Increasingly more foreigners are choosing to not travel to China for fear of being detained:
The dramatic detention of a handful of foreigners in recent years has instilled a deep fear in some people, especially those with politically adjacent occupations. As President Xi breeds a culture of nationalism and forges increasingly hostile relations with Western governments, some fear that if a diplomatic spat between their government and Beijing occurred while they were in China they could become a target.
CNN
You can read more at the link, but depending on ones occupation or viewpoints people should legitimately be concerned about being detained.
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.
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.
Here is another bounty-gate story in Afghanistan:
The Trump administration is working to verify intelligence that shows China offered to pay militants in Afghanistan to kill American troops, a U.S. news website has reported, citing anonymous high-level sources.
“Administration officials across multiple agencies are currently working to corroborate the initial intelligence reports,” which is in the process of being declassified, the Axios news website, which broke the story, reported Wednesday.
National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien briefed President Donald Trump on the reports earlier this month, Axios reported.
But the intelligence the administration claims to have was “thinner even than reports that Russia offered payments to the Taliban to target U.S. and coalition troops, which were never corroborated,” another news website said, citing an unnamed government official.
Stars & Stripes
You can read more at the link, but if the Russians and Chinese were offering bounties they were not very good at it considering there has not been a U.S. troop death due to combat in Afghanistan since February. It seems it would be in their interest to get the U.S. out of Afghanistan and thus out of their geopolitical backyards. If so encouraging the Taliban to comply with the peace terms instead of offering bounties would be in their interest.
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.
The media should stop publishing every wacky claim on the Internet. Who besides wack jobs would believe the Chinese military is massing on the Maine border?:
It may seem like an updated version of the 1966 comedy “The Russians Are Coming! The Russians are Coming!” but there is nothing funny about conspiratorial ravings from the Twitterverse that Chinese troops massed along the border with Maine were schwacked in an airstrike.
Recent posts from a QAnon-backing Twitter handle with nearly 50,000 followers claimed that tens of thousands of Chinese troops had amassed along Maine’s border with Canada and that an F-16 fighter that crashed last week in Michigan was actually shot down — presumably by the Chinese.
Military Times
I know ROK Heads are smart enough to know this is a bunch of rubbish. However, the media continues to have their fascination with the QAnon site and amplifies all their wild claims by publishing them. Before the Internet, newspapers did not amplify the rantings of every village idiot and that is basically what anyone that believes the Chinese Army is massing in Canada is.
It seems the media highlights the rantings of our modern day village idiots as an act of sensationalism to get page clicks. That is why I did not put the link to this article on this posting. I think the rantings of QAnon says more about the state of the modern American media than it does them.
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?
