Zero Covid Policy Causes Mass Uprisings in China
China is experiencing mass unrest and uprisings across cities across the country. It’s unprecedented. (An excellent report by laowhy86 on the COVID lockdowns in China.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBfLm98oFTM
Shanghai Residents Rebel As Cases Surge, Lockdown Extended ‘Indefinitely’
“Please comply w covid restrictions. Control your soul’s desire for freedom. Do not open the window or sing.” To be sure, the surge in cases is partially a factor of the latest mass-testing regime, but that hasn’t stopped the CCP from imposing the most draconian lockdown since Wuhan (as we explained earlier, backing down would be an intolerable capitulation for President Xi and local authorities, whose careers are now in jeopardy due to factors that are completely out of their control). Following an unceasing torrent of scandals, including separating COVID positive children from their parents, covering up nursing home deaths and failing to address shortages of food and medicine, the population of Shanghai has reached its breaking point.
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/shanghai-residents-rebel-lockdown-extended-indefinitely
President Xi Faces An Impossible Dilemma In Shanghai As COVID Outbreak Worsens Despite Lockdown
The reason the situation in Shanghai presents such a difficult conundrum is that backing down from its lockdown in Shanghai would mean admitting that the “Zero COVID” approach has been an abject failure. But continuing with the heavy-handed lockdown risks spurring even more unrest – something the CCP has bent over backwards to avoid. For the CCP, it’s an impossible dilemma. Already, social media has been flooded with reports of locals dying from neglect as hospital resources have been stretched thin (and not from COVID; it’s other ailments that are killing people now).
https://www.zerohedge.com/covid-19/president-xi-faces-impossible-dilemma-shanghai-covid-outbreak-worsens-despite-lockdown
The brutality and absurdity of China’s zero-COVID policy
Li Chengpeng, a prominent Chinese writer, writes that lockdown horror stories will be recorded in the history books sooner or later. He cites a 4-year-old girl with acute laryngopharynx in Changchun who died awaiting medical treatment because she had no proof of a COVID test. In a residential neighborhood in Shanghai’s Xuhui District, Li writes, a patient with advanced rectal cancer could not get his radiotherapy for seven days. When he experienced internal bleeding, his wife knelt in front of the neighborhood committee and pleaded, “Please save my husband,” but the committee refused to let him leave for treatment and he died the next day. According to Li, common scenes are law enforcement officers dragging someone in front of a crowd and beating them for violating pandemic prevention rules, or train control officers sternly scolding passengers for taking off their masks to eat.
https://thehill.com/opinion/international/3256866-the-brutality-and-absurdity-of-chinas-zero-covid-policy/
Michael Hudson: Interview with Margaret Flowers, WBAI, March 29, 2022
And all of a sudden, this means that other countries can no longer safely hold their reserves by sending their money back, depositing them in US banks or buying US Treasury Securities, or having other US investments because they could simply be grabbed as happened to Russia. So, all of a sudden this last week, you’re seeing the world economy fracture into two parts, a dollarized part and other countries that do not follow the neoliberal policies that the United States insists that its allies follow. We’re seeing the birth of a new dual World economy.
https://thesaker.is/michael-hudson-interview-with-margaret-flowers-wbai-march-29-2022/
This War Is Actually About Central Banking
Lee Camp describes the many times the US has used military force to defend the dollar and how the current war in Ukraine may have more to do with Russia and China’s transition away from the dollar.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SyqeTvE5pxU
US approves $95m Patriot weapons support for Taiwan
“This proposed sale serves US national, economic, and security interests by supporting the recipient’s continuing efforts to modernize its armed forces and to maintain a credible defensive capability,” it said. “The proposed sale will help to sustain the recipient’s missile density and ensure readiness for air operations. The recipient will use this capability as a deterrent to regional threats and to strengthen homeland defense.”
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/4/6/us-approves-95m-weapons-sale-for-taiwan
Why is China’s military so shockingly corrupt? Will Xi jinping be able to control the army?
Unlike the armies of many countries around the world, China’s military, the People’s Liberation Army, or PLA, has been an army of the Party since its inception. Above all else Its purpose is to ensure the survival of the Communist regime, and when faced with a split within the Party, it splits too, each protecting its own bosses.
Beijing claims to the outside world that China has 2 million active-duty soldiers, the largest regular army in the world. It also has the world’s second-largest navy in total warship tonnage. Coupled with the trinity of nuclear strike capabilities consisting of missiles, submarines, and bombers, it’s the largest military force in Asia.
However, it has been noted that the PLA has been relatively cautious in its actions over the past few decades, quietly expanding while avoiding provoking the US and its allies into military conflict and avoiding the formation of a global anti-communist alliance.
This cautious behavior can be seen as a strategy of the Chinese Communist Party or CCP, but it also reveals an unspeakable secret, namely, the real combat power of the PLA has been seriously undermined by the pervasive corruption in the military and the turbulent internal conflict within the Party.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5hENyRScto
Defence must secure northern Australia amid gravest risk since WWII
Acquiring nuclear-propelled submarines and growing the Australian Defence Force by 20,000 people are good initiatives, but they will take two decades to deliver. Meantime, budget estimates hearings last week revealed that Defence is inexplicably cancelling a $1.3 billion project that would have delivered armed and remotely piloted MQ-9B Reaper drones in the mid-2020s. This is, to use a strategic term, mind-bogglingly stupid. A rare Defence project that was going to deliver new combat capability in just a few years is shelved after a decade’s worth of planning and investment.
https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/defence-must-secure-northern-australia-amid-gravest-risk-since-wwii/
“We need to reunify with Taiwan province as soon as possible with our overwhelming troops and firepower”
– sociologist Li Yi spoke to cadres at Beijing’s Chaoyang District Party School about the lessons China could learn from the war on the road to unification with Taiwan.
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1510904715025993732.html
The overstated danger of a peaking China – Some foresee an era of aggression as China’s power peaks but return to non-threatening foreign policy’s more likely
Several respected foreign affairs analysts have recently argued that China’s relative power is peaking and will soon go into decline, prompting Beijing to behave more aggressively between now and the end of the decade. This view is well-argued and consequential, but – fortunately – questionable. Proponents of this view first point out the well-known obstacles to China achieving superpower status. China is running out of resources, its productivity is decreasing, its economic growth is permanently slowing and its population is rapidly aging.
https://asiatimes.com/2022/04/the-overstated-danger-of-a-peaking-china/
Biden wrote college recommendation letter for son of Hunter’s Chinese business partner, emails reveal
“Jonathan, Hunter asked me to send you a copy of the recommendation letter that he asked his father to write on behalf of Christopher for Brown University,” Schwerin wrote.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/biden-brown-university-hunter-chinese-business-partner-emails
Chinese firm regains control of DR Congo copper mine after agreeing to reach solution with government over royalty disputes
Policy and mining analyst Christian-Geraud Neema, wrote in an analysis for the China Africa Project: “The Congolese government is playing the appeasement card to avoid any probable form of judicial escalation – national or international – which would not benefit any of the parties.”
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3172881/chinese-firm-regains-control-dr-congo-copper-mine-after
