Donald Trump was elected with a mandate to make deals and “drain the swamp.” I had my doubts he could make a difference in the geopolitical realm. But even on economic matters, he has not had a lot of success. His Tiktok saga reveals just how far he has left people down.
[This article is cross posted at the Saker; a short, abridged version of this article was initially published on the South China Morning Post.]
Trump’s demand for a fire sale of Tiktok hit a legal wall two weekends ago when a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction. Judge Carl Nichols, a Trump appointee, questioned whether a President had the legal authority to so broadly ban and restrict a “personal communication” and “informational” service such as Tiktok on “national security” grounds.
But even without the injunction, Trump’s vaunted deal-making skills were fast morphing into a freak show. From the beginning, Trump made unsubstantiated accusation that Tiktok was being used as a platform for Chinese espionage even when the CIA found no evidence of Chinese espionage. The EFF – which traditionally has been critical of China’s Internet companies – has also concluded that there is no evidence that TikTok is less secure than other social media apps.
Sincere there are lots of misinformation and disinformation – fake news – on the Western Media, I decided to put on some random real stories on China below. Enjoy!
Spectacular tidal bore surges up Qiantang River The Qiantang River tidal bore is a world-renowned natural phenomenon known for its momentum and charm, caused by the gravitational pull of the moon: The leading edge of the incoming tide forms waves of water that travels up the narrow river – against the direction of the river current. Known locally as the «Silver Dragon», the wave sweeps past the city of Hangzhou, menacing shipping in the harbor. The best time to view the tidal bore is between the 15th and 18th day of the eighth month on the Chinese lunar calendar, exactly the Mid-Autumn Festival. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGwV3ydAVvA
Recently, I wrote a short comment in the piece India’s border policies line with Thalassa noting that “India is on the wrong side of history.” It was too “conclusory” a comment that deserves to be better explained. So I’d like to take a brief time why I think India is on the wrong side of history in siding with America against China today.
Without much adieu, please take a good look at this short documentary from CGTN linked above. It’s about China’s take on its “War on Terror” in XinJiang. Compare China’s approach to the West’s own “internally” and “externally” (over US $6 trillion and over 1.3 million lives)
Go ahead – take the first steps to taking the red pills to escape from the MSM and US government propaganda about China … and much of the world…
[This piece was originally published in the Asia Times]
By Anand.orkhon – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=38279696
The media are once again ablaze with misinformation against China, this time on its supposed attempts to eradicate the Mongolian language from Inner Mongolia. A recent piece by Antonio Graceffo, an American economist and author based in Ulaanbaatar, in the Diplomat is an excellent introduction:
In August, the government announced that when the school year began in September, classes in Mongolian would be sharply curtailed. Under the new regulations, literature, politics and history will all now be taught in Mandarin….
Many parents in Inner Mongolia responded to the announcement by saying that they would prefer to keep their children home than have them forced to accept Mandarin-language instruction. As schools opened in the first week of September, strikes by parents were widespread.
In Naiman county, for example, where there were normally 1,000 Mongolian students, just 40 registered for this term and only 10 actually showed up on the first day of class. Across the region, more than 300,000 students have gone on strike….
Videos have surfaced online showing ethnic Mongolian parents trying to remove their children from school grounds and police preventing them from doing so. According to a report by the BBC, hundreds of riot police were deployed the prevent one strike, but after a standoff lasting several hours, parents finally managed to break through the police barricades and collect their children.
Other videos have appeared on social media showing masses of Mongolian children chanting “Our mother language is Mongolian!” and “We are Mongolian until death!’ One showed Inner Mongolian men, dressed in traditional clothes, raising the khar suld (or black banner), the battlefield standard of the Mongol army, which represents the power of the “eternal blue sky” (monke khukh tenger).
Traditionally, the khar suld was meant to concentrate and mobilize the spirit and power of all Mongols to defeat their enemies. According to legend, it is the repository of the soul of Genghis Khan. To many ethnic Mongolians, the raising of the suld is the equivalent of a declaration of war. As one Mongolian commented, “It’s a big sign that they will not give up. [The protesters] will go until [the] end.”
The article goes on to accuse China of diluting Mongolian language and identity.
