Trump and His Nixonian Bargain

By Rich Kozlovich

Trump's visit to China has ended and I'm shocked at seeing so little analysis on news sites about his deal making with Xi as of yet, so, let me be the first.  

If you had any doubts about what Trump's negotiating plans were for China, let me disabuse you of those doubts.  It's all about money, not security, not principles, not morality, not honesty.   It's about money, the Nixon/Kissinger failure.  Why are so many U.S. CEOs in China with Trump, and what do they want?  Market share!  Including getting involved in China's financial markets, which I find humorous since they're facing a massive real estate crisis. 

This almost sounds treasonous as Jacob Thaysen the CEO of Illumina  says, "We want to be a part of China," and have no doubt.... that's the theme among all these CEO's.  Make no mistake, Xi wanted Trump to come to China for the same reason Mao wanted Nixon to come.  His economy is a mess and he desperately needs access to the American market.  

There's much that can be gleaned from what the public is being fed by the media.  Let's start with Xi's fear of a Thucydides Trap. That's a veiled threat.  Give us what we want or else there will be war.  This clabber about China wanting to be in a co-operative relationship with America is nonsense.  They want an extortionary relationship.                

Pay attention to what they do and ignore everything they say.  Nothing about China is ever what it appears to be.  Here are my China commentaries. 

Currently China's investments in their military must be staggering.  They've upgraded their naval forces including doing a lot of research of electromagnetic propulsion systems, and their air force has been revamped for launching drones, also in the form of swarms from sea based platforms.  This apparently for use in amphibious landings.  Guess where that's intended? 

They're upgrading their drone technology to match America's large drones, which will give them mission capability in "reconnaissance, area denial and control, precision strike, cluster strike and damage assessment."  All of which will be "all military" integrated, all of which is being tested over and around Taiwan.  

The world is noticing and doesn't like it.  Japan will be conducting a military exercise for the defense of what the Japanese call the Senkaku Island, which will enhance potential joint military operations in opposition to China's aggressive intentions and actions in those waters, and elsewhere, including Taiwan.

"The four Quad members (Australia, India, Japan and the United States) started the Malabar naval exercises in Japan. This comes amid heightened tensions related to North Korea's flurry of missile tests. Japan's prime minister this week reaffirmed the country's commitment to increasing defense spending, crafting a new security strategy and acquiring long-range weapons."

I have to wonder what the other three Quad members are thinking after this "kumbaya" dog and pony show.

The Philippine government is developing a military modernization program.  And I've no doubt this is a reflection of China's bully boy economic/military tactics involving fishing in Philippine waters.  China is attempting to claim all of the South China Sea belongs to them and will enforce that view with naval might.

Once again, the cost to China for all this is immense, and it's money they don't have.   Like Russia, China is not a natural capital generating nation, they need the American market, badly.  Their economy is flat, and the restrictions Trump imposed, which was largely criticized by many, is responsible, especially in the chip market.  But given the CEO's he's brought with him for this trip, I've no doubt that's going to change. 

 Xi is another Mao with a total commitment to Marx/Leninist economic theory.  The world should be thankful he's been in effect installed as leader for life as he's going to lead them into economic oblivion, unless Trump saves him like Nixon saved Mao. 

On February 12, 2023 Jeff Crouere published this piece in Canada Free Press, China: Our Teflon Enemy, saying:

The communist dictators of China are brutal authoritarians who have been repressing the basic human rights of their own people for decades. In China, citizens do not have an independent media or the freedom to speak, assemble, petition their government, or practice their religious faith. 

All of which are violations of the UN Charter.  He goes on to discuss how China viciously crushed the freedom movement in Hong Kong.  The human rights abuses against 12 million Muslims, even the children aren't safe.  The brutality of the Tienanmen Square stand off with thousand arrested and murdered. 

Sadly, China did not have to pay much of a penalty for this mass killing of peaceful demonstrators. President George H. W. Bush criticized the barbarous behavior, suspended some diplomatic exchanges, and curtailed military sales. While some minor economic sanctions were imposed, nothing significant was done to hinder the progression of U.S.-China relations.

 They did nothing to stop the spying from China, they did so little to punish China for their crimes against humanity, it amounted to nothing.  The big show made by America's leaders of that day was just that, a big show, because the economic business continued as usual.  They sold out the nation in favor of greedy and corrupt multinational corporations, and that's been made obvious by the actions and words of the leaders of the World Economic Forum at Davos that year. 

Xi's been playing the modern Mao, which is interesting since his father was a prominent Maoist, and then for whatever reason (Mao, a man who murdered between 40 and 70 million of his people, rarely concerned himself with evidence) purged and publicly humiliated his father and his family during his childhood during the cultural revolution, and made them suffer for years.  And this is who he's emulating?  I think there must be something wrong with his mind.

China is one of the most disruptive and evil forces in the world  leaving devastation in it's wake.  China consumes and destroys, just like the tribbles, only China isn't warm and cuddly, it's a ravenous dragon that Trump originally intended to tame.  China isn't just an adversary, it's a threat to western civilization. Actually, China is a threat to civilized behavior.  Make no mistake about it, they’re still commies, and commies are dictators, and so what do dictatorships do to distract the population from their problems? They start a war! Only this is far more problematic than it was decades ago.

China's constantly interfering in the affairs of everyone, but especially America, and the reason why is they want to rule the world.  Since Nixon and Kissinger opened China up to world trade  they've been actively moving in that direction, and America has been funding that effort, and now Trump's visit makes it looks as if that will continue. 

