When Autocrats Get Nervous

Generally, there are 2 main reasons for a country to get belligerent.

1. Feeling big and bad, they start throwing their weight around to take advantage of their strength
2. Feeling not so big and bad, they start throwing their weight around to cover up their weakness

Putin's aggression towards Ukraine seems to have been a manifestation of #1 above - mistaken to be sure, because he was apparently unaware of the enormous corruption that has been hollowing out the Russian military (as well as the economy) for 30 years. Which is tragically laughable given the fact that Putin is about as corrupt as they come, but somehow he trusted the colonels and generals (who were busily selling all the tank engines on the black market) when they told him everything was peachy, and don't worry, boss - we'll knock over Kyiv in about a week?

China's been getting all frisky too. We've been thinking their aggressive posturing is because of their strength as well, but we're becoming aware of some very serious problems there. ie: work force demographics due to a dramatic decline in their population growth, they've way over-built both commercial and residential spaces, and they're seeing a near collapse in consumer spending and capital investment.

So, sometimes the assholes are assholes because they need territory or population or resources.

Sometimes the assholes are assholes because they need to hide their asshole-ishness behind some make-believe shit.

And - of course - sometimes the assholes are assholes just because they're assholes.

Blasting Bullhorns and Water Cannons, Chinese Ships Wall Off the Sea

The Chinese military base on Mischief Reef, off the Philippine island of Palawan, loomed in front of our boat, obvious even in the predawn dark.

Radar domes, used for military surveillance, floated like nimbus clouds. Lights pointed to a runway made for fighter jets, backed by warehouses perfect for surface-to-air missiles. More than 900 miles from the Chinese mainland, in an area of the South China Sea that an international tribunal has unequivocally determined does not belong to China, cellphones pinged with a message: “Welcome to China.”

The world’s most brazen maritime militarization is gaining muscle in waters through which one-third of global ocean trade passes. Here, on underwater reefs that are known as the Dangerous Ground, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, or P.L.A., has fortified an archipelago of forward operating bases that have branded these waters as China’s despite having no international legal grounding. China’s coast guard, navy and a fleet of fishing trawlers harnessed into a militia are confronting other vessels, civilian and military alike.

The mounting Chinese military presence in waters that were long dominated by the U.S. fleet is sharpening the possibility of a showdown between superpowers at a moment when relations between them have greatly worsened. And as Beijing challenges a Western-driven security order that stood for nearly eight decades, regional countries are increasingly questioning the strength of the American commitment to the Pacific.

While the United States makes no territorial claims to the South China Sea, it maintains defense pacts with Asian partners, including the Philippines, that could compel American soldiers to these waters. Just as anxiety over nearby Taiwan has focused attention on the deteriorating relations between Washington and Beijing, the South China Sea provides yet another stage for a contest in which neither side wants to betray weakness. Complicating matters, Chinese diplomats and military officers are engaging less at a time when open communication could help defuse tensions.

China’s arming of the South China Sea has also forced Southeast Asian fishermen — from nations like the Philippines that Chinese diplomats have referred to as “small countries” — to abandon the fishing grounds they have depended on for generations. It is putting tremendous pressure on those governments.

“I told the Chinese, ‘Your leadership talks about shared prosperity, but what you are doing cannot make it more plain that you think we are just stupid people who can be fooled and bullied,’” said Clarita Carlos, who until January served as the national security adviser of the Philippines. “The interconnected oceans should be our common heritage, and we should be working with marine scientists from every nation to fight the real enemy: climate change.”

“Instead,” she added, “the Chinese are building military bases on artificial islands and bringing guns to the sea.”

During a four-day sail through a collection of rocks, reefs and islets called the Spratlys that are within the Dangerous Ground, New York Times journalists saw the extent to which China’s projection of power has transformed this contested part of the Pacific Ocean. Not since the United States embarked on its own campaign of far-flung militarization more than a century ago, leading its armed forces toward a position of Pacific primacy, has the security landscape shifted so significantly.

A P.L.A. Navy tugboat lingering in the vicinity had failed to stop us, perhaps because of the early-morning hour. But as we approached the Chinese military base, the tugboat, about 2.5 times the size of our vessel, churned water to reach us, turning on its floodlights and blasting its horn repeatedly. Over the radio, we were told that we had intruded into Chinese territorial waters.

Our boat was Philippine-flagged, and an international tribunal convened by the Permanent Court of Arbitration ruled in 2016 that Mischief Reef was part of the exclusive economic zone and continental shelf of the Philippines. China has ignored that ruling. In a radio exchange, we said we were allowed to sail through these waters.

The P.L.A. tugboat responded with more barrages of its horn, a sonic assault so piercing that we felt it in our bodies. Then, with its floodlights nearly blinding us, the P.L.A. tugboat rushed at our vessel, swiping within 20 meters of our much smaller boat. This was a clear breach of international maritime protocol, maritime experts said.

As dawn broke, we could see both the fortifications on Mischief Reef and an array of Chinese vessels closing in from different directions: half a dozen maritime militia boats and a recently commissioned navy corvette designed to carry anti-ship missiles. The navy tugboat stayed near, too.

On other occasions, Chinese coast guard and militia vessels have rammed, doused with water cannons and sunk civilian boats in the South China Sea. In 2019, for instance, 22 Filipino fishermen were left to float amid the wreckage of their boat for six hours after a Chinese militia vessel struck them.

Danger extends overhead. In May, a Chinese fighter jet sliced past the nose of a U.S. Air Force reconnaissance plane flying through international air space over the South China Sea, echoing an incident last December when a Chinese fighter came within 20 feet of an American plane.

Zhou Bo, a retired P.L.A. colonel who is now a senior fellow at the Center for International Security and Strategy at Tsinghua University in Beijing, said that claimant nations and the United States — which conducts regular air and sea patrols in the South China Sea — should accept Beijing’s contention that this is Chinese turf.

“The U.S. should stop or decrease its operations there,” he said. “But since it is impossible, so the danger will grow. A stronger P.L.A. can only be more resolute in defending China’s sovereignty and national interests.”

