China‘s recent live-fire drills near Taiwan were targeted at the island’s government, a military expert said this week, claiming Chinese forces would leave “no chance” for the U.S. to intervene.

Veteran Chinese commentator Du Wenlong spoke confidently about the People’s Liberation Army‘s amphibious capabilities on Tuesday amid a six-day, large-scale PLA exercise off the coast of eastern China, roughly 135 nautical miles north of democratic Taiwan.

Appearing as a panelist on Chinese state broadcaster CCTV’s prime-time program Defense Review, the analyst said the short distance meant PLA forces would be able to reach the island’s shores “within a day.”

The prolonged Chinese military drills in the East China Sea were announced by China’s maritime safety authority, which issued a no-go zone for merchant vessels lasting through July 21. The exercises—also about 120 nautical miles northeast of the disputed Senkaku Islands—would have involved the PLA’s Eastern Theater Command.

© Fred Lee/Getty Images Planes from the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Air Force fly in formation during a parade to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Communist Party on July 1, 2021, in Beijing, China. Fred Lee/Getty Images

“From a strategic point of view, this allows us to traverse that distance in a very short amount of time, then begin combat maneuvers on the island,” Du said of a hypothetical attack on Taiwan.

The live-fire drills were announced a day after a U.S. Air Force jet landed in Taipei to deliver what local media described as “diplomatic mail” for the American Institute in Taiwan, which is the de facto U.S. embassy on the island. The stopover lasted all but 34 minutes, but the nature of the delivery—involving an American military asset—irked Beijing, which accused the U.S. of trespassing in its airspace.

Du called the PLA exercises a “serious warning” about Taiwan’s continued military engagements with the U.S.

“The current drills a short distance away could be considered a routine exercise, but I think they’re specially targeted [at Taiwan],” Du added. “Taiwan is the target.”

“How much time would the U.S. really have?” Du said, in the event China decided to launch a wave of attacks to invade the island.

He added: “Before U.S. forces arrive, we will have completed all our combat tasks. They will have no chance to intervene in a Taiwan Strait conflict.”

Cross-strait tensions have risen in recent years amid a breakdown in dialogue between Taipei and Beijing, now into its fifth consecutive year. Each side blames the other for the impasse.

As U.S.-Taiwan ties reached new highs in the final year of the Trump administration, they coincided with a straining of relations between the U.S. and China. The Biden administration has been working to reestablish communications at all levels—seen as necessary to avoid misunderstandings and accidents, especially of a military nature.

Beijing, meanwhile, has offered weekly reminders of its intention to “unify” Taiwan, which it considers a Chinese province despite having never governed it. China has also warned Taiwan—increasingly confident about its security because of U.S. backing—that it will use force if necessary.

Taiwan’s female artillery brigade takes part in an anti-invasion drill on a beach in Pingtung County on May 30, 2019. Patrick Aventurier/Getty Images

Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force Murasame-class destroyer JS Ikazuchi steams alongside the U.S. Navy’s only forward-deployed aircraft carrier, USS Ronald Reagan, in the Philippine Sea on August 18, 2020. Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Jason Tarleton/U.S. Navy

U.S. Marines maneuver combat rubber raiding craft after conducting drills in the Coral Sea on July 19, 2021. Lance Cpl. Grace Gerlach/U.S. Marine Corps

U.S. Marines maneuver combat rubber raiding craft after conducting drills in the Coral Sea on July 19, 2021. Lance Cpl. Grace Gerlach/U.S. Marine Corps

Although the recent PLA drills were considered close at 135 nautical miles, it is not the nearest to Taiwan proper Chinese forces could come.

The choppy strait separating the two neighbors is only 70 natural miles wide at its narrowest point. Taiwan’s outlying islands of Kinmen also lie just 3 miles from the Chinese port of Xiamen in Fujian province.

While the view out of Beijing suggests the PLA is capable of a swift and unannounced attack, military analysts in the U.S. and Taiwan predict such an outcome is far from conclusive.