What about the massive human rights violations.  They're murdering people to harvest their organs, they have massive spying operations in the US and elsewhere, they're stealing intellectual property, and religious persecution is rampant, including against Christians.  They set up "secret police stations" to intimidate and threaten Chinese who've immigrated to America.  They're interfering in American academia by funding leftist propaganda to undermine American values.  Their deliberate flaunting of international law.   They've consistently provoked India in the Himalayas, for reasons I fail to understand other than they think they will intimate them into believing China will invade India from the North if they interfere with their activity in the South China Sea and Taiwan. 

They're unendingly interfering in governments all over the world, which includes their Belt and Road Initiatives, and picking fights with Japan along with  the Philippine Islands, Vietnam and other South East Asian countries involving the Spratly Islands, Paracel Islands, Scarborough Shoal, and what's being called the nine-dash line area claimed by China and rejected by the rest of the world, which China is attempting to enforce with military intimidation.  Will those issues be addressed?  I'm betting they will not. 

China is a corrupt, parasitic "Big Brother is watching nation", and it's a failing nation that's bluffing and stealing it's way forward.  Given the many issues involving China and it's goals, this will be the most important foreign policy issue Trump deals with, and a harbinger of things to come, given the damage Nixon wrought.  I hate to think with damage the world will face in the future.  I had concerns Trump was more concerned with a trade deal than the real issues between China and America that has been reinforced by China buying 200 Boeing jets.

Finally, understand this is more far ranging and dangerous than the media portrays it.  Make sure to read Ben Shapiro's article in the China section.  He gets it, China is our enemy by choice. 

At this point in time China is touting this as a great victory, and it is.  Trump traded the moral high ground for 200 planes, soy beans, and a promise to ignore Iran's needs.  It was as I feared a Nixonian bargain.  And this was with a man who is actively attempting to defeat Trump supporters in the midterms and working to promote anti-American socialists.  

There's no information right now as to how much access they'll be getting to the American market, but that's clearly part of the Trump plan.  Now Trump thinks it's  it's "very insulting" to keep Chinese nationalists from attending American universities and China should be allowed to buy as much farm land as the want since according to Trump farmers will lose a lot of money if China can't buy farm land and apparently he's going to let China get the oil it needs "from Iran".  

It's my view Trump has lost his way. 

1.  Trump's Business First Diplomacy
2.  Trump: China to Purchase 200 Boeing Jets in First Major Order in Nearly a Decade
3.  Xi Warns Trump Over Taiwan
4.  China: There is no ‘Thucydides trap’
5. Fox News Got Firsthand Experience With China's Surveillance State. Here's What Happened. 
6. China: Our Enemy, Not Our Rival
7. Feds Seize Millions of Illegal Vapes From China
8. Chinese National Indicted in Florida for Allegedly Importing Deadly New Synthetic Opioid
9. Schmitt: I Want Focus on Decoupling from China, Want to See Ag. Markets Opened Up
10. CBS's Tony Dokoupil Points Out The Obvious: China's Also in the Suck
11. Jury Convicts Chinese American Who Operated China’s NYC Police Station
12. They Felt Safe in America—Until Beijing Went After Their Parents in China
13. Arcadia mayor's bust demonstrates China's web of influence is all over California
14. Who Really Needs Whom? Trump, Xi Jinping, and the Illusion of Chinese Strength
15. Taiwan watches Trump-Xi meeting for signs China will test US resolve
16.  Mayor of Arcadia Eileen Wang Admits to Acting as Chinese Spy
17.  Oz: Chinese Government Involved in Fraud, Suspect Russia, Cuba as Well
18. McCormick: ‘Existential Battle with China’ Requires Government, Industry Teamwork ‘This is Like Winning World War II
19. Trump: It’s ‘Very Insulting’ to Not Let Chinese Students In
20. Trump: Farmers Will ‘Lose a Lot of Money’ if Chinese Nationals Don’t Buy Land, Obama Didn’t Do Anything
21. China Celebrates Trump and Xi’s Mutual ‘Vision’ on Bilateral Ties
22. Trump: Xi said China won’t send military gear to Iran, wants to see Hormuz reopened
23. China’s Democrat pawns: How Beijing bets on midterms to undermine Trump By Mike Robertson   

Nothing Is Ever As It Appears In China: Military Intimidation

By Rich Kozlovich 

It appears China's top boss, Xi, who over the years positioned himself as the new Mao, with absolute power.... and now..... he's in trouble. The CCP is more of a mafia organization than a political party", and many of it's ranking members are part of the CCP's royalty, kids who had prominent and powerful CCP parents, in his case his father.    

He's purging communist party members, prominent military leaders, many of which were his biggest supporters.  Prominent members are ignoring meetings, the economy is in trouble, and given the recent events taking place in China over trade, and what seems to be Xi's diminishing power  I originally published this article on July 26th, 2021, but for some reason it's been hit everyday this week, which means it's being passed around, so I think this is worth another look.

One more thing.  For those who've read about Xi's history it becomes clear he's never been the brightest pebble in the brook.  Because of connections he failed upward, and he's been and amazingly successful schemer. 

First, we have to understand that whenever you read anything about China you must see past what's written. China is a complicated country, with a long and profound history. China's culture is considered the world's oldest culture by many, and China houses most of its population, which is one quarter of the world’s population, in an area about the size of everything east of the Mississippi River in the United States, and they are ethnic Han. The rest of China is sparsely populated and mostly occupied by other ethnic groups that hate the Han and consider the central government illegitimate, and the general population has grown to doubt the legitimacy of the central government as a result of all the incompetence and corruption.

The government’s one child policy has created a large male/female imbalance in the population as a result there isn’t enough women to go around. This creates serious social consequences and dissatisfaction. Pollution is terrible and the government is spending huge amounts of money to keep everyone working, including building cities that no one occupies, and the banking system has troubles the government hides.

