Tag: china

The Drums Of War With China Are Beating Much Louder Now

Comments from both Washington and Beijing have suddenly become much more pointed and aggressive in recent days, with talk about hot war now being discussed as not just a real possibility but in many cases as a probability. Let’s have a look at some of the most significant recent developments.

Beijing comments on US encirclement

The Chinese government has finally broken from its usual restrained commentary on the way the empire has been aggressively encircling the PRC with war machinery in ways that Washington would never permit itself to be encircled and waging economic warfare that it itself would never tolerate.

“Western countries—led by the U.S.—have implemented all-round containment, encirclement and suppression against us, bringing unprecedentedly severe challenges to our country’s development,” President Xi Jinping said in a speech last week.

China’s new Foreign Minister Qin Gang followed up on Xi’s comments the next day with a warning of “conflict and confrontation” should US aggressions and encirclement continue.

“If the United States does not hit the brake, but continues to speed down the wrong path, no amount of guardrails can prevent derailing, and there surely will be conflict and confrontation,” he said, adding, “Who will bear the catastrophic consequences? Such competition is a reckless gamble with the stakes being the fundamental interests of the two peoples and even the future of humanity.”

Keep reading

Study Suggests Bronze Age Ice Skates Discovered In China Were Imported From Europe

A 3,500-year-old pair of ice skates were discovered in a mountainous area of China, archaeologists claimed in late February.

Researchers investigating the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region discovered the oldest-known skates in a tomb in the Gaotai Ruins, according LiveScience. The skates are made out of the bones of oxen and horse, but it is unclear whether they were used for sport, hunting, or regular travel throughout the region.

The design is unique, made of a very flat blade that forms a cutting edge allowing users to glide over ice, LiveScience continued. Xinjiang Institute of Cultural Relics and Archeology researcher Ruan Qiurong said the newly-discovered skates are almost exactly the same as some found in prehistoric Europe.

Keep reading

US Ambassador To China: “We’re The Leader” Of The Indo-Pacific

A recent US Chamber of Commerce InSTEP program hosted three empire managers to talk about Washington’s top three enemies, with the US ambassador to China Nicholas Burns discussing the PRC, the odious Victoria Nuland discussing Russia, and the US ambassador to Israel Tom Nides talking about Iran.

Toward the end of the hour-long discussion, Burns made the very interesting comment that Beijing must accept that the United States is “the leader” in the region and isn’t going anywhere.

“From my perspective sitting here in China looking out at the Indo-Pacific, our American position is stronger than it was five or ten years ago,” Burns said, citing the strength of US alliances, its private sector and its research institutions and big tech companies.

“And I do think that the Chinese now understand that the United States is staying in this region — we’re the leader in this region in many ways,” Burns added emphatically.

The “Indo-Pacific” is a term which has gained a lot of traction in geopolitical discourse in recent years, typically describing the vast multi-continental region between Australia to the south, Asia to the north, Africa to the west, and the middle of the Pacific Ocean to the east. It contains half the Earth’s population, and it very much includes China.

After making the rather audacious claim of being “the leader” of a region which China is a part of but the United States is not, Burns went on to claim the US does not want any kind of confrontation with the Chinese government.

“We want a future of peace with China,” Burns said. “As President Biden makes clear every time he talks about this, we don’t want conflict, but we’re gonna hold our own out here. And I feel optimistic, just concluding my first year as ambassador, about the American position in this country and in this region.”

Again, Burns is saying this from China, so by “in this country” he means in China.

Keep reading

Senate unanimously votes to declassify Wuhan lab leak intelligence

The Senate on Wednesday unanimously voted in favor of a bill mandating that the Biden administration declassify intelligence materials involving the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Republican Sens. Mike Braun, Ind., and Josh Hawley, Mo., reintroduced the measure following a report from the Department of Energy concluding that the virus was likely the result of a lab leak, the Epoch Times reported.

Hawley celebrated the measure’s passage in a Tweet, saying “Tonight the Senate UNANIMOUSLY passed my bill to declassify all the intelligence the government has on #covid origins. Let the people see the truth!”

Formerly maligned as a conspiracy, the notion that the virus spread by way of a leak has increasingly gained traction among major federal agencies, including the DOE and FBI.