Mr. Zhou added that he thought the risk of a conflict between the United States and China was higher in the South China Sea than in the Taiwan Strait, another theater of geopolitical friction.

Frictions in the South China Sea are greatest in places where Southeast Asian countries have defied the Chinese mandate that the waterway, scooped out on Chinese maps with a dashed line, belongs to Beijing. In waters close to Vietnam and Malaysia, Chinese vessels have disrupted attempts to explore and develop oil and natural gas fields. The Chinese coast guard has forcibly prevented its Indonesian counterpart from arresting Chinese fishermen operating well within Indonesian waters.

Chinese forces frequently harass Philippine coast guard boats trying to access a tiny contingent of Philippine marines stationed on Second Thomas Shoal, which, like nearby Mischief Reef, also lies within the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone. (Control over such a zone gives a country the rights to all resources within it, although foreign flagged boats are allowed free passage through most of the waters.)

In February, a Chinese coast guard ship directed a military-grade laser at a Philippine coast guard boat trying to resupply the marines at Second Thomas, temporarily blinding some sailors, according to the Philippine side. The Chinese coast guard has also unleashed high-intensity water cannons at the resupply boats, as recently as last month. In both cases, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said that the Philippine vessels were violating Chinese territorial sovereignty, forcing the Chinese to intervene.

As we left Mischief Reef, with Chinese vessels still shadowing us, we saw just how lopsided the contest is at Second Thomas. In 1997, the Philippines, outmanned and underfunded, beached a World War II era navy ship on the shoal, creating a makeshift base from which its soldiers could defend Philippine waters.

With the marooned navy ship in the distance, we watched as the same Philippine coast guard vessel that had been targeted by the military laser was flanked by a pair of Chinese coast guard ships more than double its length. The radio crackled with verbal jousting.

“Since you have disregarded our warning,” a Chinese coast guardsman said, “we will take further necessary measures in accordance with the law, and any consequences entailed will be borne by you.”

“We will deliver food and other essentials to our people,” the Philippine side answered.

The Philippine boat barely made it through to resupply the marine base. Every week brings such a David and Goliath showdown, and the chance for a dangerous miscalculation.

“The Chinese are flouting the maritime rules of engagement and intentionally violating the good rules of conduct,” said Gregory B. Poling, the director of the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “They’re making foreign vessels veer, sometimes at the last moment. One day, a foreign vessel is not going to veer off. And then what?”

Despite its lack of territorial claims in the South China Sea, the American Seventh Fleet regularly cruises these waters to ensure freedom of navigation for all nations, according to the U.S. Navy. (Beijing contends that the presence of American military ships, particularly patrols near Chinese-controlled bases, inflames tensions.) And security pacts bind the American military to several Asian countries. The Philippines, which was once an American colony, is tied to the United States in a mutual defense treaty that Vice President Kamala Harris said last year would extend to “an armed attack on the Philippine armed forces, public vessels or aircraft in the South China Sea.”

This month, U.S. and Philippine warships sailed together in the South China Sea, and the two navies plan a joint patrol later this year.

American support has not always been so full-throated. In 2012, Chinese vessels occupied Scarborough Shoal, off the coast of the Philippines’ most populous island, even after the United States thought it had brokered a deal for both the Philippines and China to withdraw from the reef to cool tensions. Despite the Chinese incursion, American forces did not defend the shoal. Chinese boats have essentially controlled Scarborough ever since.

Around the same time, China began constructing what it said were “typhoon shelters” for fishermen on several South China Sea reefs it controlled. Then Chinese dredgers began piling sand on the atolls. Airstrips and barracks appeared. In 2015, China’s leader, Xi Jinping, stood in the White House Rose Garden and said that “China does not intend to pursue militarization” of the Spratlys, despite satellite evidence that China was doing just that.

“The U.S. response was pretty much limited to statements that they opposed it, but not much more,” said M. Taylor Fravel, the director of the security studies program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an author of books on China’s defense strategy and territorial disputes, noting that the development of the P.L.A.’s South China Sea military bases was done in three phases from 2014-2016. “It’s reasonable to speculate that a much harder response to the first wave would have prevented the next two waves.”

The 2016 tribunal ruling that dismissed China’s “historical claims” over most of the South China Sea came just as the Philippines was ushering in a new president, Rodrigo Duterte, who made close ties with China a signature of his six years in power. Mr. Duterte ignored the tribunal ruling, even though it favored his country. Since President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. took office last year, his administration has spoken out against the Chinese presence in the South China Sea. Mr. Marcos has also granted the United States access to a handful of military bases on Philippine soil and is allowing for the building of others.

After we left Second Thomas Shoal, we sailed toward the Philippine island of Palawan, home to nearly a million people. Green hills rose on the horizon as we neared Sabina Shoal, a rich fishing ground for centuries. In recent years, the Chinese have placed buoys here. The Philippine coast guard has removed them.

Right on Sabina Shoal, where delicate coral once thrived, we saw boats arranged in a defensive formation. Ropes tied some of the vessels together. Chinese flags flew. Men bantered over the radio in a southern Chinese dialect. No fishing nets were in evidence.

China has said that such trawlers are commercial fishing vessels, and a Chinese appetite for seafood has created the world’s largest fishing fleet. But these South China Sea boats, experts say, rarely fish. Instead, they act as a maritime militia, swarming contested waters and unoccupied reefs for days or even months. They have steel hulls and advanced satellites, and some have rammed smaller Southeast Asian fishing boats. If a storm descends, they shelter at Chinese naval bases, like those built on Mischief, Fiery Cross and Subi reefs, satellite imagery shows.

We could see empty Chinese instant noodle packets floating in the water. We heard the Philippine coast guard over the radio, urging the Chinese boats to leave Sabina. There was no response. The Philippine entreaties faded.

China

1980s: The Canadians are buying up all the businesses - we're doomed!

We weren't doomed

1990s: The Japanese are buying up all the commercial real estate - we're doomed!

We weren't doomed

2000s: The Arabs are buying up all the resorts and apartments and condos - we're doomed!

We weren't doomed

2010s: Foreigners are buying up all the US debt bonds - we're doomed!

