In China, fears of financial Iron Curtain as U.S. tensions rise

[Zorro!]

Here is another more of less comprehensive take on this question, this time from Yahoo Finance, with some links, including one to an article about ex-aide John Bolton’s criticism of Trump for not taking a harder line on China. Bolton, always a hardliner, now a “Never Trumper,” predicts that — if elected — Trump will revert to taking a softer line on China.

How the US uses the dollar payments system to impose sanctions on a global scale

The pervasive nature of the US dollar payments system along with its dominance in international transactions have afforded Washington broad powers to impose economic and financial sanctions on other countries.Upping the ante against its opponents, the United States has restricted foreign...

finance.yahoo.com

I haven't gotten the sense lately that Bolton is a fount of predictive value.

Looking through your Yahoo Finance link to see why Trump is supposedly about to go soft on China. I found nothing supporting your claim.

Here is the interesting thing about Trump: He tells you what he is going to do, and then he does it.
Trump said that he would reduce the trade deficit with China, and he has. He has reversed 9 years of deterioration in our China Trade deficit in just the last two years.

Personally I have no idea what Trump would try to do with U.S.-China trade and political relations if he is re-elected. His present “Biden Is in China’s pocket” sloganeering is just an opportunist election campaign ploy. Trump will not seriously challenge the developing bipartisan anti-China Wall Street consensus. Bolton is certainly a “New Cold War” ass, much like Pompeo, but he is now a working with the equally anti-China, anti-Trump Democrats. Trump is only an unstable and unprincipled demagogue. He actually admires Xi and Putin and is following an idiosyncratic and utterly unthought out policy. The U.S. trade deficit with China is parallel with our world deficits and flow essentially from similar causes.

P.S. Zorro! , the Bolton article was in a separate link within the Yahoo article. For what it’s worth, here it is: US-China decoupling already under way, John Bolton says

Bolton's a warmonger. Trump was right to fire him. You're welcome to him.

 

[Tom Paine 1949]

Here are excerpts from a long Oct. 7 article in the well-informed Nikkei Asia (the world’s largest financial newspaper) titled “Inside the US campaign to cut China out of the tech supply chain.”

What started as U.S. government pressure on American companies to boycott specific Chinese entities has since become a concerted effort to force non-U.S. suppliers to join a wholesale blockade of Chinese technology....

The idea ... would have been unthinkable just two years ago. But pressure from the Trump administration has made this a reality, with companies from Apple to Google decamping from China to Vietnam, India, Thailand and Malaysia in the last 36 months. For the global tech industry, the question is whether the alternative supply chain that emerges can match the efficiency of the one in China that builds more than 200 million iPhones a year.

Taiwan is in a key position to witness this new emerging U.S. policy because its tech companies sell equally to both sides.... They count as clients top U.S. companies like Apple, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Qualcomm, Hewlett-Packard, and Dell, as well as leading Chinese companies such as Huawei, Lenovo, Xiaomi, Alibaba Group Holding, and Oppo. Sitting astride a fault line separating China and the U.S. in a new technology cold war, Taiwan's companies are being forced, albeit unwillingly, to choose sides.... Taiwan, a diplomatic gray zone without a full-fledged U.S. embassy, viewed by Beijing as a breakaway part of the People's Republic of China.

So far, China's reaction has been muted, but few tech executives think they can count on continued forbearance by Beijing.... On Sept.19, China created its own version of the U.S. trade blacklist: the "Unreliable Entity List," reserved for any foreign companies that treat Chinese companies unfairly, according to the government's judgement. While no one has been put on the blacklist yet, China's state-backed nationalist newspaper Global Times in May said that Apple, Qualcomm, Cisco Systems and Boeing could potentially be added on the Chinese list.

“In the next two to three years, you will see not just the big electronics assemblers, but also more and more component suppliers shifting their capacity outside of China to support a new supply chain," an iPhone supplier executive said.... The costs of leaving China are immense, however. The country still offers an unbeatable combination of well-organized infrastructure, skilled labor that no other country can match... In the past, it would only take two hours to mobilize the delivery of components from other Chinese provinces. But in the future, it would take at least one to two weeks of waiting time as the supply chain becomes decentralized outside of China."...

Industries across sectors and market watchers are paying close attention to the upcoming U.S. presidential election, but not many of them believe the competition and geopolitical tensions between Washington and Beijing will die down, no matter who becomes the next American president...

——

I note that putting pressure on Taiwan (with one million of its citizens living and working in mainland China) to choose sides, endangers not merely Taiwan’s economy but its very survival. The geopolitical stakes and the possibility of war are rising.

 

[Zorro!]

Here is another more of less comprehensive take on this question, this time from Yahoo Finance, with some links, including one to an article about ex-aide John Bolton’s criticism of Trump for not taking a harder line on China. Bolton, always a hardliner, now a “Never Trumper,” predicts that — if elected — Trump will revert to taking a softer line on China.

