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Posts Tagged ‘Xi Jinping’

Escobar: Russia-China Are On A Roll

Posted by M. C. on December 28, 2023

Tyler Durden's Photo

by Tyler Durden

Authored by Pepe Escobar,

While the dogs of war bark, lie and steal, the Russia-China caravan strolls on…

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/escobar-russia-china-are-roll

2023 may be defined for posterity as The Year of the Russia-China Strategic Partnership. This wonder of wonders could easily sway under a groove by – who else – Stevie Wonder: “Here I am baby/ signed, sealed, delivered, I’m yours.”

In the first 11 months of 2023, trade between Russia and China exceeded $200 billion; they did not expect to achieve that until 2024.

Now surely that’s One Partnership Under a Groove. Once again signed, sealed and delivered during the visit of a large delegation to Beijing last week, led by Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin, who met with Chinese President Xi Jinping and revisited and upgraded the whole spectrum of the comprehensive partnership/strategic cooperation, complete with an array of new, major joint projects.

Simultaneously, on the Great Game 2.0 front, everything that need to be reaffirmed was touched by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s detailed interview to Dimitri Simes on his Great Game show.

Add to it the carefully structured breakdown written by head of the SVR Sergey Naryshkin, defining 2024 as “the year of geopolitical awakening”, and coming up with arguably the key formulation following the upcoming, cosmic NATO humiliation in the steppes of Donbass: “In 2024, the Arab world will remain the main space in the struggle for the establishment of a new order.”

Confronted with such detailed geopolitical fine-tuning, it’s no wonder the imperial reaction was apoplexy – revealed epidermically in long, tortuous “analyses” trying to explain why President Putin turned out to be the “geopolitical victor” of 2023, seducing vast swathes of the Arab world and the Global South, solidifying BRICS side by side with China, and propelling the EU further into a black void of its own – and the Hegemon’s – making.

Putin even allowed himself, half in jest, to offer Russian support for the potential “re-annexation” of country 404 border regions once annexed by Stalin, eventually to be returned to former owners Poland, Hungary & Romania. He added that he is 100% certain this is what residents of those still Ukrainian borders want.

Were that to happen, we would have Transcarpathia back to Hungary; Galicia and Volyn back to Poland; and Bukovina back to Romania. Can you feel the house already rocking to the break of dawn in Budapest, Warsaw and Bucharest?

Then there’s the possibility of the Hegemon ordering NATO’s junior punks to harass Russian oil tankers in the Baltic Sea and “isolate” St. Petersburg. It goes without saying that the Russian response would be to just take out Command & Control centers (hacking might be enough); burn electronics across the spectrum; and blockade the Baltic at the entrance by running a “Freedom of Navigation” exercise so everyone becomes familiar with the new groove.

That China-Russian Far East symbiosis

One of the most impressive features of the expanded Russia-China partnership is what is being planned for the Chinese northeastern province of Heilongjiang.

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And Then Biden Blew It … Again

Posted by M. C. on November 17, 2023

The warparty at work.

These are the morons with their finger on the red button.

And Then Biden Blew It … Again

Moon of Alabama

In June U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken was on a long desired trip to China. Just 24 hours after a somewhat positive statement of the meeting came out Biden blew it by calling Xi Jinping a ‘dictator’.

The Chinese government was not amused:

China’s foreign ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning called Mr Biden’s remarks “extremely absurd and irresponsible”. Speaking at a regularly scheduled press conference on Wednesday, she said that the comments were “an open political provocation” that violated diplomatic etiquette.

Yesterday President Xi Jinping of China met U.S. President Joe Biden near San Francisco.

The Chinese spokesperson had set out the agenda:

Hua Chunying 华春莹 @SpokespersonCHN – 11:25 UTC · Nov 16, 2023

President Xi Jinping noted that there are two options for China and the U.S. in the era of global transformations unseen in a century: One is to enhance solidarity and cooperation and join hands to meet global challenges and promote global security and prosperity; …
… and the other is to cling to the zero-sum mentality, provoke rivalry and confrontation, and drive the world toward turmoil and division. The two choices point to two different directions that will decide the future of humanity and Planet Earth.

Xi wanted to chose the first path. But shortly after their meeting Biden walked on the second.

