EU-China Relations: “Downward Spiral”

A much-anticipated EU-China Summit, the first since 2020, has ended as both a failure and a success: a failure because the two sides were unable to agree on anything of bilateral importance; a success because after years of kowtowing to China, European officials finally stood their ground. EU-China relations are now on a new footing: Beijing no longer calls the shots.

EU-China relations have long been on a downward trajectory due to a panoply of disputes, including the worsening human rights situation in China, Beijing’s spreading of disinformation to cover up the origins of the coronavirus pandemic, China’s unfair trade practices, and its economic bullying of EU member states.

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Communist China says Nato has ‘messed up Europe’ and warns over role in Asia-Pacific

China’s ministry of foreign affairs has accused Nato of messing up Europe and stirring up conflicts in the Asia-Pacific region, after the UK’s foreign secretary told China it should “play by the rules”.

In a speech at Mansion House in London on Wednesday, Liz Truss renewed calls to boost Nato in the wake of the Ukraine war, and said the coordinated moves to isolate Russia from the world economy proved that market access to democratic countries was no longer a given. Truss also delivered a direct warning to China.

“Countries must play by the rules. And that includes China,” she said.

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Organs of the State – The People’s Republic of China is guilty of large-scale, Nazi-like medical experimentation on political prisoners

I spent my career as a pediatric cardiothoracic surgeon, involved for almost all of it in transplantation. Medicine should be a caring profession, seeking the best for patients, doing no harm, and dealing in truth as the basis of trust. Transplantation might be the apotheosis of human generosity, since one human consents to donate an organ to preserve the life of another, usually unknown to them. Sadly, in some settings this ethical basis has been ignored and organs have been removed forcibly and without consent from prisoners of conscience, many times resulting in their death. Clinicians acting on behalf of the state are often involved, and thus complicit in the crime.

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China and Russia’s ‘Space War’: Where Is The US?

Space-based threats from China and Russia have grown exponentially in recent years, according to a new report on the issue by the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), published April 12.

“Evidence of both nations’ intent to undercut the United States and allied leadership in the space domain can be seen in the growth of combined in-orbit assets of China and Russia, which grew approximately 70% in just two years,” noted Kevin Ryder, DIA senior analyst for space and counterspace. “This recent and continuing expansion follows a more than 200% increase between 2015 and 2018.”

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Female Suicide Bomber Blows Up 3 ChiComs in Karachi Pakistan

Three Chinese nationals and their Pakistani driver were killed in an explosion in the southern city of Karachi, police say.

The blast ripped through their van, injuring at least four others near the university’s Confucius Institute.

Police have yet to determine the cause of the blast – but the separatist Baloch Liberation Army said the van was attacked by a female suicide bomber.

The group opposes Chinese investment in Pakistan, saying locals do not benefit.

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A Churchillian Warning From Shinzo Abe on China and Taiwan

The former prime minister advises abandoning strategic ambiguity.

If there is a “gathering storm” in the Indo-Pacific, Japan’s former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe may be the Asian Winston Churchill. In an opinion piece in the Los Angeles Times on April 12, Abe called for the U.S. and Japan to end strategic ambiguity toward Taiwan. “The policy of ambiguity,” Abe wrote, “worked extremely well as long as the U.S. was strong enough to maintain it, and as long as China was far inferior to the U.S. in military power. But those days are over.” Abe wrote that the U.S. policy of strategic ambiguity “is now fostering instability in the Indo-Pacific region, by encouraging China to underestimate American resolve, while making the government in Taipei unnecessarily anxious.”

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China Lurks Behind Most Crises Facing America

Since the disastrous U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan last August and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, it has felt like the world is on fire.  But in the midst of these attention-grabbing crises, there is an even more pernicious threat facing the United States and the signs are all around us.  Behind most major foreign policy issues lies China.

Take the Iran nuclear deal. Media reports indicate that Iran’s fleet of tankers has ferried at least $22 billion worth of illicit oil to the People’s Republic of China since 2021.  This has provided the Iranian regime with a major source of revenue and raised questions about the Biden administration’s lax enforcement of sanctions.

It is as good an example of China’s duplicity as can be found today.  But it is not an isolated incident.

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China or the USA?

Two recent reports highlight a disturbing trend in the global power dynamic. They are not receiving much attention because of the ongoing war in Ukraine, but China is exploiting this out-of-the-spotlight moment to work smartly at increasing its influence within the Muslim world. Meanwhile, the US is squandering this moment by trying to negotiate a renewed Iran nuclear deal with Russia’s assistance.