How the US uses the dollar payments system to impose sanctions on a global scale

The pervasive nature of the US dollar payments system along with its dominance in international transactions have afforded Washington broad powers to impose economic and financial sanctions on other countries.Upping the ante against its opponents, the United States has restricted foreign...

finance.yahoo.com

I haven't gotten the sense lately that Bolton is a fount of predictive value.

Looking through your Yahoo Finance link to see why Trump is supposedly about to go soft on China. I found nothing supporting your claim.

Here is the interesting thing about Trump: He tells you what he is going to do, and then he does it.
Trump said that he would reduce the trade deficit with China, and he has. He has reversed 9 years of deterioration in our China Trade deficit in just the last two years.

Personally I have no idea what Trump would try to do with U.S.-China trade and political relations if he is re-elected. His present “Biden Is in China’s pocket” sloganeering is just an opportunist election campaign ploy. Trump will not seriously challenge the developing bipartisan anti-China Wall Street consensus. Bolton is certainly a “New Cold War” ass, much like Pompeo, but he is now a working with the equally anti-China, anti-Trump Democrats. Trump is only an unstable and unprincipled demagogue. He actually admires Xi and Putin and is following an idiosyncratic and utterly unthought out policy. The U.S. trade deficit with China is parallel with our world deficits and flow essentially from similar causes.

P.S. Zorro! , the Bolton article was in a separate link within the Yahoo article. For what it’s worth, here it is: US-China decoupling already under way, John Bolton says

Bolton's a warmonger. Trump was right to fire hi

Here are excerpts from a long Oct. 7 article in the well-informed Nikkei Asia (the world’s largest financial newspaper) titled “Inside the US campaign to cut China out of the tech supply chain.”

What started as U.S. government pressure on American companies to boycott specific Chinese entities has since become a concerted effort to force non-U.S. suppliers to join a wholesale blockade of Chinese technology....

The idea ... would have been unthinkable just two years ago. But pressure from the Trump administration has made this a reality, with companies from Apple to Google decamping from China to Vietnam, India, Thailand and Malaysia in the last 36 months. For the global tech industry, the question is whether the alternative supply chain that emerges can match the efficiency of the one in China that builds more than 200 million iPhones a year.

Taiwan is in a key position to witness this new emerging U.S. policy because its tech companies sell equally to both sides.... They count as clients top U.S. companies like Apple, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Qualcomm, Hewlett-Packard, and Dell, as well as leading Chinese companies such as Huawei, Lenovo, Xiaomi, Alibaba Group Holding, and Oppo. Sitting astride a fault line separating China and the U.S. in a new technology cold war, Taiwan's companies are being forced, albeit unwillingly, to choose sides.... Taiwan, a diplomatic gray zone without a full-fledged U.S. embassy, viewed by Beijing as a breakaway part of the People's Republic of China.

So far, China's reaction has been muted, but few tech executives think they can count on continued forbearance by Beijing.... On Sept.19, China created its own version of the U.S. trade blacklist: the "Unreliable Entity List," reserved for any foreign companies that treat Chinese companies unfairly, according to the government's judgement. While no one has been put on the blacklist yet, China's state-backed nationalist newspaper Global Times in May said that Apple, Qualcomm, Cisco Systems and Boeing could potentially be added on the Chinese list.

“In the next two to three years, you will see not just the big electronics assemblers, but also more and more component suppliers shifting their capacity outside of China to support a new supply chain," an iPhone supplier executive said.... The costs of leaving China are immense, however. The country still offers an unbeatable combination of well-organized infrastructure, skilled labor that no other country can match... In the past, it would only take two hours to mobilize the delivery of components from other Chinese provinces. But in the future, it would take at least one to two weeks of waiting time as the supply chain becomes decentralized outside of China."...

Industries across sectors and market watchers are paying close attention to the upcoming U.S. presidential election, but not many of them believe the competition and geopolitical tensions between Washington and Beijing will die down, no matter who becomes the next American president...

——

I note that putting pressure on Taiwan, with its more than one million citizens living and working in China, to choose sides, endangers not merely Taiwan’s economy but its very survival. The geopolitical stakes and the possibility of war are rising.

We are under no obligation to do business with Liars, Outlaws, Slavers and Cheats who loosed a global pandemic with lies rather than the truth they had committed to by treaty.

Where they are the best choice, we will do business with them, but, let's face it, their customer services sucks. Loosing a pandemic is about the crappiest thing you can do to your customers. Moving supply chains out of China is very very smart!

 

[Tom Paine 1949]

We are under no obligation to do business with ...

Of course the U.S. can refuse to do business with China. But as I have detailed here and elsewhere, the U.S. is trying to drag the whole world, kicking and screaming, into its economic war against China, using threats of every kind. If continued and escalated, this will most likely lead to war, and Taiwan and the South China Sea are likely places it will start. The U.S. has no prospect of “winning” such a war in China’s backyard.

 

[Zorro!]

DECOUPLING, BIGLY: Trump Just Took the Nuclear Option on Huawei.

On Monday the Commerce Department expanded its foreign-produced direct product rule to include situations “where U.S. software or technology is the basis for a foreign-produced item” that will be used by Huawei, or where the company is party to such a transaction, such as being an intermediary supplier.