We weren't doomed

2020: The Chinese are buying up all the farm land - we're doomed!

Jeezus H Fuq, what's wrong with these people?

I'm not saying, "Don't worry, be happy". There's plenty to worry about. But I will say there's always an under-taste of fuckery whenever I hear some "conservative" telling us horrible things are about to happen.

China’s economic woes may leave U.S. and others all but unscathed

The forecast for escaping economic damage could deteriorate if Beijing cheapens the currency to boost exports

Judith Marks, the chief executive of the elevator maker Otis Worldwide, returned in April from a 10-day trip to China saying “all signals look positive” for the country’s recovery from its draconian covid lockdown.

The Chinese rebound that seemed to be gaining momentum in April lost steam in May and reached midsummer in danger of petering out altogether. Suddenly, the world’s second-largest economy, for years a reliable juggernaut, was ailing. The core of the problem: a debt-ridden, overbuilt property sector that threatened to smother growth well short of the government’s 5 percent annual target.

Chinese weakness is bad news for companies such as Otis, based in Farmington, Conn. China is its most profitable market for new equipment sales, accounting last year for roughly one-third of orders. Through the first half of the year, China was the company’s only major market where orders were in decline.

But the elevators that Otis sells in China are made there. So while the property market slump means that fewer are needed, most of the pain will be felt at Otis facilities in China, not in the United States. For all its remarkable progress and prosperity, China is not an important enough customer of goods produced elsewhere for its woes to be contagious. At least for now.

“China has been less of a growth engine than is widely assumed,” said Brad Setser, a former Biden administration trade adviser. “The direct effects of its slowdown are going to be relatively modest. It doesn’t matter to the export side of the U.S. economy if China grows at zero or China grows at 5 percent.”

That could change if China’s slowdown proves worse than anticipated, unnerving global financial markets, or if the government artificially cheapens its currency in a bid to export its way out of the crisis at the expense of its trading partners.

But China’s downshifting economy is likely to clip just a few tenths of a percentage point off global growth, economists have said. One indication of the country’s modest impact can be seen in its trade in manufactured goods, such as industrial equipment, automobiles, furniture and appliances.

China’s imports of manufactured items for its own use, rather than to make products for customers in other countries, amount to just 3.5 percent of gross domestic product, according to Setser. And China’s reliance on foreign factories is about one-third lower than when Xi Jinping became the country’s leader in 2012 and accelerated a self-sufficiency drive.

“That’s unusually low,” said Setser, now a senior fellow with the Council on Foreign Relations. “China makes almost all of the manufactured goods consumed in China.”

Otis, which has plants in Tianjin and near Shanghai, has operated in China since the mid-1990s. Its elevators and escalators are used in infrastructure projects, such as the Tianjin metro, as well as in the residential and commercial developments at the heart of China’s real estate bubble.

Although the property market slowdown is pinching new equipment orders, demand for servicing of installed units remains strong, Marks told investors in July, when Otis reported higher quarterly sales and earnings.

To be sure, a prolonged downturn in China — or one that is deeper than expected — would be felt around the world. First to suffer would be major commodity producers. The Chinese economic miracle for decades has vacuumed up copper from Peru, ore from Australia, soybeans from Brazil and oil from Saudi Arabia and Russia.

Direct financial links between the United States and China have thinned in recent years, amid a trade war and rising geopolitical tensions. But a deeper Chinese slump could set off a “negative feedback loop,” with sinking stock and bond prices, rising volatility and a soaring dollar combining to sap consumer and business confidence in the United States and elsewhere.

Such a scenario, akin to the fallout from the 2015 Chinese stock market crash, could shave half a percentage point off global growth and 0.3 points off U.S. growth, according to Gregory Daco, the chief economist at EY-Parthenon.

“What matters to the U.S. and the rest of the world is if the China shock is translated into a broad-based deterioration in overall financial conditions,” he said.

China’s neighbors are already feeling a chill. But their decline in exports to China is primarily the result of American consumers buying fewer electronics than they did during the work-from-home phase of the pandemic rather than a consequence of Chinese domestic weakness.

China sits at the center of a pan-Asian electronics supply chain, assembling products with components shipped there from South Korea, Malaysia, Thailand and Taiwan.

Multinational corporations that serve the domestic Chinese market also would be hurt. The German automaker BMW depends on China for more than 29 percent of its annual revenue. More than 27 percent of Intel’s sales come from Chinese customers.

“China does matter for the global economy. Germany is a big exporter to it. It matters for commodity markets. It sets the tone for emerging Asia,” said Nathan Sheets, the global chief economist at Citigroup.

But China’s old growth model, which relied on heavy investment in public infrastructure and housing, is exhausted. After decades of frenzied growth, the country has just about all the high-speed rail lines and apartment complexes that it needs.

Chinese leaders have said they intend to pivot to an economy based on more consumer spending and service industries. But “there’s still a long way to go,” Sheets said.

The current slowdown underscores a shift in China’s global image. For years, China’s vast domestic market beckoned multinational corporations with the promise of enormous profits. And it seemed certain to surpass the United States as the world’s largest economy.

Now, the outlook is less rosy. China grew in the second quarter at an annual pace just above 3 percent, a far cry from the roughly 9 percent rate it averaged over its first three decades of economic reform. Its aging labor force is shrinking, and Xi emphasizes loyalty to the Communist Party rather than expanding the economy.

Visiting Beijing last week, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said U.S. business executives have told her that China is “uninvestable” because of the government’s increasingly erratic treatment of foreign businesses.

“China is growing slower and building less. It’s not going to be uniquely central the way it used to be,” said Scott Kennedy, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

The International Monetary Fund says China will contribute more than one-third of global growth this year. But that figure overstates China’s impact on its trading partners, some economists have said. Rather, it demonstrates the arithmetic truth that China, even with all its problems, is a large economy that will grow faster than its counterparts. That produces a large output gain, but most of the benefits stay at home.

China runs a sizable trade surplus with the rest of the world, meaning it sells to other countries much more than it buys from them. Chinese exporters dominate global markets for products such as electronics, footwear and aluminum, while consumers in China save much of their income rather than spending it on foreign goods.

