Neutering & Defanging Chinese Threat (15-11-2017)

sudarshan · Post by **sudarshan** » 29 Oct 2020 08:33

...Self-deleted...

darshan · Post by **darshan** » 31 Oct 2020 22:08

Not sure if I want to be in this building after the move. Nonetheless good showcasing of skills. No shame in utilizing engineers at disposal.

A 5-story building in Shanghai 'walks' to a new location
https://www.cnn.com/style/article/shang ... index.html

Kati · Post by **Kati** » 31 Oct 2020 22:18

Eight Individuals Charged With Conspiring to Act as Illegal Agents of the People’s Republic of China

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/eight-in ... blic-china

Cyrano · Post by **Cyrano** » 01 Nov 2020 02:58

Interesting read from CNN: "How China's Xi Jinping blew a golden opportunity with US President Donald Trump"

Hong Kong (CNN)At the first meeting between Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping, held over chocolate cake and sorbet at the US President's vast Mar-a-Lago private club in Florida, the two leaders seemed on the brink of establishing an unlikely and potentially special relationship.

Trump, less than three months into his first term, had spent his election campaign denouncing the Chinese government for undermining the United States, through a wide trade imbalance and cheap labor. "We can't continue to allow China to rape our country," Trump said in May 2016. But when Trump was standing alongside Xi at Mar-a-Lago the following April, his tone changed dramatically. The two leaders exchanged compliments during a news conference, with Trump describing their relationship as "outstanding." Pictures from the meeting showed the two men sitting side-by-side, smiling broadly, on a golden couch. "It was a great honor to have President Xi Jinping and Madame Peng Liyuan of China as our guests ... Tremendous goodwill and friendship was formed," Trump tweeted shortly after the visit.

Three years later, and that "outstanding" relationship is a distant memory. Trump no longer talks about his friendship with Xi as relations between the two countries continue to plummet, amid stark divisions over trade, technology, human rights and accusations of Chinese expansionism. As Trump battles for reelection in November's presidential election, experts now say that Xi may have missed a golden opportunity to establish a more beneficial relationship with the US President. In Trump, China found an American leader who seemed focused on transactional politics and trade deals, rather than human rights and Chinese foreign policy, both topics which the ruling Communist Party have been traditionally eager to avoid. It wasn't just their relationship with the US either. More broadly, Trump's isolationist "America First" foreign policy offered Xi a clear opening to assert China's global leadership credentials across a range of key policy areas -- from the climate crisis to free trade. But rather than building up goodwill, China chose to intimidate its global partners and indulge in fierce nationalist rhetoric. And instead of becoming a global power to rival the US, China saw its reputation plunge around the world.

How Trump could have helped Xi
Less than a week before Trump took office in January 2017, Xi took the stage in Davos, Switzerland, at what appeared to be the dawn of a golden era for China and Beijing's international influence. In a speech to the global liberal elite at the World Economic Forum, held in the Swiss Alps, Xi called for countries to shun protectionism in a clear swipe at Trump's "America First" rhetoric. His speech was well received among economic leaders. In his introduction of Xi at Davos, World Economic Forum founder Klaus Schwab said "the world is looking to China."

Daniel Russel, who was US assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs under President Barack Obama, said that it was Trump's anti-globalist rhetoric as much as Xi's words that made China look like a potential alternative global leader to the US.
"At the same time that Xi was hypocritically claiming to be the grand defender of the global system, Trump was attacking it viciously and putting forward a very nationalist jingoistic message. So that magnified the contrasts and widened the gap," said Russel, who is now vice president of international security and diplomacy at the Asia Society Policy Institute. Across a wide range of areas, Trump's policies opened an opportunity for China to take a more leading role in global affairs. Leaving the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) in January 2017 opened the door for China to push its own regional trade deal. After Trump ditched the Paris cimate change accords five months later, Xi told a gathering of Communist Party leaders China would be a "torch bearer" on the issue. When Trump began to distance the US from its allies, calling on long-time partners to pay their "fair share" of defense spending, Beijing took the opportunity to move closer to regional powers.

China and Japan planned an exchange of state visits for the first time in a decade, thawing a deep diplomatic freeze which had been in place since a territorial dispute over islands in the East China Sea in 2012. South Korean leader Moon Jae-in announced in June 2017 that the deployment of a controversial US-made missile defense system, heavily opposed by China, would be deferred. Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, leader of one of the US's closest allies in Asia, said that he "loved" Xi Jinping. "I think at the start of the Trump administration, China was being seen by the rest of the world as a country which potentially could provide a good steadying role in steering the world though the next turbulent phase in the coming few years," said Steve Tsang, director of the SOAS China Institute think tank in London. For Xi, it was a remarkable 12 months. The Chinese government saw its stock rise internationally, built a close relationship with the new US President and had been handed strategic victories on trade, foreign policy and climate change. In short, "the Trump administration was a godsend for the Communist Party of China," said Tsang.

Why it went wrong
Yet in October 2020, nearly four years after Trump was inaugurated, China's global reputation is at its lowest point in years. Poll numbers released by Pew Research on October 6 found that the Chinese government was viewed negatively in all 14 major countries surveyed, including Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, Japan and the US. In 2002, 65% of US citizens surveyed viewed China favorably -- in 2020 that number is just 22%. A massive 74% view China unfavorably. The coronavirus pandemic, first reported in the Chinese city of Wuhan in December 2019, has severely damaged Beijing's reputation as countries struggle to deal with rising caseloads. Government leaders and officials around the world, including Trump, have accused Beijing of mishandling the outbreak by playing down the severity of the virus in the early stage, and allowing it to spread overseas.

But even before the outbreak, China was finding its reputation was beginning to dim, especially among Western nations.
For years, Australia has been at the forefront of the West's uneasy embrace of China -- a close US ally whose largest trading partner is Beijing. With an unpopular and isolationalist American leader, China had never had a better chance to woo Australia. But when the Australian government introduced legislation in 2018 against foreign interference, Beijing was furious, seeing the legislation as targeted at them. Leaders in Canberra were cut off from Beijing, visas were frozen, valuable exports to China suddenly faced increased customs checks and an Australian writer was charged with spying. In 2017, more than 60% of Australians had a positive view of China, according to Pew. By 2020, it was just 15%. The treatment of Australia wasn't unique, however. Relations between Canada and the US were strained under Trump, who clashed with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau over immigration and trade. But instead of moving closer to Trudeau, Beijing plunged relations with Ottawa into a deep freeze. Following the arrest of a top executive and daughter of the founder of the Chinese tech giant Huawei in Canada at the request of the United States in late 2018, two Canadians were detained in China. The two men, entrepreneur Michael Spavor and former diplomat Michael Kovrig, were later charged with spying and handling state secrets. In 2019, China moved to block Canadian canola seed and meat exports, leading to uncertainty among other Canadian businesses operating in China.

