by Pepe Escobar – posted with permission
The annual meeting of the National People’s Congress. Photo: Xinhua
The key takeaways of the Two Sessions of the 13th National People’s Congress in Beijing are already in the public domain.
In a nutshell: no GDP target for 2020; a budget deficit of at least 3.6% of GDP; one trillion yuan in special treasury bonds; corporate fees/taxes cut by 2.5 trillion yuan; a defense budget rise of a modest 6.6%; and governments at all levels committed to “tighten their belts.”
The focus, as predicted, is to get China’s domestic economy, post-Covid-19, on track for solid growth in 2021.
Also predictably, the whole focus in the Anglo-American sphere has been on Hong Kong – as in the new legal framework, to be approved next week, engineered to prevent subversion, foreign interference “or any acts that severely endanger national security.” After all, as a Global Times editorial stresses, Hong Kong is an extremely sensitive national security matter.
This is a direct result of what the Chinese observer mission based in Shenzhen learned from the attempt by assorted fifth columnists and weaponized black blocs to nearly destroy Hong Kong last summer.
No wonder the Anglo-American “freedom fighter” front is livid. The gloves are off. No more free lunch. No more paid protests. No more black blocs. No more hybrid war. Baba Beijing’s got a brand new bag.
The three threats
It’s absolutely essential to position the Two Sessions within the larger, incandescent geopolitical and geoeconomic context of the de facto new Cold War – hybrid war included – between the US and China.
So let’s focus on an American insider: former White House national security adviser Lieutenant General HR McMaster, author of the upcoming Battlegrounds: The Fight to Defend the Free World.
This is as clear cut as it gets in terms of how the “free world,” in Pentagonese, perceives the rise of China. Call it the view of the industrial-military-surveillance-media complex.
Beijing, per McMaster, is pursuing a policy of “co-option, coercion and concealment,” centered on three axes: Made in China 2025; the New Silk Roads, or Belt and Road Initiative; and a “military-civil fusion” – arguably the most “totalitarian” vector, centered on creating a global intel network in espionage and cyber-attacks.
Call these the three threats.
Whatever the spin across the Beltway, Made in China 2025 remains alive and well – even if the terminology has been skipped.
The target, to be reached via $1.4 trillion in investments, is to profit from the knowledge accumulated by Huawei, Alibaba, SenseTime Group and others to design a seamless AI environment. In the process, China should be reinventing its technological base and restructuring the entire semiconductor supply chain to be domestic-based. These are all non-negotiables.
Belt and Road, in Pentagonese, is synonymous of “economic clientelism” and a “ruthless debt trap.” But McMaster gives away the game when he describes the cardinal sin as “the goal of displacing the influence of the United States and its key partners.”
As for the “military-civil fusion,” in Pentagonese, that’s all about fast tracking “stolen technologies to the army in such areas as space, cyberspace, biology, artificial intelligence and energy.” It amounts to “espionage and cyber-theft.”
In sum: “pushback” is essential against those China’s commies becoming “even more aggressive in promoting its statist economy and authoritarian political model.”
Chinese diaspora speaks
Apart from this binary, quite pedestrian assessment, McMaster does make an interesting point: “The US and other free nations should view expatriate communities as a strength. Chinese abroad – if protected from the meddling and espionage of their government – can provide a significant counter to Beijing’s propaganda and disinformation.”
So let’s compare it with the insights of a true master in Chinese diaspora: the redoubtable professor Wang Gungwu, born in Surabaya in Indonesia, who will be 90 years old this coming October and is the author of a delightful, poignant book of memoirs, Home is Not Here.
For outsiders there’s no better explanation of the predominant frame of mind across China:
“At least two generations of Chinese have learnt to appreciate that the modern West has valuable ideas and institutions to offer, but the turmoil of much of the 20th century has also made them feel that the Western European versions of democracy might not be that important for China’s national development. The majority of Chinese seem to approve of policies that place order and stability above freedom and political participation. They believe that this is what the country needs at this stage and resent being regularly criticized as politically unliberated and backward.”
Wang Gungwu stresses how the Chinese think quite differently from the “universalist” trajectory of the West, and thus reaches the heart of the matter: “Should the PRC succeed in providing an alternative route to prosperity and independence, the US (and elsewhere in the West) would see that as a fundamental threat to its (and Western European) dominance in the world. Those who feel threatened would then do everything they can to stop China. I think this is what most Chinese believe is what American leaders are prepared to do.”