With much pomp and circumstances, the U.S. has proposed to the world a brand new beginning, a shiny new age: a Clean Global Internet. The new enemy is China, which must be purged from the new rebuilt Internet.
According to Secretary of State Pompeo, “The Clean Network addresses the long-term threat to data privacy, security, human rights and principled collaboration posed to the free world from authoritarian malign actors.” “The Clean Network program is the Trump Administration’s comprehensive approach to guarding our citizens’ privacy and our companies’ most sensitive information from aggressive intrusions by malign actors, such as the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).”
I copied a video from Tiktok showing a video from the Epoch Times. The video showed amazing recent footage of lightning in Chinese cities such as Shanghai and Chengdu.
But … instead of leaving it just as that … the video goes on to gives a narrative these natural occurrences may not be completely natural … that perhaps God is mad at China. Why else would lightning arise near where so many people live or directly hit buildings?
With the Democratic Convention over and Republican next it’s obvious China is the target for both parties. as I am a Maoist in theory but just a petite Bourgeoise in practice I can’t help but thinking about the future for U.S.. All the kumbaya and stirring speeches belies the fact the pandemic exposes the chasm in American society and bleak future despite records keep breaking in the DOW. Professor Chen Ping recently stoked backlash against him when he claimed income of 2,000/month Yuans which is approximately $300 in Shanghai might not be bad compare $3,000/month in Los Angeles which I totally agree as you have to live in U.S. for a while to appreciate his humor and irreverence. Most Chinese have no idea U.S. is no utopia and sliding toward a cliff. I lived in NYC and when driving into Manhattan faced panhandlers on almost every other red light. Last night during dinner my niece who is married to an Irishman and teleworking from her $5,000/month luxury apartment commented of all the homeless living in empty hotels and her colleagues rather than brave through the unwashed are leaving in drove to the suburbs. Compare that with all the crowds in water park in Wuhan I am not optimistic about New York, with rent moratorium and eviction over soon and homeless will swell like a tsunami. I guess the nth QE will slow the deterioration somewhat as long as the rich around the world will squirrel their loot in U.S. and keep the dollar afloat as reserve currency, but that is more under assault. I do hope China starts soon to divest those dollars and bonds. I am not a Trumpie and wish the democrats well. At least their management will be gradual slide rather than an explosion like in Beirut. Any vaccine will not fundamentally change the direction of the slide. The ultimate human rights is the right to life, not some meaningless vote.
Sayragul Sauytbay/Сайрагүл Сауытбай was by the U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on 4 March 2020 given the «International Woman of Courage»-award (IWOC), an American award presented annually by the U.S. Department of State (mainly to opposition figures in other countries), https://www.state.gov/secretary-of-states-international-women-of-courage-award/
Besides on Jun 22, 2020 the book «Die Kronzeugin: Eine Staatsbeamtin über ihre Flucht aus der Hölle der Lager und Chinas Griff nach der Weltherrschaft» by Sayragul Sauytbay and German journalist Alexandra Cavelius was published on «Europaverlag. And «Scribe Publishers», a publisher in the United States, is going to translate and published the book in the UK, the US and Australia in May 2021 under the title «The Chief Witness: Escape from China’s Modern-Day Concentration Camps», https://www.dw.com/en/how-china-is-destroying-kazakh-culture/a-54434930
Journalist Alexandra Cavelius has earlier cooperated with Rebiya Kadeer, former president of World Uyghur Congress, on writing the book: «Rebiya Kadeer, Alexandra Cavelius: Die Himmelsstürmerin, Chinas Staatsfeindin Nr.1 erzählt aus ihrem Leben» (Verlagsgruppe Random House, 2007). and with the English version: «Dragon Fighter: One Woman’s Epic Struggle for Peace With China» (Kales Press, 2009)
Earlier in 2013 U.S. Department of State had given a similar «IWOC»-award to Chinese Tibetan Tsering Woeser.
A sum of money probably follows the award, but that is not stated at the web-site of the U.S. Department of State.
There are many reasons for Donald Trump to threaten to shut down Tiktok. One is personal. He is still infuriated about his team being tricked into his Tulsa rally disaster earlier in June.