As the Federal Reserve and other major central banks tried to cool inflation by raising interest rates over the past year, foreign demand for Chinese goods sagged. Through July, Chinese exports were down 5 percent from the same period in 2022. But imports fell nearly 8 percent, meaning the surplus widened.

“Countries that run a trade surplus basically subtract more from global growth than they contribute,” said George Magnus, an economist at Oxford University’s China Center. “It’s doing more for its own growth than it’s contributing.”

Exports have been a central ingredient in China’s economic strategy for decades. Government officials have repeatedly spoken of promoting domestic consumption. But in the past three years, China’s export sector has delivered more than one-fifth of the country’s annual economic growth, the largest share since the 1997 Asian financial crisis, according to the ChinaPower project at CSIS.

China began the year with hopes for a boom. In December, Xi reluctantly relaxed his strict zero-covid policy after rare public protests. Freed from lockdown, Chinese consumers were expected to drive an economic rebound.

But after a burst of spending, the recovery fizzled. Fresh government data this week showed Chinese factories, consumers and real estate developers all mired in a slump.

“They’re structurally in a deep hole that they’re going to have a lot of difficulty climbing out of,” said Andrew Collier, the managing director of Orient Capital Research in Hong Kong.

Chinese authorities have taken a number of steps to revive growth, including cutting interest rates. But they have made little headway. And with more than 21 percent of young people unemployed, the prospect of social unrest looms.

One lever Beijing has not pulled is manipulating the value of its currency.

The yuan this year has fallen 5 percent against the dollar, reflecting China’s slower growth and lower interest rates. The government could further cheapen the yuan by selling it on global markets. That would effectively discount Chinese goods, making them less expensive for customers paying with dollars and euros.

Swamping foreign markets with made-in-China products would raise export earnings and boost domestic employment. But it would be certain to worsen already fractious relations with the United States and Europe.

There’s no sign yet that the Chinese authorities plan to make such a move. But if the economic deterioration accelerates, they might.

After all, they have done so before. China kept its currency undervalued for years after joining the global trading system in 2001, prompting years of complaints from the U.S. government and American businesses.

Today's Press Poodle

No, CNN, you have to stop reporting on this in a passive neutral way.

At the very least, the headline editor should be fired yesterday. Because you cannot find defensible middle ground between democracy and dictatorship, which is exactly the inference that headline invites - as well as the first four paragraphs.

Four fucking paragraphs before you mention Russia's brutality, and Xi's belligerence towards practically everybody in Asia.

These assholes are assholes, with asshole ambitions and asshole intent. Say that or STFU.

Russia and China hit back at a G7 that saw them as a threat

Moscow and Beijing lashed out against the Group of Seven (G7) summit in Hiroshima, where leaders of major democracies pledged new measures targeting Russia and spoke in one voice on their growing concerns over China.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Saturday slammed the G7 for indulging in their “own greatness” with an agenda that aimed to “deter” Russia and China.

Meanwhile China’s Foreign Ministry accused G7 leaders of “hindering international peace” and said the group needed to “reflect on its behavior and change course.”

Beijing had made “serious démarches” to host country Japan and “other parties” over their decision to “smear and attack” China, it said.

Both Russia’s brutal assault on Ukraine and how to handle an increasingly assertive Beijing have loomed over the three-day gathering of the world’s leading industrialized democracies taking place in Japan – just across regional seas from both countries – where Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky made a surprise, in-person appearance.

G7 member countries made the group’s most detailed articulation of a shared position on China to date – stressing the need to cooperate with the world’s second-largest economy, but also to counter its “malign practices” and “coercion” in a landmark joint communique Saturday.

Leaders also pledged new steps to choke off Russia’s ability to finance and fuel its war, and vowed in a dedicated statement to ramp up coordination on their economic security – a thinly veiled warning from members against what they see as the weaponization of trade from China, and also Russia.

The G7 agreements follow a hardening of attitudes on China in some European capitals, despite differing views on how to handle relations with the key economic partner, deemed by the US as “the most serious long-term challenge to the international order.”

Countering China’s ‘coercion’

Beijing’s retort later Saturday urged the G7 “not to become an accomplice” in American “economic coercion.”

“The massive unilateral sanctions and acts of ‘decoupling’ and disrupting industrial and supply chains make the US the real coercer that politicizes and weaponizes economic and trade relations,” the Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

“The international community does not and will not accept the G7-dominated Western rules that seek to divide the world based on ideologies and values,” it continued.

G7 member countries are Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States. The European Union also joins as non-country member.

A number of non-G7 leaders also attended the summit, including Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Indonesian President Joko Widodo, and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.

Albanese on Sunday said he has been concerned “for some time” over China’s activity, including its military activities in the South China Sea, and called for “transparency” by Beijing over the detention of Australian journalist Cheng Lei.

China’s image in Europe has taken a severe hit over the past 15 months as leaders there have watched China’s Xi Jinping tighten ties with fellow authoritarian Russian President Vladimir Putin, even as Moscow’s invasion sparked a massive humanitarian crisis and Moscow’s leader was accused of war crimes by an international court.

Beijing’s increased military aggression toward Taiwan – the self-ruling democracy the Chinese Communist Party claims as its territory but has never ruled – and economic penalties against Lithuania following a disagreement over Taiwan have also played a role in shifting sentiment.

Concern about such incidents was reflected in the G7 statement on ensuring economic security and countering economic coercion, which did not explicitly mention China.

The G7 leaders’ ability to sign on a statement “so specifically directed at Beijing” would have been “hard to believe” two years ago, according to Josh Lipsky, senior director of the Washington-based think tank Atlantic Council’s GeoEconomics Center.

“The bottom line is that the G7 has shown it will increasingly focus on China and will try to maintain a coordinated policy approach. That’s a major development,” he said.

War in Ukraine

The G7 agreements land as China has been marshaling its diplomats in a concerted attempt to repair ties with Europe, largely by recasting itself as a potential agent of peace in the war in Ukraine, even if that claim has been met with widespread skepticism among Western nations.