No US Deep State assessment can possibly stand when ignoring the wealth of Chinese history: “The nature of China’s politics, whether under emperors, warlords, nationalists or communists, was so rooted in Chinese history that no individual or group of intellectuals could offer a new vision that could appeal to the majority of the Chinese people. In the end, that majority seemed to have accepted the legitimacy of PRC’s victory on the battlefield coupled with the capacity to bring order and renewed purpose to a rejuvenated China.”
Remixed long telegram
Federal prosecutor Francis Sempa, author of America’s Global Role and an adjunct professor of political science at Wilkes University, has compared McMaster’s assessment of the China “threat” to the legendary “long telegram” written by George Kennan in 1947, under the pseudonym X.
The “long telegram” designed the subsequent strategy of containing the Soviet Union, complete with the building up of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. It was the prime Cold War blueprint.
The current, pedestrian long telegram remix might also have long legs. Sempa, to his credit, at least admits that “McMaster’s timid policy recommendations will not lead to the gradual break-up or mellowing of Chinese Communist power.”
He suggests – what else – “containment,” which should be “firm and vigilant.” And he recognizes, to his credit, that it should be “based on an understanding of Chinese history and Indo-Pacific geography.” But then, once again, he gives away the game – in true Zbigniew Brzezinski fashion: what matters most is “the need to prevent a hostile power from controlling the key power centers of the Eurasian landmass.”
It’s no wonder the US Deep State identifies Belt and Road and its spin-offs such as the Digital Silk Road and the Health Silk Road across Eurasia as manifestations of a “hostile power.”
The whole fulcrum of US foreign policy since WWII has been to prevent Eurasia integration – now actively pursued by the Russia-China strategic partnership. New Silk Roads across Russia – part of Putin’s Great Eurasia Partnership – are bound to merge with Belt and Road. Putin and Xi will meet again, face-to-face, in mid-July in St. Petersburg, for the twin summits of BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, and will further discuss it in extensive detail.
So presiding, in silence, over the Two Sessions, is the understanding by the Chinese leadership that getting back to domestic business, fast, is essential for a renewed push on the grand chessboard. They know the industrial-military-surveillance-media complex will pull no punches to deploy every possible geopolitical and geoeconomic strategy to sabotage Eurasia integration.
Made in China 2025; Belt and Road – the post-modern equivalent of the Ancient Silk Road; Huawei; China’s manufacturing pre-eminence; breakthroughs in the fight against Covid-19 – everything is a target. And yet, in parallel, nothing – from a remixed long telegram to stale ruminations on the Thucydides Trap – will derail a rejuvenated China from hitting its own targets.
Congrets to Pepe Escobar for his succinct recap of the Hòngkóng situations. But he forgets one crucial point: The law the “Mainland” now wants imposed on Hòngkóng is not a law that qualls HK “democratizing” moves, but one that prohibits groups funded fro the US of North A or from he U kingdom of B and that onely. Not even those funded from Táiwanese sources, as I read the Chinese-language text of the proposal presented by Miss Lam and others to the national people’s congress in Bĕijing yesterday.
From Forbes:
Last year in the United States 180 thousand people graduated university with a STEM degree.
Last year in China 5 million people graduated university with a STEM degree.
You dont need to be a genius to see who is going to own the future.
How many of the US graduates were Chinese?
Exactly. It reminds me of the current “discussion” surrounding Biden’s presumptive lead in the procession toward the presidential nomination. It’s all a kind of Kabuki talk. Biden has no chance. He won’t get the nomination. His brain is turning to mush in full view of the national audience. A real discussion would deal with when he will be replaced: before or at the convention. With a kind of whimsical fantasy around how he will be destroyed if he ever managed to get the nomination.
Here, the subject is the configuration of the future of the world. The future of the world is Chinese. It’s inevitable. Discussions about the US “plan” to prevent that, and preserve US hegemony, is fanciful. Like the notion of “victory” in Afghanistan. You don’t avoid defeat by refusing to notice that you’ve been defeated.
The rise of China and decline of the US-led West was made inevitable by the invention of nuclear weapons. The only way China might have been stopped would have been military conquest and subjugation. But once China had acquired nukes, military conquest became impossible without Mutually Assured nuclear Destruction.
The era of US hegemony is rapidly coming to an end.
