A neutral world would be nice like something you would hear about at the Nimbin Mardi Grass days in the 90's.
China on our doorstep
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A neutral world would be nice like something you would hear about at the Nimbin Mardi Grass days in the 90's.
Dona Ferentes
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The last Taiwan Strait crisis in 1996 (Clinton):
Following Beijing’s launching of missiles across the strait that year, Washington sent a battle fleet, including two aircraft carriers, to the area. US Defence Secretary William Perry declared that
Following Beijing’s launching of missiles across the strait that year, Washington sent a battle fleet, including two aircraft carriers, to the area. US Defence Secretary William Perry declared that
Value Collector
Have courage, and be kind.
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Back then the USA was like that one kid on the under 14’s footy team that had hit puberty and was stronger than everyone else so he could afford to be a bit of a bully.
Now though he is on the under 17’s team, and just realised that kid he used to push around last season has hit puberty and the gym, and maybe acting like a bully might get him a blood nose.
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On the same theme:
Analysis: Taiwan tensions reveal challenges for U.S. navy as Chinese threat grows
The long route of Nancy Pelosi's Tuesday flight over Borneo to Taipei and a U.S. aircraft carrier's complex passage through the South China Sea highlight the difficulties U.S. forces now face against a Chinese military keen to flex its muscles over Taiwan.
China's military modernisation in recent decades mean some security analysts say it would be unthinkable for U.S. aircraft carriers to challenge Chinese forces in the seas around Taiwan in the way they did a quarter of a century ago.
Back then, one carrier sailed through the Taiwan Strait as another manouvered close by to end days of Chinese missile launches and military drills as Beijing protested Taiwan's first direct presidential election.
More than half of the U.S. Navy's 111 currently deployed battle force ships are now within the Japanese-based Seventh Fleet's sphere of responsibility that straddles the western Pacific and Indian oceans, according to the tracking by the independent U.S. Naval Institute.
Deploying ships en masse to the Chinese coast is another matter, given China's inventory of advanced cruise and ballistic missiles and its expansive surface fleet, regional security analysts say.
Four powerful vessels - the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan, the amphibious assault ship USS Tripoli and the guided missile cruiser USS Antietam are east of Taiwan, Reuters has confirmed. Another assault ship - which also carries F-35 strike fighter aircraft - is at port nearby in Japan.
Some security analysts say it was highly likely U.S. attack submarines were also close to such a formation.
The passage of the Reagan strike group was particularly closely watched by regional security analysts in the days before Pelosi's mission.
The Reagan later headed through the tight sealanes of the Philippines' archipelago before reaching waters west of Taiwan, according to an official U.S. naval Facebook page.
Singapore-based security scholar Collin Koh said the passage through the Philippines' San Bernadino strait by an aircraft carrier was unusual, instead of sailing north between the Philippines and south China coast.
"I think it shows some carefully calibrated deployments, designed to not unnecessarily provoke China even while ensuring they're moving to where they need to be."
Has anyone figured out what Pelosi was there for and what she achieved. Did she visit any chip manufacturers to get some inside info??
Has anyone seen the transcript of Biden's phone call with Xi??
The media used to lobe publishing presidential transcripts with foreign leaders...what's changed?
Has anyone seen the transcript of Biden's phone call with Xi??
The media used to lobe publishing presidential transcripts with foreign leaders...what's changed?
JohnDe
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I have a theory, but My views are not going to change anything.
Logic lost on Xi as world walks Taiwan tightrope
The causes and courses of serious conflict are rarely rationally driven. The tensions over Taiwan are no different.
Yes, Beijing may complain that Foreign Minister Penny Wong has been “finger-pointing” by firing off calls for restraint. But when you’re firing off ballistic missiles yourself, the logic gets lost somehow.
And by now, the debate over US Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s true motives for visiting Taiwan is already pointless except to historians. Hyped-up patriotic Chinese netizens may brand her a version of the Wicked Witch of the West, supportive Taiwanese an incarnation of Buddhist goddess Guan Yin.
But it matters little. She has flown away. The determination of Beijing to seize Taiwan, and of Taiwan’s citizens to live as they choose, has not changed.