Another is political. Donald is down in the polls. He is not down and out, but he is down across the board in so many areas, across demographics, and in electorally critical states. He needs a win, soon, and he ain’t going to get it against the Coronavirus. So he wants to manufacture a win against China.
But there may be a third…
Perhaps Donald really wants to shut down many of the younger generation who absolutely hate his guts – his racist, revisionist, some say fascist vision of America. He wants to shut them down. Immobilize them against mobilizing against him this coming election.
On a lighter note… if the following video is anything to go by, I think this may be an important but less discussed reason for Trump’s tirades against Tiktok. Tiktok is becoming an important platform of discourse and expression for teens around the world. Trump definitely sees them as a threat. He wants to silence a generation.
No, that didn’t happen. What did happen is an example of America’s full-spectrum propaganda against China.
Here’s an article from Forbes on forced Uyghur labor when it first appeared in March, and then updated when it was exposed for using photo of a factory in Brazil. Notice the March date remain unchanged, no editorial correction:
Now it seems America’s Color Revolution has come home to roost, we can see the difference in narrative between protest violence at home and the Hong Kong protest violence that was glorified and rationalized by our media back then.
So just how bad was it? Take this incidence of protest violence as example. An off-duty officer was jumped by 3 rioters a year ago. He suffered over 20 stab wounds and lost portions of fingertips. When his wife arrived the doctors told her to “be prepared”. Officer Wei managed to survive the 14 hour surgery ended with a hundred stitches all over his body. To date he is still struggling to recover and may require additional surgeries:
(LEFT: Officer Wei’s upper right arm bone was exposed by the two cuts; RIGHT: Officer Wei were stabbed multiple times, including cuts nearly a foot long)
There are many China experts talking about China, but most do not really understand China. Kishore Mahbubani is one of the few I would like to recommend who can talk about China with some understanding. His most recent book “Has China Won” generate quite a stir in Western academic circles and there were a few debates with other experts you can access in YouTube. He is a retired Singaporean diploma and was head of delegation to UN. As you can see from the title he thinks China is winning the war with West and analyzing the event before the Corvid pandemic, and the recent conversations and debates he further accentuate China’s advantage versus West. He is generally friendly with China although critical in the perspective of liberal thinkers in general. He agrees with Professor Zhang Weiwei and consider China from the perspective as a civilization with more than 2,000 years of unbroken history and various philosophies shaping the present course rather than the normal critics as authoritarian or even Marxism. Though he thinks China made a mistake in overplaying her hand and being arrogant and triggering the attacks by Trump Administration rather than continue to play Deng’s strategy of hiding her strength. And the fact of alienating the U.S. business community and causing overwhelming negative reaction from U.S. populace. I think he is wrong in that analysis as negative reaction was inevitable as China climb the ranks from way down to near the top. The Bush administration was ready to cut down China to her size as the spy plane incident developed, but was sideswiped by 9/11 and Bin Laden. Obama was ready to encircle China with Pacific Rim agreement and was cancelled by ignorant Trump. Islamic terrorism although damaging in Xinjiang did gave China 15 more years of breathing room with U.S. pressure and sanctions as Huawei and China is now on semiconductors. Professor Mahbubani is correct on China’s defensive nature and diplomatic policy. He is too optimistic on whether West can rise to China’s challenge and he is rare among the Western experts being seeing China clearly.
As calls for “defunding” the Police in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death mounts across America – land of the free, it is interesting to compare how police treats its citizens in the U.S. vs China – often depicted as a “police state” in the West.
Police brutality is nothing new in the U.S. or the West (for example, see this, or this, or this, or this). What about China?
As we get closer to the infamous date that many westerners would like to remember about tanks running around Tiananmen Square, I would like to remind why the events leading it in the first place. In case if you are brainwashed by western propaganda, the Chinese in early 1989 at the time saw rampant inflation and the Chinese government at the time weaning people out from the Iron Rice Bowl. Some people are simply disgusted how corrupt officials get rich while many other people suffer, especially academics. I rather not get into the details of this, but when the government doesn’t listen to the demands of its people, the government loses its legitimacy.