(I’ll be interested to see if the Covid-19 event turns out in the end to have been a US bioweapons attack intended to cripple China without setting off a nuclear war.)
(I’ll be interested to see if the Covid-19 event turns out in the end to have been a US bioweapons attack intended to cripple China without setting off a nuclear war.)
Not that you’ll ever get an “official” answer to that question, or even an unofficial consensus answer for that matter either, but as a long time student of all things false-flag in the wake of OKC and 9-11 (the seminal events in the turning of the US into an “unofficial/official” state sponsor of terror); I, for one (among many others), consider the question to be purely rhetorical. Of course this was a US sponsored bio-terror event! I never for a moment ever thought otherwise.
you are right on the money
https://forum.ascendchina.ch/t/usas-multi-prong-end-game-approach-with-its-cia-biovirus-covid19-to-stop-china/49
In the end sheer numbers may not matter as much as producing scientists and engineers with what I call the Einstein capacity – someone who does not care too much about grades but more about facts and the truths and breakthroughs that can be derived from those facts.
Certain educational systems, less in the West but more so in the East, tend toward and reward conformity. Such a system will fail an absolutely off-the chart brilliant student but pass a brilliant one at best. A person like Einstein would most likely had been failed or gauged an average student in the East. So would Dr Watson, the discoverer of the DNA molecule. Einstein was fortunate that he lived in a Europe that was so liberal as far as learning is concerned and did not stigmatise him just because of his poor grades and occupation as a patents clerk. I have also seen a 15 year old school dropout solve the Rubik Cube in a few minutes.
The truly off-the-chart brilliant will need an eco-system of a certain quality to realise his potential – an environment free of ridicule, without mental pressure to conform, a society that would accept him for who he is and a society that will make him feel safe, provided for, appreciated and protected by fairness, good moral customs and good rule of just laws.
Give a country just 500 scientists like Einstein and it will still beat a country with 5,000,000 good scientists but none without the brilliance of Einstein.
Einstein is exacty an example of the opposite, in my opinion. He was refused a post in almost every university. His daddy was writing behind his back, begging to get him a job. That is why he was sitting in a patent office. His exceptional schooling he got at home were he was among others taught math, philosophy, etc… by a student medicine, friend of the family (Max Talmud). In the patent office he came in contact with the problem of synchronising clocks between cities at a large distance from one another, which made him think about the concept of time, for example. So, I would say, despite of the Western system, he managed to deliver good science.
The immediate challenge for China is to rapidly, say within 6 months manufacture its own computer chips, i.e. 5 and 7 nm chips using its own equipment. Can China do it?
In the medium term, say 3 years, China would have to produce its own passenger jets including its engines. Can China do it?
Then in the defence area, China will have to produce it WS-15 43,000 pounds thrust jet engines for her J20 stealth jets. Can China do it by the end of 2020?
If China can do these, the US hegemony, both economic and military, bar the US dollar, would be truly over.
Para 1 No, maybe 4-5 years. The big problem is that the manufacturers who make the equipment that will manufacture those 5/7nm chips are all US. To force the Chinese into that market ahead of their natural time is a huge strategic blunder by the US. Short term loss of business and long term out of advanced semiconductors.
Para 2 No, maybe 4-5 years if the Russians help, which may not be forthcoming.
Para 3 No, they don’t need it. In the final analysis you only need stealth if you plan to attack first, which is why neither the Russians or the Chinese are as hung up on it as the US.
There are other manufacturers who made those equipment which produces the 5/7 nm chips. These are EUV, extreme ultra violet-ray machines – one of such China had already produced a few months back. Korea, Japan and the Dutch also produce such machines.
It will normally take China a year to put such machines into production lines along with the supporting machines.
But in an emergency, China can conceivably be able to do it in 6 months. No way will China allow Huawei to fall by the wayside due to US unjust beggar-thy-neighbour persecution.
The US attitude is totally against its much ballyhooed ‘Christian’ values. And so far I have not read of any prominent American Christian speaking up against such disgusting policies.
Don’t need stealth? Even in a defensive operation against an attack, it would be an advantage to attack the attacking enemy by surprise.
The Russians and the Chinese may not be that “hung up” because they know how to make US ‘stealth’ visible to themselves. The ever-confident US may not be able to do the same against Chinese or Russian stealth especially in war conditions.
So to ignore stealth would be a tactical mistake.
And the US ban may be completely ineffective. Not only SMIC, but Foxconn and MediaTek can supply those high-end chips needed by Huawei.