There are dozens of steps in developing, manufacturing and installing chips in a device, with U.S. technology an integral part throughout. Synopsys Inc. and Cadence Design Systems Inc. make software used to design semiconductors; Lam Research Corp. and Applied Materials Inc. are major suppliers of manufacturing equipment — all four companies are based in Silicon Valley.

There are many more American technology providers crucial to the process. Remove just one, and any chip company will struggle to keep up. Removing them all would be akin to cutting off the oxygen. And if the new rule is to be strictly interpreted, then even the use of generalist technologies like PCs running on Microsoft Corp.’s Windows and Intel Corp. processors could be prohibited.

Huawei isn’t merely a Communist front corporation — it was built on the bones of Nortel, picked clean by Huawei in what amounted to state-sanctioned intellectual theft and espionage.

We have had it with the Lying Outlaw Slavers of Beijing. They lied, cheated, stole and loosed one pandemic too many on us.

 

[Zorro!]

We are under no obligation to do business with ...

Of course the U.S. can refuse to do business with China. But as I have detailed here and elsewhere, the U.S. is trying to drag the whole world, kicking and screaming, into its economic war against China, using threats of every kind. If continued and escalated, this will most likely lead to war, and Taiwan and the South China Sea are likely places it will start. The U.S. has no prospect of “winning” such a war in China’s backyard.

Oh, the US has to do what the Lying Outlaw Slavers in Beijing demand or they attack us? We don't bow to the threats of Lying Outlaw Slaver Scum that loose pandemics on their best customers.

 

[Tom Paine 1949]

Actually, Taiwan is on China’s front porch, not in their “back yard.” The South China Sea is far more important to them than the Gulf of Mexico is to the U.S. China will guarantee free transit through the South China Sea, but if the U.S. is looking for war ...

 

[Zorro!]

Actually, Taiwan is on China’s front porch, not in their “back yard.” The South China Sea is far more important to them than the Gulf of Mexico is to the U.S. China will guarantee free transit through the South China Sea, but if the U.S. is looking for war ...

You are the one claiming that Lying Outlaw Slaver Beijing is threatening war if we refuse to trade with them. Rather moronic.

 

[Zorro!]

China’s threats on behalf of Huawei are becoming desperate.

In the face of growing momentum against Huawei, which many Western governments fear will be forced to spy for Beijing, Chinese embassies have been doing a full court press in countries that have not yet made a decision.

In Germany, the Chinese ambassador threatened that country’s auto industry in China. The Chinese envoy to Denmark threatened the free-trade agreement with the Faroe Islands. In France, Beijing’s ambassador warned the government not to discriminate against Huawei, lest it threaten the development of European companies in China – this is the same envoy who, during his previous appointment to Canada, threatened “repercussions” if Ottawa rejected the Chinese company.

In the U.K., where the government had agreed in January to allow Huawei to supply as much as 35 per cent of the 5G network’s peripheral system, political pressure has mounted to reverse that decision. The government has initiated a club of 10 countries, called the D-10 – with “D” representing democracy – comprising the G7 plus India, South Korea and Australia to collaborate on 5G technology alternatives. The Chinese ambassador to Britain has now said that China would put a halt to its planned nuclear reactors and high-speed rail network in the U.K. if Huawei equipment is banned. And the chair of British bank HSBC warned the bank would face reprisals in China.

Chinese Communists are just bullies with money.

Mobsters, in other words.

Lying Outlaw Slaver Thugs. We do not fear their threats.

 

[Zorro!]

The Lying Outlaw Slavers Of Beijing Blasts Latest US Navy Deployment Near Paracel Islands: "Halt Provocations!"

​

PLA tells Pentagon it must ask 'permission' for South China Sea maneuvers...

 

[Tom Paine 1949]

Despite many-sided attacks on the Chinese economy by the Trump Administration, and increasing pressure being applied to Western banks and businesses that trade with China by the White House, the Chinese Yuan continues to appreciate against the U.S. Dollar. Here are excerpts of an article on this subject:

Leading banks still bullish on yuan ...

SHANGHAI (Reuters) - China’s move to cool a rising yuan stands little chance of stopping further gains, international banks say, as the strength of the world’s second-biggest economy and a near-record yield advantage drive big and steady inflows.

Over the weekend, the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) scrapped a requirement for banks to hold a reserve of yuan forward contracts, removing a guard against depreciation and sending the currency down 1% for its steepest drop since March.

However, an identical move three years ago ultimately proved ineffective and investors say the conditions this time are even more likely to buoy the yuan, perhaps as far as 6.50 per dollar....

Goldman Sachs forecasts the yuan, last quoted at 6.7450 ... will hit 6.50 per dollar in 12 months.

Much as in 2017, the PBOC’s move follows a long spell of appreciation. The yuan has strengthened more than 6% since late May and just closed its best quarter in a dozen years as China leads the world out of the coronavirus pandemic and soaks up capital flows.

Foreign holdings of Chinese government debt rose at the fastest pace in more than two years last month ... analysts say China’s economy - projected to keep growing as the rest of the world shrinks - could attract enough capital to fuel a self-perpetuating yuan rise.

