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New Cold War

US Accuses Chinese Warship Of ‘Unsafe’ Maneuver In Taiwan Strait

June 5, 2023 Dave DeCamp, Antiwar.com. , , ,
US Indo-Pacific Command accused a Chinese warship of acting in an “unsafe manner” when it passed a US Navy guided-missile destroyer that was transiting the Taiwan Strait with a Canadian frigate on Saturday. The command said in a statement that the Chinese warship overtook the USS Chung-Hoon in the Taiwan Strait and passed within 150 yards of its bow. The statement said the Chung-Hoon had to slow its speed to 10 knots (nautical miles per hour). The US military frames its Taiwan Strait transits as “routine,” but Beijing views them as provocations. In recent years, the US has increased its military activity around Taiwan and in the South China Sea, ignoring Beijing’s warnings.

Montana TikTok Ban A Sign Of Intensified Cold War With China

May 28, 2023 Ari Paul, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. , , , , , ,
There is an emerging consensus in US foreign policy circles that a US/China cold war is either imminent or already underway (Foreign Policy, 12/29/22; New Yorker, 2/26/23; New York Times, 3/23/23; Fox News, 3/28/23; Reuters, 3/30/23). Domestically, the most recent and most intense iteration of this anti-China fervor is the move to ban the Chinese video app TikTok, which is both a sweeping assault on free speech movement and a dangerous sign that mere affiliation with China is grounds for vilification and loss of rights. Several TikTok content creators are suing to overturn “Montana’s first-in-the-nation ban on the video sharing app, arguing the law is an unconstitutional violation of free speech rights,” on the grounds “that the state doesn’t have any authority over matters of national security” (AP, 5/18/23). TikTok followed up with a lawsuit of its own (New York Times, 5/22/23).

G7’s Coercion Claim Against China Slammed As ‘Absurd’

May 19, 2023 Chen Weihua, Friends of Socialist China. , , , ,
The United States and its Western allies have been the major perpetrators of economic coercion that have inflicted suffering on millions of people around the world, according to international experts and scholars. G7 leaders meeting in Hiroshima, Japan, from Friday to Sunday are set to issue a statement that includes their concerns about alleged economic coercion by China, Reuters reported, citing unnamed US officials. “The report that the G7 may call out China’s economic coercion is hypocritical given that the US is by far the world’s biggest deployer of unilateral coercive measures,” said Jeffrey Sachs, a Columbia University economist who served as a special adviser to the UN secretary-general from 2001 to 2018.

Protests Erupt Against US Military Exercises In The Philippines

May 3, 2023 Jeremy Kuzmarov, Covert Action Magazine. , , ,
This past month, more than 3,000 U.S. and Filipino soldiers participated in a three-week live-fire military exercise called Balikatan, which included a drill to blow up a mock Chinese warship in the South China Sea. The exercises coincided with the U.S. Navy’s sailing a guided-missile destroyer, the USS Milius, within 12 miles of Mischief Reef in the Spratly Islands near the Philippines, over which China claims sovereignty. The Biden administration’s two-pronged show of force followed President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr.’s decision to expand U.S. access to Filipino military bases—which are really U.S. bases that violate the Filipino constitution’s prohibition of foreign military bases in the country.

You Are Reading This Thanks To Semiconductors

April 28, 2023 Vijay Prashad, Tricontinental: Institute For Social Research. , , ,
On 7 October 2022, the United States government implemented export controls in an effort to hinder the development of China’s semiconductor industry. An expert on the subject told the Financial Times, ‘The whole point of the policy is to kneecap China’s AI [Artificial Intelligence] and HPC [High Performance Computing] efforts’. The next day, China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said: In order to maintain its sci-tech hegemony, the US has been abusing export control measures to wantonly block and hobble Chinese enterprises. Such practice runs counter to the principle of fair competition and international trade rules. It will not only harm Chinese companies’ legitimate rights and interests but also hurt the interests of US companies.

Chinese ‘Police Stations’ And War Propaganda

April 21, 2023 Margaret Kimberley, Black Agenda Report. , , ,
“Right now there are changes – the likes of which we haven’t seen for 100 years – and we are the ones driving these changes together.” Xi Jinping to Vladimir Putin , March 22, 2023 President Lula da Silva of Brazil recently visited China’s President Xi Jinping. French President Emmanuel Macron, Belarus President Aleksandr Lukashenko, Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi and Spain’s prime minister Pedro Sanchez have all made the journey in recent months. Even Germany’s amateurish Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock went, but her goal was to make sure that double talking Macron didn’t stray far from the EU’s pro-U.S. orthodoxy. The frequency of high level meetings is interesting when one considers Joe Biden's bizarre rant in his State of the Union Speech.

Protest In Taiwan Against Tsai’s Meeting With Congressman McCarthy

April 17, 2023 Liu Xin and Xing Xiaojing, Orinoco Tribune. , , , ,
More than 50 political parties in the island of Taiwan staged a protest outside Taoyuan Airport in Taipei on Friday against regional leader Tsai Ing-wen’s meeting with US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. The Friday activity, themed “Anti-Taiwan independence, anti-interference” started around 7:30 pm and lasted for more than an hour. More than 200 people from over 50 political parties – including the Labor Party of Taiwan, the Reunification Alliance Party, the Chinese Unification Promotion Party, and the New Party – gathered outside the airport, calling for reunification and waving banners with slogans such as “Tsai-McCarthy selling Taiwan” and “We want no war, but peace.”