The US had played its last card out of weakness (unable to compete with Huawei) and it is a very weak hand.
Here is the link to SMIC, MediaTek and Foxconn being the effective substitute for TSMC: https://www.gizchina.com/2020/05/22/huawei-gets-a-way-out-u-s-new-laws-will-be-completely-ineffective/
Simon,
You said this:
“China will have to produce it WS-15 43,000 pounds thrust jet engines for her J20 stealth jets. Can China do it by the end of 2020?”
The Chinese will need until 2040 to produce a jet engine for their jets. They have failed time and again to produce jet engines for their top line jets.
What they should do is buy the engines from Russia and not be so proud that the engines that save their ass come from Russia, a dependable partner.
They have proven so far that jet engines of the Russian quality are far beyond their ability at this time.
So, buy what you need. The USAF buys R-180 rocket engines for the Atlas V missiles.
If you need something for national security, can’t make it yourself, can buy it from a dependable source, buy it.
The plan would be to slowly, with no pressure on the engineers and design people, to learn from the Russians and develop the competency. It will take 15-20 years. Can’t be done in a short time. That’s how they have failed for decades. False pride to think they can do it short term. They keep failing with that operational plan. It won’t change and the need is dire. Those aircraft carriers and islands in the SCS need jets that can fly and fight. Russian engines will give them that.
Larchmonter445. Yeah, Russia’s help is very much appreciated. And would not be forgotten. E.g. in helping China kick-start her manned space program, defence aviation, etc. At present Russia and China needs each other.
And China did trust Russia in 1689 by signing the treaty of Nerchinsk with Russia as an equal – a first by China with any foreign country.
And I am sure China needs Russia’s help too in the high tech area: radars, electronics, AI etc.
But would Russia still help China in say, 20 years time? It all depends on who will succeed Putin. Russia under Putin is China’s best friend. It was a belligerent US which pushed Russia and China into each other’s arms.
So to ensure stability, China must develop a certain degree of independence in all critical areas of technology. I am sure all countries would do the same to the extent of their capability and cost-effectiveness.
And Larchmonter445, if I read China correctly, China had already perfected the WS-15 engine with 43,000 pounds thrust – which is even more powerful than the US’s F22 Raptor’s 35,000 pounds.
But in true Sun Tzu style, is not announcing it. One hint: It’s J10s fghters are already fitted with the WS-10 engines which replaced the original Russian ones. Those fighters are now so versatile that they were able to perform Pugachev’s “Cobra” maneuver with ease.
Those new engines will likely be ‘announced’ during a lightning hot war with the US in the western Pacific Ocean.
I don’t think WS-15 is operational yet. They’re still testing and tweaking it to address the problems with reliability.
Excellent, Pepe.
Very concise and remarkably clear for anyone to see the Cold War v. 2.0 foisted upon the globe, but particularly aimed at Americans who will pay forward and backward for this containment strategy.
The Chinese will prosper, unfettered by the US relationship that has drained off tens of thousands of the best brains, who will now head home.
And the Chinese capital infusion in the US will return, as best it can to invest in the Mainland enterprises and developments. That’s Trillions of dollars pulled from the US, tossed out from the US, driven away from the US.
China no longer will pay “extra” for being students, residents, tourists and investors. They will get better value for their dollars/yuans at home.
The race to the top just got easier for China.
Thanks to lamebrains like McMaster, Navarro, Bannon, Trump, Cotton, and the Sinophobia chorus in the Media.
In other words the US no matter what it does is its own worst enemy.
“Containment.” Such an ironic word choice by a card carrying member of the MIC, especially under the current circumstances. Not a clue that that’s exactly the strategy being employed by the Chinese and Russians against the US as we speak until the time that – let’s borrow another favorite neo-con phrase here – the AZ empire is finally enfeebled enough that it can finally be properly “drowned like a baby in the bathtub” without making too big of a mess for the rest of the world in the process. That time’s not nearly as far off as the current AZ leadership imagines it to be. If the AZs were smart they’d be making nice while they still could in the hopes that the Chinese might graciously throw them some scraps after the coming collapse, but of course they’re not nearly that smart either. Gonna be an interesting century for those who live long enough to see it.
The US strategy is leading to self-containment i.e. isolation. In the end, the US will rush towards China’s ample and open arms.