At a recent meeting of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation’s Council of Foreign Ministers, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi was a special invitee. It was the first time that a Chinese government official had ever been invited to be present at an OIC meeting. The OIC has 57 member countries, making it the world’s second-largest international organization.

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Biden’s Middle East: Saudi Arabia Embraces China; Will They Topple the Dollar?

Saudi Arabia is considering selling oil to China — which buys more than 25% of Saudi oil exports — in exchange for yuan (China’s currency), according to a recent report by the Wall Street Journal. The move would be unprecedented. Saudi Arabia, ever since its 1974 agreement with US President Richard Nixon, has been selling oil in exchange for US dollars.

The change, if realized, would be significant. The status of the US dollar, including as the world’s reserve currency, depends on its dominance of global markets, especially the oil market, where 80% of sales are done in US dollars. If Saudi Arabia were to break the tradition of pricing its oil in dollars, as it is contemplating doing, others could well start to price oil in yuan or other currencies — negatively affecting the US dollar’s status and potentially the entire US economy.

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Chinese Firm to Acquire 13 Percent of Canadian Lithium Company for $5 Million

A Chinese firm that specializes in industrial explosives is planning to acquire a more than 10 percent stake in a Canadian lithium company for $5 million.

On April 17, China-based company Sichuan Yahua Industrial Group Co. Ltd. (Yahua Group) announced its plan to acquire 13.2 percent of Ultra Lithium Inc., a Vancouver-based lithium and gold exploration firm, through its wholly-owned subsidiary Yahua International Investment and Development Co. Ltd.

The deal signed between the two companies will also see Yahua International acquiring a 60 percent stake in a wholly-owned subsidiary of Ultra Lithium that has two lithium mining projects in Ontario, at Forgan Lake and Georgia Lake.

This ought to go over well with the Biden admin and their secure sourcing initiatives.

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Deterring China: U.S. Should Arm Taiwan to the Hilt – Now

Wrong signals.”

That is what the Eastern Theater Command of China’s People’s Liberation Army said on April 15, referring to Washington’s encouragement of Taiwan. That day, the Chinese military sent fighter and bomber aircraft as well as frigates near the island republic.

China’s exercises, said Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian, were “a countermeasure to the U.S. negative actions recently, including the lawmakers’ visit to Taiwan.” Beijing, he said, would “continue to take strong measures to resolutely safeguard its sovereignty and territorial integrity.”

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Stuck inside, rationing food: Canadians in Shanghai detail life in COVID-19 lockdown

Racelle Luo and her family are confined to their apartment in Shanghai round the clock — except when it comes to essentials like picking up deliveries and dumping trash.

The 35-year-old, who is originally from the Toronto area, her husband and their three children, as well as millions of others in China’s most populous city, are in another lockdown as the government tries to curb the spread of COVID-19.

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Hunter Biden’s Laptops Scandal Exposes How Communist Influence Operations Work

Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop revealed much information, including Hunter’s shady business dealings in Ukraine and China, raising questions about the extent to which President Biden was involved in his son’s business activities. This ongoing scandal lifted the curtain of foreign governments’ covert influence campaigns in the United States. No government has conducted such influence campaigns more effectively than Communist China.

To understand China’s influence campaigns on foreign soil, one has to get familiar with a secretive Chinese government agency, the United Front Work Department (UFWD), or United Front. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) established UFWD in the 1930s, aiming to recruit famous intellectuals, writers, teachers, students, publishers, and business leaders who were not necessarily Communists.

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Fauci touts China’s COVID protocol when confronted on Shanghai lockdown: ‘Better than almost anybody else’

The horrific events in Shanghai continue to shock the world with images of a beleaguered population entirely at the mercy of a soulless bureaucratic regime.

But the medical bureaucrats closer to home refuse to draw the unavoidable conclusions from that terrible example, while continuing to suggest that lockdowns remain a vital tool in the federal government’s bag of tricks. As a case in point, Dr. Anthony Fauci recently spoke with MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell to discuss the latest developments involving the COVID-19 pandemic.

When asked by Mitchell about the situation in Shanghai, Fauci waffled, refusing to condemn the lockdowns and even seeming to repeat the discredited canard that China’s draconian lockdowns had somehow enabled them to handle the pandemic “better than almost anybody else.”

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