Tag Archives: china

CHINA, NOT ONLY THE U.S. ENEMY BUT THE WHOLE WORLD

Fox News Channel logo.svg

On Monday President Trump will address the United Nations General Assembly. It will be another opportunity for the president to set out his “America First” agenda and to explain that it’s better, and more democratic, for sovereign nations to work together to solve problems than to hand over power to remote and unaccountable international bureaucracies.

His approach is a stark contrast to the globalist ideology that has held sway for far too long – the idea that individual countries should subordinate their own national interest to some vague notion of the “global interest.”

This was the thinking that led to the biggest foreign policy mistake of the last two decades: the globalists’ insistence on engagement with China. Mesmerized by their own fantasy of an economically borderless world – convenient for global corporations but disastrous for American workers – the elitists have helped bring China’s brutal, authoritarian Communist regime to the brink of achieving its long planned-for attempt at world domination.

We often hear about how we’ve been losing out to China economically – and that’s true. But the case against China is a moral one too.

UN and U.S. officials have estimated that China has literally imprisoned one million Muslims in internment camps. Reports include brainwashing to force Muslims to worship dictator Xi Jinping instead of Allah.

President Trump should reject in its entirety the failed China strategy of his globalist predecessors.

China’s vile “social credit” system is using the world’s most sophisticated technology in an Orwellian effort to monitor, track and control every Chinese citizen and punish those who step out of line.

And the dictators of Beijing are now spreading their poison internationally, colonizing countries around the world with an imperialist aggression far worse than anything in history.

President Trump should now reject in its entirety the failed China strategy of his globalist predecessors. This means not just continuing, through tariffs, to pressurize the Chinese regime on issues like the theft of vital technology from American companies.

He needs to go bigger, and bolder. At the UN and beyond, he should rally the whole world behind a simple but audacious goal: to topple Xi Jinping’s regime by turning China into a pariah state.

It must start with economics. For a long time, our economic interaction with China was minimal. That all changed when, with U.S. backing, China joined the World Trade Organization in 2000.

The elitists argued that by integrating China into the world economy, we would benefit financially through increased, mutually beneficial trade and investment; and that we would benefit strategically by moving China away from communism towards openness and maybe even democracy.

Of course the exact opposite happened, on both fronts. Over the next few years, manufacturing jobs in America were destroyed on a massive scale as China used its newfound access to “dump” its state-subsidized exports into the American and world markets.

And instead of moving towards democracy, China has become ever more authoritarian and aggressive. The only difference is that now, it is incomparably richer and more empowered to assert its hegemonic mania – thanks to the elitists’ catastrophic misjudgment.

Both President George W. Bush and President Barack Obama pathetically failed to stand up to China’s economic imperialism and global expansionism. Neither had the backs of working Americans; instead, they just wanted to look like good global players to their big business donors and foreign policy experts – all of whom are now utterly humiliated as the true scale of the establishment’s China debacle becomes apparent.

The Chinese have turned intellectual property theft into a weapon of war.

The greedy, foolish elites were mesmerized by the prospect of untold riches from China’s untapped consumer markets – little realizing that China would never be as stupid as we were, and allow foreign competitors to get the edge. The gullible and naive ‘Asia experts’ labored under the impression that if we gave China the Olympics, if we engaged on China’s terms, if we got China into the trading system, then China would become more democratic, human rights would improve, and we would all be a lot richer.

Well the Chinese got richer. And the elites in America got richer. But is China any more democratic? No; it has regressed, if that is possible, from communist oligarchy to an increasingly totalitarian state. Is China playing by the rules? No; it is quite literally taking islands from its neighbors, ignoring intentional rulings, and flouting agreed maritime boundaries. Instead of playing by the established rules of the international community it is actively setting its own, creating a network of quiescent countries – including in Europe – through its One Belt, One Road infrastructure initiative. Its aggressive cyber-warfare against America has included not only industrial espionage but the theft of Americans’ personal data on a massive scale.

Meanwhile, Chinese industry continues to undercut American manufacturing, totally disproportionate tariffs are levied on foreign imports to China and currency manipulation has further put our exporters at an unfair disadvantage. Even when China does allow American corporations to compete in its markets, it’s entirely on the regime’s terms: American companies cannot own their own Chinese businesses, they can only operate through joint ventures. And for technology companies, a condition of operation is to hand over commercial secrets in vital areas like AI and quantum computing. The Chinese have turned intellectual property theft into a weapon of war.

I hate to say I told you so – but I told you so.

Against the grain of the elite’s embarrassing China swoon, I argued all along that no good would come of this. While I was working In Downing Street I typically stayed away from foreign policy but I did have one early victory as I persuaded David Cameron, in the teeth of frantic protests from the Foreign Office and Treasury, that his first major international visit as Prime Minister should be to India not China. Of course the corrupt apparatchiks of Beijing, by now accustomed to over a decade of craven kowtowing by the supine West, were infuriated.

And sure enough, the China-skeptic posture I advocated was reversed in an instant, culminating in the abject humiliation of a lavish state visit to Britain for the brutal dictator Xi Jinping, paraded through the streets of London in a gold carriage while goons from the Chinese Embassy beat up pro-democracy protesters just a few feet away.