Leading banks still bullish on yuan despite policymakers' nudge

 

[Zorro!]

Actually, Taiwan is on China’s front porch, not in their “back yard.” The South China Sea is far more important to them than the Gulf of Mexico is to the U.S. China will guarantee free transit through the South China Sea, but if the U.S. is looking for war ...

More militaristic threats from the Lying Outlaw Slavers of Beijing simply because the US is choosing to move some of it's business elsewhere rather than deal with the criminal thugs of Beijing? You are a real piece of work. If you think we will be intimidated into buying from China my these threats of yours, you don't know many actual Americans.

Last week, Lord Chris Patten, the last British governor of Hong Kong, reminded us how badly wrong China watchers had gotten their assessment of the Beijing leadership. The Chinese Communists might be thuggish dictators, these experts said, but they were men of their word and could be trusted to do what they promised.

Patten busts that myth, citing four chilling examples of the Chinese Communist Party’s duplicity:

1. its denial of the existence of some 380 internment camps to imprison over 1 million Muslim Uighurs;
2. its breaking of World Health Organization rules by not notifying the body within 24 hours of the COVID-19 pandemic;
3. Xi’s breaking his word to President Obama that he would refrain from militarizing the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea;
4. and Xi’s tearing up the promise China made to Hong Kong and the international community that the city would enjoy its liberties until 2047.

“The last thing the world should do is trust the Communist Party of China,” Patten concludes.

As the Hong Kong Protestors Warned Us: "Do Not Trust China, China Is Asshoe."​

 

[Tom Paine 1949]

Actually, Taiwan is on China’s front porch, not in their “back yard.” The South China Sea is far more important to them than the Gulf of Mexico is to the U.S. China will guarantee free transit through the South China Sea, but if the U.S. is looking for war ...

More militaristic threats from the Lying Outlaw Slavers of Beijing simply because the US is choosing to move some of it's business elsewhere rather than deal with the criminal thugs of Beijing? You are a real piece of work. If you think we will be intimidated into buying from China my these threats of yours, you don't know many actual Americans.

Last week, Lord Chris Patten, the last British governor of Hong Kong, reminded us how badly wrong China watchers had gotten their assessment of the Beijing leadership. The Chinese Communists might be thuggish dictators, these experts said, but they were men of their word and could be trusted to do what they promised.

Patten busts that myth, citing four chilling examples of the Chinese Communist Party’s duplicity:

1. its denial of the existence of some 380 internment camps to imprison over 1 million Muslim Uighurs;
2. its breaking of World Health Organization rules by not notifying the body within 24 hours of the COVID-19 pandemic;
3. Xi’s breaking his word to President Obama that he would refrain from militarizing the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea;
4. and Xi’s tearing up the promise China made to Hong Kong and the international community that the city would enjoy its liberties until 2047.

“The last thing the world should do is trust the Communist Party of China,” Patten concludes.

View attachment 400563
As the Hong Kong Protestors Warned Us: "Do Not Trust China, China Is Asshoe."​

This is an OP about economic relations and the possibility of decoupling between China and the U.S.A. Please try to stay on topic. I certainly have no intention of answering every unrelated slander, lie, or exaggeration you insist on repeating here. Start another thread if you wish.

 

[Zorro!]

Despite many-sided attacks on the Chinese economy by the Trump Administration, and increasing pressure being applied to Western banks and businesses that trade with China by the White House, the Chinese Yuan continues to appreciate against the U.S. Dollar. Here are excerpts of an article on this subject:

Leading banks still bullish on yuan ...

SHANGHAI (Reuters) - China’s move to cool a rising yuan stands little chance of stopping further gains, international banks say, as the strength of the world’s second-biggest economy and a near-record yield advantage drive big and steady inflows.

Over the weekend, the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) scrapped a requirement for banks to hold a reserve of yuan forward contracts, removing a guard against depreciation and sending the currency down 1% for its steepest drop since March.

However, an identical move three years ago ultimately proved ineffective and investors say the conditions this time are even more likely to buoy the yuan, perhaps as far as 6.50 per dollar....

Goldman Sachs forecasts the yuan, last quoted at 6.7450 ... will hit 6.50 per dollar in 12 months.

Oh Goody! Both values round to a yuan is worth 15 cents.

Much as in 2017, the PBOC’s move follows a long spell of appreciation. The yuan has strengthened more than 6% since late May and just closed its best quarter in a dozen years as China leads the world out of the coronavirus pandemic and soaks up capital flows....

"Strongest in a dozen years?" What a load of Lying Slaver Outlaw China Cheerleader crap. Here's a chart for the last dozen years:

​

The yuan today is worth 14.68 cents.
As recently as March of this year it was worth 14.9 cents.
March 2018 it was worth 15.95 cents.
May 2016 it was worth 16.11 cents.
Jan 2014 it was worth 16.56 cents.

We are supposed to excited because through the summer it rallied from the lower than whale-shit value of 13.95 cents to 14.68 cents?

... China’s economy - projected to keep growing as the rest of the world shrinks...

