The joint is jumping!
IOC’s Witold Banka defends decision to clear 23 Chinese swimmers. After all possible tests and investigations, the International Testing Agency confirmed that the no-fault verdict for 23 Chinese swimmers involved in a 2021 contamination case was solid and reasonable. USADA’s accusations are “politically motivated” and grounded in an anti-China bias, Banka told the IOC. The US should make sure its own sporting organizations follow international doping codes before accusing other countries of illegally enhancing their athletes.
Fourteen Palestinian factions met in Beijing and agreed to expand the PLO, unite Gaza and the West Bank, form a national consensus government, confront settler attacks, and assist the Al-Aqsa Flood.
“No matter how the international situation changes, China will always firmly support the just cause of the Palestinian people,” said FM Wang Yi. “To resolve this historical injustice, the principle of ‘Palestinian-owned, Palestinian-led and Palestinian-ruled’ must be upheld.
Why China’s Foreign Ministry and Diplomats Matter (More Than We Think). “Actually, this involves a lot of hard work. This is a tough job. What we do every day consists of repeated meetings and paperwork. Most things and times are unexciting, even boring”.
Ukrainian FM Kuleba tells FM Wang Yi Ukraine is willing and prepared to conduct negotiations with Russia. Last July, daily Ukrainians killed in action (KIA) was 716. This month, it is 1,948, a threefold increase. Weekly destruction or damage of US-made M777 artillery pieces was 8 last year, 17 this year..
Geopolitics
By using force and pretending to benevolence the hegemon will certainly have a large state. By using virtue and practicing benevolence the wise ruler will achieve humane authority, for the humane man has no enemies. Mencius.
The US Department of Commerce emails foreign companies, warning them not to participate in or support supercomputing conferences in China. In addition to sanctioning Chinese supercomputing companies, Washington now even sanctions Chinese supercomputing academic conferences.
“I fear they’re outsmarting us over and over again,” says China expert Michael Pillsbury, Director for Chinese Strategy at the Hudson Institute and author of The Hundred-Year Marathon: China’s Secret Strategy to Replace America as the Global Superpower. Pillsbury played a key role in initiating military and commercial rivalry with China.
Trump mentioned America’s hydrocarbon advantage over China, but China is working towards energy self-sufficiency by making solar and wind cheaper than thermal. If it can make, say, green ammonia and methanol cost competitive with hydrocarbons, it would achieve energy security and make a green energy trading platform more important than ICE and CME, since energy is the world’s most traded commodity. Oil prices matter little if crude oil is no longer needed for transportation. – TP Huang.
Turkish FM Hakan Fidan in Beijing about Türkiye joining BRICS. Fidan said Türkiye ‘adheres to the one-China principle and will not allow activities in Türkiye that undermine China’s territorial integrity’. That cements a major shift for Türkiye, which used to call Xinjiang “East Turkistan,” accuse China of “genocide” against Uyghurs (a claim the rest of the West still makes), and train Xinjiang militants.
If the EU or the USA freeze its foreign reserves and/or private sector assets, China could nationalize much of the stock of FDI in China, worth $1.9 trillion—focusing on investments from the United States and Europe. China can also freeze more than $1.2 trillion of Chinese domestic stocks and bonds owned by foreign investors. Moreover, Chinese entities have incurred about $2.7 trillion of external debt mostly in USD and euro—including a few Chinese sovereign international bonds. China can stop servicing many of those debts, using the same argument as Russia—that it is willing and able to pay, but is prevented from doing so by US government actions. China can even invoke the force majeure clause if such a clause is contained in any of the external debt contracts. The clause allows parties to a contract to suspend performing the contractual obligations due to government actions which are unforeseen at the time of signing the contract. A pause in servicing China’s external debt would inflict substantial losses on Western investors—largely through investment funds and pension funds. As a result, in terms of balance sheet exposures, China has about $3.4 trillion of identifiable international assets at risk of possible sanctions and up to $5.8 trillion of liabilities to, or assets in China of, international investors and companies largely from Western countries. China therefore has plenty of room to take retaliatory actions. A sanctions and counter sanctions war game suggests that the losses are comparably severe for both sides. Moreover, such a situation will significantly disrupt economic exchanges—mainly trade between the two sides. Since exports account for 18.5%, or a relatively large share of China’s GDP, with about one-third of that going to the United States and European Union, their disruptions could cause a substantial decline in China’s economic activity. On the other hand, China accounts for 18.6% of US imports—and 22.4% of EU imports—especially in manufactured goods and several critical goods, such as pharmaceuticals and chemicals to make pharmaceutical products. Consequently, disruptions in Chinese imports would cause noticeable shortages, rising prices, and discomfort for consumers and some producers in the importing countries. The macroeconomic impact for the United States may be less severe than for China. However, the lower tolerance of American consumers for goods shortages and inflation would mean the social and political fallout of an all out economic war with China could be more significant in the United States. The economic impact on Europe would also be more substantial as the EU exports more including to China—at 17.6% of GDP compared to 11.7% for the United States . In short, in a scenario of Western sanctions coupled with Chinese counter measures, both sides will suffer substantial damages. This could lead to a situation of economic MAD—or mutually assured destruction—reinforcing the more catastrophic nuclear MAD. These considerations would set the parameters of the geopolitical rivalry and conflict between China and the West. This will likely intensify in the foreseeable future to encompass all areas of relationship between the two sides, but hopefully will stop short of economic or military wars! Hung Tran
Defense
The PLAN’s eight, 12,000-ton, Type 055 Renhai-class cruisers have 112 vertical launch tubes that fire land-attack cruise missiles, surface-to-air and supersonic, anti-ship cruise missiles. The YJ-18 missile, for example, has a 300 km range, making
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it more lethal than similar US Navy weapons. Given its size, speed, phased-array radar and huge missile arsenal, the 055 is the world’s most potent surface combatant.Two more, under construction, will function as “shotguns” for carrier and expeditionary strike groups.