Last week as European leaders headed to Asia, Chinese special envoy Li Hui began his own European tour billed by Beijing as a means to promote peace talks.

Li, who was dispatched after Xi late last month made his first call to Zelensky since the Russian invasion, visited Ukraine on Tuesday and Wednesday, where he fronted China’s vision of a “political settlement.”

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak meets Ukraine President, Volodymyr Zelenskyy during the G7 Summit at the Grand Prince Hotel on May 20, 2023 in Hiroshima, Japan.
G7 talks culminate Sunday with in-person appeal from Zelensky
That calls for a ceasefire but not for the withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukrainian territory first – a scenario which critics say could serve to cement Russia’s illegal land grab in the country and runs counter to Ukraine’s own peace plan.

Zelensky’s travel to the G7 in Asia is also “a way of putting pressure on China,” according to Jean-Pierre Cabestan, an emeritus professor of political science at Hong Kong Baptist University.

The message to China is for it “to be more more outgoing in its support for a solution” that aligns with Kyiv’s interests in terms of its territorial integrity and Russian troops pulling out from Ukraine, he said.

When asked about the possibility of China playing a role in ending Russia’s war, a senior White House official on Saturday said the US hopes that Xi views this week’s summit as a signal of “resolve.”

“We would hope that what President Xi and the (People’s Republic of China) extract from what they’ve been seeing here … is that there’s an awful lot of resolve to continue to support Ukraine … and that China could have a meaningful role in helping end this war,” the official said.

Xi's Bitch

I'll start with this: There's no such thing as a Left-Wing Dictatorship, so in spite of Xi Jinping's congratulating himself on "being elected" to what can only be termed Forever Chairman Of The CCP, he is not - and has never been - a communist. He's an authoritarian dictator - a Commie In Name Only - Joe Stalin's favorite long-lost nephew. He's a fucking autocrat. 

And Vladimir Putin is now his bitch, in much the same way Trump was made Putin's bitch.

Watch the body language. They both look pretty awkward - rarely looking each other in the eye - probably because these jagoffs hate having to do anything out in the open, so this is strictly political theater, but Putin looks like he loaded up on prunes and vodka for breakfast and is in need of an emergency bathroom break.

Xi meets Putin in show of anti-West unity, but there’s unease, too

It’s the most significant arrival in Moscow since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine last year. After weeks of diplomatic noise about a planned meeting, Chinese President Xi Jinping landed in the Russian capital for a three-day state visit. He’ll be feted Tuesday at state dinner hosted by Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin’s 15th century Faceted Chamber, the famed banquet hall of the czars where Ivan the Terrible celebrated his conquest of lands in Central Asia and Peter the Great hailed his 1709 victory over the Swedes at Poltava, in what’s now Ukraine.

It’s also the same room where former U.S. president Ronald Reagan softened his “evil empire,” anti-Communist bravura in 1988, toasting instead to “the art of friendly persuasion, the hope of peace with freedom, the hope of holding out for a better way of settling things” at a dinner with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. The bonhomie between those two leaders prefigured the eventual end of the Cold War and the collapse and disintegration of the Soviet Union, an event that remains a source of grievance and regret for Putin.

While highlighting their own friendship, Xi and Putin are, to varying degrees, offering a joint front against a perceived shared adversary. The script surrounding the two autocrats’ confab is one of unity and umbrage with the West. Writing in China’s state-run People’s Daily ahead of Xi’s visit, Putin decried “the U.S.’s policy of simultaneously deterring Russia and China, as well as all those who do not bend to American dictation, is getting ever more fierce and aggressive.”

In Kremlin-run RIA Novosti, Xi took a subtler approach, elliptically pushing back against the democracy versus autocracy rhetoric touted by President Biden and his Western allies. “There is no universal model of government and there is no world order where the decisive word belongs to a single country,” Xi wrote. “Solidarity and peace on the planet without splits and upheavals meet the common interests of all mankind.”

Chinese leader Xi Jinping met Russia's Vladimir Putin in Moscow on March 20 to promote Beijing's role as a potential peacemaker in Ukraine. (Video: Reuters)
On one level, the meeting of the world’s two most prominent autocrats represents the hardening of an ideological axis. Both leaders see themselves hemmed in by a confrontational, meddling United States; both resent Washington’s grandstanding over the international order and rule of law, while their state mouthpieces routinely call out perceived American hypocrisy and double standards; and both have their own visions of a world order where supposed American hegemony is unraveled.

“The pictures of Xi and Putin together in Moscow will send a clear message. Russia and China remain close partners — linked by their joint hostility to America and its allies,” observed Financial Times columnist Gideon Rachman.

High on the agenda is talk of peace. Beijing, which is nominally neutral on Russia’s war with Ukraine, recently issued its position paper on the conflict, itemizing a 12-point peace plan that could settle matters. While analysts largely dismissed it at as a sop to the Kremlin, China is nevertheless positioning itself as a potential broker for a future cease-fire. Xi comes to Moscow in the wake of China successfully ushering in a thaw in relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran, a diplomatic feat the United States had little ability of its own to accomplish.

For now, most outside observers are skeptical. On Monday, U.S. officials warned against any Sino-Russian calls for a cease-fire in Ukraine, arguing that would only make concrete Russia’s illegal invasion. “All that’s going to do … is ratify Russia’s conquest to date,” White House national security spokesman John Kirby said. “All that’s going to do is give Putin more time to refit, retrain, reman and try to plan for renewed offenses at a time of his choosing.”

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that Xi’s visit, which came days after the International Criminal Court put out a warrant for Putin’s arrest on war crimes charges, suggested that “China feels no responsibility to hold the Kremlin accountable for the atrocities committed to Ukraine,” and would “rather provide diplomatic cover for Russia to continue to commit those very crimes.”

There’s no doubt China has sensed opportunity in the crisis. “Beijing refuses to condemn the invasion, has blamed the United States for the war and criticizes Western sanctions designed to starve Putin’s war machine of funds,” my colleagues noted. “With Russia’s economy under intense pressure, China last year kept it afloat, boosting trade with Russia — including a sharp increase in Chinese exports of electronic chips that Moscow needs for weapons production — and a steep rise in purchases of Russian oil.”