Oh, the Lying Outlaw Slavers of Beijing predict good news for their currency? Well, hells bells, why didn't you lead with that?

 

[Zorro!]

Actually, Taiwan is on China’s front porch, not in their “back yard.” The South China Sea is far more important to them than the Gulf of Mexico is to the U.S. China will guarantee free transit through the South China Sea, but if the U.S. is looking for war ...

More militaristic threats from the Lying Outlaw Slavers of Beijing simply because the US is choosing to move some of it's business elsewhere rather than deal with the criminal thugs of Beijing? You are a real piece of work. If you think we will be intimidated into buying from China my these threats of yours, you don't know many actual Americans.

Last week, Lord Chris Patten, the last British governor of Hong Kong, reminded us how badly wrong China watchers had gotten their assessment of the Beijing leadership. The Chinese Communists might be thuggish dictators, these experts said, but they were men of their word and could be trusted to do what they promised.

Patten busts that myth, citing four chilling examples of the Chinese Communist Party’s duplicity:

1. its denial of the existence of some 380 internment camps to imprison over 1 million Muslim Uighurs;
2. its breaking of World Health Organization rules by not notifying the body within 24 hours of the COVID-19 pandemic;
3. Xi’s breaking his word to President Obama that he would refrain from militarizing the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea;
4. and Xi’s tearing up the promise China made to Hong Kong and the international community that the city would enjoy its liberties until 2047.

“The last thing the world should do is trust the Communist Party of China,” Patten concludes.

View attachment 400563
As the Hong Kong Protestors Warned Us: "Do Not Trust China, China Is Asshoe."​

This is an OP about economic relations and the possibility of decoupling between China and the U.S.A. Please try to stay on topic. I certainly have no intention of answering every unrelated slander, lie, or exaggeration you insist on repeating here. Start another thread if you wish.

And yet you posted this:

...China will guarantee free transit through the South China Sea, but if the U.S. is looking for war ...

You think you can threaten us with war and not be responded to? Japan made a similar error at Pearl Harbor, and in short order their empire was smoldering ruins.
Hitler made a similar miscalculation, or troops are still in Germany.
The USSR made a similar blunder, it no longer exists.
OBL celebrated his act of war, he is now dead.
The ISIS caliphate brought the war to our streets, it no longer exists.

We do NOT fear threats from the Lying Outlaw Slavers of Beijing - you folks remind me of a bug in search of a windshield.

 

[Tom Paine 1949]

As I said, this thread is about the danger of full China-U.S. economic “decoupling,” and how such decoupling might influence the one party state capitalist regime in China.

History shows (see Thucydides Trap - Wikipedia ) that rising and declining international powers often end up in war. China is a growing Asian continental economic power which does not have a history of overseas imperialist expansion, but rather a history of being victimized. It carries the psychological scars of that history. Its leaders rightly fear the new Western attempts to strangle its economic development. Of course despite its incredibly rapid economic growth and present power, China’s average per capita income still remains far lower than the U.S. or Western Europe.

It is worth pointing out that even tiny imperialist Japan, feeling strangled especially after the oil embargo imposed on it after its invasion of Manchuria and China, decided to gamble everything on directly attacking bases in the U.S. Hawaiian territory and seizing U.S., British, Dutch and French economic zones of control, colonies & neo-colonies in Asia.

Of course China is not Imperial Japan — it is far more powerful and populous. Though not strongly imperialist in modern times even under socialist rule, it is now a one party state capitalist society where corporations are expected to compete and make profits. It too will react as any great geopolitical power would if it feels it is being strangled. XiJinping or other CCP leaders may eventually feel forced to react militarily to protect what they consider China’s own absolutely strategic interests within what they consider China’s legitimate territorial and historical boundaries. They will try to protect in other ways what they consider China’s right to “free trade.” Of course the Chinese people and government have no desire or intention of attacking the U.S.A. But the South China Sea or the ambiguous and never resolved status of Taiwan can easily become flashpoints where small conflicts get out of control.

In our era, “Total War” equals the end of civilization. Therefore it is vitally necessary that both sides respect and understand each other’s vital interests. I would add that this is also true of the U.S. relationship with the Russian Federation. Not nearly enough attention is being paid to these problems, as even the old warmongering realpolitik strategist Henry Kissinger recognizes:

Henry Kissinger Calls on U.S., China to Set ‘Limits’ on Threats or Risk World War | National Review

 

[Zorro!]

As I said, this thread is about the danger of full China-U.S. economic “decoupling,” and how such decoupling might influence the one party state capitalist regime in China...

Yes. You repeatedly hint that if we move some of our business to other suppliers, because we don't like the customer service from the Lying Outlaw Slavers of Beijing that they might launch a military attack on us. That would indicate that they are morons on top of everything else. We have every right to move our business as we please, after for them to threaten us with war over it, just illustrates why they are very poor choice in business partners. In short, the lying outlaw slavers are untrustworthy.

... rising and declining international powers often end up in war...

Here you go with the moronic war threats again. Equally moronic is the inference that we are a "declining" power.