He again blew it:

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What China Is Really Playing at in Ukraine

Posted by M. C. on May 3, 2023

As for what will be left of Ukraine, it is already being bought by Western mega-players such as BlackRock, Cargill and Monsanto. Yet Beijing certainly does not count on being left high and dry. Stranger things have happened than a future rump Ukraine positioned as a functioning trade and connectivity BRI partner.

https://strategic-culture.org/news/2023/04/30/what-china-really-playing-in-ukraine/

Pepe Escobar

Beijing is fully aware the NATO proxy war against Russia in Ukraine is the un-dissociable double of the U.S. war against its Belt and Road Initiative.

Imagine President Xi Jinping mustering undiluted Taoist patience to suffer through a phone call with that warmongering actor in a sweaty T-shirt in Kiev while attempting to teach him a few facts of life – complete with the promise of sending a high-level Chinese delegation to Ukraine to discuss “peace”.

There’s way more than meets the discerning eye obscured by this spun-to-death diplomatic “victory” – at least from the point of view of NATOstan.

The question is inevitable: what’s the point of this phone call? Very simple: just business.

The Beijing leadership is fully aware the NATO proxy war against Russia in Ukraine is the un-dissociable double of an American direct war against the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

Until recently, and since 2019, Beijing was the top trade partner for Kiev (14.4% of imports, 15.3% of exports). China essentially exported machinery, equipment, cars and chemical products, importing food products, metals and also some machinery.

Very few in the West know that Ukraine joined BRI way back in 2014, and a BRI trade and investment center was operating in Kiev since 2018. BRI projects include a 2017 drive to build the fourth line of the Kiev metro system as well as 4G installed by Huawei. Everything is stalled since 2022.

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China is the Rock Upon Which the U.S. World Order Breaks | The Libertarian Institute

Posted by M. C. on April 6, 2023

France is a major European NATO ally. China’s emergence as a diplomatic superpower has created a crack in the structure of the U.S.-led alliance.

France is not alone in its willingness to work with China. Where France’s independent position reveals a rift within the U.S.-led alliance, Brazil’s independent position reveals the emergence of other poles in the newly emergent multipolar world.

https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/china-is-the-rock-upon-with-the-u-s-world-order-breaks/

by Ted Snider

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In March, Chinese President Xi Jinping visited Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow, where they not only “reaffirm[ed] the special nature of the Russia-China partnership,” but “signed a statement on deepening the strategic partnership and bilateral ties which are entering a new era.” As Xi was leaving the Kremlin, he told Putin that “Together, we should push forward these changes that have not happened for 100 years.” That goodbye was Xi’s not so coded call for the end of the American century.

In his February 7 State of the Union Address, U.S. President Joe Biden got carried away by his excitement and arrogantly and ineptly went off script and called out, “Name me a world leader who’d change places with Xi Jinping. Name me one. Name me one.”

But the deflating truth is that the world is lining up behind China and Russia’s vision of a multipolar world no longer exclusively led by the United States. From Africa and its unanimous attendance at the recent Russia-Africa in a Multipolar World conference, to the Middle East and its long list of countries lining up to join the Chinese and Russian led multipolar organizations BRICS and the SCO, to Latin America and most of Eurasia and Asia, including India, the weight of the world is going to Xi’s place to balance American hegemony and support a multipolar world.

Biden’s outburst was an insult and confrontation that was a personal microcosm of U.S. provocation and confrontation of China on a global level. And it has had a corrosive and dangerous effect. An angry China is not answering America’s phone calls. Biden had hoped to talk to Xi on the phone in mid-March, but Chinese officials are not responding to U.S. requests to arrange the call. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s calls to set up talks with his Chinese counterpart have also not been answered.

China is emerging as the rock upon which the U.S.-led alliance breaks.

China’s growing economic, diplomatic, and political influence is beginning to be more powerfully felt on the world stage. The rapid growth of international organizations that support China and Russia’s multipolar world vision is just one piece of evidence. China’s emergence as an influential broker is another.

Beijing has become a power that can shape the world, leaving Washington out of the process. They shocked the world in March by brokering a region transforming agreement between archrivals Saudi Arabia and Iran. And they upset the U.S. in February by initiating a peace process for the war in Ukraine. Both initiatives left the U.S. out in the cold.

