China
September 23, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
China’s President Xi Jinping reportedly is moving down a Maoist path. If so, this is probably the most important development of 2021. The Wall Street Journal reports on this development in a story with the headline: “Xi Jinping Aims to Rein In Chinese Capitalism, Hew to Mao’s Socialist Vision.” The subtitle is: “Going beyond curbing tech giants, [Xi] wants the Communist Party to steer flows of money and set tighter
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September 22, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
In this post, I argued against a defense of Gen. Mark Milley’s reassurances to China, in the waning days of the Trump administration, that’s based on his apparent collaboration with the Defense Department. If Milley made improper statements to Chinese military officials, it doesn’t matter that high-ranking DOD officials were in the loop. I also argued that, in all likelihood, Milley did make improper statements to the Chinese. Even before
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September 20, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
Every nation’s diplomacy is closely tied to its business interests. But for the French, as anyone who follows the Middle East knows, this approach is a fetish. If France’s claim to be the world’s foremost diplomats has any foundation, this is it. Any nation would be upset that the U.S. swooped in to sell submarines to Australia, overriding a deal France had in the works for years with the Aussies.
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September 19, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
Last week, Bob Woodward alleged that in the waning days of the Trump administration, Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, assured his Chinese counterpart, Gen. Li Zuocheng, that the United States would not strike China or its interests. According to Woodward and his co-author Robert Costa, Milley went so far as to pledge he would alert China in the event of a U.S. attack. Woodward
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September 15, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
A headline in the Washington Times declares: “Biden has ‘great confidence’ in Gen. Milley despite the general’s anti-Trump maneuvers.” A more accurate headline would replace “despite” with “because of.” Other than Milley’s anti-Trump sentiments and maneuvers, it’s difficult to imagine a reason why Biden would have any confidence in the general. Oh, wait. I forgot about Milley’s determination to expose military members to the anti-American ravings of critical race theorists.
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September 10, 2021 — Scott Johnson
Journalist and China scholar Jonathan Mirsky died this week at the age of 88. Britain’s Guardian has just posted Jonathan Steele’s fantastic obituary with many links recounting his career, mostly in British journalism. Jonathan taught Chinese and Chinese history at Dartmouth when I was an undergraduate. I got to know Jonathan (as we all called him) as the center of the antiwar movement on campus. He must have spoken at
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September 8, 2021 — Scott Johnson
The Intercept’s Sharon Lerner and Mara Hvistendahl report on what they found in documents they have obtained under the Freedom of Information Act: NEWLY RELEASED DOCUMENTS provide details of U.S.-funded research on several types of coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China. The Intercept has obtained more than 900 pages of documents detailing the work of EcoHealth Alliance, a U.S.-based health organization that used federal money to fund
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September 3, 2021 — Steven Hayward
There is little doubt that China was already giddy that they get to deal with U.S. “climate envoy” John Kerry, but having watched Biden’s weakness in Afghanistan, they aren’t even being coy about it any more. They are openly telling Kerry that the U.S. won’t get any Chinese cooperation on climate change unless the U.S. backs off pressuring China on other issues, such as trade, human rights, etc. The Wall
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August 28, 2021 — Scott Johnson
President Biden bears responsibility for the epic humiliation of the United States in Afghanistan. He proclaims it a great success consistent with his strategic genius. He nevertheless seeks to turn our attention elsewhere on a daily basis. Yesterday Biden remarked on the investigation into the origins of COVID-19 by our so-called Intelligence Community. The Key Takeaways have been posted in unclassified form. I found this paragraph in Biden’s statement more
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August 17, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
Almost every sentence of Joe Biden’s little talk about Afghanistan was dishonest, flawed, or both. Here’s one example. Biden said: Our true strategic competitors — China and Russia — would love nothing more than the United States to continue to funnel billions of dollars in resources and attention into stabilizing Afghanistan indefinitely. The U.S. was spending about $52 billion a year to support its military effort in Afghanistan and about
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August 4, 2021 — Scott Johnson
Last year the Washington Free Beacon reported that the New York Times had quietly deleted hundreds of “advertorials” that the Chinese Communist Party paid to publish. This week the Spectator published Dominic Green’s column reporting that the Times suppressed any inquiry into the origins of the Covid epidemic. Dominic’s column links to and builds on the Free Beacon story. Dominic also links to Times reporter Alexandra Stevenson’s tweet below, which
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July 31, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
David Goldman (also known as “Spengler”) summarizes with approval the analysis of Chinese professor Jin Canrong. The professor’s thesis is this: [T]he United States has issued a massive amount of excess currency due to the epidemic, and the amount of currency issuance far exceeds the normal needs of economic development, so there is a situation in which more currency is issued but production cannot be restored. Inflation in the United
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July 27, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
Michael Sobolik, writing for The Hill, identifies a key problem with Joe Biden’s China policy. That policy is an incoherent mishmash. Nearly every president from Nixon on has tried to engage and to some degree appease China. Donald Trump chose a different course. He confronted China. Biden, by contrast, is straddling these two courses. Sobolik writes: On the one hand, the president has insisted that the United States will compete
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July 8, 2021 — Steven Hayward
Politico reports a stunner today: the climatistas are begging President Biden not to be too tough on China for human rights violations, or anything else, because . . . it might be bad for the climate! Biden’s new Cold War with China will result in climate collapse, progressives warn As a new Cold War takes shape between the U.S. and China, progressives fear the result will be a dramatically warming
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June 21, 2021 — Steven Hayward
News accounts have been swirling for days (though conspicuously not in the NY Times, Washington Post, etc) that a very high ranking Chinese intelligence official (some reports say it is Dong Jingwei, the vice minister for state security) has defected to the U.S., and is confirming the lab leak hypothesis for COVID-19, as well as warning the U.S. of extensive penetration by Chinese agents. The News (Australia) reports: Vice Minister
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June 21, 2021 — Scott Johnson
Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett obviously had the deep thinkers of the Biden administration in mind when he asserted that Iran’s presidential election was a sign for world powers to “wake up” before returning to a nuclear agreement with Tehran. The winner of Iran’s presidential election this past Friday was one Ebrahim Raisi. Raisi won with 62 percent of the vote. Iran’s president-elect is sanctioned by the United States in
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June 15, 2021 — Scott Johnson
Sky News Australia has posted the video of Sharri Markson’s 16-minute report on the Wuhan lab that appears to have been the source of the Covid-19 scourge with the following summary appended: The Wuhan Institute of Virology kept live bats in cages, new footage from inside the facility has revealed, disproving denials from World Health Organisation investigators who claimed the suggestion was a “conspiracy”. An official Chinese Academy of Sciences
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