As the West seeks to isolate Russia, China’s leverage over Moscow has only grown. That’s a position of influence that Russian policy elites would have warned against before Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, but are in no position to thwart now. Some Chinese commentators reject the invocation of an ironclad “alliance” between the two countries, pointing to a deeper of history of friction, as well as current differences both in terms of strategic interests and political styles.

China and Russia may both believe “that the current international order is unfair, unreasonable, and imperfect,” said Zhao Long, a senior fellow at the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies, in a recent interview with a Chinese outlet, but they approach this status quo in markedly different ways.

“China’s emphasis is on reform and improvement, not starting all over again,” Zhao added, gesturing to Putin’s border-smashing revanchism. “But it is obvious that Russia has already had an impulse before the war, hoping to carry out a ‘subversive’ reconstruction of the entire international system and international order. In the aftermath of this conflict, I am afraid, Russia’s desire to dismantle the current international order will grow even stronger.”

While Chinese officials and analysts may quietly disapprove of Russia’s conduct, they have found accommodation with Putin, who by necessity is consolidating Russia’s role as a junior partner to China on the world stage. Among other developments, because of sanctions, Russia is now trading its dependence on the dollar to reliance on the Chinese yuan.

“Russian leaders like to emphasize the unprecedented strategic cooperation between the two countries,” wrote Alexandra Prokopenko for Carnegie Politika, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s blog on Russia and Eurasia. “Yet in reality, this cooperation makes Moscow increasingly dependent on Beijing.”

Alexander Gabuev, the director of the Berlin-based Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center and an authority on Sino-Russian relations, argued that the time may come when China will use its clout with the Kremlin to extract further political concession, especially as the West cuts its own economic ties to Russia. Beijing may expect Russia in the future to allow it access to Arctic naval bases or alter its own dealings with China’s regional rivals, like India.

“China is content simply to monetize its growing geoeconomic leverage over Russia by securing discounts on its hydrocarbon exports and conquering its consumer market,” Gabuev wrote in the Economist. “But it is probably only a matter of time before China demands more political loyalty for its help in keeping Putin’s regime afloat.”

Ukraine, Russia, China

Putin fucked up in various ways, aside from some pretty dumbass assumptions that the Ukrainians would just roll over and play dead.

• He didn't bring enough guys

You need a 3:1 advantage in numbers of invaders-to-invadees

You need 1 Russian occupier for every 50 Ukrainian occupy-ees

• He didn't think his own brand of corruption had taken hold in the Russian military almost top to bottom, side to side, and front to back
• He didn't figure on his little excursion becoming a unifying force for NATO
• As rich as he is, he hadn't stolen enough to survive what looks like it could be years of crippling economic sanctions

China is watching this clusterfuck closely, knowing it's practically a lead pipe cinch that Vlad will not survive it.

Xi would need at least 500,000 guys to invade (probably more because it's an amphibious landing), and he'd have to leave all of them on Taiwan for years as an occupying force.

Mike's Guess:

The need to reduce the number of occupation troops is what drives the inevitable slaughter of the occupied country's population, as well as the push to keep throwing more of your own people into the meat grinder. For the guy calling the shots, it becomes a fairly simple matter of "better them than me".

War has always been the stupidest fuckin' thing humans do. And it's even stupider now.

Grey Zone Tactics - Mar 2022

Question 1. How Does China View Competition in the Gray Zone?

Chinese analysts view gray zone actions as measures that powerful countries have employed both historically and in recent decades that are beyond normal diplomacy and other traditional approaches to statecraft but short of direct use of military force for escalation or a conflict. While Chinese scholars do not typically use the term gray zone to describe Chinese gray zone activities, the Chinese conceptualization of military operations other than war (MOOTW) is helpful for understanding how China may use its military for such activities. Chinese analysts characterize coercive or confrontational external-facing MOOTW as stability maintenance, rights protection, or security and guarding operations. China believes that MOOTW should also leverage nonmilitary actors and means.

Question 2. What Drives and Enables Chinese Use of Gray Zone Tactics?

Chinese activities in the gray zone support PRC leadership's overarching domestic, economic, foreign policy, and security objectives in the Indo-Pacific, which Beijing views as China's priority region. Gray zone activities balance China's pursuit of a more favorable external environment by altering the regional status quo in its favor with a desire to act below the threshold of a militarized response from the United States or China's neighbors. Recent developments have provided an increasingly varied toolkit for pressuring other countries across four key domains: geopolitical, economic, military, and cyber/IO. These developments are laws and regulations enabling Beijing to harness nongovernmental personnel and assets growing Chinese geopolitical, economic, and military power and influence vis-à-vis other countries increasing linkages between China's military development and economic growth the integration of military and paramilitary forces.

Question 3. How Does China Employ Gray Zone Tactics?

Overall, China tailors its gray zone activities to the target and has an increasing variety and number of more-coercive tools. Beijing layers the use of multiple gray zone tactics to pressure allies and partners, particularly on issues related to China's core interests. Combining multiple geopolitical, economic, military, and cyber/IO activities means that China no longer has to rely on significant escalation in any single domain and, if needed, can sequence actions to apply pressure in nonmilitary domains before resorting to use of military activity. China also appears to be more cautious and selective in using high-profile gray zone tactics against more-capable countries—for instance, employing a smaller variety of tactics against Japan and India than against Vietnam and the Philippines.

China has increasingly leveraged military tactics, and there is no evidence to suggest that China will use fewer military tactics as its overall military capabilities grow or that improved bilateral relations will discourage China from pressing its territorial claims. Likewise, there is little reason to believe that China will use fewer military gray zone tactics as its geopolitical or economic power increases. China has recently relied heavily on air- and maritime-domain tactics, for example.

China exercises caution in its use of high-profile, bilateral geopolitical and economic tactics and has become more active in wielding its influence in international institutions or via third-party actors. Since at least 2013, China has expanded its involvement on the ground in select regions, recruiting local proxies and engaging in various information efforts. In terms of nonmilitary tactics, China uses geopolitical and bilateral tactics most often.

