Category: China

The Chinese government is once again pointing fingers at the U.S. to justify why the Chinese Communist Party should remain solely in charge of China:

BEIJING (Reuters) – China’s foreign ministry said on Friday that seeing the plight of Americans suffering in a severe winter storm that hit the state of Texas this week reinforced a belief among Chinese citizens that their country is “on the right path”.

Foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying made the comments in response to a question from a state media journalist on calls by western countries for an investigation into alleged human rights abuses in its western Xinjiang region.

During her lengthy response, made at a regular ministry news conference, Hua repeated China’s denials of abuse of Muslims in the region, and said that Australia, Canada and the United States had histories of genocide.

But she also contrasted the vulnerability of many Texans with the festive experience of Chinese during the recently-completed Lunar New Year holiday. State and social media in Communist Party-led China frequently draw attention to crises in the United States and other western countries.

“Not to be wanting of food or clothing, not to be hungry or cold, this is the fundamental human right that is the most real,” she said.

“In the meantime in Texas … millions of people found themselves caught in the terrible situation of not having electricity and heating at home, a few tens of people even lost their lives because of this,” she said.

“This gave the Chinese people a deeper appreciation for what is the real human right, and made us believe more strongly that China is on the right path. We are fully confident about our future,” she said.

Reuters

You can read more at the link.

Did anyone expect anything other than a sham investigation by this WHO team?:

The White House on Saturday called on China to make available data from the earliest days of the COVID-19 outbreak, saying it has “deep concerns” about the way the findings of the World Health Organization’s COVID-19 report were communicated.

White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said in a statement that it is imperative that the report be independent and free from “alteration by the Chinese government”, echoing concerns raised by the administration of former President Donald Trump, who also moved to quit the WHO over the issue.

A spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy fired back with a strongly-worded statement, saying the United States had damaged multilateral cooperation and the WHO in recent years, and should not be “pointing fingers” at China and other countries that supported the WHO during the COVID-19 pandemic. (……)

The team had requested raw patient data on 174 cases that China had identified from the early phase of the outbreak in the city of Wuhan in December 2019, as well as other cases, but were only provided with a summary, Dominic Dwyer, an Australian infectious diseases expert and member of the WHO team, told Reuters.

“It is imperative that this report be independent, with expert findings free from intervention or alteration by the Chinese government,” Sullivan said.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link, but if this team was never going to get all the information it needed from the Chinese government it should have never went. Now the Chinese government can repeat the talking point that an independent WHO team found no evidence that the virus was released from the Wuhan lab even though that is not true considering they never received all the data they needed. At least one of the WHO scientists on the trip is not ruling out the lab theory.

The Chinese are already using their new Coast Guard law to pressure the Japanese over the Senkaku Islets:

Chinese government vessels entered Japanese territorial waters near the flash point Senkaku Islands on Saturday — the first time since China passed a new law earlier this month that allows its coast guard to use military force in waters the country claims — including those around the Senkakus.

Two China Coast Guard vessels, including one from its second-largest class of ships, entered the waters around the Japanese-administered Senkakus, which Beijing claims and calls the Diaoyu, around 4:45 a.m. on Saturday, approaching two Japanese fishing boats operating in the area, the Japan Coast Guard said in a statement.

The Japan Coast Guard said it had sent vessels to the area to protect the fishing ships while repeatedly urging the Chinese ships to leave the area. Two other Chinese government ships, including one sporting a cannon-like weapon, were spotted in the so-called contiguous zone just outside the territorial waters, it added.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link.

China’s rhetoric continues to increase in regards to its territorial disputes with its neighbors:

Under Chairman-for-life Xi Jinping, Beijing’s belligerent rhetoric has been scaling new heights.

“Chinese people don’t want war, but we have territorial disputes with several neighbouring countries instigated by the US to confront China,” the Communist Party’s Global Times propaganda service declared in September.

Again, neighbouring countries would disagree over the identity of the instigator.

China has sea disputes with the Philippines, Vietnam, Japan, Malaysia, Indonesia, Brunei, South Korea, Singapore and Taiwan. It has land disputes with Russia, India, Nepal, Bhutan, Laos, Mongolia, Tibet and Myanmar.