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US Officials Really, REALLY Want You To Know The US Is The World’s “Leader”

Posted by M. C. on March 23, 2023

The message they’re putting out is, “This is our world. We’re in charge. Anyone who claims otherwise is freakish and abnormal, and must be opposed.”

https://open.substack.com/pub/caitlinjohnstone/p/us-officials-really-really-want-you?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android

Caitlin Johnstone

In response to questions he received during a press conference on Monday about Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin cementing a “new era” in strategic partnership between China and Russia, the White House National Security Council’s John Kirby made no fewer than seven assertions that the US is the “leader” of the world.

Here are excerpts from his comments:

  • “The two countries have grown closer. But they are both countries that chafe and bristle at U.S. leadership around the world.”
  • “And in China’s case in particular, they certainly would like to challenge U.S. leadership around the world.“
  • “But these are not two countries that have, you know, decades-long experience working together and full trust and confidence. It’s a burgeoning of late based on America’s increasing leadership around the world and trying to check that.”
  • “Peter, these are two countries that have long chafed, as I said to Jeff — long chafed at U.S. leadership around the world and the network of alliances and partnerships that we have.”
  • “And we work on those relationships one at a time, because every country on the continent is different, has different needs and different expectations of American leadership.”
  • “That’s the power of American convening leadership. And you don’t see that power out of either Russia or China.”
  • “But one of the reasons why you’re seeing that tightening relationship is because they recognize that they don’t have that strong foundation of international support for what they’re trying to do, which is basically challenge American leadership around the world.”

Caitlin Johnstone @caitoz

John Kirby really wants everyone to know that America is in charge of the world. This is from one single press conference.

11:17 PM ∙ Mar 21, 2023

3,067Likes978Retweets

The illusory truth effect is a cognitive bias which causes people to mistake something they have heard many times for an established fact, because the way the human brain receives and interprets information tends to draw little or no distinction between repetition and truth. Propagandists and empire managers often take advantage of this glitch in our wetware, which is what’s happening when you see them repeating key phrases over and over again that they want people to believe.

We saw another repetition of this line recently at an online conference hosted by the US Chamber of Commerce, in which the US ambassador to China asserted that Beijing must accept the US as the “leader” of the region China happens to occupy. 

US empire managers are of course getting very assertive about the narrative that they are the world’s “leader” because that self-appointed “leadership” is being challenged by China, and the nations which support it with increasing openness like Russia. Most of the major international news stories of our day are either directly or indirectly related to this dynamic, wherein the US is struggling to secure unipolar planetary domination by thwarting China’s rise and undermining its partners.

The message they’re putting out is, “This is our world. We’re in charge.

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The Cold War Racket Is Back

Posted by M. C. on March 8, 2023

The modern war racket started in 1913 with Fed and never left.

by Jacob G. Hornberger

https://www.fff.org/2023/03/07/the-national-security-establishments-renewed-cold-war/

Chinese leader Xi Jinping has issued a direct critique against the U.S. government’s policy of containment when it comes to China. According to an article in the Wall Street Journal, the critique is unusual in that it comes directly from China’s leader rather than indirectly through governmental spokespersons. 

The Journal article quotes Shirley Martey Hargis, fellow at the Washington think tank Atlantic Council, who suggests that Xi might just be shifting the blame for economic problems in China. “It’s either take the blame or shift it,” she said. 

Notwithstanding China’s economic problems, however, the fact is that Xi is right. There is no denying that U.S. national-security establishment, led by the Pentagon and the CIA, have been pursuing a Cold War policy of containment against China, with the aim of renewing its old Cold War racket. 

Of course, as the Russians will attest, the Pentagon and the CIA have been doing the same with them — doing everything they can to gin up their old Cold War racket against Russia, just as they are doing against China.

Take a look at this map. You might be shocked, or maybe not. It displays the number of U.S. military bases near China. Tom Orsag, a freelance leftist journalist, points out that “China is effectively encircled by US bases all across the Pacific.” Orsag adds, “The U.S. is the biggest bully in the Pacific, with rings of military bases blocking and threatening China.”

Now, take a look at this map. It depicts the number of Chinese military bases near the United States. Number? Zero! In fact, according to an article at Eurasia Times entitled “Over 750 Military Bases Across 80 Countries: How US Military Overshadows China In Projecting Power Overseas,” China has the grand total of one foreign military base — in Djibouti, which is more than 7,000 miles away from the United States.