On the 50th anniversary of Canada beginning diplomatic ties with China on October 14, Trudeau delivered a stern rebuke of Beijing's international diplomacy and human rights record. "We will remain absolutely committed to working with our allies to ensure that China's approach of coercive diplomacy ... is not viewed as a successful tactic by them," he said.

In neighboring India, the rise of populist Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014 had presented an opportunity for Xi and his government to woo New Delhi, a rising regional power that had long been courted by Washington. In 2018, it seemed like Xi was making headway. The two sides resolved a heated border dispute peacefully and the Chinese leader met with Modi in Wuhan for a two-day informal summit, where the two strongman leaders were pictured sipping tea and strolling through ornate gardens. But two years later, India's relationship with China has nosedived to its lowest point in years. A border dispute between the two nuclear-armed countries in June, where more than 20 Indian soldiers were killed, has pushed New Delhi closer both militarily and diplomatically to Beijing's rivals, the US and Japan. New Delhi has also banned a raft of popular Chinese-owned apps, including video-sharing giant TikTok, in a major blow to China's tech sector.

Yinan He, associate professor at Lehigh University's Department of International Relations, said that, over the past three years, when Beijing wasn't actively starting diplomatic fights with other countries it often talked down to or intimidated them. "The behavior of China under Xi Jinping really enraged many other countries," she said. Beijing has also faced growing criticism within the international community over several domestic controversies, including its ongoing crackdown on human rights and dissent, the erosion of civil rights in Hong Kong, and military expansionism in the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait. In particular, the treatment of Uyghur Muslims in the western Xinjiang region has become a major concern for countries around the world. On October 6, Germany presented a statement to the United Nations on behalf of 39 countries, mostly from Europe and North America, publicly condemning China's actions in Xinjiang, where up to 2 million people, mostly Turkic minorities, are believed to have been placed in detention centers. But in the face of international criticism, the ruling Chinese Communist Party has not relented. In fact, Beijing has moved to embrace a new breed of aggressive diplomacy to combat what it has denounced as unfair and biased attacks on China. Dubbed "wolf warrior diplomacy" after a series of aggressively patriotic Chinese films in which the hero bests US special agents, this emboldened form of diplomacy encourages officials to forcibly denounce any perceived slight to Beijing and the Communist Party. In July 2019, Zhao Lijian, then a counselor at the Chinese Embassy in Pakistan, began to hit back against the US government on social media over allegations of human rights abuses in China. Zhao accused the US of criticizing China while ignoring its own domestic problems with racism, income inequality and gun violence. Zhao was later promoted, becoming one of three rotating spokespeople for the Chinese Foreign Ministry.

Though the aggressive behavior has estranged diplomatic partners, Jessica Chen Weiss, associate professor of government at Cornell University, said the real target remains domestic. According to Weiss, the authoritarian nature of China's government means that it can't brook any concession internationally that might seem like weakness at home. To the Communist Party, weakness might spell the end of its time in power. "When push comes to the shove the Chinese government has to first and foremost focus on regime security," said Weiss. Experts say that in recent months there has been discussion within the Chinese government over whether these "wolf warrior" tactics have hurt their country more than they've helped. But for now, with international concerns over its handling of the coronavirus growing louder, any chance of a short-term revival for Beijing's global reputation seems unlikely. Weiss said that, in fact, China's system of government may not actually have ever been up to the challenge of becoming the world's leading superpower, at least not in the model of the US.

The Chinese government places as much importance on being feared as being loved, Weiss said, and that severely limits its ability to wield soft power and form close diplomatic relationships. According to Weiss, China is unlikely to take the US' place, no matter how much Trump pulled back on the world stage. "(Beijing wants to ensure) that nobody thinks China can be pushed around, or taken advantage of," she said. "That emphasis on deterrence and intimidating dissent has conveyed Chinese resolve but it undercuts Beijing's efforts to showcase its international image as a benign global leader."

Broken bond
This year, Trump has been eager to inflame popular anger against China for its handling of Covid-19 -- at least in part to distract from his administration's own failure to contain the virus domestically. He regularly describes the disease as the "China virus" and has placed a large proportion of the blame for the escalating US epidemic at Beijing's door. Yet despite his regular attacks on China, Trump never attacks Xi personally. On August 11, seemingly more in sorrow than anger, Trump said he used to like Xi, but he didn't "feel the same way now." "I had a very, very good relationship, and I haven't spoken to him in a long time," he told Fox Sports Radio.

Xi and Trump are now a long way from where they started three and a half years ago, and in that time Beijing's reputation around the world has suffered. "Anti-China sentiment is at its highest levels in decades ... and Beijing is aware of that," Weiss said. As early as August 2018, Chinese officials in private were voicing their concerns that Xi was mishandling the US relationship and risking a disastrous plunge in bilateral relations. Those voices are only likely to grow louder ahead of the 2022 National People's Congress in China, where Xi would normally be expected to hand over power to a chosen successor. "I suspect that Xi might be facing some internal challenges from people within the Communist Party who are not happy about his heavy-handed style," said He, the Lehigh University China expert.

But whether or not China has taken advantage of the Trump administration's shrunken presence on the world stage, experts said that in the long run, the fundamentals favor Beijing and Xi. Russel said that the US and other leading nations were heavily reliant on China and the massive wealth generated by its economy, making any moves towards a broader decoupling and a return to a Cold War level of separation unlikely. "If you look at it from China's point of view ... are you going to call into question the financial goose that lays the golden egg?" he said.

pankajs · Post by **pankajs** » 02 Nov 2020 23:02

https://twitter.com/shehzadhqazi/status ... 1377946624

9/x: We created @ChinaBeigeBook as a check on behind-the-curtain machinations common in NBS data. Our Q3 stats, gathered in real-time say GDP growth is nowhere near official figures: all sectors are contracting YoY, interior provinces are in recession, & consumption is lagging.

pankajs · Post by **pankajs** » 03 Nov 2020 15:14

Very strange happenings of the China/Vietnam border

https://twitter.com/bill_hayton/status/ ... 0282235904

"Reports have also emerged that China is constructing a wall along its border with Vietnam in a bid to stem the outward flow of smuggled migrant workers."

darshan · Post by **darshan** » 03 Nov 2020 21:44

Samsung's Exynos chipsets could power budget Xiaomi and OPPO phones next year
https://www.androidcentral.com/samsungs ... -next-year
...
As per the Business Korea report, Samsung's System LSI business division is in talks to supply chips to Xiaomi and OPPO for some budget phones in the first half of 2021. Currently, the only Chinese smartphone maker that sources mobile chipsets from Samsung is Vivo. The Exynos 980, which is Samsung's first Exynos chip with an integrated 5G modem, powers Vivo's X30 and S6 5G phones.

