“…Simply put, the EU-China agreement is a far more meaningful expression of European strategic autonomy than anything seen so far in the heated debate over the concept, outclassing even Macron’s most headline-grabbing interviews. The indignant cries of American commentators that Europe should have waited to consult with the Biden administration miss the point: the lack of consultation is the message.”
The US should quit NATO in response. But it won’t, not with President China Boy in charge.
Europe and China yesterday signed a Comprehensive Agreement on Investment after seven years of negotiation. Why now? As I report at Asia Times, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron pushed the deal through to pre-empt anything that the new U.S. administration might have to say on the subject.
China’s government appears set to launch itself into the post-COVID future committed to a diplomatic approach based on some simple notions: if insults don’t work, try threats. If that fails, go back to insults.
Geng Shuang, Beijing’s deputy ambassador to the United Nations, got in an early bit of abuse when he responded to a German envoy’s plea to release Canada’s two Michaels, Spavor and Kovrig, as a Christmas gesture. Noting that the German diplomat’s tenure on the Security Council was about to end, Geng sneered: “Out of the bottom of my heart: good riddance.”
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson plans to use the G7 summit that Britain is hosting in 2021 to launch the “D10”, intended as an alliance of democracies to counter China.
His proposal is for the G7 group of leading industrialised nations to be joined by Australia, South Korea and India. The focus would be on developing 5G telecommunications technology to reduce dependence on Huawei and the Chinese Communist Party as well as reliance on essential medical supplies from China.
That will make Justin cry.
The Year of the Rat, 2020, began poorly for China. Hong Kong was in an uproar, and its protesters were enjoying international sympathy. The Communist Party’s policies toward Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang were being widely condemned as excessive, even genocidal. Consumers, particularly in America, had begun to boycott Chinese goods in the backlash over pro-China censorship by the NBA, Blizzard Entertainment, and other ostensibly American companies. Tariffs had precipitated adramatic decline in Chinese exports to the United States. The world had woken up to the Communist Party’s hegemonic ambitions, and it seemed that a pushback had begun under American leadership.
A host of corporate media outlets including CNN, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and MSNBC have participated in private dinners and sponsored trips with the China-United States Exchange Foundation, a Chinese Communist Party-funded group seeking to garner “favorable coverage” and “disseminate positive messages” regarding China, The National Pulse can reveal.
… More than a year since the first known person was infected with the coronavirus, an AP investigation shows the Chinese government is strictly controlling all research into its origins, clamping down on some while actively promoting fringe theories that it could have come from outside China.
The government is handing out hundreds of thousands of dollars in grants to scientists researching the virus’ origins in southern China and affiliated with the military, the AP has found. But it is monitoring their findings and mandating that the publication of any data or research must be approved by a new task force managed by China’s cabinet, under direct orders from President Xi Jinping, according to internal documents obtained by The AP. A rare leak from within the government, the dozens of pages of unpublished documents confirm what many have long suspected: The clampdown comes from the top.
The U.K.-based Centre for Economics and Business Research believes that, due to China’s superior response to COVID-19, the Chinese economy will become the world’s largest by 2028, five years earlier than previously forecast.
“For some time, an overarching theme of global economics has been the economic and soft power struggle between the United States and China,” the Centre wrote in a December 26 report. “The COVID-19 pandemic and corresponding economic fallout have certainly tipped this rivalry in China’s favor.”
As a global pandemic began to take root in February, China held a series of backchannel conversations with Canada, lobbying the federal government to keep its borders open.
With the virus already taking a deadly toll in Asia, Heng Xiaojun, the Minister Counsellor for the Chinese embassy, requested a call with senior Transport Canada officials. Over the course of the conversation, the Chinese representatives communicated Beijing’s desire that flights between the two countries not be stopped because it was unnecessary.
“The Chinese position on the continuation of flights was reiterated,” say official notes taken from the call. “Mr. Heng conveyed that China is taking comprehensive measures to combat the coronavirus.”
Canadian officials seemed to agree, since no steps were taken to restrict or prohibit travel. To the federal government, China appeared to have the situation under control and the risk to Canada was low. Before ending the call, Mr. Heng thanked Ottawa for its “science and fact-based approach.”
Looks like the Globe released this from the paywall. Interesting but distressing read of our ruling class at work.
h/t CT
At the start of the year the Chinese government faced two major challenges; an unknown disease which threatened to tear through its population and a wave of voices online telling the world what was happening.
By the end of 2020, a glance at Chinese state-controlled media shows that both appear to be under control.
The BBC’s Kerry Allen and Zhaoyin Feng take a look back at the country’s online government censors who worked harder than ever to supress negative information, the citizens that managed to break through the Great Firewall, and how the propaganda machine re-wrote the narrative.
It was once an accepted truth that China’s increased economic trade and participation in international bodies such as the World Trade Organization would benefit everyone.
China and its citizens would benefit through the jobs and wealth earned from their vast export market. Americans and Europeans would benefit from access to an ever-greater array of ever-cheaper goods. Asian, African, and other American nations would benefit from access to both sides of this market and the incentive to replicate a version of China’s export model. And the world’s democracies, the cornerstones of the post-Cold War international order, would benefit from China’s recognition that it would gain more by abiding the rules of the game than by breaking them.
Zhang Zhan, a 37-year-old former lawyer and citizen journalist who was arrested in May while reporting from Wuhan, has been sentenced to four years in jail.
Zhang was arrested for “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” – an accusation commonly used against dissidents, activists and journalists – with her video and blog reports from the Wuhan lockdown. Last month she was charged with disseminating false information.
On Monday afternoon, just hours after the trial began, Zhang’s lawyer said she had been sentenced to four years in jail.
The United States is ratcheting up the threat of sanctions against European companies in an effort to deal a death blow to the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline between Russia and Germany. The pipeline would double shipments of Russian natural gas to Germany by transporting the gas under the Baltic Sea. U.S. President Donald Trump, like his predecessor Barack Obama, has criticized the project because it would make Germany “captive” to Russia for its energy supplies.
Trump has been especially critical of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who, in opposition to the United States and many Eastern European countries, has doggedly pursued the pipeline project, which would funnel billions of dollars to Russia at a time that Germany is free-riding on the U.S. defense umbrella that protects Germany from that same Russia.
That would be the same Teutonic Tart noted here, she luvs her China too – Angela Merkel faces European revolt over China trade policy
In a recently released viral video, Chinese Professor Di Dongsheng of Remnin University of China explains in vivid detail how the communist regime bends Americans to their will. The Chinese communists, he says, “have people at the top of America’s core inner circle of power and influence. We have our old friends.”
Just where are these “circles of power and influence”? Notably, they are the elite power centers of the American political Left: the media, Hollywood, higher education, Wall Street, and Washington, D.C.
In Canada our China Class is every bit as insidious and every bit as evil.
I’m old enough, just barely, to remember watching Paul Henderson score his winning goal against the Soviets in the final game of the 1972 Summit Series. I knew that something important had happened, but I didn’t fully understand what it was until much later. Yes, it was hockey, and our national pride was at stake, but there was more to it than that. Team Canada was fighting for our way of life against an adversary that sought to tear it down. The United States was the standard flag bearer in conflicts with the Soviets, but in September 1972 the Canadians were combatants in the Cold War.