Take a look at this map. It shows the number of U.S. military bases near both Russia and China. 

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Woke Capitalism Is a Monopoly Game

Posted by M. C. on February 11, 2022

And, as Xi Jinping acknowledged in a recent address to the World Economic Forum, it is not “egalitarian.” It vests economic and political power in the hands of corporate and state elites, and it uses coercion and state power to concentrate the control of wealth in their hands—however much they promise to redistribute it through “social justice.”

https://mises.org/wire/woke-capitalism-monopoly-game

Michael Rectenwald

In 2018, Ross Douthat of the New York Times introduced the phrase “woke capital.” Essentially, Douthat suggested that woke capitalism works by substitut­ing symbolic value for economic value. Under woke capitalism, corporations offer workers rhetorical pla­cebos in lieu of costlier economic concessions, such as higher wages and better benefits. The same gestures of woke­ness also appease the liberal political elite, promoting their agendas of identity politics, gender pluralism, transgender rights, lax immigration standards, climate change mitigation, and so on. In re­turn, woke corporations hope to be spared higher taxes, in­creased regulations, and antitrust legislation aimed at monop­olies. Although woke capitalism alienates cultural conservatives, the Republican Party remains procorporate, making woke capitalism a win-win strategy for corporations.

Business Insider columnist Josh Barro suggested that woke capitalism provides a form of parapolitical representation for workers and corporate consumers. Given their perceived political dis­enfranchisement, woke capitalism offers them representation in the public sphere, as they see their values reflected in corporate pronouncements.

Others have suggested that corporations have gone woke only to be spared cancellation by Twitter mobs and other activists, that wokeness is a good “branding tool,” or that progressive shareholders also demand corporate activism.

But woke capitalism cannot be sufficiently explained in terms of placating coastal leftists, ingratiating left-liberal legislators, or avoiding the wrath of activists. Rather, as wokeness has escalated and taken hold of corporations and states, it has become a demarcation device, a shibboleth for cartel members to identify and distinguish themselves from their nonwoke competitors, who are to be starved of capital investments. Woke capitalism has become a monopoly game.

Just as nonwoke individuals are cancelled from civic life, so too are nonwoke companies cancelled from the economy, leaving the spoils to the woke. Corporate cancellations are not merely the result of political fallout. They are being institutionalized and carried out through the stock market. The Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) Index is a Chinese-style social credit score for rating corporations. Woke planners wield the ESG Index to reward the in-group and to squeeze nonwoke players out of the market. Woke investment drives ownership and control of production away from the noncompliant. The ESG Index serves as an admission ticket for entry into the woke cartels.

Research suggests that ESG investing favors large over small companies. Woke capitalism vests as much control over production and distribution in these large, favored corporations as possible while eliminating industries and producers deemed either unnecessary or inimical.

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Eurasia takes shape: How the SCO just flipped the world order

Posted by M. C. on September 24, 2021

The whole Global South, stunned by the accelerated collapse of the western Empire and its unilateral rules-based order, now seems to be ready to embrace the new groove, fully displayed in Dushanbe: a multipolar Greater Eurasia of sovereign equals.

The US better rethink it’s Iranian and Chinese war plans.

https://thecradle.co/Article/analysis/2104

By Pepe Escobar

https://media.thecradle.co/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/22154938/Unknown-11.jpeg

The two defining moments of the historic 20th anniversary Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in Dushanbe, Tajikistan had to come from the keynote speeches of – who else – the leaders of the Russia-China strategic partnership.

Xi Jinping: “Today we will launch procedures to admit Iran as a full member of the SCO.”

Vladimir Putin: “I would like to highlight the Memorandum of Understanding that was signed today between the SCO Secretariat and the Eurasian Economic Commission. It is clearly designed to further Russia’s idea of establishing a Greater Eurasia Partnership covering the SCO, the EAEU (Eurasian Economic Union), ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) and China’s Belt and Road initiative (BRI).”

In short, over the weekend, Iran was enshrined in its rightful, prime Eurasian role, and all Eurasian integration paths converged toward a new global geopolitical – and geoeconomic – paradigm, with a sonic boom bound to echo for the rest of the century.