Well now we know. We can’t pretend that China wants anything less than world domination – economically, technologically, politically, militarily. We can’t waste time hoping it will play by our rules. It won’t. The sooner we realize that, the sooner we can take the aggressive stance we need to isolate this rising giant of a rival. We put all our might into fighting and winning the Cold War against the Soviets; the Chinese regime is an infinitely bigger threat because unlike the Soviet Union it is an economic powerhouse. Military conflict between China and America isn’t inevitable, and I’m not advocating that we go down that path. But for our long term prosperity, and for a world run according to the values of openness and democracy, we must take aggressive action now, even at the cost of short-term pain.

Yes we have to get tough on our trade imbalances with China, as President Trump has been doing. But we can and should go further than that. When I was at Oxford, I proudly joined protests against apartheid South Africa. They were rightly an international pariah for their despicable treatment of the majority of their people.

It’s time for a complete economic boycott of China. We can start by imposing exactly the same conditions on Chinese companies in America as the ones imposed on American companies in China: no independent operations, compulsory joint ventures and the forced handover of intellectual property. How long do you think Chinese companies would stay here on that basis? Next: no American company or investor should be permitted to support China’s various schemes for world domination like One Belt One Road. All U.S. companies in China should pull out, and no new investments should be made.

Yes this seems drastic but in the long run it is our only hope of putting sufficient pressure on the vile Beijing regime that it might collapse from within. China is our enemy, not our “partner,” and we need to start acting like it.

This is an edited extract from “Positive Populism – Revolutionary Ideas to Rebuild Economic Security, Family and Community in America.”

Steve Hilton is host of “The Next Revolution with Steve Hilton” on Fox News Channel at 9pm ET Sundays and author of the book “Positive Populism: Revolutionary Ideas to Rebuild Economic Security, Family and Community in America.” Follow him on Twitter @SteveHiltonx.

Sponsored Stories You May Like

 

THIS IS NO TIME TO WAVE THE WHITE FLAG – CHINA PROVOKING NEIGHBORS IN SEA DISPUTE

A future situation will bound to occur between South East Asian nations, the United States and their antagonist China.  As evidence of this we turn to the Hague decision in 2016. 

Click here to view the most recent warning by Chinese military personnel warning those who travel near the islands. These are verbal warnings, but future warning may be by missile or aircraft. This will cause a flash point between a belligerent nation and those who seek to travel freely based on international law.

Hague’s South China Sea Spratly Verdict All About Real Estate

The Hague has delivered a political hand-grenade with its surprisingly harsh and clear decision in the case of the Philippines vs. China over the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea.

It’s all about real estate. And the natural resources under it.

To say it ain’t good news for Beijing is playing it down. China lost on every count in the Permanent Court of Arbitration, based on the Law of the Sea.

The Taiwan coast guard secure a C-130 military transport plane on the tarmac of Taiping island, also known as Itu Aba, in the Spratly archipelago. (Image: AP/Johnson Lai)

The Philippines has used the law to say that China has been illegally impinging on its economic rights by stopping fishermen and petroleum explorers from entering the area.

Yes, that’s true, and no, China can’t do that, the court said. Presumably the warships that have warded those efforts off will now have to let them through.

Most importantly, the court ruled that China’s claim to almost 90% of the South China Sea based on the Nine Dash Line is invalid. Any claim to the resources in that region was “extinguished” when the Law of the Sea came into effect in 1994, establishing clear rules for exclusive economic zones around islands, the court said.

The decision came down to an interesting real-estate definition. Are the Spratly Islands actually “islands,” which can support life or economic activity, or “rocks”?

That is important because islands get an exclusive economic zone around them for 200 nautical miles. Rocks get nothing. In a separate issue, features that are above water at high tide – yes, even rocks! – get a 12-mile maritime zone governing free passage.

MORE FROM FORBES

Islands or rocks? That’s what the Philippines asked, and they got their answer on Tuesday. The Spratly Islands, confusingly, are rocks. They don’t support ongoing human life, the court decided. Over the course of history small groups of fishermen and some Japanese fishing and guano-mining businesses have tried to live there, and they have failed.

That means any of the Spratlys that are within 200 nautical miles of the Philippines belong, economically, to the Philippines, which are most definitely islands. Each Filipino island of course has its own exclusive economic zone.

This matters not so much because anyone wants to build houses in the Spratlys. This is not Monopoly. But China does want a monopoly on the resources under the islands … excuse me, rocks … because the oil and gas reserves in the South China Sea are worth around US$5 trillion.

The dilapidated Sierra Madre is being used by the Philippine Navy near Ayungin Shoal to secure a perimeter in the Spratly Islands. (Image: Ritchie B. Tongo/AP)

China has famously built seven Spratly reefs into man-made islands, three of them with airstrips. These stake its claim physically. China says they will be used for safety purposes as well as militarily. The Hague says all of that activity is illegal, and has aggravated the dispute. Also, it says Chinese fishermen have used that protection to harvest protected species such as turtles, corals and giant clams illegally.