... China is a growing Asian continental economic power...

Well, as an export economy, trapped between Russia and and a fairly easily blockaded coast, that has to import both food and energy, with a population that has a history of revolution if it's rulers don't keep it fed.

... which does not have a history of overseas imperialist expansion...

Taiwan would beg to differ. The lying outlaw slavers of Beijing threaten the Free Democracy of Taiwan, all the time. The Lying Outlaws of Beijing imagine the conquest of this amazingly hardy people who have been under threat by the Chinese Communist Party for 80 years, but not ruled by them for a single day, to be a cakewalk, when actually the PLA would be lured to it's destruction on the rocky cliffs of Free Taiwan.

China has nothing to fear so long as it quits lying, thieving, stealing, destroys it's concentration camps and frees their captives and respect the territorial boundaries of it's neighbors, which today it violates as policy.

And when the Lying Outlaw Slavers of Beijing loose pandemics on their customers, and their customers reduce their business exposure, the Lying Outlaw Slavers shouldn't threaten war, it just makes them look stupid in addition to lawless.

... Western attempts to strangle its economic development...

There is no law that says we have to do business with Thieves, Crooks, Outlaws and Slavers that loose pandemics on us.

... Of course despite its incredibly rapid economic growth...

Well, based on mercantilism when they should have been developing their internal markets rather than relying on external markets that can easily cut them off.

... China’s average per capita income still remains far lower than the U.S. or Western Europe...

Are you averaging in the zero income of the three million in Concentration Camps?

... It is worth pointing out that even tiny imperialist Japan, feeling strangled especially after the oil embargo imposed on it after its invasion of Manchuria and China, decided to gamble everything on directly attacking bases in the U.S. Hawaiian territory and seizing U.S., British, Dutch and French economic zones of control, colonies & neo-colonies in Asia...

More of your happy war talk. Threats of military attack by the Lying Outlaw Slavers if we reduce the amount of business we do with the Totalitarian State. The PLA complains that their forces spend too much time playing video games and masturbating to be an effective fighting force.

Excessive masturbation is hurting China's military
nypost.com › 2017/08/25 › excessive-masturbation-is-h...

Aug 25, 2017 — ... military says excessive masturbation and too many video games are ... The People's Liberation Army is now dishing out advice after one city ...

They would destroy themselves trying to take Taiwan, yet, you think they can pull off an attack on Guam? And the "provocation" is that we don't want to business with liars and cheats? Your Lying Outlaw Slavers sound pretty pathetic and desperate.

... Of course China is not Imperial Japan — it is far more powerful and populous...

Well, look at you! Threatening WWIII if you don't get your way. Saddam threatened the same. He promised "The Mother of All Battles!" Yet, he was hauled from a hole and hung from his neck until dead after he tried to take over a neighboring territory that he claimed was a rogue "province."

... But the South China Sea or the ambiguous and never resolved status of Taiwan can easily become flashpoints where small conflicts get out of control...

No. It's resolved. Only China claims it's "unresolved" because it wants to steal from it's neighbors. China can only attack Taiwan in Oct or April. There plans to invade by the millions via commandeered fishing boats cannot brave the storm waters of the strait outside of those two 4 week windows, so there is no time of attack that will surprise the combined naval forces of the US/Australia/Japan/India.

Get a map out, google "First Island Strategy" then feel fear in your gut as the naval forces of the QUAD fill the gaps between all those islands and seal up China like a cork hammered into a bottle. Not one more jar of food, not one more gallon of fuel enters the Land of the Lying Slaver Outlaws until the territory of Taiwan is secured from the International Outlaws of Beijing that just loosed a pandemic on the entire world.

Taiwan has prepared for this for a eighty years, it's great strength in the fighting free hearts of indominable people make only by their natural defenses: Surrounded by rough seas with unpredictable weather, its rugged coastline offers very few places with a wide beach suitable for a large ship that could bring in enough troops to subdue its 24 million people. The mountainous terrain is riddled with tunnels that will keep key leaders alive, and would provide cover for insurgent war even in the unlikely event that China established control.

Taiwan is bristling with asymmetric capabilities like mobile missile systems that avoid detection, preventing Beijing from quickly destroying all of its defensive weaponry. With thousands of surface-to-air missiles and anti-aircraft guns, Taiwan will rain fire and death, inflicting heavy losses on the Chinese invasion force, sending them to watery graves, long before they reached the main island.

Taiwan’s military has fortified defenses around key landing points and regularly conducts drills to repel the Lying Outlaw Slaver forces arriving by sea and from the air. Outside of the western port of Taichung, Apache helicopters, F-16s and Taiwan’s own domestically developed fighter jets stand ready send the invading fishing boats full of excessively masturbating video game players to their demise as they approach, even while M60 tanks, artillery guns and missile batteries pummel hapless targets than managed to reach the inhospitable beaches.

Should the troops of the Lying Outlaw Slavers manage to make it ashore they would face 175,000 full-time soldiers and more than 1 million reservists ready to fight to the death of the invaders attempting the unlawful occupation of their homeland.