And why would the US rush towards China’s comforting arms? It would be so in the event of a second and deadlier wave of covid-19 and the US don’t have the wherewithal to cope.
This may happen because desperate Trump is forcing the economy to reopen without the measures in place to effectively detect and stop the human-to-human transmission. Only China, and to a lesser extent South Korea, have this ability. But the scale of South Korea’s battle to curb covid-19 is nowhere near the scale of China’s effort; and also not as effective.
China to day reported zero new infections, not even from imported cases and no deaths. South Korea has 23 new cases and 2 new deaths.
And like the 1918 flu pandemic, the virus may mutate into a deadlier strain and target the younger and stronger, using their stronger immune system against them by tricking it to mount a cytokine overreaction resulting in the destruction of the affected organ by the immune system itself which is usually, but not limited to, the lungs.
That is why it is so important to stop the human-to-human transmission and slow the further mutation of the virus until a vaccine is available. Trump does not understand this. Dr Anthony Fauci, the head of Trump’s covid-19 response team was reported to say that he has “no doubt” that there would be a second wave of covid-19 infections.
Meanwhile, China has completed a phase 1 clinical trail on 108 adults with promising results according to the Lancet: https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-05/tl-tlf052220.php
So China’s arms are open and increasingly able to heal the US and the world.
China is resolute on the Hong Kong issue. Heard of strategic contempt? This is what they say they have now towards the US on the Hong Kong issue.
The US does have tangible options in its toolkit to exert pressure on China. But after the two-year long trade war, China has encountered all possible US punitive tools and has built its resilience. China’s latest announcement showed its strategic contempt for Washington’s tactics of pressuring Beijing. As long as the US dares to play its cards, China will play the game without hesitation.
The editorial as a whole is scathing.
https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1189188.shtml
Only the usual US warmongers care a fig for Hong Kong, or for ‘fighting’ China either. US leadership is beyond abysmal these days. The creativity of the US culture / civilization is still there (why is Elon Musk in the US instead of S. Africa, where he was born, or China for that matter). But, unless the stranglehold of the billionaire oligarchs of Wall Street, Pharma, and the MIC can be loosened the US will only accomplish a fraction of what it could.
Musky boy has been working on a million mile dry cell battery with CATL. It is going to allow for massive amounts of charge/discharge cycles and allow people to turn their cars into household energy storage that can also be used to stabilize and supply the grid and make the owner money. The guy is finding ways to socialise capitalism by providing products that make their owners money. He is making the whole third industrial revolution deal a reality and China is most definitely on board.
My admiration for China has gone up in smoke. They have gifted us with ‘lockdown’ … why everyone followed this idiotic policy I will never be able to comprehend. But, we are all many steps closer to totalitarianism now, with significant credit going to China.
Soooo…. the US doesn’t possess any agency for its own decisions then? Monkey see, monkey do, and all that? Granted, in the US’s case, that line of thinking does make a certain perverse kind of sense. But really now. Blaming China for our own stupidity – leaving aside for the moment that this whole thing is almost certainly an American MIC sponsored event – might just be the hallmark of Stupid Americanism.
I’m not nearly as certain about that as you seem to be. It would not surprise me in the least if indisputable information was forthcoming that this virus and the horrible results were the work of British and U.S. military and accompanying 3 letter agencies.
As Pepe Escobar has shown in a previous article, U.S. intel knew China was in trouble with this virus before China knew. How does that happen? And then everything rolled out the same way almost everywhere. The house arrest of entire populations, the appearance of these floor stickers everywhere, slave training us. Even the marketing was the same: We are all in this together, and we can’t go back to normal until there is a vaccine. This entire event looks like it was planned, and that not by China.
What exactly is it that the U.S. is so determined to protect? It can’t be their manufacturing. They sent that away long ago to enrich the corporate heads. They don’t care about their own citizens. They only have their power and control, centered in their financial system and currency. That is all they are protecting, for the benefit of the few at the top, the real rulers of the world. They have now impoverished vast swaths of western nations but they don’t care about that. Their banking system is funneling money to the chosen winners, everyone else be damned.