Question 4. Which PRC Tactics Could the United States Prioritize Countering?

Given the wide range of PRC gray zone tactics and the diverse collection of allies and partners in the Indo-Pacific region, the United States faces the difficult task of determining how to prioritize which PRC activities to counter. The U.S. government, experts, and academics do not currently agree on how to assess which PRC gray zone tactics are most problematic. Policymakers could consider aggregating across three different criteria: (1) the extent to which PRC tactics undermine U.S. objectives and interests in the Indo-Pacific region, (2) how difficult it is for allies and partners to respond to and counter tactics, and (3) how widely China uses specific tactics (against one or multiple allies and partners).

While there are many ways to combine the three indicators, the most balanced approach might be to weight U.S. objectives and interests equally with allied and partner concerns (40 percent each) and the prevalence of PRC tactics less (20 percent). Based on this aggregate method, ten of the 20 most-problematic PRC tactics are military activities that the People's Liberation Army or Chinese paramilitary actors engage in, with many of the tactics involving operations near or in disputed territories. Other military tactics include China engaging in highly publicized and large-scale, cross-service military exercises; establishing military bases or potential dual-use facilities in neighboring countries to threaten a target; and building up or acquiring PRC military capabilities against targets.

Geopolitical, economic, and cyber/IO tactics also ranked among the top 20. While the most-problematic PRC activities were international geopolitical and grassroots economic tactics, other PRC economic activities and grassroots cyber/IO activities in the targeted region were also problematic. Relative to the other tactics, grassroots geopolitical activities and bilateral cyber/IO activities have been less challenging. These findings suggest that the United States should devote significant effort to helping U.S. allies and partners counter PRC international geopolitical and economic tactics (particularly PRC economic activity in the target region or in disputed regions) and address grassroots cyber/IO activities.

Recommendations

• The U.S. government should hold gray zone scenario discussions with key allies and partners to better understand their concerns, responses, and needs.
• The National Security Council or the U.S. Department of State should identify a set of criteria to determine the most-problematic PRC gray zone tactics to counter via whole-of-government efforts.
• The United States could prioritize countering Chinese activities in disputed territories and responding to PRC geopolitical international and economic tactics.
• The U.S. Department of Defense should develop gray zone plans similar to existing operational plans but focused on responding to a range of more-escalatory PRC gray zone scenarios.
• The U.S. Air Force should continue to build out intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance infrastructure in the Indo-Pacific and improve regional cyberdefense capabilities to increase domain awareness, identify and attribute PRC activities, and counter PRC cyber/IO tactics.

BETTER MEN THAN THESE

HAVE BEEN TRYING

TO CONQUER THE WORLD

FOR 2,000 GENERATIONS.

AND THE WORLD REMAINS UNDEFEATED

A Message

My dear friend, President Xi -

Don't fuck with me.

Best Regards,

Joe

Shifting The Blame

Typical. Instead of looking at Russia's invasion of Ukraine and seeing what an asshole Putin is for launching a war of conquest, China says we should look at it and see the big bad American boogey man.

Permanent Standard Disclaimer:

That's not to say the US has nothing to be ashamed of when it comes to fucking with things we have no business fucking with.

But this is not one of those things.

Yes, we have a vested interest in a free and democratic Ukraine, and helping Ukraine in service to that interest is good dual-purpose policy.

The spread of democracy is an all-round good thing in itself. And whenever democracy takes hold anywhere, it works against autocratic dickheads everywhere - like Putin and Xi. And also against plutocratic dickheads like most of the "conservatives" here in USAmerica, Inc.

As always, I maintain a firm belief that forces are at work all over the joint trying to move every country towards a global plutocracy. But that's a slightly different rant.

The focus here is on the way these dickheads try to deflect and shift the blame. They either blame the victim (Putin'a bullshit about "De-Nazification"), or they deflect to something like his secondary rationalization of "NATO is out to get us", which is what Xi is picking up on, with the variation of "everything bad that happens can be blamed on Washington".

Democracy in Ukraine is in fact a "threat to Russian", but it's only a threat to "Putin's Russia", and it's in Xi's best interest to lean in favor of a fellow-autocrat, while trying not to look like he's directly supporting Putin's war. And that's another exercise in selective reasoning because of Xi's ambitions of "taking Taiwan back".

It's been said that Geopolitics is a worldwide poker game where everybody's cheating and everybody knows everybody's cheating. So it should never come as a surprise when some event or series of events reveals what a fucked up mess it really is.

Anyway ...

A year later, China blames U.S. ‘hegemony’ — not Russia — for war in Ukraine

Ahead of the first anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, China has launched a public diplomacy offensive to wrest control of the narrative about its role in the conflict, trying to clear itself of accusations that it has sided with Russia while accusing the United States of turning the conflict into a “proxy” war.

Few of the positions staked out by Chinese officials in a flurry of speeches and documents this week are new, but they have underscored why Beijing continues to stand by Moscow even as it professes “deep concern” about the conflict: It considers the United States — not Russia — the progenitor of global insecurity, including in Ukraine.

Beijing insists it is neutral in the conflict, but those claims routinely clash with its rhetorical and diplomatic support for Russia.

That was illustrated this week, with China’s top diplomat, Wang Yi, arriving in Moscow in a show of solidarity with Russia — especially when contrasted with President Biden’s unannounced trip to Kyiv, where he walked the streets with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

The China-Russia relationship has stood the test of stormy international circumstances and remained “as stable as Mount Tai,” Wang told Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday, using a Chinese idiom for rock-solid.

“Crisis and chaos appear repeatedly before us, but within crisis there is opportunity,” he said.

By actively responding to the challenges of the times, the two nations can bring about an even deeper comprehensive strategic partnership, and that relationship “will not be overpowered by a third party’s coercion or pressure” because it is built on a strong economic, political and cultural foundation, Wang added.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping is expected to visit Russia some time this year, but the Kremlin declined Wednesday to be drawn on reports that it could be as soon as April.