For a few brief years, the prospect was held open – albeit with only very modest chance of success – that those two goals could be aligned, or at least be entertained in parallel, if the People’s Republic of China were to somehow persuade most Taiwanese people that while becoming part of the PRC they could retain some of their sovereign institutions under a “one country, two systems” arrangement as intended for Hong Kong.
Foreign Minister Penny Wong looks towards her Chinese counterpart Wang Yi at the East Asia Summit in Phnom Penh on Friday. Picture: DFAT / Michael Godfrey
The subjugation of Hong Kong, chiefly via the introduction of the National Security Law in mid-2020, and the eager rediscovery of the old colonial sedition offence ended any thoughts of such an arrangement for Taiwan – either in Taiwan or in Beijing.
It remains important that people learn the story of Taiwan – and that may be one positive outcome of the current troubling confrontation, including Chinese live-fire exercises around, and military flights crisscrossing, Taiwan’s territory.
Taiwan has never been a part of the PRC, which was established in 1949. Before that, the Chinese Communist Party during the 1940s supported Taiwan’s separate liberation. The island was occupied by Japan from 1895, and then from 1945 by the Nationalist government whose army finally fled there in 1949 after defeat by the communists.
Taiwan expert Gerrit van der Wees has cited a Mao Zedong interview with Edgar Snow in 1937 in which Mao promises to help the Koreans in their struggle for independence, adding “the same thing applies for Taiwan”.
But such rational reviews of history are readily sidestepped by Mao’s 21st century successor, Xi Jinping, who views “historical nihilism” – anything that defies the party’s agreed contemporary position – as almost akin to treason.
Most people alive in China today have ever and only heard, from childhood, that the “reunification” of the country as its boundaries are detailed by the party – incorporating especially Taiwan but not Mongolia, which was more patently a part of the previous empire that ruled China – is now a sacred task.
China has constantly changed, but tends to claim constancy, especially under the PRC.
Meanwhile, nothing significant has actually changed in Taiwan, in the lead-up to the current confrontation. The progressive but also pragmatic, and economically successful, government under President Tsai Ing-wen has stuck by the status quo even as the PRC strips it of its diplomatic partners, leaving Beijing as the unchallenged ruler of “One China”, over which Taipei covets no say.
Leaving aside the warring histories, three elements of the imbroglio do require urgent rational consideration, however.
One is obviously the military threat, and options. The invasion of Ukraine by China’s “no limits” comrade, Russia, highlights areas where Taiwan must raise its game – including raising military service from the now-residual four months to a year, acquiring vastly more drones, mines and flexibly sited missiles, and upgrading reservists’ training.
It’s too early to conclude that Russia’s failure to win swiftly might deter Beijing from attacking Taiwan. Beijing might instead be considering how the lessons offered by its own rapid take-down of democratic politicians, media and students in Hong Kong may provide a template for controlling Taiwan and occupying all discourse channels, if it can seize a strategic foothold.
Taiwan underlining its determination to maximise every effort for its own defence is vital.
Historian Niall Ferguson believes that as Korea was the hot war that triggered the first Cold War, Ukraine has done likewise for the second Cold War. If he’s right, that’s not good, but it’s better than helping trigger an incomparably worse new global hot war, which conflict across the Taiwan Strait would generate.
A second issue is the threat of gigantic disruption to the global economy, which would take a huge hit if Beijing did decide to attack – whether by blockade or by direct assault, and maybe brought forward by the awareness of China’s having already peaked economically and in global influence.
For Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company alone supplies more than half the world’s chip market, vital for so many products we all use daily. This should act as a huge deterrent, but Xi may surprisingly soon, however wrongly, start to believe China can become self-sufficient in tech as he extends central economic controls.
A third important consideration is the need for Australia and other concerned countries to develop Taiwan strategies promoting broadbased relationships including trade arrangements, research and cultural links that will prove more meaningful than mere rhetoric.
For China, two crucial constraints remain in place.
In the short term, don’t add to the many disruptions ahead of the important party congress in November. Longer-term, the hardheads are well aware that while hero-status awaits the victor over Taiwan, failure to succeed swiftly in a military dice-throw would place the Communist Party in existential jeopardy like no other event.