In The Philippines, Repression And US Trade Policy Go Hand-In-hand

April 16, 2023 Maximillian Alvarez, The Real News Network. , , ,
For call center workers in the Philippines, attempts to unionize the workplace don’t just entail confrontations with local management—but overseas US-based multinationals and the US federal government’s foreign policy agenda as well. Since 2022, the Biden administration has promoted a new economic initiative known as the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity (IPEF). Touted as a vehicle for “writing the new rules of the 21st century economy,” the IPEF links 14 nations across the Pacific Rim into an emergent bloc that has been compared to the defunct Trans-Pacific Partnership. Like the TPP before it, the IPEF attempts to build an exclusive economic regional pact that excludes China.

Why China’s Winning And The US Is Panicking

April 13, 2023 Lee Camp, Mintpress News. , , ,
One of the most important topics going on right now in our world is, as the U.S. government likes to call it, the “great power conflict” between China and the U.S. To explore this topic, Lee Camp brings on a political science professor from Shanghai to break the issue down. Dr. Joseph Gregory Mahoney of the East China Normal University joins us for an hour-long discussion on the reality of life in China, the decline of U.S. hegemonic power, Chinese foreign policy and economic development, the return of Cold War propaganda narratives, philosophy, and much more. Mahoney is a Ph.D. and professor of politics and international relations who grew up in Alabama during the Cold War.

Chinese Foreign Ministry Statement On Tsai’s ‘Transit’ Through The US

April 8, 2023 Friends of Socialist China. , , ,
The following statement, issued by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China on 6 April 2023, expresses China’s strong objection to the US’s facilitation of Tsai Ing-wen’s transit through the US, during which she had a high-profile meeting with US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. The statement points out that this visit forms part of an increasingly consistent pattern by the US of undermining the One China principle and encouraging Taiwanese separatism, with a view to stoking cross-Strait tensions and weakening China. The statement urges the US to return to a framework of international law and to its obligations under the three China-US joint communiqués.

US Push To Strip China’s Developing Country Status

April 7, 2023 Danny Haiphong, Black Agenda Report. , , , ,
On March 28, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the "PRC Is Not a Developing Country Act" by a unanimous vote of 415-0 in yet another demonstration of the solid bipartisanship that exists in the United States when it comes to containing and isolating China. Under the terms of the bill, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken would be directed to seek the removal of China's status as a developing country from international organizations and institutions. The United Nations, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank all recognize China as a developing country for good reason. China's GDP per capita, while rising, is $12,700 or about five times smaller than the U.S.'s.

Protesters Gather As Kevin McCarthy Meets With Taiwan’s Tsai Ing-Wen

April 7, 2023 Pivot to Peace. , , ,
On April 5th at 10 am protesters from the Chinese community, Pivot to Peace, CODEPINK, the ANSWER Coalition and other communities gathered at the Ronald Reagan Library in Simi Valley, CA  as U.S. Speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy and other politicians met with Taiwan’s president, Tsai Ing-Wen. In the final stop of her Americas tour, Tsai’s meeting with McCarthy signals yet another provocation on U.S.-China relations. This comes just months after McCarthy’s predecessor, Nancy Pelosi deliberately violated the “One China Policy” agreed upon in the joint U.S.-China Shanghai Communique by visiting Taiwan.

Government Hasn’t Justified A Tiktok Ban

March 25, 2023 Adam Schwartz and David Greene, Electronic Frontier Foundation. , , , ,
So we are troubled by growing demands in the United States for restrictions on TikTok, a technology that many people have chosen to exchange information with others around the world. Before taking such a drastic step, the government must come forward with specific evidence showing, at the very least, a real problem and a narrowly tailored solution. So far, the government hasn’t done so. Nearly all social media platforms and other online businesses collect a lot of personal data from their users. TikTok raises special concerns, given the surveillance and censorship practices of its home country, China. Still, the best solution to these problems is not to single-out one business or country for a ban.

Iraq Invasion, AUKUS Blasted In Rousing Sydney Rally

March 22, 2023 Consortium News. , , , ,
A week after Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese agreed in a meeting in San Diego with President Joe Biden and British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to spend A$368 billion to buy nuclear submarines from the two countries, anti-war activists met in a sweltering Sydney town hall on Sunday on the 20th anniversary of the start of the war against Iraq to hear why the submarine deal is a disaster for Australia that must be stopped.  Greens Party Senator David Shoebridge, former foreign minister Bob Carr, retired diplomat Alison Broinowski and Colin Powell’s former chief of staff, Lawrence Wilkinson (via video hook-up from Virginia), told the rally that an aggressive United States was dragging Australia into an unnecessary conflict with its main trading partner, China, a country which posed no threat. 

The Drums Of War With China Are Beating Much Louder Now

March 14, 2023 Caitlin Johnstone. , , ,
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. 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.
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