Check out this fascinating interactive time lapse on exactly what China has been doing in the Spratlys, from The New York Times. The Sydney Morning Herald also has a great aerial demonstration of how all three runways have changed the reefs, describing the construction as the stuff of the “arch-villain’s hideouts.”

Even Taiwan has been deliberately maintaining a scientific and military base on one Spratly island – now a rock under the court’s definition – that has no fresh water. It calls it Taiping, while the Philippines calls it Itu Aba. Fresh water is one of the keys to being defined as an island.

Anyone who is lucky enough to own an island will know that harsh reality. If you don’t have a fresh-water source, you have to ship in water at great cost. You can actually pick up islands surprisingly cheaply, but it’s the huge cost of maintaining one that’s the problem.

China has been using the Nine Dash Line, based on a map first printed in 1947 under pre-Communist China, as justification for its claims. The map brushes the coasts of Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and the Philippines, all of which have various overlapping claims to parts of the sea.

I remember seeing a map of China, including of course Taiwan, with the Nine Dash Line for the first time when I went to cover the APEC summit in Shanghai in 2001 for CNN. I was shocked at how it seemed to me to ignore geography completely in what looked suspiciously like a land, or sea, grab. Critics have also contended that the Nine Dash Line is vague, and they suspect deliberately so. China says nautical maps generated by aeons of fishermen visiting the region show it has long occupied the area.

The Hague decision is “final and binding,” according to the court. But it is not binding, really, in that it is not enforceable. There’s no world body or even individual charged with enforcing it.

The main law force will be the weight of public opinion. All the politicians in the entire South China Sea dispute will be using the decision as ammunition against Beijing. The United States has sent warships through the area claimed by China just to show it can, and would no doubt respond, hopefully not using real ammunition. Australia has been considering such moves.

China will be under great pressure to cease construction, but it will be difficult to evict what are now apparently squatters from the Spratlys they now occupy. The court made it clear it wasn’t within its mandate to settle the territorial disputes, only to rule on the economic zones.

This file shot from a military plane showed China’s on-going reclamation of Mischief Reef in the Spratly Islands, where it has now built an airstrip. (Image: Ritchie B. Tongo/AP)

China’s reaction has been measured. After The Hague’s decision, China put up a statement on the Web site of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. While not specifically referring to the verdict, China reiterated its historical presence in the region, and referred to other bits and pieces of law to justify its claim.

It offered an open hand for the Southeast Asian nations to shake. It is willing to negotiate individually with the nations involved on the sovereignty issue.

Is it really about islands and who owns them? No. It’s about oil.

The most important part of the statement is that China is willing, while the legal disputes lumber on, to enter into provisional, practical deals involving joint development in the South China Sea, to “achieve win-win results and jointly maintain peace and stability.”

I doubt anyone is ever going to get free title to their own bit of the South China Sea. Meantime, let’s get on with business.

Alex Frew McMillan is a Hong Kong-based writer and free-lance reporter.

CHINA WINS 51 to 49 – HOW WE CAN STOP THEM BY TURNING THE TABLES

President Trump has engaged China in battle; no more patsy U.S, we now will play by our rules. Like it or not they have no choice. Behind the scenes fisticuffs, bare knuckle Asian martial arts will occur. But don’t sell Trump short on this pugilistic octagon rumble, he is no Clinton, Bush, Obama, the patsies of old relinquished our technology to the enemy – for WHAT? Corporate America wanted to expand, they wanted to make more money and they knew that China was ripe for the taking; or were they? We find out decades later that the Chinese played the game of Three-card Monte expertly. Shells, cards or marbles  whatever the game was it was fixed from the beginning. China said take it or leave it; 51 to us 49 to you. Technology poured in like the icon waters of the Yangtze. Their ability enhanced to such a degree they now threaten America with inovation.

In the mean time we racked up trillions of dollars of debt buying Chinese products. They converted this windfall purhasing companies worldwide. Technology, manufacturing, software, biotech, oil and mining were not unscathed. Their hand reached into Latin America and Africa. Their thirst to become a world wide leader in all aspects by 2035 has them driven. Hegemony in shipping lanes, contested islands and seas without contestation manifests their ability to threaten the free world. Who will stand up to the Chinese Dragon?

But a view from afar is it possible that we hold the cards? When an entity owes the bank $100, the bank owns the entity, but when an entity owes the bank a $1,000,000,000 the entity now owns the bank. Getting in too deep in the borrowers side can have unintended consequence. We shall see if the United States plays hardball in the tariff arena.

Our suggestion to address the Chinese threat is simple. Notify China that imports into the United States will be halted immediately. Repercussions yes? This will cause chaos in the China workspace. Three hundred fifty million people will be out of work. They will not be happy campers, but will be dragons out for vengeance. What could China do? Threaten us, with what? They have a trillion or two in treasury bills, so what. Paper, is all it is; paper tiger holding paper. Revolution will ensue, workers of the China hinterland world will unite. Leaders will be targeted. No Tienanmen Square here – this will be the Peoples Army taking to the street seeking blood. And blood it will be for the Commies. Will it happen? Time will tell.