What is clear is the Chinese leadership is striving for two things. Social and economic stability, world dominance in both and continued central control of all things in the hands of the communist leadership. 

Make no mistake about it, they’re still commies, and commies are dictators, and so what do dictatorships do to distract the population from their problems? They start a war! Only this is far more problematic than it was decades ago.

 So who do you start a ruckus with? Taiwan, Japan, India or the maybe the Philippines? 

There are a handful of tiny Islands off the coast of China known as the Diaoyu in China and the Senkaku in Japan which are barren and uninhabited. These five islands “encompass a grand total of seven square kilometers” and were won from the Chinese in the first Sino-Japanese war of 1895. But after 1968 the Chinese decided that they wanted them back; after it was discovered “the islands may be sitting on top of huge oil and gas reserves”, which China has none.  A lot of coal, but no oil, or at best very little.

This gives the Chinese a potentially legitimate gripe, especially when you consider what the Japanese did to them in WWII and were then the losers of that war. By pushing this they then bring into play far more than these islands and its potential wealth. They create a Munich Moment. The real goal of the Chinese government is to be the big dog in the South China Sea and ultimately all of South East Asia. 

If they push this and win; it seriously weakens American influence, militarily and economically. The rest of the countries in the area then can be much more easily bullied into falling into line, including India and the Philippines, and of course even Australia.  But all these threats and seeming preparations for military action is triggering a backlash.  Taiwan is now building their own submarine, bypassing China's successful efforts blocking Taiwan's efforts to acquire one from other countries. 

Taiwan is also seeking "allies" in other non-neighboring nations like Lithuania:

Taiwan will set up its first office in Europe using the name “Taiwan,” drawing a rebuke from China and praise from the U.S. as the island democracy seeks to strengthen its diplomatic presence around the globe in the face of pressure from Beijing............. Taiwan’s other diplomatic outposts on the continent are under the name of “Taipei.”  “Lithuania has firmly believed in universal values such as democracy, freedom and human rights, and is a like-mined partner of Taiwan,”.....Taiwan and Lithuania are both at the strategic front line to safeguard democratic and free regimes.......Lithuania has firmly believed in universal values such as democracy, freedom and human rights, and is a like-mined partner of Taiwan.”

An outright war with these nations isn't going to happen, in spite of the threat to use nuclear weapons against Japan if they oppose an attack on Taiwan, with China saying they will make an exception in their first use policy in the case of Japan.  

And of course everyone believes them when they say they have a first use policy.  Right?  

The result?  

The World Is Laughing at the CCP’s ‘Stupidity’: Taiwan Official on China’s Threats to Nuke Japan.  

"Japan’s annual defense white paper issued on July 12, for the first time expressed concern for Taiwan’s stability, linking it to Japan’s national security."  

Article 9 of their Constitution prohibits war as a means to settle international disputes, however, they do have a Self Defense Force, albeit with restrictions.  Article 9 is being reinterpreted to understand that self defense my require acting in defense of allies, and they're building ships to do it.   Their conclusion?  

 “There are two sides … you can either join the West or you can join China,” 

According to Geopolitical Futures:

"Japan, France and the U.S. held trilateral drills on Japanese soil for the first time over the weekend. Australia joined in on Saturday for naval drills. Among all European powers expressing renewed interest in Indo-Pacific military affairs lately, France has perhaps the biggest direct interests at stake." 

While that's caused some turmoil in Japan, this kind of rhetoric from China gives impetus to such moves, and I've explained why I don't think there will be an attack on Taiwan in this June 13th article, and the conclusions I state there are now playing out.  

• Beijing Warns Japan Over Defense of Taiwan: ‘China Is No Longer What it Was’
• Japan Suggests Deploying Forces to Protect Taiwan from Chinese Invasion
• Beijing’s Mouthpiece Calls for Missile Strikes on Australia
• Japan's Road: Past, Present and Future

What they are doing is Waging Gray-Zone Warfare:

"......... gray-zone warfare can be divided into three levels: low, medium, and high. He said that the ‘high’ level includes nuclear posturing, military threats, large-scale clandestine operations that ‘create fait accompli situations,’ the use of special forces to deny mobilization of the target country’s military, and support of large-scale proxy wars........... the CCP’s actions have reached this highest level of gray-zone warfare.”............

 “China’s deployment of maritime militia around Philippine-claimed features in the West Philippine Sea and the rest of the South China Sea is an example. But Bautista, who is also former executive director of National Task Force West Philippine Sea, said gray zone tactics involved other means. ‘Even as we speak, war is being fought in the gray zone. In information and propaganda realm, economic and other areas.”

Infringement on the territorial waters of the Philippines, even using naval vessels to force the Philippines to allow fishing in their waters.  This another example of how the CCP simply ignores international law.  Understand this:  The CCP will honor no agreement or treaty once they decide it's inconvenient, just as they've done regarding all their violations of the Sino-British Joint Declaration regarding Hong Kong, which I will address later.

They practice what's been called "object lesson wars", such as the 1962 Sino-Indian War, which they've reenacted, as explained in this piece from the Jamestown Institute:  Expanding and Escalating the China-Bhutan Territorial Dispute, constantly claiming some piece of land or even an entire sea, as in the , belongs to them. 

("Himalayan squabbling. The end of winter in the Himalayas means the return of squabbling season along the Line of Actual Control, the Indian-Chinese disputed border. Both India and China appear to be positioning for another summer of skirmishes, reportedly doing drills and building out new infrastructure." From Geopolitical Futures)

The lessons to be gleaned from the 1962 Sino-Indian War, is the Chinese think they have a right to "punish" nations like India, Japan and the Philippines when those nations stand in their way or have something they want.   In the case regarding their invasion of India, the Indian military was ill-equipped and unprepared to deal with the Chinese.  Being communists, they play the bully.  China was the aggressor, as they were in Tibet, which I will deal with this in another post.  There was no declaration of war.  It was a sneak attack.  The world isn't going to be fooled now. 