Keep reading

New Biden Cyber Strategy Takes Aim at China as ‘Most Persistent Threat’

The Biden administration’s new cybersecurity strategy takes aim at China’s communist regime and other authoritarian powers for subverting the international order through malign cyber activity.

The 2023 National Cyber Strategy, released on March 2, says that communist China and other regimes are attempting to export their own forms of authoritarianism through the use of technology.

“The governments of China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and other autocratic states with revisionist intent are aggressively using advanced cyber capabilities to pursue objectives that run counter to our interests and broadly accepted international norms,” the strategy states.

“Their reckless disregard for the rule of law and human rights in cyberspace is threatening U.S. national security and economic prosperity.”

China in particular is threatening U.S. interests and dominating emerging technologies critical to global development with the intent of reshaping the world order, the document states.

“[China] now presents the broadest, most active, and most persistent threat to both government and private sector networks and is the only country with both the intent to reshape the international order and, increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to do so.”

“Having successfully harnessed the Internet as the backbone of its surveillance state and influence capabilities, [China] is exporting its vision of digital authoritarianism, striving to shape the global Internet in its image and imperiling human rights beyond its borders.”

Keep reading

US Power Alliance Says It’s Preparing An “Information War” Against China

In an article published last week titled “US working with ‘Five Eyes’ nations, Japan on information warfare,” a publication on military intelligence and communications technology called C4ISRNET reports that the US and its allies are collaborating “to share and sharpen information-warfare techniques in the Indo-Pacific” with the goal of “countering” the “increasingly aggressive China.”

Here’s an excerpt:

Dialogues and exchanges of best practices are ongoing with Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the U.K. and other countries including Japan, according to Vice Adm. Kelly Aeschbach, commander of Naval Information Forces.

“I want to say we have at least a dozen countries or so that are either establishing information warfare programs, or are interested in partnering further in the information warfare realm,” she said Feb. 15 at the West 2023 conference in San Diego. “We are leaning in there, we are focused.”

Japan, specifically, has expressed significant interest in information warfare, “in a really positive way,” Aeschbach told C4ISRNET. Japan and Australia, among others, are considered critical U.S. allies in the Indo-Pacific, a region national security officials are invested in as they seek to counter an increasingly aggressive China.

Libertarian Institute’s Kyle Anzalone and Connor Freeman have a good write-up on this latest revelation in which they explain that information warfare is “a broad swath of military operations a country can use to disrupt another” which “can include spreading disinformation or preventing the spread of information.”

As Anzalone and Freeman note, one significant recent instance of the US government’s acknowledged use of information warfare was when US officials told NBC News that the US government has been deliberately circulating unsubstantiated information to western news media “as part of an information war against Russia.”

Which is to say, they lied. When you do things like telling New York Times reporters that “Russia asked China to give it military equipment and support for the war in Ukraine after President Vladimir V. Putin began a full-scale invasion last month,” only to have NBC report that you knew this claim “lacked hard evidence,” you lied. You used your country’s mass media institutions to circulate disinformation.

Keep reading

U.S. Plans To Drastically Increase Troop Numbers In Taiwan

The United States reportedly plans to significantly boost its military presence in Taiwan as tensions with China grow.

Officials told The Wall Street Journal and Fox News the U.S. is preparing to send between 100 and 200 troops to Taiwan in the coming months, which would be the largest such deployment in decades and a marked increase from the approximately 30 troops stationed there last year.

These added troops will reportedly train Taiwanese forces on using U.S. weapons systems and military maneuvers.

“We don’t have a comment on specific operations, engagements, or training, but I would highlight that our support for, and defense relationship with, Taiwan remains aligned against the current threat posed by the People’s Republic of China,” Defense Department spokesman Army Lt. Col. Marty Meiners said in a statement shared with The Daily Wire.

“Our commitment to Taiwan is rock-solid and contributes to the maintenance of peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait and within the region,” Meiners continued.

Taiwan is a self-governed island nation that the Chinese Communist Party has sought to bring under its control. The United States provides defense support to Taiwan but does not formally recognize it as a country.