Rowan Callick is an industry fellow at Griffith University’s Asia Institute.
ROWAN CALLICK
CONTRIBUTOR
Stockbailx
"Profit Compoundd" Rules
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I'm not sure if I've heard right but I read on the grape vine, watching ABC this morning, that Taiwan has now started it's own military exercises as a show of force, I guess. Good luck Taiwan...But what troubles me is that if Taiwan and China start butting heads, there's bound to be conflict. Interesting to see how this all plays out...I'll be sitting in my bunker watching closely...
China certainly being a bit of a trouble maker. Should anything exculate into a war, I would hate to see Taiwan left out to dry, like what had happened to the Ukrainians...
China certainly being a bit of a trouble maker. Should anything exculate into a war, I would hate to see Taiwan left out to dry, like what had happened to the Ukrainians...
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Do not worry, we will boycott trade with china and we the glorious democratic west will win within months...like with Ukraine.
I hope many are not too star stroked to realise that Taiwan is exactly the same play for the US.Push **** to hell , then gain the benefits
2021 US losing hegemony, huge USD crisis and economy, china moving to #1
2025:
China back to main foe and second on world rank, US back number one,EU dead, SE Asia and minors Korea, Japan economically annihilated..oz too
Full bipolar world, US economic crisis over with war effort and new Marshall plan.population brainwashed with new MC Cartyism... The frog in a rééducation camp for daring questionning EV, CC and CO2 or refusing to get his booster number 8 or objecting killing all his methane emitting cattle
Build your shelter..
China has warned it will take “counter-measures” if America doesn’t “immediately revoke” a deal to sell $US1.1 Billion ($A1.6 Billion) worth of arms to Taiwan, after US President Joe Biden approved the package.
JohnDe
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bux2000
"Don't rely on your memory.....just write a bl**dy
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Seems theory and reality still have a way to go prior to meeting. It would also appear dangerous when a Government Department takes over control of the supply of a product........... Nothing to see here though.
Seal of disapproval: New expressway opening 'uncomfortably close' to Xmas
Documents reveal almost 13,000 tonnes of asphalt is faulty on Peka Peka to Ōtaki motorway.
bux
JohnDe
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Never underestimate nature & change.
Xi Jinping doubtless expected to celebrate the New Year by touting the superiority of his authoritarian economic and governance model. Instead, he is trying to manage a healthcare crisis, a weakening economy, and political protests. These vulnerabilities – each attributable to the Chinese Communist Party under Mr Xi’s leadership – allow the US to combat the party’s mercantilist policies and debunk its narrative that China’s rise to global dominance is inevitable.
In Shanghai, a crowd chanted calls for Xi Jinping to step down, a rare act of political defiance that reflected public frustration with his ‘zero Covid’ demands. Picture: Twitter
Mr Xi’s climb-down from his signature zero-Covid policy, and the broad and poorly controlled spread of the virus, has exposed the weaknesses of China’s social safety net. The public demonstrations since November are signs of underlying discontent. The participation of the well-off and normally passive urban populations affirms that Mr Xi can’t expect to maintain political control if he continues to impose such authoritarian restrictions.
Mr Xi’s climb-down from his signature zero-Covid policy, and the broad and poorly controlled spread of the virus, has exposed the weaknesses of China’s social safety net. The public demonstrations since November are signs of underlying discontent. The participation of the well-off and normally passive urban populations affirms that Mr Xi can’t expect to maintain political control if he continues to impose such authoritarian restrictions.
As Simone Gao recently wrote in these pages, the end of zero Covid was in large part an admission of the government’s unsustainable financial situation. In early December, Beijing said local governments would be responsible for the cost of daily Covid testing. These already distressed institutions were put in charge of the healthcare emergency in addition to their responsibilities for education, unemployment insurance and retirement. They are also still expected to stimulate economic growth through building infrastructure and subsidising local industries.