Their goal is to neuter America's military status, not only in South East Asia, but worldwide, and it's a threefold attack.  Military, diplomatic and economic, all of which I will address later.  Militarily that's not so easy.  Below is a map published by Geopolitical Futures defining America's assets in South East Asia.

 

 

This whole thing is symptomatic of the problem with the Chinese government. 

• They have a huge economy that may not be real.
  
• They have a banking system that's an illusion. 
• They have a huge national debt. 
• They absolutely need trade with world to maintain their economy.
• They don't have oil reserves. 
• They have a huge military that may not be effective. 
• They have competent economic neighbors in Japan, India and the Philippines, to whom China has made threatening moves. Economies they don’t really want to compete with because they may not be capable. 
• They have a central planning system that is clueless, and an economy predicated on total employment, not profitability.  They were smart enough to leave Hong Kong alone because it was a huge money machine for the government, but they won't allow the nation to go down that path because it would destroy the elitists that run the country. A course of action they've now abandoned because they fear that kind of freedom Hong Kong had would spread to the mainland. 
• They have serious internal problems with the general population, many of whom consider the central government illegitimate and staggeringly corrupt. 

The problem still remains that has been foundational of all of their problems since Mao. They’re still commies! They think like commies, they act like commies, ergo, they’re commies, and commies are now, and have always been, aggressive, unreasonable, murderous and failures at basic economics and human rights.  Both of which I will address in other pieces.  And they're staggeringly corrupt. 

Pay attention to this whole South East Asia economic situation. There is a reason China is expanding it's navy, including air craft carriers.  It's all an effort to instill an economic hegemony through Asia via military intimidation.  There are serious internal and/or external events in the offing with China that will impact the whole world, and the world is taking notice and recognizing China is the world's biggest threat, and one thing all this military intimidation has done is make everyone aware of how dangerous they are, and the world is going to react.  

A counterintuitive take on the risk that China poses to the world

February 16, 2023 By Andrea Widburg

David Archibald, an Australian scientist and analyst, counterintuitively argues that China is weaker than we think. I don’t agree with everything Archibald says, both factually and theoretically, but I thought his essay is interesting enough to bring to your attention. The premise of Archibald’s claim that China is not as forbidding as Xi Jinping makes it appear is summed up in a single sentence: 

“China has a lot of structural problems that make it a fragile state, a frail state and even potentially a future failed state.” 

Archibald makes five major points:

One: China’s demographic games have been disastrous. Mao, who believed in big battalions, deliberately encouraged massive population growth, which peaked at about 1.4 billion. The result is that China cannot feed its population. That continues to be true despite its one-child policy that has now left China in a demographic tailspin with an aging population that a smaller, youthful population must support...............To Read More....

In China Things Head South Quickly

January 19, 2023/ Francis Menton  @ Manhattan Contrarian

If you follow developments out of China at all, you have likely noticed a spate of bad news recently. For years, even decades, it seemed that China could do no wrong in its growth toward becoming a major world power: China reported economic growth of 10% and up every year; it was becoming the hub of manufacturing for the entire world; and as its economy grew, its clout on the world stage increased rapidly. Pundits on the left (and occasionally on the right as well), often with overt admiration for the Chinese model of authoritarian state-directed crony capitalism, widely predicted that China would supplant the U.S. as the world’s leading power some time not too far into the 21st century.

Suddenly that’s looking much less likely. What happened? The fault lines have been there for a long time, but well-concealed by a regime with tight control over information flow, let alone by a Western press with a deep hatred of the West and not hiding its cheerleading for success of the Chinese model. In the last few months, as conditions have deteriorated, the regime has lost a big piece of its ability to keep the lid on.

Here’s my two cents: If the goal is long-term success for the country and the people, the Xi regime is doing pretty much everything wrong.

As a Manhattan Contrarian reader, it will not have come as a surprise to you that China would soon be facing serious reverses. As long ago as a post in September 2018, I asked “What Are The Long-Term Prospects For China?” That post reviewed various destructive policies of the Chinese government that included things like the pervasive surveillance system, tight and increasing state control of investment, suppression of religion and of ethnic minorities, and more, and concluded by asking: “[I]n a world of tough competition for talent and investment, what does China really have to offer?” In another post in March 2021, I asked “Is China About To ‘Win’ The Battle For The Future?” That post reviewed the prognostications of multiple pundits, on both left and right, predicting, often in exactly those words, that China was “winning the battle for the future.” But my conclusion was that various self-inflicted wounds stemming from the authoritarian governance model would soon undermine Chinese progress:

China’s system has enormous disadvantages, mostly self-inflicted by the ruling Communist Party, that show every prospect of greatly hindering and undermining its ongoing economic advance.

So with that introduction, let’s review some of the latest news:

Covid. Since the outset of the pandemic, China has pursued what it has called the “zero Covid” policy. Somehow Xi or others in the regime got the idea that they could accomplish the ultimate demonstration of the superiority of their system by imposing the strictest lockdowns and other control measures, and thereby preventing the disease from ever spreading in their country. In a post on April 16, 2022, I described conditions in Shanghai at that time, largely as then reported by The New York Times:

China has adopted an absolutist “zero Covid” policy without any rational weighing of the actual costs and benefits of the policy. Young adults and children with little to no risk of death from the disease are locked in their homes, often starving, and deprived of all normal human social contact for weeks and months on end. And since the disease has not yet worked its way through the population as it has elsewhere, China has no end in sight for these draconian policies. . . . The New York Times reports on April 10 about how the recent Shanghai lockdown is affecting the residents: “Residents have swarmed the police officers who enter their neighborhoods wearing white protective suits. They have shouted out their windows, demanding to be given supplies. Others have banged pots and pans in protest. . . . “We just want to eat, is that so hard?” [residents] yelled.”