From the beginning of the war, China has tried to protect its rapidly deepening economic and political ties with Russia at the same time it tried to assure Western audiences that it wants peace and should not be a target for sanctions.

But as China’s role as a lifeline for an isolated Russia grows, it is becoming harder for Beijing to stay on the sidelines.

The Foreign Ministry in Beijing has declined to comment on reports that Xi will deliver a “peace speech” on Friday, exactly one year since Russia launched its invasion, saying only that China will issue a document clarifying its stance on the day.

The problem with China’s story of being an honest broker is that Russia remains a “key ally in the effort to push back against the U.S.-led order,” said Arthur Kroeber, partner at the research firm Gavekal Dragonomics.

“The true purpose of Xi’s speech” — assuming it takes place — “will be to drive a wedge between the U.S. and its European allies, by suggesting that China, not the U.S., is the real advocate of a peaceful resolution of the Russia-Ukraine war,” he wrote in a note on Wednesday.

The latest propaganda blitz also provides a clearer picture of Xi’s foreign policy priorities as he embarks on a third term in power. Bringing about an end to the war is only one item in Xi’s ambitious agenda to reshape the global order so that the United States and its allies cannot slow China’s rise or challenge its territorial claims. And to that end, China remains closely aligned with Russia.

An attempt to justify China’s stance on the war in Ukraine to a conflicted domestic audience, the new wave of propaganda is also a way to rebuff growing concern that Beijing will step up support for Putin’s war effort as it enters its second year.

Beijing has rejected U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s warning that China might be considering providing “lethal” support to Russia as a “wild accusation” and accused the United States of wanting Ukraine to “fight till the last Ukrainian.”

“It’s plain for the world to see who is calling for dialogue and striving for peace and who is adding fuel to the fire, handing out knives and instigating hostility,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said on Tuesday.

Ding Chun, director of the Center for European Studies at Fudan University in Shanghai, said Blinken’s claim was a “strategic statement” meant to warn China. “It’s not a substantive accusation, but rather a part of U.S. strategy to tell China not to have the intention [to do so],” he said.

But it’s not just the United States that is concerned about China’s intentions. Zelensky told the German daily Die Welt this week that he hoped China would make a “pragmatic assessment” and avoid allying itself with Russia’s war effort, because if it did “there will be a world war.”

In response to fears that the conflict could expand, Wang Wen, a professor at Renmin University, said it was wrong for Zelensky to speculate about Beijing’s actions. Instead, “he should thank China for promoting humanitarian aid to Ukraine. If China really were to support Russia, then Zelensky’s life would get even worse,” he said.

(In the month after the invasion, China gave Ukraine $725,000 of humanitarian aid and $1.5 million in other forms of aid. It hasn’t announced additional support since then.)

Seeing the United States as a source of instability — while giving aggression from Russia and other authoritarian states a pass — is a longtime stance of the Chinese Communist Party. But under Xi, it is a worldview that has become more deeply embedded into China’s foreign policy and echoed by its national security establishment.

Lu Xiang, a researcher at the state-run Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said the true threat to Ukraine’s autonomy is Western support. Having once been part of the Soviet Union means that “if a big country from outside the region uses Ukraine as a chess piece to weaken Russia’s strategic interests, then that means [Ukraine’s] sovereign interests will of necessity be suppressed,” he said.

At the core of Xi’s priorities for promoting China’s security is an effort to counteract the United States’ influence in the international order, often by enlisting countries that share similar grievances.

Chinese complaints about American “abuse of hegemony” in global military, political and economic affairs were listed in a five-page document issued by the Chinese Foreign Ministry on Monday, which called the Ukraine conflict a case of the United States “repeating its old tactics of waging proxy … wars.”

Separately this week, China issued a “concept paper” that staked out positions on global hot-spot issues, from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to the Pacific islands.

China’s foreign minister, Qin Gang, released the document at an event in Beijing, running through a string of broad commitments to uphold the U.N. charter, reject the use of nuclear weapons and protect territorial integrity, while also taking thinly veiled swipes at the United States for “abusing unilateral sanctions” and building security blocs.

The document, which did not mention Russia, made only passing reference to the “Ukraine crisis” as an issue to be resolved through dialogue. It repeated that “legitimate security concerns of all countries” should be taken seriously — a phrase often used by Beijing in defense of Moscow.

Qin also used the event to call for countries to stop “clamoring about ‘Ukraine today, Taiwan tomorrow.’”

Since the start of the war, China has tried to draw a distinction between Russia’s actions and its own escalating military aggression in the Taiwan Strait. For many in the self-governed island democracy, however, the war has been a wake-up call for the need to be better prepared to repel an attack from China.

Missing from the newly proactive stance China laid out this week is any indication that Beijing is willing to take a leading role in peace negotiations.

“Neither Russia nor Ukraine can defeat each other completely in the short term,” said Fudan University’s Ding. “China has emphasized the need to stop the war and promote peace, but it has not explicitly said that it wants to be a mediator in this war, and it is very difficult to do so in practice. Although China has a better relationship with Russia, it is a question of to what extent Russia will listen to China’s thoughts.”

Today's Daddy State

Here it is - your Moment of Saddam

Former Chinese President Hu Jintao unexpectedly led out of Communist Party congress as leader Xi Jinping looks on

Former Chinese President Hu Jintao was unexpectedly led out of Saturday's closing ceremony of the Communist Party congress in a dramatic moment that disrupted the highly choreographed event. State media said late Saturday that Hu was "not feeling well" when he was escorted out, but was doing "much better" after getting some rest.

The frail-looking 79-year-old seemed reluctant to leave the front row of proceedings at Beijing's Great Hall of the People, where he was sitting next to President Xi Jinping.

- snip -

Later, state news agency Xinhua said on Twitter: "Xinhuanet reporter Liu Jiawen has learned that Hu Jintao insisted on attending the closing session... despite the fact that he has been taking time to recuperate recently.

"When he was not feeling well during the session, his staff, for his health, accompanied him to a room next to the meeting venue for a rest. Now, he is much better," Xinhua said.

No word yet on whether or not Mr Hu is expected to be submissive enough to survive his "recuperation".