A senior doctor at Shanghai's Ruijin Hospital has said 70 per cent of the megacity's population may have been infected with Covid-19, state media reported on January 3. Picture: Hector Retamal / AFP
Achieving those goals would be difficult in the best of times. But China’s local authorities have been operating with one hand tied behind their backs, thanks to Mr Xi’s economic policies. More than 40 per cent of local government revenue in recent years has come from land sales to real-estate and industrial developers. That led to one of the global economy’s largest bubbles, which Mr Xi attempted to deflate by forcing developers to deleverage their balance sheets and limiting any government bailout of private real-estate firms. The crisis has devastated the government’s balance sheet and contributed to the economy’s slowing. Unemployment crept up to 6.7 per cent in the 31 largest cities in November and is in the high teens for the young.
Few of China’s development needs can be met by the overmatched leadership and faltering finances of local governments. The urban-rural gap remains enormous in poverty, nutrition, education and economic opportunity. Healthcare coverage is weak and forces massive precautionary saving – typically more than one-third of disposable household income, compared with high single digits in the US. Water shortages and environmental damage can’t be rectified by overburdened local governments.
Local governments in China often aren’t able to directly raise enough money to cover the funding needs of infrastructure projects. Picture: Lin zejun/Sipa Asia/Zuma Press
As it usually does, Beijing is trying to reinvigorate growth through infrastructure development, permitting local governments to lend more to real-estate developers and increasing exports. The first two likely won’t achieve much. Such capital investment can’t sufficiently drive the economy, in large part because of the country’s ageing population and overbuilt housing and transportation networks. The government must turn to exports because consumer demand is repressed by the need to save for medical care and retirement. This explains why Mr Xi has been so eager to lower the temperature with Western importers.
The Biden administration has signalled its willingness to work with China to manage the current crisis, from facilitating solar-product imports to applauding Beijing’s promises at the COP27 climate conference. The White House is slow-walking sanctions on TikTok and establishing only limited controls on US investment in China.
A better approach would be to remain on the offensive against Mr Xi’s mercantilism and find ways to undermine the Communist Party’s narrative of competence and inevitable global dominance. This would include the Trump administration’s $US300 billion in tariffs on Chinese exports and limiting Chinese acquisition of Western technology. It would also limit US investors’ ability to finance research and production of sensitive technologies in China – as proposed by Sens. Bob Casey and John Cornyn – and delist Chinese companies on US stock exchanges if they don’t comply with Securities and Exchange Commission auditing requirements.
Beijing’s failures give the US and its partners an opening to persuade potential allies, especially in South and Southeast Asia, to dismiss what Mr Xi calls the gravitational attraction of the Chinese model. The US has been the leading investor in Southeast Asia in recent years and could further boost ties by reopening negotiations to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership.
The Biden team should also call out China’s human-rights abuses, exploitation of local resources, and the corrupting influence of the Belt and Road Initiative in Africa, South America and South Asia. Instead of lauding China for dodgy commitments on climate change, the US could talk about the environmental harm from China’s economic model. China’s CO2 emissions are well above those of all members of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development. It mines more coal than the US, the European Union and India combined. And it plans to build, or is already constructing, more new coal-fired electric plants than the rest of the world combined.
Mr Xi’s narrative of economic and political competence continues to be exposed as myth, allowing the US to work with allies to remind unaligned nations of the value of the Western model. It also should help convince our often recalcitrant allies, in the EU and elsewhere, not to relent on combating Chinese mercantilism.
Mr Duesterberg is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and author of Economic Cracks in the Great Wall of China.
The Wall Street Journal
JohnDe
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Starting to see some light.
Dona Ferentes
A little bit OC⚡DC
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More coercive claptrap ... I'd prefer the ambassador spoke in Mandarin; was the performance urbane? Not really. ,
UMike
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Chinese leaderish flips on a whim.
Craton
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Peter Zeihan's prognosis for China is insightful and thought provoking. Video is 4.34 mins and Australia gets a mention.
Garpal Gumnut
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China on our doorstep.
"It is too early to say".
Thanks for the vid @Craton . As for Mr. Zeihan's opinion, I put little store on this. The CCP Padre may have been demoted for any number of reasons and America in general is China-phobic atm. His comments on the demographic challenge are the only ones that hold water with me. Otherwise it is propaganda, not that I have anything against American propaganda.
My guess would be that China is primarily worried about the re-arming of Japan, who have a history of matching the Chinese militarily, the loss of Russia as a bulwark against Europe and finally Covid which they are the masters of mismanagement even outdoing the USA .