I came across this message from one of my favorite modern Saints, Elder Paisios. In a few words, he hits the means of control on the head.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4F3-zCUw8mQ&list=LLhehRu_EcDa2tN3J0XpZV0Q&index=3&t=0s
While I totally get the contempt for the corrupted Western “democracies”, I can’t help but be puzzled about the seemingly delighted tone in the reports about how China changes the game. No one here – not Mr. Escobar, nor Mr. Roberts, nor the whole Saker forum – could exist and write as they do under the Chinese system. And I am not writing this out of ignorance, but two decades of experience living in China. The amount of corruption in the West is so gigantic and extensive that I can understand very well to wish death to this system. We should not confuse the actual Chinese system with our fancy born from antagonism against our own corrupt system.
@LW76,
Perhaps you construe the wish for China’s rise and successful ventures along the various Silk Roads with our wish for life under Chinese rule or Chinese social system/political ideology.
What fits for the Chinese people, Socialism with Chinese characteristics, is unfit for everyone else. The Chinese don’t even preach to teach their “ways” for others to emulate. They teach their civilizational strengths, Daoism, Confucianism, even some elements of Buddhism. But nothing about their system is transferable to other cultures.
No one here who understands China in this modern period of development has blinders on. We know that they are a controlled society. However, the society demands that control. Stability internally is the number one consensus in China. And individualism is far from their cultural norm.
What is admired is the accomplishments, the infrastructure, the arts, the desire to be not just number one in ranking, but the best in quality and a leader among partners, Cooperation with others is one of the characteristics of Chinese policy.
They have a long way to go. They have made mistakes. They have created obstacles for themselves. No one thinks they are without “sins”.
Personally, I despise ideological governments, so I have little praise for much of what the government professes.
Remember this. Capitalism and individual, as well as collective, perseverance transformed China. Not socialism or communism.
Certain aspects of the Chinese system is usable in other countries. E.g. the competence of the Government and that the government is legitimised in practice by its competence in achieving good results for the welfare of the people and not by the constitution alone nor by the votes of the electorate alone.
If the government is incompetent resulting in continuous suffering of the people until beyond a certain point, the people will tear up the constitution and overthrow the government.
All governments are ultimately legitimised by their competence as shown by the deliverables they achieved for the welfare of the people.
I think you will be surprised. The Saker is heavy on facts, albeit from a certain viewpoint. But this site is not openly promoting hate or fake news like many US media. And it promotes a good level of decency and moral values in discussion. Besides it is supportive of Russia – China’s best friend.
I believe The Saker will thrive in China, especially if there is a mandarin version of it.
good idea.
I am all for a Chines franchise of The Saker.
We in the US are not confused. We have plenty more Mitch McConnells (Addison Mitchell McConnell Jr. is an American politician serving as Kentucky’s senior United States senator and as Senate Majority Leader.) to run our major institutions and protect our freedoms.
The National Security Law for Hong Kong is long ovetdue.
So-called “pro democracy demonstrators” ran amok in Hong Kong last year with the full support of Western governments and the Western MSM hypocrites.
Persons madquerading as demonstrators imposed chaos and mayhem on the territory, shutting down schools, public transport and business in general.
Persons in the territory who voiced support for Beijing were visciously attacked on numerous occasions and these acts of violence were invaraibly ignored or justified by the MSM.
China is right to move against these criminals, a lot of whom were shown to be aided and abetted by foreign governments hostile to China.
The Basic Law will remain, but treason, terrosism and lawlessness will be poscribed and rooted out!
Predicably, we see the US and others lamenting how much the proposed law is a threat to “democracy”.
I recall that during one of these so-called “demonstration” a man who voiced support for Beijing was set alight by a “pro-democracy demonstrator”.
If anyone did this in the US or in any of the other countries lending support to these people, the MSM would treat it like the barbaric act that it is abd nothing else.
So why should China tolerate these people whose sole aim is to undermine the rule of law and sow chaos?
The National Security Law is coming and crimimals will be held to account.
Selah
Article 23 of the Basic Law stipulates that the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) “shall enact laws on its own to prohibit any act of treason, secession, sedition, subversion against the Central People’s Government (CPG), or theft of state secrets, to prohibit foreign political organizations or bodies …”
Article 23 was never implemented. It will be now. China is a sovereign nation.
Pepe is too optimistic. China is not just up against the US but the entire Western alliance. And once Russia realises that China is too powerful, its partnership with China will unravel too. Recent polls have shown that Russians want cooperation with the EU despite the pain the EU has inflicted upon them via the sanctions. This suggests to me that the relationship between Russia and China simply cannot be sustained in the long run without a solid foundation of shared history and culture.
https://asiatimes.com/2020/05/russians-want-more-cooperation-with-eu-polls-show/
Surely, cooperation with the whole world is the plan? Why would a country not attempt to improve its relations with everyone?