China leadership mostly never takes a calculated risk, their adventures are planned decades ahead. Case in point, Boeing made a deal with the Chinese devil transferring jet engine technology and trade secrets to the Chinese.  And now China is building civilian aircraft to compete with China. They also have prototype F-35 to challenge us in the skies. This is no checker game, it is for real. And the controversy continues as the United States is set to sell and transfer nuclear reactors along with technology to suppress submarine detection. This vividly brings to mind the iconic saying by Vladimir Lenin, “The Capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them.”  Lenin was most prescient.

Over the years we have bought Chinese made products manufactured by slave labor thereby transferring trillions of dollars to China. In turn they have purchased manufacturing firms, oil companies, mining companies, software-computer companies and technology. Their industrial espionage is well known . On their way to equivalency in many industries China now is an existential threat to the United States and its neighbors. Take the most recent Spratly Island dispute for evidence of such.

Where do we stand now? China has amassed one trillion  in U.S treasury bills. Their present currency reserves top three billion. Trump has continue to criticize China for currency manipulation. Actually the are not currency manipulators. He is mistaken.

What China actually has done is to enslave 350 million people over the years (the early stage of the accumulation process) producing products for export – mostly to the United States. These employees effectively were slaves. As stated above, China amassed billions of dollars through this paradigm.  Then with the haul in hand they bought worldwide companies with the loot; companies such as those involved in manufacturing, technology, mining, oil, pharmaceutical and retail. 

A very simple solution to solve our China problem. China demands that if American companies want to do business in China they have to partner with a Chinese company to enter the market; in most cases our companies  are minority players owning 49% of the enterprise.Trump has to read China the riot act. How will that work?  We no longer will take it the 49% deal; it is 100 or nothing.

It is time for us to tell them point blank: we demand that our companies be allowed to own 100% and be able to repatriate their profits, if not we have an alternative. No more Chinese imports into the United States will be allowed from China starting tomorrow.

The fallout here will be the same as if a nuclear bomb hit China. Mass layoffs will challenge the leaders. Revolution will ensue. We don’t think the Chinese leadership wants to see this happen.

 

CHINA SYNDROME BY MICHAEL OBERNDORF

China?  CHECK THE LAST TWO PARAGRAPHS

 

I have been spending time in Hong Kong this past year, and recently took a short trip into China proper. Several things struck me as being not at all what I expected, in both places. Not surprising, though, given the Ministry of Propaganda, aka, the “mainstream” media, filtering of what we are allowed to hear about. The skewed, leftist-agenda driven misinformation and downright lies that they spew out daily rarely paint a picture of what the world is actually like. Thus, I thought I would share some of my personal observations that if skewed, are skewed in the direction of proudly-American patriotic conservatism.

 

Hong Kong was taken as a colony by the British in 1841, as part of a treaty ending a brief war over opium. Over time, it became a great Asian commercial center and lots of people got very rich there, including many Chinese. In 1992, Hong Kong was returned to China by the British who were definitely watching the sun set on their former empire, and on their standing as a first tier nation.

 

However, rather than imposing the idiotic central planning that communists are infamous for, the ChiComs allowed business to continue pretty much as usual: largely unregulated and untaxed. As a result, Hong Kong continued to prosper, bringing huge amounts of capital and trade to, and through, it. I saw more Ferraris in 10 days last winter than I had seen in the previous 10 years in the US. Unemployment appears to be minimal. The parks have only retired people, not the jobless, in them, and the homeless are very hard to find. Poverty seems darn near non-existent, and, unlike America’s Democrat-run cities, it’s safe and clean. It reminds me of what America was like back when I was growing up, in the 1950s and early ’60s. And though they have experienced some recent unrest among the Chinese residents regarding the local political process, international business – the source of Hong Kong’s fabulous wealth – has been mostly unaffected. This, of course, may change, but for the more or less immediate future, Hong Kong will likely maintain its #1 ranking as the most free place for doing business in the world. The USA, by the way, under Obozo and his Merry RINOs, has sunk to #17.

 

China proper, too, had some surprises. When I crossed the border into Shenzhen – Hong Kong and the New Territories are not part of the Mainland and you have to have a visa to cross from them into China – I expected there to be a big change from booming Hong Kong. Instead, it looked very much the same – well dressed (often expensively) people, lots of luxury cars, but with China license plates, lots of big construction projects, and so on. Unlike our border with Mexico, where the poverty, crime, filth, and pollution are a stark contrast, Shenzhen clearly has benefited from its proximity to the epitome of free enterprise. But while Shenzhen was similar to Hong Kong, there were recognizable differences.

 

One of the first things I noticed on the cab ride from the crossing to my hotel – a marvelous Crowne Plaza – was that there were, what were clearly homeless wino-types, sleeping in the parks. These people are not supposed to exist in Mao’s worker’s paradise, but they do indeed, though not in great numbers. I wonder how they have managed to stay out of sight of the all-seeing eye of the People’s Police.  And this relates somewhat to another Chinese anomaly – ghost cities and unfinished housing.