As for our defence against China atm. our alliances with the US, UK, Canada, India and other countries close and far should keep us secure.
My main worry is the US in relation to China. Should the US go "native" again by electing Trump, Biden or some similar muppet then our risks increase exponentially.
gg
"It is too early to say".
Thanks for the vid @Craton . As for Mr. Zeihan's opinion, I put little store on this. The CCP Padre may have been demoted for any number of reasons and America in general is China-phobic atm. His comments on the demographic challenge are the only ones that hold water with me. Otherwise it is propaganda, not that I have anything against American propaganda.
My guess would be that China is primarily worried about the re-arming of Japan, who have a history of matching the Chinese militarily, the loss of Russia as a bulwark against Europe and finally Covid which they are the masters of mismanagement even outdoing the USA .
As for our defence against China atm. our alliances with the US, UK, Canada, India and other countries close and far should keep us secure.
My main worry is the US in relation to China. Should the US go "native" again by electing Trump, Biden or some similar muppet then our risks increase exponentially.
gg
Craton
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Cheers @Garpal Gumnut
His many other vids are much more in-depth paticularly regarding demographics and how that plays out; especially for Germany, Japan, Russia and China, as they are too top heavy with an ageing population and no replacements coming through the rank and file. Gen Z is just not reproducing in the numbers required.
He covers a lot of ground, there are many pieces to the puzzle of globalisation. He paints in brush strokes that may be broad and based on the available statistics.
Some may say he's seen to be spruiking the US of A but, America is blessed with a huge labour pool to the south (Mexico), a resource rich neighbour to the north (Canada), a topography that is favourable and favours a large population, now thanks to shale oil is now a nett exporter etc all coupled with a govt. that isn't hell bent on using it's younger population as cannon fodder.
I agree his POV isn't the end all to be all but of lot of what he puts forward resonants.
From a DYOR investment perspective, I personally like knowing where he's parking his money and from one of his latest vids, he's strong into "energy" commodities like copper and the big four food giants like ADM.
Propaganda?
Yeah, maybe...
Peter, in his capacity as a geo-politics strategist, has advised the Australian govt. in the past so he does has creditibility. From that one short video, it is much condensed but IMHO, succint re. China.
His many other vids are much more in-depth paticularly regarding demographics and how that plays out; especially for Germany, Japan, Russia and China, as they are too top heavy with an ageing population and no replacements coming through the rank and file. Gen Z is just not reproducing in the numbers required.
He covers a lot of ground, there are many pieces to the puzzle of globalisation. He paints in brush strokes that may be broad and based on the available statistics.
Some may say he's seen to be spruiking the US of A but, America is blessed with a huge labour pool to the south (Mexico), a resource rich neighbour to the north (Canada), a topography that is favourable and favours a large population, now thanks to shale oil is now a nett exporter etc all coupled with a govt. that isn't hell bent on using it's younger population as cannon fodder.
I agree his POV isn't the end all to be all but of lot of what he puts forward resonants.
From a DYOR investment perspective, I personally like knowing where he's parking his money and from one of his latest vids, he's strong into "energy" commodities like copper and the big four food giants like ADM.
Propaganda?
Yeah, maybe...
Peter, in his capacity as a geo-politics strategist, has advised the Australian govt. in the past so he does has creditibility. From that one short video, it is much condensed but IMHO, succint re. China.
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I would expect that given the rampant COVID in China, there will be a lot more deaths this year, and with an already falling birth rate, China may go two years in a row with a declining population.
Mind you, they are nowhere near the trouble that the likes of Japan and the Europrean countries find themselves in.
The following table of average age per country highlights the ones that will have growing demographic problems in the future.
Australia sits below the US and China, but like the US, there are a lot of young immigrants clamouring to get here.
There are greater numbers trying to get out of China compared to those hoping to get in.
Mick
Mind you, they are nowhere near the trouble that the likes of Japan and the Europrean countries find themselves in.
The following table of average age per country highlights the ones that will have growing demographic problems in the future.
Australia sits below the US and China, but like the US, there are a lot of young immigrants clamouring to get here.
There are greater numbers trying to get out of China compared to those hoping to get in.
Mick