I own a Huawei. In 50 years this is the best m/c I have used. Apart from programming a Burroughs computer – serious fin, it doesn’t get better than this.
Once they release an open source phone I’ll get it. I’ve still got the phone I bought 7 years ago. Holds plenty of music and that’s about all I use it for.
Should any doubters still be out there, the Cold War 2.0 is full on.
Pompeo is threatening 5 Eyes vassals to abandon Belt and Road Initiative participation.
This is congruent with the threats against Huawei installations for 5G and 3G,4G systems already installed.
The war is via INFOwar technologies, propaganda, lies, threats, disinformation, Mass Media content, sabotage of truthful resources, DDOS cyber warfare, and Breaking News false flag fabrications.
The goal is to cripple China’s economy and to blunt Eurasian Integration before it leaves the US in the dust of history.
This isn’t some insignificant operation. The US intent is to kill China as a competitor by all means necessary.
Nothing in the toolkit of Empire is off the table.
So pay attention to every statement however outlandish or bombastic from US officials at any level. It is policy, not simply bloviation or outright mendacity.
The gloves are off. The strength of China versus the power of the Hegemon.
Never mind the coming “collapse”, the “death of the dollar”, the “civil wars”, the corruption and endless treasury-sucking wars, the derivative bubble, or Trump’s inadequacies and the Dems failed Liberal Cult dogmas.
This is going to last 20-30 years.
China has consistently underestimated the US need to be #1. The leadership in and around the US government, within the Deep State, managing the Shadow Government, on Wall Street, surrounding the Pentagon and State Department, managing the MIC corporations all are focused on crushing China, dividing China from Russia, and blowing up BRI projects (mostly using Islamic terrorism where threats of sanctions and destabilizations won’t work).
AFRICOM was set up and operates to drive China out of Africa.
INDO-PACCOM has been reorganized to contain China and make it a second rate nation again.
There will be assassinations of those leaders who resist the US demands (in places like Africa, the Philippines, East Europe), wherever the US aims to stop BRI projects.
Expect Libya, Syria, Egypt to be on fire for many more years.
Expect the US to unleash the Israeli’s to do as much destabilization in Lebanon, Golan, Syria as possible short of using the IDF directly.
The Mediterranean will be roiled with air and naval confrontations as Turkey (now blessed by the US) will exert its attempt at regional hegemony and the spread of MB ideology.
All is related to pressure on Russia, eruptions against BRI and the many fronts of Cold War 2.0 against China. All are a unity of intent.
The US has formulated this Cold War as Russia and China have played patience as a tactic, hoping the US would allow a peaceful transition in world power adjustments.
Both now have nothing to show for the tactic.
The chaos-making is US strength, a powerful tool, like an arsonist tossing firebombs from a speeding vehicle driving through crowded streets at night.
And, it will get worse for China and Russia after the US election.
Trump intends to test nuclear bombs again. Taiwan will become a very hot confrontation. The Japanese will probably “take” the Daiyou Islands, forcing China to back down in shame or fight for rocks in the East China Sea whose only value is the zone of gas and oil within which they sit.
to Larchmonter445:
OK – you laid out how and what USA could plan and carry out together with its vassals.
However, we don’t know yet what Russia and China will do …. Konfucius and Asian ways of thinking are to my knowledge much different. Pres. Putin is well versed with Asian culture I think (through his Yudo experience which usually includes some sort of philosophy). I don’t think that both will let much happen without some sort of responses. Those responses could be done extremely asymmetrical. To my knowledge USA usually is too much self-satisfied and lacks completely self-assessment of its situation concerning economy. A country having neglected its own economy for too long will have difficulty to establish very soon the same as it once was.
I don’t think that neither China will let too mach happen in Hong Kong and Taiwan and Russia will surely not return some Islands to Japan.
If USA starts with Nuclear bombs it will get answers of both countries that for sure. Because neither Russia nor China want to become vassals.
And I think the USA will go the way as they always did the last 75 years (and even before!!) – so it could be that their movements can be – maybe – easier calculated and taken into account.
We shall see.
Keenan’s ideas of containing people hunkered down inside a Fortress and behind a Great Wall was just a dumb idea that sustained itself by his perceived “Gravitas” and smoke and mirrors. Having Gravitas does not mean you know how to think.