The post included this picture of a street scene from Shanghai, with police and health officials in haz-mat suits and no civilians to be seen outdoors:

At the time, the Worldometers site, using official Chinese government data, was reporting what appeared to be a huge success for the zero Covid policy, at least if the only measure of success is number of cases and deaths from Covid and you think that imprisoning people in their homes for months is OK and that official Chinese government data are real. The death rate for China from Covid at that time was given as 3 per million population. My comment was that the official death rate “is highly likely to be wildly understated, but nobody knows by how much, because any local official daring to report accurate information would likely be fired if not jailed.”

By December, there were widespread reports that Covid was surging in China — although if you followed the Worldometers site, you could still not find the surge in the officially-reported data. But some Western news sources at last started to get curious. Here is the latest from NBC News today:

SHANGHAI — Patients are crammed into hallways, stairwells and lobbies, and still the sick keep coming. In scenes reminiscent of the start of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, Chinese hospitals are struggling to cope with a surge in Covid-19 cases following the country’s decision to scrap its “zero-Covid” policy in early December.

So is the Chinese government starting to get honest?

After international criticism that it had not been transparent about the severity of the outbreak, the Chinese government said last weekend that it had recorded 60,000 Covid-related deaths since Dec. 8.

That’s a start — Worldometers as of today continues to show a total of only 5,272 Covid deaths in China. But NBC continues:

An estimate on Tuesday by Airfinity, an independent forecaster based in London, put the number of Covid-related deaths in China since Dec. 1 at 608,000, 10 times the official figure.

608,000 deaths would be about 425 per million population. That’s still a fraction of the U.S. rate (which is about 3,300 per million), but those 608,000 deaths in China are only in the last month and a half. The real number in China since the start of the pandemic remains anybody’s guess, and the current surge of cases and deaths could well result in rapid catch-up to the rates in the Western countries that had far less severe restrictions. The Chinese have lived in near prison conditions for the last three years — and for what? To make the leaders look good (by some twisted definition of “good”)?

Population. The Wall Street Journal reported on January 16, based on official Chinese data, that China’s population had actually declined year-on-year in 2022 over 2021.

The National Bureau of Statistics said Tuesday that China’s population dropped to 1.412 billion in 2022, from 1.413 billion in 2021. It was the first decline since the early 1960s, when the country was devastated by famine after Mao Zedong launched his “Great Leap Forward.”

It may sound like a rounding error, but the difference between 1.413 billion and 1.412 billion is a whole million people. And the decline represents almost entirely excess of deaths over births. In simple terms, nobody is having children in China any more. The data on number of births are quite astounding. From the WSJ:

The number of births declined to 9.56 million from 10.62 million in 2021, Tuesday’s data showed. China’s birthrate—the number of births per thousand people—dropped to 6.77 in 2022, compared with 7.52 in 2021.

By contrast, according to Macrotrends, the U.S. birthrate for 2022 was 12.012 per 1000 people — close to double the Chinese rate. The U.S. rate is right around the level that is sufficient to maintain the population; and with ongoing rapid immigration, the U.S. can expect continued increases in population. For China, at this extremely low birth rate, the population is almost certain to continue to decline. And the way the math of this works, unless the birth rate reverses quickly, the decline will accelerate. The UN put out a prediction in late 2022 that China’s population would decline by nearly half by 2100, to under 800 million. And others have even more dire projections. (A University of Wisconsin study in 2021 projects a population for China in 2100 of between 350 and 450 million.)

China also has negative net immigration (that is, more people emigrate than immigrate), according to Macrotrends. What foreign citizen would want to voluntarily enter this prison/surveillance state, where ethnic minorities are treated like second-class citizens when they are not put into forced labor camps?

Economic “Growth”. As reported in many sources, citing official Chinese government data, China reported economic growth for 2022 as 3%. Here is a quote from Reuters, January 17:

2022 GDP grows 3.0%, far below official target. . . . China's economic growth in 2022 slumped to one of its worst levels in nearly half a century as the fourth quarter was hit hard by strict COVID curbs and a property market slump, raising pressure on policymakers to unveil more stimulus this year.

3% year-on-year economic growth is far lower than the levels of growth reported by China for the past several decades. Compared to the U.S., the 3% may still not sound too bad, until you realize, again, this is official Chinese statistics. There could be endless amounts of padding in there.

So overall, how is Xi doing? I’d say, he’s giving an object lesson on how to drive a country into the ditch. Until the government is ready to accept a large role for freedom and entrepreneurialism outside state control, they are likely in for a long period of stagnation. I don’t see Xi and his crowd going that route.

China is in deep trouble and bound to get worse

September 13, 2021 By Uldis Sprogis

Is China the next superpower? Is the media's depiction of the country as a ten-foot giant really accurate? That's dubious. For all its bluster on the global stage, China is a giant in trouble.

Here are some of the reasons we know:

Perhaps the biggest problem in China is its erstwhile "one child" policy, which created many single, self-absorbed adults with poor social skills and an entitlement mindset that included no great desire to marry young and bear the financial burden of offspring. China switched to a two-child policy and recently revised it to allow three children per family. But it's too little, too late. The best result is that in about 20 years, the Chinese population will probably be more than halved anyway, instead of something worse, and the elderly will be a great burden on their single offspring and the economy.