The report adds that Xiaomi and OPPO have evinced interest in buying Exynos chips from Samsung as they plan to expand production next year to benefit from the U.S. sanctions on Huawei. Samsung's upcoming Exynos 1080 is expected to use the latest Cortex-A78 CPU cores from ARM, which are claimed to offer up to 20% higher performance than the previous generation. It also uses ARM's latest Mali-G78 GPU.
...

g.sarkar · Post by **g.sarkar** » 04 Nov 2020 00:06

https://www.rediff.com/news/report/indi ... 201103.htm
Quad nations kickstart Malabar naval exercise in Bay of Bengal
Source: PTI, November 03, 2020
The navies of India, the US, Japan and Australia on Tuesday held a series of complex manoeuvres in the Bay of Bengal, kick-starting the four-day-long first phase of the Malabar naval exercise, seen as a prelude to future military cooperation among the member nations of the Quad or Quadrilateral Coalition.
The mega exercise is taking place at a time India and China are locked in a nearly six-month-long bitter border standoff in eastern Ladakh.
Japan, Australia and the US -- the three other participants of the exercise -- too are having fractious ties with China in the last few months over a range of contentious issues. "Several complex military drills were conducted on the first day of the exercise in the Bay of Bengal," a military official said.
.....
Gautam

chanakyaa · Post by **chanakyaa** » 04 Nov 2020 00:09

Not much India related news, but some international angle. Listing of IPO of Chinese companies has been a big deal in recent years, with countries wooing Chinese to list them on their countries. Continued examples of China using this and its market as a weapon. To be fair, they did not invent this weapon. Just are getting good at using it. In a strange move (within the past 12 hours) world's largest IPO, Ant Group (30% owned by Alibaba), has been suspended hours before it were to list in Shanghai and Hong Kong. The reasons were tied to some disclosure failures...which is pretty silly to raise at the last moment.

U.S. should try to delay IPO of China's Ant Group, Senator Rubio says (Oct 9)
One theory is that is that the decision to not list in NY could be the main pain point.

And, in a separate news.
China to Halt Key Australian Imports in Sweeping Retaliation

China has ordered traders to stop purchasing at least seven categories of Australian commodities, ratcheting up tensions with a key trading partner in its most sweeping retaliation yet....

pankajs · Post by **pankajs** » 04 Nov 2020 16:08

https://twitter.com/NileshShah68/status ... 9984227328

-Will take ~3- 6 months to remove container shortages
- Exports to China picking up rapidly with food and food products contributing ~ 60 %. Steel / pipes accounting for the balance.
- Business is booming with all time high record volumes

1. Food shortage in China.
2. << Looks like >> China importing food from India instead from US/Australia
3. << Looks like >> China importing Steel from India instead of Iron ore from Australia.

SSridhar · Post by **SSridhar** » 04 Nov 2020 21:07

Never had much respect for the Chinese diplomatic skills. Look at how they got cornered below.

China says it 'noted' Pak move to accord 'provisional provincial status' to Gilgit-Baltistan in PoK - Economic Times

China on Wednesday said it has "noted" the recent move by Pakistan to accord 'provisional provincial status' to Gilgit-Baltistan in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK).

On Sunday, Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan said that his government has decided to accord a "provisional provincial status to the Gilgit-Baltistan region of PoK.

Reacting to Khan's remarks, Spokesperson in the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) Anurag Srivastava said in New Delhi that India "firmly rejects" the attempt by Pakistan to bring material changes to a part of Indian territory which is under Islamabad's "illegal and forcible occupation" and asked the neighbouring country to immediately vacate such areas.

Asked for his reaction to Pakistan's decision on Gilgit-Baltistan and India's reaction to it at a media briefing here, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said, "we have noted relevant reports".

"China's position on the Kashmir issue is consistent and clear. It is an issue left over from history between India and Pakistan. It should be resolved peacefully and properly according to the UN charter, relevant security council resolutions and bilateral agreements," he said.

To a follow-up question referring to China's protest to India's decision to abrogate Article 370 last year and whether Beijing's silence on Pakistan's move on Gilgit-Baltistan ran counter to China's claim on adopting a neutral approach on Kashmir issue, Wang said it was not a valid statement.

"I don't think that's a valid statement. As I said just now, China's position on the Kashmir issue is consistent and clear," he said.

He also reiterated that interested countries can join USD 60 billion China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).

Asked to name the countries who had shown interest to join the project, Wang said, "as we have repeatedly said that the CPEC and other projects under the BRI are open and we welcome interested countries to join such cooperation to jointly contribute to regional and global stability and prosperity."

India has protested to China over the CPEC project as it is being laid through PoK.

Karan M · Post by **Karan M** » 04 Nov 2020 21:12

chanakyaa wrote:Not much India related news, but some international angle. Listing of IPO of Chinese companies has been a big deal in recent years, with countries wooing Chinese to list them on their countries. Continued examples of China using this and its market as a weapon. To be fair, they did not invent this weapon. Just are getting good at using it. In a strange move (within the past 12 hours) world's largest IPO, Ant Group (30% owned by Alibaba), has been suspended hours before it were to list in Shanghai and Hong Kong. The reasons were tied to some disclosure failures...which is pretty silly to raise at the last moment.

U.S. should try to delay IPO of China's Ant Group, Senator Rubio says (Oct 9)
One theory is that is that the decision to not list in NY could be the main pain point.

And, in a separate news.
China to Halt Key Australian Imports in Sweeping Retaliation
China has ordered traders to stop purchasing at least seven categories of Australian commodities, ratcheting up tensions with a key trading partner in its most sweeping retaliation yet....

Jack Ma pissed off the PRC state regulators by calling them out in public. This was revenge. He just got showed that he is in the PRC.

darshan · Post by **darshan** » 04 Nov 2020 23:50

National Defence College opens doors for 5 countries; Nepal, Myanmar and Bangladesh get more seats
https://www.wionews.com/india-news/nati ... ats-340582
India's prestigious National Defense College has opened its door for 5 news countries--Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Philippines, Indonesia and Maldives and will be giving addition seats to 3 countries in the neighbourhood--Nepal, Myanmar, Bangladesh. The famed institute, from which India's Crème de la crème has passed has only 100 seats currently--75 for Indian nationals, 25 to foreign nationals.
....

chanakyaa · Post by **chanakyaa** » 05 Nov 2020 01:26

@Karan M, you are right about Jack Ma not showing much love to the regulators, but calling off one of the biggest IPO (~$300 billion valuation) at the last moment seems possible, but very extreme considering Ant's decision to list only in mainland and HK. This would have been a case study of China domestically raising that amount of capital. Huge deal. My guess is that potential re-listing in NYC is back on the table. And, if Hilial-e-Bakistan is in charge, that would be nice way to reward the bank$ters. Will see. For now, it has been pushed back by at least 6 months.