Fast forward today in America. America has been socialist for the Rich thanks to the bailout during the financial crisis, thanks to Obama. This snake oil salesman president also crushed the occupy wall street movement by the way. President Trump made it worse by giving rich people tax breaks. He bungled covid-19 response and gave the rich tax breaks and gave the poor the scraps. What stuck me to write this article is that the pro-business CNBC knows that this is happening.
Many Americans stuck at home, jobless, see their business evaporate, seeing many minorities die while the stock market went sky high, big businesses getting bigger. There is enough kindling out there to start the fire and the death of George Floyd is just the catalyst. If George Floyd was killed 6 months ago, the response will not be so intense.
Like what happened in early 1989 in China where its people questioned the legitimacy of its government, I think today many Americans have the same feeling. Do they care if some local stores get looted or burnt down? Probably not. Meanwhile, Trump floated the idea about sending out the military to quell the protests. Let’s hope that June 4th will not be an ominous day in America just like in China. Then again, president Trump, the elites and western media are blind thinking that these riots and protests are really about a racial problem and firing police officers and putting them in jail will solve the problem, I think they are wrong.
Trump’s mishandled almost every foreign and domestic policy from Trade war with China. Now Trump is knee deep in a recession and handling the coronavirus. China seems to have the upper hand controlling of the coronavirus situation and has passed the National Security Law in Hong Kong.
I recall several months ago when the Hong Kong government was proposing to pass the extradition treaty many other countries were outraged that this would happen. Compared to this many countries including Japan, South Korea, India, ASEAN as well as EU seems to be pretty quiet about this. Besides the US, only the other 4 five eyes countries (Canada, UK, Australia and New Zealand) are somewhat vocal about China’s latest move. Perhaps it is another sign of America’s decline and China’s rise.
Many people in the West – apparently led on by the U.S. government – believe that the Chinese had covered up information regarding initial extent of the epidemic in China. Some had asserted that the death toll in China was actually magnitudes higher. When that could not be proven, some are taken to the notion that China kept data regarding human-to-human transmission from the world. The supposed evidence? An email Taiwanese authorities sent to the WHO on December 31.
This email has often been presented to constitute evidence that Taiwan had learned of and warned the WHO of human-to-human transmission in Wuhan, but that the WHO ignored. Turns out, the email did not make any such assertion. No one has been able to present an email from Taiwan to the WHO reporting any information about human-to-human transmission.
This article from China Daily is good. Very good. It links to sources from the West itself that debunks the junk that is pervading through Western political establishments and many mainstream media.
Another article is this one from Independent Media Institute (IMI).
Yet another is this one from the Grayzone by Max Blumenthal and Ajit Singh.
And finally, this one from the TriContinental (archieved pdf here).
Despite his Administration’s many failures in responding to the Covid-19 crisis, Trump is rebranding himself as the tough, indispensable leader America needs. At the center of Trump’s new pitch: his “travel ban” against China back in February. According to Trump, but for his “early” and “decisive” actions, “thousands and thousands of lives” would have been lost.
“Everybody was against it. Almost everybody, I would say, was just absolutely against it. … I made a decision to close off to China that was weeks early. … And I must say, doctors — nobody wanted to make that decision at the time.”
Trump’s “travel ban” however was more taking a swipe at China than keeping America safe.
Recently I have been reading so much junk and misinformation about China that’s it’s unbeleivable. Of course, there will always be bottom feeders such as this from a David Cole on TakiMag. But there are some more reputable ones too, such as those from Niall Ferguson about China deliberately spreading the virus to the world…
Following is a recent piece from George Koo about the Sad State of American Anti-China Fever – from a Chinese American’s Perspective. It was published on Asia Times.
I completely empathize and echo George’s sentiment. America in my opinion has degenerated to a shadow of its former self – much in the last 20 years. It’s not the economy or gdp per se. America is still doing well there. It’s its psyche. It has conjured falsehood out of thin area against invisible enemies. It has fought pointless wars after pointless wars. The election of President Trump and the degeneration of President Trump from Candidate to President are all emblematic of America’s decline. It is a nation that no longer cares about truth … From the President down to the senators to many in the press, stories are presented in biased, unbalanced ways. There is little goodwill toward each other … or the world. It’s all about winning and success … devoid of humanity.