In October, Chinese President Xi Jinping called for a “peaceful reunification” with Taiwan, but stressed China “will never promise to renounce the use of force and we reserve the option of taking all measures necessary.” Amid increasing provocations by China, President Tsai Ing-wen announced in December that Taiwan would increase its mandatory military service requirement for eligible men from four months to a year.

U.S. military and intelligence officials have said Xi is gearing up his country’s forces to invade Taiwan as early as 2027. Some warned an attack could come sooner.

Keep reading

China successfully tests ‘phantom space strike’ weapon which can overwhelm an enemy’s missile defence systems ahead of a nuclear attack

China has successfully tested a ‘phantom space strike’ – a new tactic to overwhelm and sabotage missile defences by emitting fake target signals from space.

Military engineers announced earlier this month they had completed a computer simulation and achieved positive results.

The tactic is designed to overwhelm the enemy on the basis that there is only so much a missile defence system would be able to cope with.

This can lead to exhaustion of the enemy’s weapon supplies, making it easier to destroy it. 

In the simulation, a ballistic missile was launched against an enemy which had a missile defence system. 

After surpassing the atmosphere, the missile released three spacecrafts containing radio interference equipment which picked up enemy radar network signals and sent back dummy signals, successfully triggering enemy forces to launch an interceptor.

‘Generating phantom tracks in space is extremely difficult,’ the team wrote, according to South China Morning Post.

‘We solved one of the major challenges … with a clever design.’

The team was led by Zhao Yanli, a senior engineer in the People’s Liberation Army Unit 63891 – a military agency based in the central Chinese province of Henan that develops new technologies.

Dummy attacks are often used in combat to exhaust the enemy’s supplies. 

The team said this tactic was not previously feasible in space. Now the positive results of the simulation have given them hope as they move the project onto the next stage to battle any engineering challenges.

Researchers exploited a weak spot in radar stations where signals can become fuzzy and crossed over. 

The spacecrafts’ direction, speed and formation would be decided before the launch and would be based on the information obtained about the enemy’s radar station.

Keep reading

Congressional Republicans Urge Biden to Provide More Military Funding to Taiwan

The authors of the new letter to Biden reasoned that arming and equipping Taiwan “to make it a stronger and more capable partner” would be an improvement for the “national and economic security” of the United States.

Republican members of the US Congress’ foreign relations and defense committees have penned a letter to US President Joe Biden asking him to ramp up military aid to Taiwan, according to a US media outlet familiar with the contents of the missive.

The letter was reportedly authored by Senate Foreign Relations Committee ranking member Jim Risch and House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Mike McCaul, as well as Senator Roger Wicker and Rep. Mike Rogers, Republican leaders of the Senate and House armed service committees, respectively.

“Using every authority, we must arm and equip Taiwan to make it a stronger and more capable partner — which will only help the United States’ national and economic security,” the politicians declared in their letter.

They also argued that the United States “must be willing to accept the tension that comes with supporting Taiwan.”

As the media outlet points out, in December the US Congress did authorize foreign military aid financing for Taiwan – $2 billion per year – but that money comes in the form of “US-backed loans,” and the letter’s authors claim that “without FMF grants, loans are not enough to address the scale of this challenge.”

Keep reading

US Officials Now Say Chinese “Spy Balloon” Flew Over The US Accidentally

The Washington Post has a weird new article out citing multiple anonymous US officials saying that the Chinese “spy balloon” we’ve been hearing about for the last two weeks was never intended for a surveillance mission over North America at all.

The article is titled “U.S. tracked China spy balloon from launch on Hainan Island along unusual path,” and throughout it alternates between the objective journalistic terms “suspected spy balloon” and “suspected Chinese surveillance balloon” and the US government’s terms “spy balloon” and “airborne surveillance device”. There is at this time no publicly available evidence that the balloon which was famously shot down on February 4th was in fact an instrument of Chinese espionage; the Chinese government has said that the balloon was a civilian meteorological airship that got blown off course, and the Pentagon’s own assessment is that a Chinese spy balloon would not “create significant value added over and above what the PRC is likely able to collect through things like satellites in Low Earth Orbit.”

What makes the article so weird is that it actually contains claims which substantiate Beijing’s assertion that this was in fact a balloon that got blown off course, yet it keeps repeating the unevidenced claim that it was a “spy balloon”.

Keep reading