... In our era, “Total War” equals the end of civilization...

More Tough Talk from the Lying Outlaw Slavers of Beijing. The Chinese Invasion Threat: Taiwan’s Defense and American Strategy in Asia, carefully documents the utter destruction that would face the fools of Beijing should they attempt to conquer the Free Chinese People of Taiwan.

Lying Outlaw Slaver commanders fear that they would forced into armed contest with an enemy that is better trained, better motivated, and better prepared for the rigors of warfare than troops the PLA could throw against them. A cross-strait war looks far less like an inevitable victory for Lying Outlaw China than suicide for the Tyrants of Beijing.

The end of the fools of Beijing would start with their poorly considered invasion, the largest amphibious operation in human history. Tens of thousands of vessels assembled—mostly commandeered from the Chinese fishermen, they begin the ill-fated attempt to ferry 1 million Chinese troops across the strait, in two waves.

Were they to start on Oct or April 1, they would have 4 weeks before they were once again isolated by the stormy seas of the Strait, should they manage to gain the island, and fail to pacify it before the 4 week window closed, the remaining invaders would be crushed.

Taiwanese, American/Japanese/Australian/Indian leaders will know that the PLA is preparing for a cross-strait war more than 60 days before hostilities begin. They will know for certain that an invasion will happen more than 30 days before the first missiles are fired. This will give the Taiwanese Freedom Fighters ample time to move much of their command and control infrastructure into hardened mountain tunnels, move their fleet out of vulnerable ports, detain suspected agents and intelligence operatives, litter the ocean with sea mines, disperse and camouflage army units across the country, put the economy on war footing, and distribute first nation quality weapons to Taiwan’s 2.5 million determined reservists.

There are only 13 beaches on Taiwan’s western coast that the PLA could possibly land at. Each of these has already been prepared for a potential conflict. Long underground tunnels—complete with hardened, subterranean supply depots—crisscross the landing sites. The berm of each beach has been covered with razor-leaf plants. Chemical treatment plants are common in many beach towns—meaning that invaders must prepare for the clouds of toxic gas any indiscriminate saturation bombing on their part will release.

As invading forces approach, each beach will be turned into a workshop of horrors. The path from these beaches to the capital will be a nightmare of continuous booby-traps. Skyscrapers and rock outcrops will have steel cords strung between them to entangle invading helicopters; tunnels, bridges, and overpasses will be rigged with munitions (to be destroyed only at the last possible moment once filled with invading forces); and building after building in Taiwan’s dense urban core will be transformed into small redoubts that will isolate and drag hapless Lying Outlaw Slaver units into drawn-out fights over each city street, that ends in the death of the invaders.

But by the time the average PLA grunt reaches the staging area in Fuzhou, the myth of China’s invincibility will have been shattered by more than rumors. The gray ruins of Fuzhou’s PLA offices will be his first introduction to the terror of the Free Taiwan missile attack. His broken nerves will not allow time for him to acclimate himself to the shock. Blast by terrifying blast, his confidence that the Lying Outlaw Slaver army can keep him safe is chipped away.

The last, most terrible salvo will come as he embarks—if he is one of the lucky few setting foot on a proper amphibious assault boat, not a civilian vessel converted to war use in the eleventh hour—but this is only the first of many horrors on the deadly waters the invaders enter to their doom. Some transports will be sunk by Free Taiwanese torpedoes, released by submarines held in reserve for this fateful day. Airborne Harpoon missiles, fired by F-16s leaving the safety of cavernous, nuclear-proof mountain bunkers for the first time in the war, will destroy others. The greatest casualties, however, will be caused by sea mines. Minefield after minefield must be crossed by every ship in the flotilla, some a harrowing eight miles in width. Seasick thanks to the strait’s rough waves, the poor PLA grunt can do nothing but pray his ship safely makes it across.

As the poor hapless bastard approaches land, the psychological pressure will only increase. The first craft to cross the shore will be met with a sudden wall of flame springing up from the water from the miles of oil-filled pipeline sunk underneath. Should he be lucky enough that his ship makes it through the fire even as he smells the burning flesh of his fellow PLA, other boats speared or entangled on sea traps, he then faces a mile’s worth of “razor wire nets, hook boards, skin-peeling planks, barbed wire fences, wire obstacles, spike strips, landmines, anti-tank barrier walls, anti-tank obstacles … bamboo spikes, felled trees, truck shipping containers, and junkyard cars.”

The Lying Outlaw Slaver Air Force will be wasting their time destroying hundreds of decoy targets and dummy equipment, while real artillery rains hell and fire on the helpless PLA grunts as Taiwan’s mobile artillery and missile defense evades the invading air forces.

Should our poor bastard PLA grunt survive the initial barrages on the beach, he will then be fighting through the main Taiwanese Army groups, 2.5 million armed reservists dispersed in the dense cities and jungles of Taiwan, and miles of mines, booby traps, and debris. This is an enormous thing to ask of a private who has no personal experience with war. It is an even great thing to ask it of a private who naively believed in his own army’s invincibility.