SSridhar · Post by **SSridhar** » 07 Nov 2020 17:13

Next Ladakh? In India-China stand-off, a new front looms in Pakistan’s Gilgit-Baltistan - South China Morning Post

More than a month after Pakistan first unveiled plans to annex the Gilgit-Baltistan region – its only land link to China and located in disputed Kashmir
– and grant its residents full citizenship rights, an ominous silence hangs over the isolated mountainous region.

Instead of celebrations, almost all the members of the general population interviewed by This Week in Asia during a three-week tour of Gilgit, Nagar, Hunza and Astore districts last month were sceptical that Islamabad would deliver on its promises.

A few smiled indulgently when asked about it, responding with a polite “Inshallah” (God willing). Most were non-committal and responded with the secular equivalent, “we’ll see”. Others just scoffed at the idea that the constitutional status of Gilgit-Baltistan could be changed even to that of a “provisional” province, because of the implications for Pakistan’s long-running dispute with India over Kashmir. Both countries claim all of Kashmir and have fought two wars over it.

On Sunday, Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan said a decision had been made to move ahead with the plan, though he gave no time frame for implementation.

Veteran political activists foresaw Gilgit-Baltistan inexorably being sucked into a potential two-front conflict arising from the military stand-off
between China and India in Ladakh – an Indian-administered region separated from Pakistan-governed Gilgit-Baltistan only by the high altitude battlegrounds of the Siachen Glacier.

“China plans to wage a brutal winter war against India in Ladakh,” said Nawaz Khan Naji, founder of the Balwaristan National Front, a small Gilgit-Baltistan-based party that advocates independence for the region.

“When it starts, all manner of proxy warfare will break out in Gilgit-Baltistan,” he predicted, in an interview at a riverside restaurant in Gilgit.
He said “Gilgit-Baltistan is in the crosshairs of all the major powers because of CPEC”, referring to the US$60 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, launched in 2015 as a showcase programme for Beijing’s ambitious bid to connect Europe and Asia, known as the Belt and Road Initiative.

Under CPEC, over the last five years China has financed and built US$28 billion of power generation and physical infrastructure in Pakistan, along an overland route from the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region to the Chinese-operated port of Gwadar on Pakistan’s Arabian Sea coast.
China’s sole overland access to the strategic waters of the Middle East – the source of most of its oil imports – was established in 1978 with the completion of the Karakorum Highway through Gilgit-Baltistan.

None of those billions of CPEC dollars have been invested in Gilgit-Baltistan, despite its pivotal role as a gateway, and none of the officials and politicians This Week in Asia spoke to could provide a plausible explanation for this glaring omission.

In the absence of any official clarification, most laypeople, officials and politicians are convinced the absence of CPEC projects reflects an emergent game of thrones between global and regional powers that manifested recently in Ladakh.

“This is the second time Gilgit-Baltistan has been in the eye of a geopolitical storm,” Naji said. “The last time was when the Russian Empire and the British Raj clashed here in the 19th century. The borders of Gilgit-Baltistan shifted during the original Great Game, and it’s inevitable they’ll change again as a result of the new Great Game” he predicted.

India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi has repeatedly expressed ambitions of seizing control of parts of Gilgit-Baltistan, and his military chiefs have publicly declared that their forces are ready to launch an invasion.

Any foreign force intruding into Gilgit-Baltistan would walk into very hostile territory: for decades, the isolated, almost impassable high altitude valleys of the region have been a prime recruiting ground for Pakistan’s army.

Most residents of the region are poor subsistence farmers. When Gilgit-Baltistan’s long, harsh winter abates in May, they have six months to bring in a single harvest. Once the snow and ice return in October, these farmers travel to Pakistani cities to work as minimum-wage migrant labourers until spring arrives in May.

Their counterparts from Gilgit-Baltistan’s erstwhile aristocracy and other wealthy families have also traditionally pursued careers as army officers, helping to cement their place within Pakistan’s ruling elite.

Unsurprisingly, the residents of Gilgit-Baltistan – which plays host to 21 of the world’s 30 highest peaks – have proven to be crack mountain soldiers.

Practically every household in Gilgit-Baltistan includes at least one active soldier or reservist who has fought Indian forces on the Line of Control separating the Indian- and Pakistani-administered halves of greater Kashmir.

The Gilgit-Baltistan-based Northern Light Infantry (NLI) regiment shot to stardom in 1999 by seizing the strategic Indian-held Kargil Heights overlooking the main Indian supply route to the Siachen Glacier – an operation mirrored by China’s recent incursion into Indian-held territory in Ladakh. India forced Pakistan to pull out its forces by threatening an all-out war, a year after both countries had conducted their first series of nuclear weapons tests.

Dozens of Gilgit-Baltistan soldiers were slaughtered as they subsequently attempted to withdraw without the protection of covering fire from Pakistani forces.

Nonetheless, the Kargil War made national heroes of the fallen soldiers from Gilgit-Baltistan and awoke within Pakistan’s military-led establishment a realisation that the disputed region’s unflinching loyalty had to be reciprocated.

The point was further underscored by the decisive role that Gilgit-Baltistan soldiers played in the 2009 liberation of the Pakistani region of Swat – home of Nobel Peace laureate Malala Yousafzai – from the clutches of the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan.

Pakistan’s national flag now flies over the graves of Gilgit-Baltistan’s fallen soldiers at practically every burial site in the region.

The package of reforms unveiled by Pakistan in 2009, however, did little to empower the people of Gilgit-Baltistan or to repay their sacrifices.

The newly created, elected regional assembly was given very limited legislative scope. It is not allowed to raise revenues independently of Islamabad and remains completely dependent on federal grants.

The Gilgit-Baltistan government’s budget for the current financial year ending next June totals about US$415 million.

Although the region has tax-free status because of its disputed status, Pakistan’s government collects more than US$200 million a year in customs duties on overland trade with China, rather than allowing the Gilgit-Baltistan government to accrue the revenue.

Nor is the Gilgit-Baltistan Assembly empowered to hold the executive branch of the region’s government accountable for its actions.

All those powers rest with the Islamabad-appointed Gilgit-Baltistan Council, which is chaired by Pakistan’s prime minister. Among the council’s members, Pakistani officials outnumber Gilgit-Baltistan representatives.

Parallel to these convoluted reforms, Gilgit-Baltistan’s civil service has been inundated by federal officials deputed to the region since 2009.

