the US and other Western countries, the situation will be in favor of the Chinese side in the future, Wang said.

Lü Xiang, a research fellow at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times on Tuesday that China’s reaction will not be just a momentary action but will consider the whole security mechanism of Taiwan.

“The Chinese mainland could exercise its sovereignty and rights of control over the airspace on the island and adjacent sea areas around the island, to make sure there will not be another case like ‘Pelosi’s visit’ that could happen again, and to better safeguard national sovereignty,” he said.

Song Zhongping, a Chinese military expert and TV commentator, said based on the experience of the previous Taiwan Straits crisis, the PLA will strike Taiwan military targets but will not directly fire at US targets, so it is possible that the PLA will strike some Taiwan military targets this time as well, and the mainland could also consider speeding up legislation for a national reunification law and even publish a timetable for reunification which will impose real pressure on the US and Taiwan authorities.

August 2, 2022 Posted by | Aletho News | , | Leave a comment

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