While western media wants to portray that China is making up ‘conspiracy theories’ about the origins of the Coronavirus coming to the US, many epidemiologists will point otherwise. However, the fact is that many pandemics start locally and it takes some time before it spreads worldwide and it usually starts in small wave(s) before it goes critical. Here are several instances of such outbreaks.
This outbreak happened in Northern Italy in the last 3 months of 2019 where hundreds more people got hit with the same symptoms. Because the virus has spread unabated, the recent second wave got hit very hard to Northern Italy and spread to neighboring countries including Switzerland, Germany, and Spain,
However, the Chinese believe this virus spread within Wuhan as the result of the Military Games in October 2019 and it comes from the US. In fact, many point out with the closure of Fort Detrick because of how it handles hazardous pathogens last August.
2) Virginia, US June/July 2019.
Another “mysterious illness’ with the same coronavirus symptoms happened in Late June/Early July in Greenspring retirement home.
As the result of this outbreak, 3 people died and more than 80 elderly and staff got sick. Many people point to a security officer who works in Fort Belvoir which is very close to this nursing home as the source of the infection.
[Editor’s note: rolling updates on coronavirus timeline]
[Important Editor Note: I have since communicated with the authors of the article and other experts in the field and now retract this post in the sense that there are major problems with the methodology of this study. First the bat virus chosen to anchor the tree is too far away to serve as an anchor. You can get whatever tree you want! Second, there are major issues associated with forcing a most parsimonious tree in a set of data with a lot of missing data – perhaps systematically biased missing data. The data set is mostly from China, and even there only a subset. Whatever tree built is a best tree for the data, and may be completely off from reality. The study is still interesting in that it is not assuming a place of origin; it is trying to figure out a place of origin. But the study – at least in its current form – has failed. If I get time, I will write a follow-up post on this study explaining in more detail. Thanks.]
I have been reading this article in the PNAS titled Phylogenetic network analysis of SARS-CoV-2 genomes by Peter Forster, Lucy Forster, Colin Renfrew, and Michael Forster. The study involves a study of the genomes of 160 covid-19 patients from the around the world. As readers may know, viruses are RNA-based entities that periodically and regularly undergo mutations. One can study these mutations and almost like clockwork trace their evolution – i.e. their lineage and migration pattern.
The authors specifically employed a methodology known as “character-based phylogenetic networks”. The technique has been used as the “method of choice” to reconstruct prehistoric human population movements, language evolution, various ecological studies, and some 10,000 phylogenetic studies of diverse organisms – and now virology.
I have posted references that explain the U.S. attempt to smear China in light of its own catastrophic handling of the coronavirus crisis. Turns out Taiwan is an integral part of that. Interesting article I read first on Guancha. I will translate a part … and refer to the CNBC report that it refers to as well … and conclude with some brief thoughts.
Earlier Allen had talked about US government’s effort to smear China. While Trump has moderated his rhetoric after the G20 call with Xi, the propaganda push continues with latest round accusing China of deliberate under counting.
The sixth edition of the guidelines, released March 7, reads, “Asymptomatic patients with clinical manifestations will be promptly amended as confirmed cases.”
This is an especially insidious piece of propaganda. Although VOA translated the part they want you to focus on about asymptomatic individual not being classified as confirmed case thus excluded, its conclusion defies logic – how is it possible to say these cases are not tracked, if their classification are to be amended later?
Various healthcare organization should report suspected, confirmed, asymptomatic individual within 2 hours online. …
2. Report Update. Suspected cases should be immediately updated on confirmation or exclusion. Asymptomatic positive individual should be immediately updated as confirmed, on symptom manifestation.
Surveillance is inherently difficult, especially for a respiratory disease caused by a novel virus during what is normally flu season in China. … So, just because the modeled projection and the numbers on the ground don’t add up, it does not imply that there is a cover up. The institutes in China have thus far done an outstanding job of communicating throughout a very challenging and dynamic situation.
Despite Trump having said he will stop using the term “Chinese virus” or “Wuhan virus” a few days ago, 1 the U.S. is still actively pushing the world to buy the idea that China covered up its coronavirus outbreak, a cover up which directly lead the world to suffer a pandemic.
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