All of them take up officer-rank posts that would otherwise have been filled by one of Gilgit-Baltistan’s disproportionately high number of unemployed university graduates.

Federal deputationists all benefit from generous allowances to compensate for their “hardship posting”. The pay packet of top bureaucrats can exceed US$24,000 a year, placing them in the top 10 per cent of earners in Pakistan, where per capita income was less than US$1,400 in 2019.

They each return to Pakistan after a three-year posting with a second pension fund worth several hundred thousand US dollars – all paid for from the federal government’s small annual budgetary grant to Gilgit-Baltistan.

Likewise, the higher judiciary in Gilgit-Baltistan created under the 2009 reforms is in no way accountable to the region’s elected representatives.

Here, too, federal judges outnumber their local colleagues, and they have also showed a proclivity for hiring staff from Pakistan rather from Gilgit-Baltistan.

With governance and justice still firmly in federal hands, Gilgit-Baltistan residents simply do not believe Pakistan’s establishment would suddenly surrender power over their region – even if it is officially granted the status of a provisional province.

Instead, most residents expect that the transformational change to Gilgit-Baltistan recently promised by Islamabad will ultimately prove to be largely cosmetic.

Most feel that the best outcome for them would be access to Pakistan’s judicial system inasmuch as it would enable them to petition the Supreme Court against the rampant abuse of power prevalent throughout the Gilgit-Baltistan state apparatus

Residents have good reason to be sceptical. Rather than benefiting the indigenous population through better governance, the 2009 reforms strengthened the Pakistani establishment’s system of patronage in Gilgit-Baltistan, making it more susceptible to corruption.

Since 2018, this has been evident in the real estate markets of isolated, sparsely populated Gilgit-Baltistan, home to just 1.5 million of Pakistan’s 210 million residents.

There has been an enormous influx of funds from Pakistan seeking refuge from the crackdown on corruption and tax evasion launched by Prime Minister Imran Khan, shortly after his election two years ago.

The hot money latched on to expectations of an economic boom fuelled by CPEC and the Pakistani tourists who have swamped Gilgit-Baltistan since 2016, when Pakistan’s military finally defeated Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan after a nine-year struggle.

The prices of commercial and residential property in Gilgit-Baltistan have quadrupled since 2018, rising to the equivalent of 50 per cent of real estate values in Islamabad. A decade ago, land prices in Gilgit were barely one tenth of those in Pakistan’s capital city.

The subsequent movement of capital between Pakistan and Gilgit-Baltistan has enriched both the political and business elite.

“Whenever I go to get a property transaction approved, I get to see the latest registrations in the land registry. In recent times, it’s been like reading a who’s who of powerful Pakistanis,” said Rasheed Ahmad, a Gilgit-based property agent and the proprietor of local Urdu language newspaper Himalaya Today.

The property bubble has benefited many small landowners in areas popular with the tourists who flock to the region between June and September.

In turn, this has generated massive investment in hotels, restaurants and retail shops, providing sorely needed business and employment opportunities for Gilgit-Baltistan’s widely literate population.

The flip side of the real estate boom is that it exploits a political loophole under which, in the 1950s, Gilgit-Baltistan residents were deprived of their exclusive right to land ownership in the region.

In stark contrast, land ownership in Pakistan-administered Azad Kashmir is still reserved for the indigenous population. In Gilgit-Baltistan, too, there is growing concern that the massive influx of hot money from the Pakistani hinterland could come at the cost of residents’ property rights and the cohesion of tightly knit rural communities.

A prime example of such exploitation is the picturesque Naltar Valley, which houses a ski training facility for the Pakistan Air Force.
During the top-level consultations which culminated in the 2009 reforms for Gilgit-Baltistan, the military regime led by General Pervez Musharraf decided to transform the valley into a resort, so as to boost tourism in the stunningly picturesque region.

Pakistani and local politicians and officials privy to the plans quickly snapped up farm and pastoral land from the area’s poor, oblivious residents at rock bottom prices.

They quickly soared as Naltar Valley subsequently became a focal point of public investment in infrastructure, including a cascade of hydropower projects and a new road connecting it to the Karakorum Highway.

Alerted by the exploitation of their Naltar neighbours, many communities in Hunza and Nagar have since imposed a grass roots ban on the sale of property to outsiders.

Public alarm about property rights in Gilgit-Baltistan grew yet further when the Frontier Works Organisation (FWO), a commercial arm of the military which dominates the region’s construction industry, recently attempted to seize more than 3,000 hectares of ancestral pastoral land on the pretext that it was needed for CPEC projects.

The FWO was forced to retreat after the opposition Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) channelled the anger of affected landowners into a political campaign.

“Irrespective of which institution was involved, it was a land grab, plain and simple,” said Amjad Hussain, the president of the PPP chapter in Gilgit-Baltistan, in an interview in Gilgit.

To date, however, there has been no CPEC activity in Gilgit-Baltistan, despite its pivotal role as the exclusive gateway for trade between China and Pakistan.

Even under the second five-year phase of the programme launched in July, the renewed CPEC investment in hydropower projects has focused on Azad Kashmir to the west.

Belatedly, in response to public complaints about power shortages, a large hydropower plant in Hunza has been recently added to the brief list of planned CPEC projects in Gilgit-Baltistan.

“Nobody here has a problem if billions of dollars of CPEC projects are built in Pakistan, as long as it’s not at the cost of excluding Gilgit-Baltistan, the gateway for the entire enterprise, or the property rights of the people,” Hussain said.

“Otherwise, all that Gilgit-Baltistan will get out of CPEC is traffic pollution,” he said.

The traffic will be slow in coming. While the southernmost stretch of the Karakorum Highway has been transformed into a motorway by Chinese firms working under the CPEC umbrella, most of the section in Gilgit-Baltistan has been in tatters for many years.

Pakistan’s plans to rebuild the highway in Gilgit-Baltistan have been further pushed back by the construction of the massive Diamer-Bhasha Dam and Dasu hydropower project along the route.

The US$2.7 billion contract to build the dam was awarded in May to a 70:30 joint venture between China Power – which has arranged financing from Chinese state-owned banks – and the FWO.

Historically, the FWO and its sister military businesses laid the foundations of Gilgit-Baltistan’s economic infrastructure, starting with the Karakorum Highway.

In recent years, however, their virtual monopoly position in the construction and communications sectors has proven to be a serious impediment for domestic and foreign investors – including Chinese firms.

In 2018, the military-run Strategic Communications Organisation (SCO) vetoed the award of a licence to China Mobile to establish 4G internet networks in Gilgit-Baltistan, belatedly citing a redundant regulation which decades ago established it as the state monopoly operator in the disputed territory.