Commander William Coulter of US Electronic Attack Squadron 136 was unexpectedly relieved of his duties while crew of the Type 055 Nanchang were honored for their actions against a US aircraft carrier fleet. The PLAN leveraged AI with integrated radars and sensors to thwart American electronic warfare EA-18G ‘Growler’ aircraft electronic jamming, even under electronic attacks. These features allow it to effectively counter the complex and variable electromagnetic jamming tactics employed by the EA-18G by comprehensively utilizing various sensors’ characteristics based on actual conditions to create a massive “kill web,” capable of flexibly and intelligently countering the EA-18G, transforming from a “single-resource confrontation” to a “systematic detection resource confrontation”. An official report on the Nanchang confirmed this tactical shift. The ship broke from traditional formation ranks, advancing 100 nautical miles (185 km) ahead and, with the support of rear forces, blocked a US aircraft carrier task force from entering a Chinese exercise zone. In response, the US military deployed carrier-based aircraft. Videos released by China indicated that the EA-18G might have used a combat mode known as jamming-while-accompanying, forming a formation with other warplanes and conducting noise jamming or releasing dense, false target signals to confuse the Nanchang. Despite these efforts, the Nanchang’s radar system continued to function normally and successfully locked onto the US fleet’s main targets. After they removed the protective covers from the Nanchang’s vertical launching system, The US ships and aircraft withdrew.
As part of the Spratly Islands, Ren’ai Jiao [the Second Thomas Shoal] should be guarded by no one because it belongs to no-one. Therefore, ending the standoff and restoring Ren’ai Jiao to its original uninhabited condition aligns with the spirit of the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea (hereinafter referred to as the “Declaration”), which states that no actions should be taken to inhabit uninhabited islands, reefs, shoals, cays, or other natural formations. China’s actions towards Ren’ai Jiao are aimed at maintaining the territorial integrity of the Spratly Islands and to uphold the seriousness [严肃性] of the “Declaration”.
Trump: “Taiwan is 9,500 miles away. It’s 68 miles away from China. A slight advantage, and China’s a massive piece of land, they could just bombard it. They don’t even need to – I mean, they can literally just send shells. Now they don’t want to do that because they don’t want to lose all those chip plants”.
China’s AA missile can hit aerial targets 1,200 miles (2,000 km.) away. 8 meters long and weighing 2.5 tons, it can be launched from mobile platforms, a significant advancement, since anti-aircraft missiles’ range is usually a few hundred km. A solid rocket motor for vertical takeoff, and a ramjet that propels it through the upper atmosphere using real-time guidance and correction from satellite data until it activates its sensors for the final approach, detonating its payload within destruction range. It is believed to be similar to the Feitian-1 hypersonic missile, developed by the same university two years prior.
China’s global satellite surveillance network renders stealth technology obsolete, provides real-time tracking of aircraft like the F-22. The satellites are part of China’s anti-access/area denial capabilities, aimed at managing potential conflicts in hotspots such as the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea.
Patrick Lawrence: NATO has just committed the West’s post-democracies to an era of institutionalized war, global violence, and disorder—this with, by design, no plan to end it. The same threat of annihilation familiar to those who recall the Cold War will prevail once again. Spending on armaments will take automatic priority over the well-being of the societies paying for this profligacy. Russia and China will be normalized as permanent enemies. The West’s estrangement from the non–West will be an established fact of life. The Deep State, an entrenched trans–Atlantic phenomenon now, will ally with liberal authoritarian elites to enforce this regime and suppress all those who question or challenge it.