Already only about 10% of China's young population is getting married, which implies an even more precipitous drop in population in the future. China does not encourage immigration from abroad, so a precipitous drop in population will have a drastically bad impact on a shrinking economy and even on the social life of the average Chinese.

Another problem is income disparity, with a vast gulf of differences between a tiny urban elite and the country's many urban and rural poor. It's an even greater disparity in income wealth distribution than exists in the United States. That may be a reason why the CCP has decided to crack down on glorified celebrities and wealthy capitalists and is forcefully trying to redistribute their wealth, especially to the tech working class, who largely have been working a 996 shift, which means working from 9 A.M. to 9 P.M.., six days a week..............To Read More....

Economic Backsliding by China, Part I

August 22, 2021 by Dan Mitchell @ International Liberty

Long-time readers know that I periodically pour cold water on the notion that China is an economic superstar.

Yes, China did engage in some economic liberalization late last century, and those reforms should be applauded because they were very successful in reducing severe poverty.

 

But from a big-picture perspective, all that really happened is that China went from terrible policy (Maoist communism) to bad policy (best described as mass cronyism).

Economic Freedom of the World has the best data. According to the latest edition, China’s score for economic liberty rose from a horrible 3.69 in 1990 to 6.21 in 2018.

That’s a big improvement, but that still leaves China in the bottom quartile (ranking #124 in the world). Better than Venezuela (#162), to be sure, but way behind even uncompetitive welfare states such as Greece (#92), France (#58), and Italy (#51).

And I fear China’s score will get even worse in the near future.

Why? Because it seems President Xi is going to impose class-warfare tax increases.

In an article for the Guardian, Phillip Inman shares some of the details.

China’s president has vowed to “adjust excessive incomes” in a warning to the country’s super-rich that the state plans to redistribute wealth… The policy goal comes amid a sweeping push by Beijing to rein in the country’s largest private firms in industries, ranging from technology to education. …Xi…is expected to expand wealth taxes and raise income tax rates… Some reforms could be far reaching, including higher taxes on capital gains, inheritance and property. Higher public sector wages are also expected to be part of the package.

And here are some excerpts from a report by Jane Li for Quartz.

Chinese president Xi Jinping yesterday sent a stark message to the country’s wealthy: It is time to redistribute their excessive fortunes. …Another reason for the Party’s focus on outsize wealth is to reduce rival centers of power and influence in China, which has also been an impetus for its crackdown on the tech sector… China already has fairly high income tax rates for its wealthiest. That includes a top income tax rate of 45% for those who earn more than 960,000 yuan ($150,000) a year… Upcoming moves could include…a nationwide property tax.

These stories may warm the hearts of Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders, but they help to explain why I’m not optimistic about China’s economy.

 

If you review the Economic Freedom of the World data, you find that China is especially bad on fiscal policy (“size of government”), ranking #153.

That’s worse than China does even on regulation.

Yet the Chinese government is now going to impose higher taxes to fund even bigger government?!?

Is the goal to be even worse than Venezuela and Zimbabwe?

P.S. Many wealthy people in China (maybe even most of them) achieved their high incomes thanks to government favoritism, so there’s a very strong argument that their riches are undeserved. But the best policy response is getting rid of industrial policy rather than imposing tax increases that will hit both good rich people and bad rich people.

P.P.S. I’ve criticized both the OECD and IMF for advocating higher taxes in China. A few readers have sent emails asking whether those international bureaucracies might be deliberately trying to sabotage China’s economy and thus preserve the dominance of Europe and the United States. Given the wretched track records of the OECD and IMF, I think it’s far more likely that the bureaucrats from those organizations sincerely support those bad policies (especially since they get tax-free salaries and are sheltered from the negative consequences).

 

Bearing Witness to China’s ‘Orwellian Dystopia’

By Bari Weiss

Earlier this month, Patrick Wack got a boost any photographer would dream of when Kodak’s Instagram account — 841,000 followers and counting — decided to feature ten photographs from his forthcoming book. It’s called “Dust,” and it chronicles the transformation, over the past half-decade, of the Xinjiang region, the cradle of Uyghur civilization, at the hands of the Chinese Communist Party.

Then, a few days after Kodak shared the photos, the company deleted them. 

It didn’t just delete them. It replaced Wack’s haunting pictures with its corporate logo and a statement that reads, in part: 

“Kodak’s Instagram page is intended to enable creativity by providing a platform for promoting the medium of film. It is not intended to be a platform for political commentary.” It went on to “apologize for any misunderstanding or offense the post may have caused.”

Instagram is banned in China, so Kodak put out an additional statement on WeChat, a Chinese social-media platform. This one was more abject:

For a long time, Kodak has maintained a good relationship with the Chinese government and has been in close cooperation with various government departments. We will continue to respect the Chinese government and the Chinese law.

We will keep ourselves in check and correct ourselves, taking this as an example of the need for caution. 

To appease Chinese Communist Party officials, other Western  brands — Apple, Airbnb, the NBA, Marriott, Dior and Valentino, to name just a few — have issued similar apologies. 

Kodak’s Instagram faux pas most closely resembles that of Mercedes-Benz, which, in 2018, posted a #MondayMotivation ad on its Instagram account that included a quote from the Dalai Lama: “Look at situations from all angles, and you will become more open.” The line sparked an uproar in Beijing, and the German carmaker quickly apologized.

Wack’s images are far more threatening to the CCP. The photographer calls the situation in Xinjiang, in the northwest region of the country, an “Orwellian dystopia.” He would know. He traveled there six times from 2016 to 2019, documenting the province as it became, in his words, “an open-air prison.”