However, the SCO has yet to fill the technological vacuum created by its intervention. Gilgit-Baltistan residents still do not have access to internet services capable of sustaining video streaming, although China completed the installation of a fibre optic cable to Pakistan via Gilgit-Baltistan two years ago.

Public frustration at the SCO’s spoiler tactics boiled over during a Covid-19 lockdown imposed throughout Gilgit-Baltistan between April and July. Students advised by Pakistan’s government to attend online classes during the peak of the pandemic took to social media to protest that they could not pursue their education because of poor connectivity.

Instead of apologising, the SCO accused young social media activists of being “anti-state” in a tweet, which was quickly deleted after it triggered a public outcry.

Likewise, Gilgit-Baltistan’s business community has become increasingly vocal in its criticism of the military’s business monopoly of public works projects in the region. At a press conference in September, representatives of the Gilgit-Baltistan contractors association said that, by hogging even relatively small scale government projects, the FWO and its sister military business concerns were putting the local construction industry out of business.

These episodes typify the increasingly terse relationship between Pakistan’s state institutions and Gilgit-Baltistan society.

Multiple sources in the civil service told This Week In Asia that there had been several instances of shouting matches between ranking local and federal bureaucrats, after the latter made demeaning remarks about Gilgit-Baltistan’s economic dependency on Islamabad.

Similarly, activist lawyers – tacitly supported by influential local personalities – have launched a series of petitions in Gilgit-Baltistan’s higher courts to maintain pressure on the Pakistani state to grant self governance to the region.

Gilgit-based lawyers involved in the campaign, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that their campaign also aimed to expose the perceived bias of the federally dominated Gilgit-Baltistan judiciary.

Like many other activists who have challenged the writ of the Pakistani state in Gilgit-Baltistan, the campaigning lawyers have been charged with offences under draconian anti-terrorist laws.

Activism against the state’s heavy-handedness peaked in October when the residents of Hunza blockaded the stretch of the Karakorum Highway between Gilgit and the Khunjerab Pass border crossing with China.

Some 500 men, women and children of all ages staged a 24-hour sit-in to demand the release of activist Baba Jan and 13 other activists sentenced to life imprisonment for rioting, after violent clashes in 2011 between police and protesters seeking compensation for the loss of lives and property caused by a massive landslide.

Lawyers associations supported the Hunza activists by boycotting courts in various districts of Gilgit-Baltistan on successive days.

On the seventh day of the protests, the state blinked: after three years of stonewalling an appeal petition seeking the acquittal of the 14 Hunza activists, the caretaker Gilgit-Baltistan government said the case would be heard within a month. Their families were assured that the men would be home by November 30.

Government officials and ranking politicians in the major political parties said public resentment was close to boiling point – particularly among Gilgit-Baltistan’s unemployed, educated youth.

“The people of Gilgit-Baltistan feel that their loyalty has not been reciprocated because Pakistan’s establishment does not trust them,” said Akbar Hussain Akbar, chief spokesman of Khan’s PTI in Gilgit-Baltistan.

“If people’s grievances are not addressed, the public blowback could be disastrous for Gilgit-Baltistan and Pakistan,” he said.

Tom Hussain is an Islamabad-based journalist and Pakistan affairs analyst

Avtar Singh · Post by **Avtar Singh** » 07 Nov 2020 20:10

Very interesting, I never thought of this angle wrt ANT financial.
Nothing to do with Jack Maa annoying anyone.

This will be listed at some point in NYC and will be used to grease the american wheels
in favour of ccp/china.

What chance does India have against such floods of money.

Better get all that military equipment up to scratch.
The only means of punishment India will have with regard to china//ccp will be death and
destruction on the battlefield.

darshan · Post by **darshan** » 07 Nov 2020 23:15

Others like Vietnam should take a hint and join.

Taiwan government to host mega Diwali celebration
https://www.wionews.com/india-news/taiw ... ion-341385

SSridhar · Post by **SSridhar** » 09 Nov 2020 16:35

Eye on China, India works to enhance Philippines ties - Indrani Bagchi, ToI

Even as the Philippines lifted its ban on oil exploration in the South China Sea, opening the way for deals with China, India has offered to give coastal surveillance radar systems to Philippines to improve maritime domain awareness (MDA). At a virtual meeting between foreign ministers of India and Philippines on Friday, foreign ministers S Jaishankar and Teodoro Locsin Jr revived a joint commission that last met over five years ago.

An MEA readout said the two sides “agreed to further strengthen defence engagement and maritime cooperation between the two countries, especially in military training and education, capacity building, regular goodwill visits, and procurement of defence equipment. They agreed to enhance cooperation in the area of counterterrorism with information exchange between concerned agencies and support in terms of specialised training needs.”

In October, Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte’s government lifted the ban on exploration in the South China Sea, which could pave the way for “joint” oil exploration projects, particularly with Chinese energy companies like China National Offshore Oil Corporation.

The six-year ban on oil exploration was lifted just before talks between Philippines and Chinese entities and observers in the region expect to see joint exploration projects being inked between China and Philippines. {It won't quite work the way the Philippines expects. China & Japan had a similar agreement in East China Sea and it ended in acrimony as China began to suck out from the Japanese side} The Philippines expects this to be acceptable to Beijing, as well as re-affirming Manila’s sovereignty over these seas. China considers these to be disputed waters, and its debatable whether they would accept Philippines’ premise.{Exactly}

Locsin, the Filipino foreign minister, waxed eloquent about how they could benefit from India’s experience in online and distance learning in a set of tweets after the meeting. The MEA statement said Jaishankar “invited Filipino students, scholars and academicians to avail the ITEC and e-ITEC initiatives, and make use of integrated PhD fellowships offered to Asean students at IITs.” India also invited Philippines to join the International Solar Alliance and the Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure.

kit · Post by **kit** » 11 Nov 2020 05:41

https://www.flightglobal.com/defence/ch ... 53.article

“China has started to build a clear technical lead over Russia in most aspects of combat aircraft development,” says RUSI. “Moreover, Russian industry is unlikely to be able to regain areas of competitive advantage once lost, due to deep structural industrial and budgetary disadvantages compared to the Chinese sector.”

Among light fighters, RUSI contends that the Chengdu J-10 family is “significantly more efficient and flexible than the aging” RAC MiG-29/35 series. At the higher end, the Chengdu J-20 is the only deployed stealth fighter, apart from Lockheed Martin’s F-35 and F-22.

RUSI also regards the Chinese version of the Su-30, the J-16, as a major improvement.