 

The Ministry of Propaganda has mentioned ghost cities, but mostly as curiosities, with little or no serious analysis. These cities are complete, with wonderful housing and shopping malls, but no more than 10% occupancy in any of them. And out in the smaller cities and towns and the countryside, I saw hundreds of relatively new three and four story western-style buildings, constructed to the point of just needing finishing – wall and ceiling finish, window glass, etc. – and then apparently left to sit, some obviously for more than just a few months. So, with all this vacant, potentially occupiable housing, why are there still homeless on the streets? And who is supposed to fill it all, since other than the handful of homeless, everyone seemed to have places to live?

 

What this suggests to me is that all these are make-work projects, to keep people busy, who would otherwise be idle, and thus, potential trouble-makers, but producing nothing of real value to the country. Indeed, I saw lots of idle workers, sitting around day after day, playing cards (gambling! shocking!) apparently victims of government dictating which businesses operate when. While it is always possible that there is some brilliant central master plan behind all this, it sure isn’t obvious, and instead hints at endemic systemic problems for which they are unsuccessfully groping for a solution.

 

Add to this the obvious popularity of Western Culture, and China becomes less of a stable, monolithic, communist state than we are led to believe it is. Virtually no one wears traditional Chinese clothes, except a few ethnic minorities in very rural areas of southwest China, and it is not unusual to see spiked, blue/green/red hairdos. Western music is everywhere, and television and advertising are clearly modeled after ours and Europe’s. This embracing of Western, non-Chinese culture hints at the adoption of Western values, sooner or later, and may be a major factor in the increasing crackdown on internal dissent. Interesting times, indeed!

 

EXPEL ALL CHINESE STUDENTS FROM THE UNITED STATES UNIVERSITIES FOR STARTERS!

The Trump administration may be considering a trade move far bigger than the steel and aluminum tariffs

If this is true – it was leaked by a “source familiar with international trade” to the Nikkei Asian Review and isn’t based on a White House announcement – then it’s going to add a lot of fuel to the already heated trade dispute between the US and China, and may ultimately make the steel and aluminum tariffs look like a game.

To punish China for its intellectual property theft, including IP infringements such as counterfeiting, and to retaliate against Chinese investment rules that require technology transfers to Chinese partners in order to set up shop in China, the Trump administration is considering a proposal by the Office of the US Trade Representative (USTR) that would impose:

  • Tariffs on a large variety of Chinese products, including tech products and consumer goods like clothing.
  • Restrictions on investment by Chinese companies in the US, the first impact of which we have already seen by Trump’s order yesterday blocking all Chinese takeovers of large US tech companies.
  • And limits on visas for certain Chinese nationals.

The USTR also urged US allies, including Japan, to implement similar measures and synchronize their policies, according to the “source familiar with international trade,” cited by the Nikkei Asian Review.

Germany, Japan, and other countries have long fumed over the required technology transfers to Chinese partners. At the same time, Chinese companies, often state-owned, have been on a shopping spree in Germany, going after robotics know-how and other industries, which has caused a lot of soul-searching in the business community in Germany. Japan too “has long opposed China’s intellectual property practices,” as the Nikkei put it. Now the USTR has asked these countries to do something about it.

The probe by the USTR started in August last year, invoking Section 301 of the US Trade Act of 1974. The act, because it conflicts with WTO rules against imposing trade restrictions unilaterally, hasn’t been used since 1995, when the WTO began sorting out trade disputes.

But in August 2017, the USTR announced that it had “formally initiated” an investigation of China under Section 301:

“The investigation will seek to determine whether acts, policies, and practices of the Government of China related to technology transfer, intellectual property, and innovation are unreasonable or discriminatory and burden or restrict U.S. commerce.”

The investigation would “look into Chinese laws, policies, and practices which may be harming American intellectual property rights, innovation, or technology development.”

“Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, as amended, gives the U.S. Trade Representative broad authority to respond to a foreign country’s unfair trade practices. If USTR makes an affirmative determination of actionable conduct, it has the authority to take all appropriate and feasible action to obtain the elimination of the act, policy, or practice, subject to the direction of the President, if any. The statute includes authorization to take any actions that are within the President’s power with respect to trade in goods or services, or any other area of pertinent relations with the foreign country.”

Trump had pledged to crack down on the causes of the huge US trade deficit. In terms of the magnitude of the trade deficit, no country comes even close to China (chart shows China and Hong Kong combined due the transshipments via Hong Kong):

The trade deficit in goods alone was $796 billion in 2017, of which the deficit with China accounted for $342 billion. China exported to the US three times as much as it imported from the US.

Though the USTR has tried to get US allies on board, at least the Japanese government rejected the proposal, saying that it would be difficult to implement since Japan lacks a law similar to Section 301, a US trade official told the Nikkei. The official said that Japan had proposed instead a joint suit against China via the WTO. That would make sense to say for Japan; it has only a small trade deficit with China/Hong Kong and in many months a trade surplus.