In today’s newsletter, we are proud to reprint Patrick Wack’s stirring images. They are accompanied by a conversation, edited for length and clarity, with him. You can preorder his book here. 

 To Read More.....

 My Take - I've shown three comments below, go to the article to see the rest.  Worth the time.  

1. Here in America, corporate oligarchs, feckless politicians, and sycophantic celebrities endorse and sponsor marching, looting, burning, and killing to protest slavery that ended 150+ years ago.When it comes to China, those same corporate pashas, loathsome politicians, and unctuous celebrities ignore the slavery and atrocities that are happening now, right before their uncaring eyes. The slavery and barbarity visited on the Uyghurs could easily happen in America; such a society is the ultimate dream of the woke and hyper-liberal.
2.  Thank you for shining on light on this tragedy ~ powerful images. Shame on Kodak for their apologist comments and for bending a knee to Communist China."China is a country where so many products are manufactured. It’s a country that the whole world has business and diplomatic relations with. And they are trying to re-engineer and disappear a people and their culture. I hope to bring light to this and what kind of a regime this is. "We American consumers can all do our part to stop this human tragedy by shunning products made in China ~ especially American brands who ignore the efforts to disappear a culture by Communist China.
3.  Did you hear Nike and LeBron James' and the NBA, and MLB and the NFL and Woka-Cola and Kodak's full-throated condemnations of these atrocities against the Uyghur in China? I didn't. Neither did anyone else. Shame on us. Shame on us for drinking on deciliter of Coke. Shame on us for watching one second of MLB, NBA, NFL and for buying their merch. Shame on us for watching one frame of John Cena et al and FF9 and every other Hollywood property cleansed, purged and whitewashed of anything offensive to the CCP, lest its gazillion dollar market be disrupted. Shame on us for selling out the Uyghur and our own souls for cheap, mediocre crap from China. The shame is on us. Shame on us.

Nothing Is Ever As It Appears In China: Infiltration, Part II

By Rich Kozlovich

During the 1890's socialists became a presence in America, but since European style socialism is fundamentally atheistic it didn't really gain a lot of traction as America was a very religious nation at that time.  So they did what all good little socialists do, they lied.  

They hide who they were by transforming themselves into the progressive movement, and believe it or not, religion was the binding force, hence what's now called the Social Gospel was born, pushing the idea that socialism was the practical application of Christian ethics, which is Hillary Clinton's religious training and background by the way. 

Infiltration of America by communist spies has been a problem since 1920, right after the Russian revolution.  During the Roosevelt administration it was so bad it's been stated the government of the United States was the most heavily infiltrated government in the history of the world.  All those agencies FDR created were filled with Soviet agents, communists, socialists and fellow travelers.  One, Harry Dexter White, even lived in the White House for two years. 

Editor's note: I recommend reading Diana West wrote American Betrayal: The Secret Assault on Our Nation’s Character and also  Stalin's Secret Agents: The Subversion of Roosevelt's Government by M. Stanton Evans and Herbert Romerstein, both of which outline just how badly his administration was infiltrated, and it seems clear FDR had to know it.  RK

For a short time with the fall of the Soviet Union their archives became accessible, and with the release of the VENONA intercepts in 1995 we now know communist agents infiltrated all of America's institutions including academia, unions, Hollywood, newspapers, government, and to this day we don't know who they all were, but their intellectual progeny remain.  Different names, different faces, but still in positions of power and responsibility with the same destructive philosophy.

Infiltration of America by the enemies of freedom is easy since America allows so much freedom, and the Russians were quite good at it.  The Chinese are even better at it.

On December 13, 2020, Paul Sacca posted this piece, Unprecedented' database leak exposes Chinese Communist Party members 'embedded' in western companies and governments: report, saying: 

A massive database of nearly 2 million registered Chinese Communist Party members has been leaked, providing the rest of the world with an "unprecedented view" into the structure of how China could infiltrate western businesses and companies, including ones in the United States, Australia, and the United Kingdom. 

"Communist party branches have been set up inside western companies, allowing the infiltration of those companies by CCP members — who, if called on, are answerable directly to the communist party, to the Chairman, the president himself,".......there are also the details of 79,000 communist party branches, many of them inside companies..............."there are 123 "party loyalists" employed at Pfizer and AstraZeneca,.........Both pharmaceutical behemoths are developing coronavirus vaccines..........

There were allegedly "hundreds" of Chinese Communist Party members employed at "firms with defense industry interests" such as Airbus, Boeing, and Rolls-Royce "......... reportedly 600 CCP members working at 19 branches of British banks, such as HSBC and Standard Chartered in 2016. The CCP members even infiltrated British consulates and universities, according to the report. Here, Here, Here, Here, Here, Here, Here

The goal of all this?  Protect and defend the Chinese Communist Party, China's leadership, especially President Xi, defend China's economic interests, manipulate political systems worldwide in order to promote and encourage politicians who will institute economic and military policies that are detrimental to the west and friendly to China, and convince the world the China model is the right model for the developing world.  With the ultimate goal of creating a Chinese economic and military hegemony world wide.

This is being done on a broad front, but in Part I let's focus on one aspect.  American institutions of "higher" learning.

On August 20, 2020 Curtis Ellis published the article, China’s Growing Influence on Campus.  Ellis notes that professors and administrators have been corrupted with Chinese funding, and "University campuses are a major front in the war."  And it is a war.