But the intended audience isn’t those neighbours. It’s the rest of the world.

It wants to plant the seed of plausible deniability in the minds of the international community.

“First, we must make it clear that the other side, not China, is the one that breaks the status quo,” Communist Party appointed editor Hu Xijin states. “Second, we need to make it clear that the other side is the provocateur in a complex situation.”

He goes on to argue that any scenario must be couched in such a way as to justify China’s behaviour. That way “a just war can be started in an upright manner”.

News.com.au

You can read more at the link, but analysts believe that it is more likely than not that China will eventually use their military to enforce territorial gains. What is going on now is that they are trying to set conditions to where it looks like they are not the aggressors. That is why the U.S. and its allies have to be careful to not give the Chinese their rationale for a “Just War”.

This is complicated by Beijing’s use of paramilitaries, most notably their militia fishing boats that are used to provoke confrontations that Beijing can then use as propaganda domestically that country X is picking on the poor Chinese fishing boat who is just trying to make a living.

Here is the future of warfare:

A drone has been converted into a flying flamethrower in central China in a fiery campaign to eradicate more than 100 wasp nests.

Blue Sky Rescue, a volunteer group that conducts search and rescue and other emergency work, have teamed up with villagers in Zhong county near the city of Chongqing.

They raised 80,000 yuan ($12,200) to buy a drone and equip it with a gasoline tank and an arm-length nozzle.

Videos released by Blue Sky show a recent mission by the six-arm drone. It hovers above a hive as large as a suitcase before swooping down. The drone operator flips the ignition switch, and the drone spits bursts of fire onto the hive.

Associated Press

You can read more at the link, but image in a swarm of drones equipped with flamethrowers coming at dismounted U.S. troops.

The classic Chinese honey trap which people keep falling for:

A woman suspected of being a Chinese spy slept with at least two US mayors and got close to numerous Bay Area politicians in a years-long intelligence campaign directed at influencing American officials early in their careers, Axios reported on Tuesday.

Fang Fang, also known as Christine Fang, was heavily involved in Bay Area and national US politics from 2011 to 2015, the outlet reported.

Two US representatives Fang reportedly fundraised for — Eric Swalwell and Tulsi Gabbard — both ran as 2020 Democratic presidential candidates.

Business Insider

Note to old guys in positions of influence, if some young, hot Chinese woman wants to sleep with you, it is not because she wants to practice English. Yes that really was her excuse that people believed:

FBI surveillance also caught her having intercourse with an Ohio mayor in a car. Apparently, when the mayor asked her why she was into him, she told him it was because she wanted to improve her English.

NY Magazine

China’s maximum pressure campaign on Australia is continuing:

Australia on Monday summoned the Chinese ambassador and demanded an apology after a Chinese Foreign Ministry official tweeted a graphic, computer-generated illustration of a grinning Australian soldier holding a knife to the throat of an Afghan child to criticize Australia’s involvement in the war-torn country.

Zhao Lijian, the most prominent of Beijing’s outspoken “wolf warrior” diplomats, was referring in the tweet to an Australian inquiry into alleged war crimes by its soldiers in Afghanistan. As China-Australia relations have plummeted this year, Zhao has sharply criticized Australia in both its economic dealings and its conduct in Afghanistan. Russia, too, has cited Afghanistan as an example of the West’s failings and hypocrisy on the global stage.

An Australian government report, published Nov. 19 after a four-year probe, found “credible information” that 25 special forces soldiers unlawfully killed 39 prisoners, farmers and civilians over several years. More than a dozen soldiers have been dismissed, and the preliminary findings will now be followed up by a special investigator and could result in criminal charges.

Washington Post

You can read more at the link, but obviously this diplomat has little self awareness considering his country is mass incarcerating and disappearing an entire ethnic group. The Australians on the other hand have identified criminal activity, are investigating, and hold those responsible accountable. This is something we will likely never see happen in China.

By the way Zhao is the same person that tried to blame U.S. Soldiers for spreading the coronavirus in Wuhan. With all the misinformation this guy is spreading why doesn’t Twitter ban or censor him like they have done to conservative Twitter users?