That the Trump administration invoked Section 301 rattled the Chinese government. In February, it sent its top diplomat, Yang Jiechi, to Washington on a fence-mending mission. This resolved nothing. At the beginning of March, it sent President Xi Jinping’s top economic adviser, Liu He, for a bigger five-day fence-mending mission.

It was doomed from the beginning. China had planned to send a delegation of about 40 people along with Liu He, sources told the SCMP, but the US government objected, and in the end the delegation was cut to about 10.

Liu met with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, and White House economic adviser Gary Cohn, and afterward announced China’s intention to reduce its trade surplus with the US. According to the SCMP, Chinese state media portrayed Liu’s mission positively.

But on March 7, after the mission was over, Trump tweeted: “The U.S. is acting swiftly on Intellectual Property theft. We cannot allow this to happen as it has for many years!” It seems to have been an apt suggestion that the USTR’s proposal was on the way. The proposal’s drastic remedies and the chance that Trump would support them might have been the real reason why Cohn quit, rather than the now softened steel and aluminum tariffs that seemed to be hitting the wrong targets.

Trump’s Executive Order blocked not only the $117-billion hostile takeover of Qualcomm, but any “substantially equivalent” foreign takeover in the future. Read… Trump’s Order Stops ALL Foreign Takeovers of Large US Tech Companies

CHINA RAMPS UP IN AI – MORE THAN A CAUSE OF CONCERN

China’s Authoritarian State Has an Edge in Artificial Intelligence Development

A wealthy repressive state can press ahead with tech innovation unimpeded by privacy concerns

Artificial intelligence researchers say that while the Chinese may not have political freedom, they have the economic freedom to chart their own course—and Beijing doesn’t throw up roadblocks to the technology on privacy grounds, as occurs in the West.
Artificial intelligence researchers say that while the Chinese may not have political freedom, they have the economic freedom to chart their own course—and Beijing doesn’t throw up roadblocks to the technology on privacy grounds, as occurs in the West. PHOTO: WANG GANG/ZUMA PRESS

China made enormous economic strides in the past quarter-century by manufacturing everything from toys to tires inexpensively and exporting them overseas. To become a truly wealthy nation, it must move beyond its role as a low-cost manufacturer and become an economic innovator itself.

Can a repressive state, led by a central government specializing in five-year plans and surveillance of its own people, make such a leap? The odds against success look steep. Economic history includes few examples of authoritarian states becoming innovative business leaders. But China aims to make that jump in artificial intelligence—or high-level machine learning—with an unusual approach that can’t be dismissed.

Beijing is bankrolling a big effort in AI, in part, to keep better track of homegrown individuals it considers criminals and dissidents, and to intimidate would-be opponents. That work involves fundamental research in image recognition, data collection and sorting that could have commercial spinoffs in the software used to run complex systems. A city with millions of self-driving cars, for instance, would need data analysis and the ability to recognize, say, that a ball bouncing across the street might be followed by a child chasing it.

“What gives China an edge is there is more of a sense of urgency,” says Paul Triolo, a technology research manager at Eurasia Group.

Last summer, China’s central government published a comprehensive plan for artificial intelligence development that aims to make the nation “the world’s primary AI innovation center” by 2030.

In China such plans aren’t simply blueprints, but indications of central government priorities, which work down to localities, state-owned firms and entrepreneurs. So far, local governments, looking to turn themselves into software centers, have pledged about $7 billion in funding for AI development, estimates a congressional panel that focuses on China.

Mix that with genuine enthusiasm for the technology among Chinese scientists and companies—and world-class talent—and you have a formidable force, say U.S. researchers who have studied China’s AI program.

“There’s an enthusiasm for AI and culture of dynamism that we don’t see as much in the U.S., at least outside of Silicon Valley,” says Massachusetts Institute of Technology researcher Erik Brynjolfsson.

Among the most innovative—and threatening—of the Chinese research involves surveillance. The Wall Street Journal has detailed how Beijing has turned its western Xinjiang regioninto a warren of facial scanners to track millions of Uighur minorities. Police there use hand-held devices to search smartphones for encrypted chat apps. A new twist: mobile facial-recognition units mounted on eyeglasses that police use to search crowds for fugitives, among other uses.

Artificial intelligence works by the collection of vast amounts of data used to “train” computer software to recognize patterns and reach conclusions, precisely the kind of skills needed to track a small number of dissidents among a sea of Chinese faces.

“A repressive state can be an engine of innovation,” says Robert Atkinson, president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a tech policy center.

In the past, Chinese efforts to innovate have stumbled over the state’s desire to centralize control, denying researchers and companies the freedom to follow their own ideas. China, for instance, has tried to jump-start its semiconductor industry with projects dating as far back as the Cultural Revolution, but still hasn’t produced a company that can compete with global leaders like Intel or Samsung. Beijing is trying once again in computer chips, putting together a massive government fund, but the U.S. government so far has blocked China’s efforts to acquired advanced Western technology.