That was the killer one-two punch immediately following the Atlantic alliance’s ignominious imperial retreat from Afghanistan. Right as the Taliban took control of Kabul on 15 August, the redoubtable Nikolai Patrushev, secretary of Russia’s Security Council, told his Iranian colleague Admiral Ali Shamkhani that “the Islamic Republic will become a full member of the SCO.”

Dushanbe revealed itself as the ultimate diplomatic crossover. President Xi firmly rejected any “condescending lecturing” and emphasized development paths and governance models compatible with national conditions. Just like Putin, he stressed the complementary focus of BRI and the EAEU, and in fact summarized a true multilateralist Manifesto for the Global South.

Right on point, President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev of Kazakhstan noted that the SCO should advance “the development of a regional macro-economy.” This is reflected in the SCO’s drive to start using local currencies for trade, bypassing the US dollar.

Watch that quadrilateral

Dushanbe was not just a bed of roses. Tajikistan’s Emomali Rahmon, a staunch, secular Muslim and former member of the Communist Party of the USSR – in power for no less than 29 years, re-elected for the 5th time in 2020 with 90 percent of the vote – right off the bat denounced the “medieval sharia” of Taliban 2.0 and said they had already “abandoned their previous promise to form an inclusive  government.”

Rahmon, who has never been caught smiling on camera, was already in power when the Taliban conquered Kabul in 1996. He was bound to publicly support his Tajik cousins against the “expansion of extremist ideology” in Afghanistan – which in fact worries all SCO member-states when it comes to smashing dodgy jihadi outfits of the ISIS-K mold.

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Only Trump Could Go To North Korea – Gold Goats ‘n Guns

Posted by M. C. on July 2, 2019

https://tomluongo.me/2019/07/01/only-trump-could-go-to-north-korea/

Author: Tom Luongo

Donald Trump did the unthinkable. He went to North Korea. He stepped over the line in the sand demarked by Washington protocol for nearly seventy years.

And that Washington establishment, predictably, hates him for it. It can be felt from all sides of the political rotunda. They hate that Trump realizes their position, one of maximum pressure, isn’t working.

They despise that Russia and China will benefit from ending this frozen conflict not to mention Koreans on both sides of the DMZ.

The cynic in me thinks they are angry that the American people will benefit as well.

So this weekend was a good one for peaceniks around the world. Trump and Chinese Premier Xi Jinping agreed to back down on the worst of his trade war demands.

Trump presumably had a good meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin which likely set the stage for his meeting with Chairman Kim Jong-un. Remember Kim met with Putin earlier this year and designated him as his go-between with Trump after the talks in Hanoi fell apart…

And only people so full of bile and despite would not be happy about this. Only people so enthralled with the thought of war and their own political and social ambitions would look at this event and seek to tear it down.

These are the people who lost yesterday in Trump’s historic and brilliant bit of diplomacy. And they are complaining bitterly about it today.

Everyone else wins.

In the land of the Twitterati, after stripping away the snark masquerading as analysis, we are left with a bunch of malcontents bemoaning their lost relevance…

In the past few weeks we’ve seen a smarter, savvier Trump avoid the traps his allies and advisors set for him. He’s showed immense restraint.

And now, Trump is climbing down off the immense mountain of entitlement he and his advisors placed him on. By stepping over the line into North Korea and meeting with Kim for nearly an hour he’s beginning to deliver on the promises he made during the 2016 campaign.

Why wouldn’t I or anyone else be cheering?

When Iran shot down that drone I said on Sputnik Radio that to solve Iran’s nuclear weapons problem Trump should be looking to North Korea. Getting Kim to agree to freezing warhead production, and presumably dissemination, ends the possibility of Iran achieving that goal anytime soon.

After meeting with most of his ‘enemies’ at the G-20, Trump did just that. He pivoted away from Iran, now a source of political pitfalls, back to North Korea which was the right thing to do.

If Iran wanted a bomb they would have one. If Russia and China wanted Iran to have one, they would have one.

So all of this talk is simply theater. Just like the strategic importance of North Korea in 2019 is still relevant with China fully capable of projecting its interests on its own.

It’s time for this insanity to end. Full stop.

The Koreans want it. The Russians want it. The Chinese want it. Japan wants it.

And we should want it too…

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