Tag Archives: foreign policy

Counterproductive

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The government of the People’s Republic of China now claims, at the end of its three-year Wuhan Virus shutdown, to be open for foreign business. A broad range of folks running American businesses actually are taking that government’s blandishments seriously.

Many companies that are increasing their commitments to China are consumer-facing. They still view China’s enormous market as a promising long-term bet, even if sales took a hit during the zero-Covid era.

This is, at best, counterproductive.

Any product’s technology, consumer-oriented or not, can be dual-used for military or intelligence collection purposes, and in the PRC, it will be—not only to the detriment of PRC citizens, but to our detriment and that of our friends and allies.

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Disingenuosity of NATO’s “Biggest European Members”

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Here’s the lede in the WSJ article:

Germany, France, and Britain see stronger ties between NATO and Ukraine as a way to encourage Kyiv to start peace talks with Russia later this year, officials from the three governments said, as some of Kyiv’s Western partners have growing doubts over its ability to reconquer all its territory.

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Any Excuse to Slow-Walk

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Now the Biden Defense Department is saying that it won’t be able to deliver the “promised” M1 tanks to Ukraine before the end of this year or potentially the next. According to Army Secretary Christine Wormuth, the military does not currently have the available inventory to supply the tanks. “Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh added:

We just don’t have these tanks available in excess in our US stocks, which is why it is going to take months to transfer these M1A2 Abrams to Ukraine[.]

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Should be Good for Us

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Russian President Vladimir Putin wants to start another arms race, which of necessity includes a technology race and a matching of economic strengths.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Tuesday that Russia would suspend its participation in the last remaining nuclear-arms treaty between Moscow and Washington, a vestige of the security architecture that has helped keep the peace for decades.

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It Shouldn’t Matter

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In a Wall Street Journal article centered on the US expanding our military presence in the Republic of China from vanishingly small to miniscule, there’s this meek remark from a “US official” regarding the training of RoC forces that that slightly larger presence would be carrying out:

One of the difficult things to determine is what really is objectionable to China. We don’t think at the levels that we’re engaged in and are likely to remain engaged in the near future that we are anywhere close to a tipping point for China….

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Lobbyists

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In particular, lobbyists representing the interests of the People’s Republic of China and companies domiciled there.

It turns out that the multinational retail and tech conglomerate Alibaba—headquartered in Hangzhou, Zhejiang, PRC—has lobbied, and donated lots of money to, American politicians, to the tune of $2.5 million just last year.

And this, via Voice of America:

Public information shows that Mercury, a lobbying firm, lobbied the White House repeatedly on behalf of Alibaba on technology policy issues, access to US capital markets, issues related to e-commerce, and small- and medium-sized enterprise export promotion.

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Yet Another Reason

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…to stop trading with and to bar exports altogether to (and imports from) the People’s Republic of China.

A US manufacturer of X-ray equipment had a decade-old patent invalidated by a Chinese legal panel. A Spanish mobile-antenna designer lost a similar fight in a Shanghai court. Another Chinese court ruled that a Japanese conglomerate broke antitrust law by refusing to license its technology to a Chinese rival.

This is the PRC weaponizing its legal system as that nation prosecutes the economic axis of its cold war against the US and against the West in general.

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Moderately Stern Letter to Follow

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Secretary of State Antony Blinken claims he wagged his finger very sternly warned his Chinese counterpart against providing Russia with “lethal support” in the invasion of Ukraine and he made it very clear that China must never violate US airspace again.

Blinken told CBS News‘ Face the Nation in an interview aired Sunday that he sent a strong message to Chinese Communist Party Central Foreign Affairs Office Director Wang Yi at the Munich Security Conference on Saturday.
“I made very clear to him that China sending a surveillance balloon over the United States, in violation of our sovereignty, in violation of international law, was unacceptable, and must never happen again[.]”

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New Possibilities

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The People’s Republic of China has already said it intended to expand its presence in Antarctica to

add new ground stations in Antarctica to support its satellite activity and data collection as concerns mount over Beijing’s surveillance programs and the rising security threats directed at the US.

Rick Fisher, Senior Fellow at the International Assessment and Strategy Center and Global Taiwan Institute Advisory Board member has an additional concern.

In 2021, state media revealed that China had put a LIDAR—a laser radar—into the Zhongshan station to conduct “atmospheric research.’ Any kind of laser raises the possibility that the LIDAR could be upgraded to be a far more powerful laser.

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TikTok

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TikTok is trying to negotiate an agreement with our government that would allow it to continue operations within our nation.

TikTok has been negotiating with the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US, an interagency government panel, for more than two years on a way to wall off the company’s data and operations from the Chinese government.

The article’s headline, though, correctly identifies what should be the deal-breaking factor:

TikTok’s Talks With US Have an Unofficial Player: China

The China in question is the People’s Republic of China.

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