AI may be different, say U.S. technology researchers. China’s AI effort is being joined by globally competitive internet powerhouses including Tencent Holdings Ltd. , which is focused on medical imaging, and Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. , which wants to help create smart cities that use sensors, cameras and computers to manage traffic. So far, the government is following their lead in technology development, AI researchers say, whatever the goals laid out in the government plan.

Chinese researchers may not have political freedom, they say, but they have the economic freedom to chart their own course. And the Chinese government doesn’t throw up roadblocks to the technology on the grounds of privacy, as occurs in the West.

“Freedom is very important,” says Mr. Brynjolfsson. “But there is more freedom in China to do startups than most people realize.”

Becoming an innovator in high technology and making a business success of those innovations in international markets is something that only a few countries have done, says Loren Graham, an emeritus MIT science historian.

“All of them—so far—are open, democratic societies in which government companies do not dominate,” he said.

He says China’s push in AI represents a great economic experiment.

“Can a country like China with lots of money combine repression, creativity and economic success based on that creativity? If the answer is yes, then we will have to rethink everything.”

Write to Bob Davis at bob.davis@wsj.com

Appeared in the February 26, 2018, print edition as ‘Authoritarianism Is China’s Edge in AI.’

CHINA – THE EXISTENTIAL THREAT FACING THE WORLD

The China syndrome is for real. There are no two ways about it. And it is going to get worse.

THE CHINA SYNDROME

The China Syndrome, the worry that an American nuclear plant meltdown could penetrate the earth’s crust finally ending up in China. A worry to this day. Economically we have seen the reverse, a China economic meltdown, now winding its way through oceans leaving economic woe and devastation in its path. China syndrome.jpg The bottom line here is simple. Over the past twenty years China has accumulated a couple of trillion dollars of our money; shipping slave produced goods to the United States in return they purchased foreign companies worldwide.

Their bounty was spent gobbling up companies across the global board. These included natural resources, manufacturing, biotech, electronic and software. They are today’s elephant in the economic room. China catches a cold, the world catches the flu.

They, that is Corporate China, has one goal in mind; to takeover the world. They are ahead of the plan they set out forty years ago. They have infiltrated country after country, threatened neighbors, broken into computer networks and stolen state secrets. However, our government and corporations have been their lackey. Doing business in China was not a walk in the park, but one kept on a leash; companies weren’t allowed to operate in China without a Chinese partner. This paved the way for them to learn, steal and develop their industries. If they couldn’t hook up with a partner, their corporations which by the way were government owned went on a shopping spree buying foreign entities; most specialized in technology, oil, minerals and finance.

Chinese competition is fierce, no company is safe from their armies of technocrats. Their domain in cellphones alone is worldwide. Their chip companies are to be reckoned with. Their fledgling airline, automobile and defense industries are now scaling up to be a force in the years ahead. America has sold out for pennies only to find out that they now will face the Frankenstein they born. This is not something to laugh at because the ramp up has just begun.

In future years we will face them on land, sea and air. Without the technical know-how we will be in second place. The time to act is now, not tomorrow, not a decade or two from now. We bring you the Spratly Islands as an example of Chinese conquest where no adversary dear threaten them. When dealing with tyrants force is the only language they understand.

THE BEGINNING OF THE END – POLITICIANS GREASED THE WAY FOR CHINA’S GRAND THEFT OF AMERICAS CORPORATIONS AND WORLD HEGEMONY

Image result It was not to be this way but unintended consequences always follow major breakthroughs no matter what the advance planning. The opening of China happened after a visit to China by then President Nixon in 1972. This was to be a grand gesture of peace, a “glasnost” of sorts. However, it never occurred to America that this visit would bring a tidal wave of Chinese imported goods to America. Rather than we selling China our goods (that was a mission consideration), the Chinese turned the tables on what was to be the greatest theft of American trade secrets, engineering know-how and manufacturing bravado. The China syndrome is real, it has surreptitiously permeated through to the United States. It did not happen overnight, but as we now know, it is happening now and there is no turning back; America has been had.

At first China sold us cheap junk amassing more purchasing power in dollars that the world has never seen; at one point holding over three trillion United States treasury bills, notes and bonds. China’s footprint covers just about every corner of the world. Their power is unprecedented, their reach beyond question. Country after country dares not challenge them. China will dominate the world in the next two decades in science, engineering, in manufacturing, product design and world hegemony. We on the other hand will see our fortunes disappear like a mirage in the desert sand.

China is manufacturing passenger aircraft in a challenge to Boeing, they are bringing Chinese automobiles to Europe, soon the United States, their fledgling biotech industry is in the forefront of new discoveries, not to mention their prowess in AI, robotics and computer technologies. But what scares us most are the Chinese ex-patriots who hone their skills in the United States and return to the homeland.

Chinese people are driven by desire for a better life through education from the get go. Their upbringing sees to it that life revolves around respect, mutual consideration and an unbearable drive to succeed. Apathy has infected the great majority of Americans who are not driven to succeed, but are very happy with a 4k HD TV and a cell phone; education is no longer a prime goal, neither is to be the best you can be. To make the most of a one time opportunity of the life here on earth is a gift, but the majority of Americans don’t see it that way. When they realize that the beginning of the end is closing in on them it will be too late to turn back the clock.  A back of the envelope calculations reveals that 20% plus of the Ivy League schools are Asian American. However, accounting for international admissions the number is significantly higher.

