Our guest today, Anders Corr is the author of the books The Concentration of Power: Institutionalization, Hierarchy & Hegemony (2021), Great Powers Grand Strategies: The New Game in the South China Sea (2015) and Publisher of the Journal of Political Risk. “His areas of expertise include quantitative approaches to conflict, rare events, and public opinion. Dr. Corr has in-depth field experience in Europe, Africa, and Asia, and has worked for several consultancies and government agencies, including Booz Allen Hamilton, United States Army, United States Pacific Command (USPACOM), United States Special Operations Command Pacific (USSOCPAC), Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).”
TAIWAN’S SPYCATCHERS ARE BATTLING A SUSTAINED CHINESE ESPIONAGE CAMPAIGN.
Beijing’s aim, say former Taiwan and U.S. officers, is to glean details on the island’s defense planning and undermine its leaders. Even the security detail of President Tsai Ing-wen has been compromised.
https://thebeltandnoose.com/taiwans-spycatchers-are-battling-a-sustained-chinese-espionage-campaign/
A Strategy to Counter Chinese Influence Operations
China’s United Front Work Department (UFWD), described by Xi Jinping as China’s “magic weapon,” is at the heart of China’s actions. Through the UFWD, American schools, businesses, politicians, and civil society institutions become unknowingly susceptible to Beijing’s malign hand. As FBI Director Chris Wray stated, China uses “subversive, undeclared, criminal, or coercive attempts to sway our government’s policies, distort our country’s public discourse, and undermine confidence in our democratic processes and values.” Only recently has the U.S. government started to dedicate more resources to countering FIO. However, the response has been insufficient. The U.S. should put as much energy into opposing FIO as China puts in conducting FIO.
https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2021/12/17/a_strategy_to_counter_chinese_influence_operations_808360.html
HERE ARE THE HYPERSONIC WEAPONS RUSSIA AND CHINA HAVE IN SERVICE
Currently, only two nations possess operational hypersonic weapons, China and Russia. It is important to remember, however, that “operational” is a subjective term. Russia, perhaps more so than any other nation, has a long history of claiming military capability they’ve yet to truly master. Likewise, many experts remain skeptical about the targeting capabilities of China’s hypersonic anti-ship weapons, even if the missiles themselves are indeed capable of flying at sustained hypersonic speeds. In other words, operational doesn’t necessarily mean effective, but to be clear, fielding these advanced weapons remains a significant source of international prestige and diplomatic leverage. On the world’s stage, most nations are left having to assume these systems can perform as advertised, in order to plan accordingly in the event that they do.
https://www.sandboxx.us/blog/here-are-all-hypersonic-weapons-russia-and-china-have-in-service/
Washington Is Preparing for the Wrong War With China – A Conflict Would Be Long and Messy
There is no easy way to prepare for a long war whose course and dynamics are inherently unpredictable. Yet the United States and its allies can do four things to get ready for whatever comes—and, hopefully, prevent the worst from happening. First, Washington can win the race to reload. China will be much less likely to go to war if it knows it will be outgunned as the conflict drags on. Washington and Taipei should therefore aggressively stockpile ammunition and supplies. For the United States, the critical assets are missiles capable of sinking China’s most valuable ships and aircraft from afar. For Taiwan, the key weapons are short-range missiles, mortars, mines, and rocket launchers that can decimate invasion fleets. Both nations also need to be ready to churn out new weapons in wartime. Taiwanese factories will be obvious targets for Chinese missiles, so the United States should enlist the industrial might of other allies. Japan’s shipbuilding capacity, for example, could be retooled to produce simple missile barges rapidly and on a massive scale.
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2021-12-16/washington-preparing-wrong-war-china
US Builds Software to Predict China’s Response to Military Action
The US military has built software to predict Beijing’s reactions to US actions in Asia, such as military activity near China and arms sales to allies in the region, Reuters reported on Thursday. Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks was briefed on the new software on Tuesday during a visit to US Indo-Pacific Command in Hawaii. The tool examines data going back to early 2020 of China’s responses to provocations from the US.