 

He lists the following:

• The FBI arrested Charles Lieber, the chairman of Harvard’s Chemistry and Chemical Biology department, for accepting millions of dollars from the Wuhan virology lab and then lying about it.
• A UCLA professor was convicted of taking CCP money to illegally send semiconductors with military applications to China.
• A University of Kansas professor hid the fact he was working full-time for a Chinese university while he was conducting federally-funded research here.
• One of the top researchers at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Texas didn’t reveal he was also being paid $14 million by a cancer institute in China.
• Elite American universities have grown increasingly dependent on CCP money.
• The University of Pennsylvania received $61 million in gifts and contracts from China between March 2017 and the end of 2019; over the previous four-year period, it took in just $19 million from Chinese donors, The Washington Free Beacon reports.
• It happens that the university is home to the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, a perch for members of Biden’s foreign policy cabinet-in-waiting.
• Between 2011 and 2017, Chinese government, companies, and individuals – China sent nearly 370,000 students to the United States in the 2018-2019 academic year – gave more than $426 million to U.S. universities and colleges. According to government data, Harvard University was the top recipient, reporting over $57 million from Chinese entities – not counting the money the chair of the chemistry department took from the CCP.

Has all this money had an impact of what these universities teach and promote. Yes!  All their activities and curriculum are geared to not upsetting China, and the hand that's feeding them.  No one can come on the campus and expose China's human rights abuses in Hong King, Tibet, organ harvesting, slave labor, and the total elimination of religious freedom via violent reprisals for daring to believe in something other than the secular divinity of the Chinese Communist Party.  

Newly obtained documents reveal disturbing details of Chinese influence on campus states: 

 “......these Confucius Institute contracts give substantial power to the Chinese side because educational institutions want Beijing’s money for language instruction but more important they want a continual flow of Chinese students, who generally pay full tuition,"........“Chinese tuition money has become a substantial source of revenue for many colleges and universities,"......... officials have warned that they are “propaganda” centers of the communist regime. “Confucius institutes are not cultural centers,” the Heritage Foundation’s Senior Fellow at Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy and author of The Plot to Change America Mike Gonzalez told Campus Reform.  “The Confucius Institutes are meant to curb and limit what Americans learn about the realities of China,"

• [RELATED: US designates Chinese-funded Confucius Institutes as 'foreign missions']

 On May 20, 2020 it was reported Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made it clear they had plans to "expel Chinese students who come here to spy on behalf of China's Communist Party." "We're taking seriously the threat that students that come here who have connections deeply to the Chinese State they shouldn't be here at our schools, spying,...........President Trump "is the first president...to recognize the threat that the Chinese communist party presented to the United States of America. "  "They were stealing intellectual property from us, they were moving in the South China sea, and all the things that you know. And presidents before (he mentioned Bush and Obama) just turned their head and wouldn't do it."  Pompeo was asked by Laura Ingraham:  Do you think China would prefer, all things considered, for Biden to win in November?" 

•  China Blasts U.S. Over Trump-Era Policy Used to Deny Visas to Military-Linked Chinese Students
  

I think the answer to that question is now moot, since Biden has revoked  the Trump administrations policy to stop China from influencing American students on campus, and the Biden DOJ has dropped charges against 5 researchers accused of hiding Chinese military affiliations. 
 

Confucius Institutes and Confucius Classrooms funded by China isn't just involved with higher education, it's influence is far, deep and wide throughout all of America's systems of education, as noted in this piece.  Chinese Regime Infiltrated US K–12 Education Through Deep Collaboration With College Board.     

• Live Panel: Corrupted by China: The College Board and K-12 Education

Let's try and get this right, Communist China Threatens American Universities, and the very structure of America.

The radical left has made its way into our universities and focused on combating perceived injustices – renaming buildings, liberalizing curriculum, and promoting safe spaces over open, honest debate – while staying silent on their connections to Communist China, a country committing genocide against its Muslim population and actively oppressing the people of Hong Kong................

Under Article 38 of the Hong Kong National Security Law, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) claims that it has global policing authority to prosecute anyone, anywhere, who might offend the delicate sensibilities of General Secretary Xi or even mention Beijing’s long list of human rights abuses...........After years of turning a blind eye to Chinese spying for the sake of grant money from the CCP and full tuition from Chinese students, universities must face the fact that the CCP’s actions require a strong response from the United States – namely a decoupling between the U.S. and China in many areas of our national life: economics, finance, trade, and now education............No American institution should cower to the Chinese Communist Party and put our nation – and their students – at risk.

Infiltration Part III will be forthcoming, along with more articles dealing with China next week.  I've been saving articles for months to do this project.  It's time consuming, almost mind boggling trying to coordinate all that information deciding what to include, what to exclude and what to save for future use, and how to put it together in some rational, understandable and readable format.  But I think it's impossible to make clear just how long range, mendacious and insidious all this is if done piecemeal.   

Best wishes to us all.  

• Nothing Is Ever As It Appears In China: Human Rights, Part I
• Nothing Is Ever As It Appears In China: Military Intimidation

China Aims to Dominate Global Governance

By Steven Neill

A December 2020 report by the U.S. Department of the Navy divulged the following on China's methods for projecting its "true maritime power":

China's aggressive actions are undermining the international rules-based order, while its growing military capacity and capabilities are eroding U.S. military advantages at an alarming rate.  China has implemented a strategy and revisionist approach that aims at the heart of the United States' maritime power. It seeks to corrode international maritime governance, deny access to traditional logistical hubs, inhibit freedom of the seas, control use of key choke-points, deter our engagement in regional disputes, and displace the United States as the preferred partner in countries around the world.

China's aggressive fishing policies coincide with its aggression in other areas as well:...........Yet even with all of the above taking place, the West has consented to and even encouraged Chinese expansion, cedeing to China her path to a dominant role in world governance, allowing and even promoting more significant Chinese influence in the U.N. other world organizations.....................To Read More....