Is there a away to reverse the China onslaught? The next two decades will provide the answers. From this vantage point the future looks bleak. An important point to consider, China thinks long term, we think short term. Chinese government is the engine that drives the private sector with a bias that thwarts foreign competition on the home front. However, they use our laws to open doors for their companies to make inroads in the United States. This is seldom possible in China because of their government run judiciary.

THE DAYS OF WINE AND ROSES ARE COMING TO AN END? WHAT DOES THE FUTURE HOLD?

The past century brought innumerable opportunities and hence riches to Americans; we were the envy of the world. WWII was over, American GIs came home – the economy roared ahead. The sixties were the best of times, the dollar ruled the world. Seventies saw great anxiety, the eighties inflation, the nineties dot.com bust. Growth could not be held back as it took hold time and time again. The new millennium saw house prices boom, then crash, bringing with it the rest of the economy and that of the world. Financial empires were lost and new ones rose from the dead.

Despite an avowed socialist winning the presidency in 2008 and 2016, the economy prospered as the monetary fountain showered the land with easy money. New technologies came to the fore, older paradigms became obsolete. Brawn became old hat, physical labor trumped by brain power. Artificial intelligence, virtual reality and the algorithm revolution gave birth to new enterprises.  Despite all the hoopla, predictions of the coming doom and economic malaise can be found in various media outlets.

(click)Factories turning to robots like there is no tomorrow; menial jobs being replaced at warp speed with bots. But with all that being said, the economy is buzzing along, employment at an all time high and unemployment skidding south faster than America’s retailers. Bitcoin has becomes the new tulip craze, propelled by Viagra chewing speculators.Image from Industriemuseum Chemnitz.

When will it end, can we see the future, what disaster lies ahead? Will China rule the world? Will a black swan make an appearance? Is America’s glass half full or half empty? It is important to note that the odds of us remaining the behemoth that we are for another century are slim indeed. Technology can migrate in milliseconds, communication sees to it. Fifty percent of start-ups are by foreign born; they come here for economic reasons knowing that their inventions are safe from tyrannical governments, but that is changing fast. Other countries are now transforming their political and legal systems. They understand what it takes to grow the new economy, especially those in the tech sector. Manufacturing at one time ruled, holding sway not only here, but in the developing countries as well, but these countries have not stood idly by. They have found out that economies don’t run on oil alone.

A tour of tomorrow’s factory may raise the question. Where have all the employees gone? Again change comes swiftly and without notice, so expect the unexpected before it is too late.

Warning signs abound!

THE ROCKET MAN – THE EXPLOSIVE RHETORIC MUST BE BACKED UP BY ACTION?

By now the world over knows who the Rocket Man is; provoking the United States with bravo, the boy-man has only one choice – put up or shut up.  Backed by Iran the Rocket Man has now set a trap for himself. Either he backs down or backs up his words with action. The latter is more apparent. To manifest his manhood Kim Jung Un has been gobbling down hundreds of E.D laced tablets a day. The thinking now is that a hydrogen bomb is waiting in the wings. Will it take flight toward Hawaii 50? We don’t know for sure. Does the United States have the capability of destroying it mid-flight? We will find out soon enough.

Hawaii reportedly prepares for nuclear attack amid heated North Korea rhetoric

North Korea’s foreign minister has said the Communist nation may test a hydrogen bomb in the Pacific Ocean after dictator Kim Jong Un vowed he would take the “highest-level” action against the United States, South Korean media reported Thursday. 

Kim Dong-yub, a former South Korean military official who is now an analyst at Seoul’s Institute for Far Eastern Studies, said Kim’s statement indicated that North Korea would respond to Trump with its most aggressive missile test yet. That might include firing a Hwasong-14 intercontinental ballistic missile over Japan to a range of around 4,349 miles to display a capability to reach Hawaii or Alaska.

A word to North Korea, DON’T MESS WITH TRUMP

China is the focus, will they continue to play Chinese checkers and continue their usual rhetoric by playing us us as patsies?

WE ARE ON THE VERGE OF NUCLEAR WAR

Russia, Iran, Turkey, China and North Korea (egging us on)  are all front and center. How did we get here? Politicians succumbing to diplomacy. Ask Harry Truman about diplomacy and he will tell you that the only diplomacy that counts is Little Boythe code name for the atomic bomb dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima on 6 August 1945 during World War II.

They say it can’t be done, but it must be done. We are on the Eve of Destruction. The world of trouble makers only know one thing, death. For world peace to survive all adversaries must be neutralized by the most powerful weapon known to man. It will come sooner rather than later. Within the next five years one of the above countries will be targeted. It may not be by the United States, others, such as Israel, have a nuclear arsenal. Don’t discount any country or people, the reality of a dirty bomb emanating from the Middle East is a probability. No matter where it comes from it will come.

"Where Revolution is the Solution" Taking back the Empire