You are blithefully running your mouth off about what would in the real world be a existential gamble. American war doctrine, which has been freely shared with the Free People of Taiwan uses terms like “mature precision-strike regime” and “anti-access and area denial warfare” to describe technological trends that make it extremely difficult to project naval and airpower near enemy shores. Costs favor the defense: It is much cheaper to build a ship-killing missile than it is to build a ship.

Democracies straddling the East Asian rim can deter Chinese aggression at a fraction of the PLA’s costs. In an era that favors defense, small nations like Taiwan do not need a PLA-sized military budget to keep the Chinese at bay. But, once the Lying Slavers of Beijing open this can of worms, it may not be up to them when the can is closed again, and whether it is their lives that will be demanded as the price to reopening their blockaded coast so that their people can eat again.

... Therefore it is vitally necessary that both sides respect and understand each other’s vital interests...

It's in our interests that these Lying Outlaw Slavers quit stealing from us, loosing pandemics on us, and threatening us with war if we shift some of our business elsewhere.
They may be able to pull that crap on their disarmed masses, but trying that crap with the US or any of the QUAD forces just might open up the door to resolving the issue of the Lying Outlaw Slavers of Beijing that lie to us, steal from us, threaten us, and just loosed a pandemic on us.

... I would add that this is also true of the U.S. relationship with the Russian Federation...

Sure, should the Lying Outlaw Slaver Morons of Beijing be dumb enough to get their coast blockaded so that the only way food and energy can get to their starving shivering people is overland with the cooperation, I'm sure that for the right price, Putin will be happy to lend a hand.

​

We will have arranged that in advance to ensure that Chinese People are not starved to death while the issue of their corrupt leadership that invaded a peaceful neighbor is resolved. You see, we are just great folks that way.

... Not nearly enough attention is being paid to these problems...

Uhhh, actually, you are likely to be amazed at just how well prepared for them we are. Let's see if you folks are smart enough to quit lying and stealing from your customers. If you can stop loosing pandemics on folks dumb enough to enter into a business relationship with you, and if you are smart enough to not be lured to your deaths in the strait of Taiwan. You folks behave and quit mistreating your neighbors and partners and you have a very good future ahead of you.

 

[Tom Paine 1949]

I’m not going to waste time on Zorro! or other ignoramuses who want to play out childish war games in their imagination. Everything I write is aimed at showing precisely the RISING DANGER of following real Dr. Strangeloves or simple political demagogues who talk big and would fight ... to the last Taiwanese.

 

[CrusaderFrank]

One of the main forces pushing the “Made In China” Covid-19 propaganda campaign was the Falun Gong religious cult’s pro-Trump Epoch Times, which also spread slanders that China deaths were in the hundreds of thousands and that Wuhan was cremating living victims of the disease. They also pushed the story that Dr. Ai Fen was imprisoned and disappeared, even before she reappeared shortly in April to say she was working as always and just wanted to be left alone to do her work.

Another original pusher of such stories was Breitbart, which worked closely with fugitive Chinese millionaire Guo Wengui, whose China information bureau served as Breitbart’s partner. Bannon was recently arrested on Guo’s $35 million dollar yacht in Connecticut. See Steven Bannon indicted for Fraud for my comments on the Bannon / Guo connection.

As for Dr. Ai Feng, her situation is not related directly to this OP theme, but she certainly may be under pressure not to speak freely about the initial cover-ups that she helped expose by Wuhan CCP bureaucrats during January of this year. China is not a country where free speech is guaranteed to individuals, especially when matters of national security or whistleblowing are concerned. This is a great pity and problem in China. Dr. Ai Feng may surely have interesting things to say about those early weeks of bureaucratic delay and indecisiveness, as perhaps also of our own nation’s many months of the same.

President Xi Awards you "Most Useful Idiot of the Month "

 

[Zorro!]

I’m not going to waste time on Zorro! or other ignoramuses who want to play out childish war games in their imagination....

You are the one threatening war if we choose to take some of our business elsewhere, I'm just wiping the floor with you, using your own silliness. If the Lying Outlaw Slavers are dumb enough to launch a war of aggression because we shift our business, it will likely be the final chapter of their misrule.

... the last Taiwanese...

Well, you only have four weeks in Oct to attack Taiwan and 4 weeks in April, the other 44 weeks of the year the rough seas will capsize your commandeered fishing boats. It's mid Oct, so clearly you aren't going this month, so, actually its you mouthing off impotently.

Good thing too, because I think Taiwan will whip your asses so badly that it will be clear to Mainline Chinese that the brutal lying outlaw slavers in Beijing have lost the Mandate of Heaven, and when that happens, China has a long history of revolution, that leaves the rulers dead in the streets.

So no, we don't fear your threats, Taiwan doesn't even fear your threats. According to your military leaders your soldiers are weak because they endlessly masturbate and play video games rather than effectively training.

Excessive masturbation is hurting China's military
nypost.com › 2017/08/25 › excessive-masturbation-is-h...

Aug 25, 2017 — PLA found that 8 percent of candidates failed because of abnormalities found in their scrotum from sitting too much. Another 25 percent flunked ...