“The J-16 features an AESA radar, increased use of composite materials for reduced weight, a fully digital ‘glass’ cockpit for both crew, compatibility with the full range of Chinese [precision-guided munitions] and a new targeting pod called YINGS-III which is roughly comparable to the US [Lockheed] Sniper pod,” says RUSI.

darshan · Post by **darshan** » 11 Nov 2020 19:13

All focused work on 4G, 5G, massive MIMO etc. paying off for chinese. Algorithms are easy once you have ability to manufacture and miniturize critical components.

darshan · Post by **darshan** » 11 Nov 2020 19:14

Qualcomm could be close to supplying Snapdragon chipsets to Huawei
https://www.androidcentral.com/huawei-a ... orts-china

Cyrano · Post by **Cyrano** » 12 Nov 2020 00:56

$250 billion wiped off Chinese tech stocks as Beijing signals crackdown

A bit strange news. Why would the Chinese crackdown on their tech sector because these companies are growing too big into monopolies? That would mean fewer companies therefore easier to control, isn't it ? May be I'm missing something?

Dilbu · Post by **Dilbu** » 12 Nov 2020 11:45

Jack Ma's comments on Chinese banking regulatory environment was not taken kindly by CCP. May be they feel the need to cut these tech companies to size so that they do not become international entities too big to remain in China's control or behave more unkily than unkle in the long run to act as levers against CCP in the economy and society.

RaviB · Post by **RaviB** » 12 Nov 2020 14:31

I think it's not so much about Jack Ma but about the Chinese fear of a potential financial meltdown, like that in the USA in 2008 which was driven by easy (but expensive) debt. The IPO was basically a stereotypical Indian moneylender on steroids and smartphone. Jack Ma thought he could bully his way past the Chinese financial regulators because he was Jack Ma, but it didn't work out.
Cory Doctorow did a very detailed article on this. It does a lot of comparison with the US banking sector, the basics financial rules of banking,etc.

Jack Ma insulting them probably didn't help, but Doctorow's analysis says that basically even without the insults, it would have been cancelled.

the consensus narrative on this is capricious Chinese regulators changed their minds and jerked the rug out from under Ali's billionaire owner Jack Ma.

The reality is a lot chewier.

Another word for "unregulated bank" is "fintech" (h/t Riley Quinn).

And now we're back to China and the money story. Chinese finance regulators have always treated money as a public utility, to be spent or withdrawn to accomplish public purposes.

During the country's rapid industrialization, regulators loosened the flow of money to allow for rapid capacity-building, directing the country's productive capacity to building factories that would multiply that capacity.

But when they shut off the spigot and told factory owners that their future growth would come from making and selling things, the wealthy rebelled and sought out money from unlicensed banks or banks that were willing to break the rules.

This led to a string of subprime debt crises over the past five years, as regulators crushed these wildcat money-creators as fast as they popped up.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/artic ... ready-here

China's 1% fought back. They emigrated:

https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2012/0 ... nese-flee/

They used cryptocurrency (aka fintech) to evade capital controls, inflating the Bitcoin price-bubble and the Vancouver/Sydney/etc real-estate price bubble as they laundered their money and stashed it in safe-deposit boxes in the sky:

https://www.ft.com/content/bad16a88-d6f ... eb37a6aa8e

As China's shadow economy ballooned it also grew in criminality. There was the wave of Chinese debt-kidnappings, which became so widespread that hostage-taking was described as "China's small claims court."

https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/08/08/ch ... r-problem/

No wonder regulators fought back.

China's regulators didn't win a decisive victory, but they retained enormous control over their money-supply, and that really paid off when the pandemic hit and they suspended all debts, rents, and taxes and mothballed the entire productive economy.

The ability to use finance as a utility is one of China's crucial assets, and it defends that asset ferociously. And that's why the Ant IPO got killed. Ant's major source of income is short-term, high-interest lending, what Chinese regulators call "pawnbrokering."

China's pawnbrokers are a $43B shadow banking sector, and the country's regulators have been cracking down on them for the past year.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... nding-boom

$43B is a drop in the bucket of China's shadow economy (valued at $9T!), but it has real metastatic potential.

Ant's innovation is to fintechify the pawnbroker industry, by tying it to apps (on the front end) and to a US-style debt-brokerage (on the back end).

IOW: Ant's business model is that desperate people use an app to request and quickly receive high-risk, high-interest loans.

Then Ant sells the loans to "investors" (AKA "securitization"). Converting debts into income streams for third parties is the true basis of the finance industry. It's the means by which socially useless intermediaries extract ever-mounting rents from the productive economy.

And as Smith writes in her breakdown, the fact that Chinese finance regulators weren't going to let Ant explode its mass-scale, app-based payday-lending pawnbrokerage is not a surprise. They've been telling Jack Ma this for months, publicly and privately.

Ma thought he could simply bull his way past the Chinese regulators – that because he runs Alibaba and its subsidiaries, that they would defer to him. But the whole point of a finance regulator is NOT to let the finance sector write its own rules.

That's because bankers will cheerfully set the whole economy on fire to turn a buck (see, e.g., America).

Ant was on track for the largest IPO in world history due to investors' appetite for converting Chinese money from a public utility to a private enrichment vehicle.

So yeah, you're goddamned right the Chinese regulator wasn't going to let him do it. Their whole job is to not let him do it.

Cyrano · Post by **Cyrano** » 12 Nov 2020 15:19

Thanks RaviB. Very interesting.

It seems Chinese regulators have acted not just to prevent this easy debt securitisation bubble, but also with the fear that if such a bubble bursts, it would bring down the much larger bubble that is the Chinese economy itself, with its fudged figures and bottomless money printing/gov debt.

pgbhat · Post by **pgbhat** » 13 Nov 2020 13:02

darshan wrote:Qualcomm could be close to supplying Snapdragon chipsets to Huawei
https://www.androidcentral.com/huawei-a ... orts-china

With Apple and Samsung developing their own chipsets internally, this is a likely possibility.

V_Raman · Post by **V_Raman** » 14 Nov 2020 04:00

At the end of the day - this is all about the 5G network equipment business which the anglosphere wanted control of - sigh...

Kati · Post by **Kati** » 16 Nov 2020 08:47

Scoop: Trump plans last-minute China crackdown

https://www.axios.com/scoop-trump-plans ... 666ad.html

rajpa · Post by **rajpa** » 16 Nov 2020 13:31

‘Expansionism a mental disorder, whole world is troubled by expansionist forces’: PM Modi targets China

https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-ne ... ls0LP.html

Modi believes expansionism is a mental disorder and reflects medieval mentality. Precisely what I have been saying.