https://news.antiwar.com/2021/12/16/us-builds-software-to-predict-chinas-response-to-military-action/
Putin and Xi plot their SWIFT escape
As Assistant to the President for Foreign Policy Yuri Ushakov succinctly explained, Putin and Xi agreed to create an “independent financial structure for trade operations that could not be influenced by other countries.” Diplomatic sources, off the record, confirmed the structure may be announced by a joint summit before the end of 2022. This is a stunning game-changer in more ways than one. It had been extensively discussed in previous bilaterals and in preparations for BRICS summits – mostly centered on increasing the share of yuan and rubles in Russia-China settlements, bypassing the US dollar, and opening new stock market options for Russian and Chinese investors.
https://thecradle.co/Article/columns/4857
US Blacklists Chinese Biotech Groups For DNA Collection Technology & Mass Surveillance
The Biden administration on Thursday announced it has placed China’s Academy of Military Medical Sciences along with 11 other institutes involved in biotechnology on an export blacklist for their involvement in assisting the Communist government’s oppression and surveillance of its Muslim Uighur population. Among other things the companies’ advanced technology is used for DNA collection as a key social control measure in the Xinjiang region, as part of efforts to use genetic technology to further mass surveillance capabilities. “These actions come in the broader context of the administration’s efforts to address the misuse of technology to surveil and in many cases…to exercise large scale repressive social control,” a senior Biden administration official told The Wall Street Journal.
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/us-blacklists-chinese-biotech-groups-dna-collection-technology-mass-surveillance
Pakistan ERUPTS In Protests against China
Large-scale protests have been happening for over a month in the Pakistani city of Gwadar, where China has built a large commercial port. The locals are angry about a number of things, but most can be tied to Chinese influence in the region. The US held its first democracy summit this week, which made headlines for censoring a Taiwanese official over a map of Taiwan and China. And the US is cracking down on more Chinese companies by adding them to a growing blacklist. This prevents US companies from selling parts to them, among other things. Watch this episode of China Uncensored for that and more of this week’s China news headlines.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ee-5SPKuDUk
A Populace Of Hostages: Corporate America’s Advancement Of China’s Belt And Road
Simply put, the CCP’s aspirations have always been framed within a zero-sum mentality, meaning China may only rise at the expense of the rest of the globe, a common feature of Marxist-Leninist theory. This has serious consequences for the American way of life and standards of living in the country. The US Government and intelligence community had typically understood Chinese grand strategy as patient and collectively viewed it within the context of former CCP General Secretary Deng Xiaoping’s mantra of “hide your strength, bide your time.” As we have seen in recent years, Xi Jinping seemingly abandoned this notion and forcefully projected China’s aggressiveness within global institutions and international fora. The dividends of cautiously capturing global elites and quietly bringing them into China’s sphere of influence has paid off quite handsomely for the CCP, as Xi believed it was time for China to flex its muscles. In accordance with the party’s Marxist-Leninist ideology, the BRI is the most suitable mechanism to coercively dominate global trade, infrastructure, and culture.
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/populace-hostages-corporate-americas-advancement-chinas-belt-and-road
The Slow Meltdown of the Chinese Economy – Beijing’s troubles are an opportunity for the U.S.—if Washington can recognize it.
China is experiencing a slow-motion economic crisis that could undermine stability in the current regime and have serious negative consequences for the global economy. Despite the many warning signs, Western analysts and policy makers are optimistic that Xi Jinping is up to the task of managing the crisis. Such optimism is misplaced.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/slow-meltdown-of-china-economy-evergrande-property-market-collapse-downturn-xi-cewc-11640032283
Why Authoritarian Regimes Bother With Elections – Beijing rewrote the rules of Hong Kong’s recent elections, and the result among voters was apathy.
With reengineered election rules, Hong Kong’s already limited democratic freedoms have been almost entirely stripped away. The number of overall seats in the city’s legislature was expanded to 90, but the number of directly elected seats was slashed to just 20. (Previously, half of the 70 seats were directly elected.) Other representatives are elected by functional constituencies, which are small, mostly commercial special-interest groups. Under a new policy of “patriots administering Hong Kong,” candidates were vetted by a panel headed by senior government officials and advised by the police. Not that there would have been many candidates to contest the positions even if the rules hadn’t changed; nearly every notable prodemocracy figure has been jailed, fled abroad, or retreated from public life after the passage of a draconian national-security law last year, another facet of a sweeping and unrelenting crackdown on Hong Kong’s liberties.
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2021/12/hong-kong-stunt-election-democracy/621071/