But to go a step further, I believe it is a mental disorder very specific to Xi at this point. It is called Xi Jinping Bipolar Thought. This sh1t needs to stop.

rajpa wrote:
rpartha wrote: I dont think that it matters whether it has any value or not... the same can be said about all their other territorial fights with other countries... the actual land may be of little value but probably from their perspective it says who is the top dog... Medieval Kingdom attitude... having said that atleast SCS allows them to control major trade route compared to their other fights...
The reason why China wants to expand is certainly to expand and acquire more cheap natural resources to feed their "manufacturing bowl of the world" .. if these territories were in the grasp of another country, they would have to buy from that country through normal trade.

The root cause of this is the medieval mindset of the CCP which is a relic of the past with its communist centralised control ideology - the chinese characteristics are just band-aid to a badly broken system.

arshyam · Post by **arshyam** » 17 Nov 2020 00:03

rajpa wrote:But to go a step further, I believe it is a mental disorder very specific to Xi at this point.

That would be a mistake. The CPC has shown consistently that they want to keep expanding wherever possible right from Mao's times. No point in giving them a fig leaf to attribute their current predicament to one person.

I would actually go a further step in the other direction: This disorder of expansionism is not just a CPC thing, but ingrained in the Chinese worldview itself, starting with what they call themselves. The only way to deal with them is to be the bully that they consider us to be ("asan", opium wars, boxer rebellion and all that). Being nice to them does not win us anything anyway, so why not bully them instead?

Bart S · Post by **Bart S** » 17 Nov 2020 00:38

arshyam wrote:
rajpa wrote:But to go a step further, I believe it is a mental disorder very specific to Xi at this point.
That would be a mistake. The CPC has shown consistently that they want to keep expanding wherever possible right from Mao's times. No point in giving them a fig leaf to attribute their current predicament to one person.

I would actually go a further step in the other direction: This disorder of expansionism is not just a CPC thing, but ingrained in the Chinese worldview itself, starting with what they call themselves. The only way to deal with them is to be the bully that they consider us to be ("asan", opium wars, boxer rebellion and all that). Being nice to them does not win us anything anyway, so why not bully them instead?

The only thing different or unique about Xi has been that he has been too arrogant or immature and clumsily showed his cards too early. Other than that the core of the CCP remains predatory, unethical and exploitative.

rajpa · Post by **rajpa** » 17 Nov 2020 01:52

Strongly wedded to the old world Chinese communist ideology no doubt, but seeking to take control of all the world's resources and the means of global production and distribution (and even political control and subversion of multilateral organizations such as UN, WHO, WTO etc) is a modern communist worldview and brainchild of bipolar Xi. It is a rapacious mindset that has given birth to abhorrent but innocent seeming initiatives like OBOR. It seeks to encourage animal spirits of capitalism using the command and control planned structure of communism which is inherently misguided and hopeless. The planned capitalism approach has failed already for example with China seeking to let go of GDP growth targets, also visible in their trouble with the ANT group which has no viable domestic or global competition and only government regulation inhibiting its growth.

So having let go of planning what is remaining is the corrupt and unaccountable central system which is of no good use. Xi is trying to remain in power by all means using XJBT in all areas of governance, which is finally, just pure mumbo jumbo.

While the rest of the world is also dealing with capitalism and regulation etc, this potent and heady Chinese mix of communism and capitalism fails spectacularly, unlike in other countries, due to highly artificial limits on capitalism which is inherently a core principle of communism. So it is self contradictory and XJBT is a recipe for disaster for Sugarland.

Xi should just give up power and do another perestroika with Chinese characteristics. What maybe good for him may also be to seek treatment for his bipolarity and megalomania.

Kati · Post by **Kati** » 17 Nov 2020 11:51

So the deep-state has taken a stand against the panda......

Bill Clinton Says China’s Direction Under Xi Upended U.S. Ties

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... d-u-s-ties

nvishal · Post by **nvishal** » 17 Nov 2020 12:14

Kati,

Bold red font is not necessary

darshan · Post by **darshan** » 17 Nov 2020 16:57

china's direction under anything should have upended ties with all the human rights violations. Xi is being made scapegoat so china and US politicians who supported china walk away free.

Cyrano · Post by **Cyrano** » 18 Nov 2020 13:29

Karan M · Post by **Karan M** » 18 Nov 2020 19:47

Bart S wrote:
arshyam wrote: That would be a mistake. The CPC has shown consistently that they want to keep expanding wherever possible right from Mao's times. No point in giving them a fig leaf to attribute their current predicament to one person.

I would actually go a further step in the other direction: This disorder of expansionism is not just a CPC thing, but ingrained in the Chinese worldview itself, starting with what they call themselves. The only way to deal with them is to be the bully that they consider us to be ("asan", opium wars, boxer rebellion and all that). Being nice to them does not win us anything anyway, so why not bully them instead?
The only thing different or unique about Xi has been that he has been too arrogant or immature and clumsily showed his cards too early. Other than that the core of the CCP remains predatory, unethical and exploitative.

Precisely. As if his predecessors were saints. As if his successors will be saints.

ramana · Post by **ramana** » 20 Nov 2020 00:33

Looks like US SD has woken up and smelled the bad odor:

https://www.axios.com/scoop-the-state-d ... 16315.html

Might go back to sleep next year.

Philip · Post by **Philip** » 20 Nov 2020 10:11

What is v.strange is our govt. outfits openly wanting curbs relaxed
for Chin investment to " kickstart" the economy ,that too after the blood of 20+ soldiers were spilled at Galwan and the 50K+ troops
deployed oncthe LAC waiting to invade! Another stst,official,yesterday,that Chin electronic ware imports by India would cross $5B! Where is the economic counterattack by rhe GOI? Extremely depressing while we rub coins in our pocket to fund defence acquisitions,now the lease option for LUHs and trainer aircraft being looked at. By sanctioning Chin goods and services,over $50B can instead be plowed back into Indian industry and some essential ware bought from Taiwan,SoKo,Japan,etc.

Manish_P · Post by **Manish_P** » 20 Nov 2020 14:33

If true, then 'Sabotage' is not the correct word, 'Cyber attack' would be more appropriate..

October 12 blackout was a sabotage

Last month’s power outage in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR) was possibly the result of a sophisticated sabotage attempt involving foreign entities, a probe carried out by the state police’s cyber cell has revealed.

The month-long probe detected presence of multiple “suspicious log – ins” into the servers connected with power supply and transmission utilities by accounts operating from Singapore and a few other south Asian countries. The state police is now coordinating with national agencies to determine if these “intrusions, interferences” were part of a coordinated effort aimed at crippling the country’s financial capital.

A source who is privy to the probe, said hackers have been trying to target the country’s power utilities since February. In June, a swarm of 40,000-plus hacking attacks by non-state groups purportedly operating from China had used a type of malware to access and then encrypt sensitive data of targeted private and public entities. A power supply provider in Jammu and Kashmir had also come under the hackers’ attack.