China watchers say any invasion of Taiwan will require extensive amphibious preparations, including intentional troop movements that will serve as timely indicators for military intelligence in Taipei—and perhaps the U.S., too.

While the possibility of U.S. intervention remains, there is also the likelihood of action by Japan, which could find itself involved in the conflict in its capacity as an American treaty ally. Earlier in July, Japanese Deputy Prime Minister Taro Aso intimated that a Chinese invasion of Taiwan could pose an “existential threat” to Japan’s own survival, necessitating a collective defense of the island with U.S. forces.

In addition, the U.S. has about 50,000 forward-deployed troops in Japan, mostly on Okinawa.

But despite the tense atmosphere and bellicose threats of war, analysts say there is no indication that China is preparing an imminent attack. They say Beijing is unlikely to take such a large risk before 2022, when China hosts the Winter Olympics and Chinese President Xi Jinping seeks a third term in the fall.

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Source: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/no-chance-us-can-stop-chinese-invasion-of-taiwan-military-expert-says/ar-AAMrANu#image=AAMrANu_1|4

The post ‘No Chance’ U.S. Can Stop Chinese Invasion of Taiwan, Military Expert Says first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

The director of a think tank dedicated to monitoring the South China Sea said on Friday that overfishing in the body of water, exacerbated by China’s attempted colonization, could damage industries and food security in all of Southeast Asia.

“If fish stocks collapse there, it’s not just going to hit fisherfolk in Palawan and Luzon [Philippine islands]. It’s gonna hit fisherfolk throughout the Philippine archipelago and everywhere in Southeast Asia,” Gregory Poling, director of Washington-based think tank Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative, told a program on the Philippine network ABS-CBN. The Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative regularly monitors satellite images in the South China Sea for suspicious activity and was among the first to reveal that China had begun building artificial islands in Philippine and Vietnamese territory in the sea.

China claims nearly the entire South China Sea. In reality, the sea is mostly international waters, with territory claimed by Brunei, Taiwan, Vietnam, the Philippines, and Malaysia. Indonesia has also become part of the dispute because China claims waters near the exclusive economic zone of Natuna Island, an Indonesian territory.

China has built artificial islands in the Spratly and Paracel Islands, two chains mostly owned by Vietnam and the Philippines. It has filled the maritime territory in the sea with fishing vessels and elbowed out competition from local fishermen who have subsisted on the plentiful fisheries in the region for centuries. It has also caused what some scientists have called “unprecedented” damage to the regional habitat.

“Building new manmade islands on top of shallow reefs is smothering them with sediment, and turning clear water muddy — the environmental damage is substantial and unprecedented in scale,” Professor Terry Hughes, a marine biologist who specializes in coral, told the Guardian in 2015, when the islands were first being built.

“The Chinese heavily subsidized fishers to go out to the Paracel and Spratly Islands. Vietnam does the same and even if parties wanted to do something about it, it’s impossible to enforce fishery rules out there,” Poling said.

The Philippine Star noted that China is threatening the South China Sea’s environment through “verfishing, dredging, island-building and destructive clam harvesting.”

The Philippines sued the Chinese communist regime in April for the illegal clam harvesting. This is occurring in the Scarborough Shoal, an indisputably Philippine sovereign territory that China has claimed for itself. At the time, ABS-CBN found evidence of more than a dozen fishing boats extracting “pile upon pile” of giant claims from the waters around the shoal.

The Philippines has already taken China to court for illegally colonizing its territory. In 2016, the Permanent Court of Arbitration at the Hague ruled that China’s presence in the South China Sea, and particularly the Spratly and Paracel Islands, must come to an end. The Chinese Communist Party called the ruling a “farce” and has largely ignored it, continuing to build facilities in the sovereign territory of other nations and destroy the regional ecosystem.

The South China Sea boasted a rich, diverse biological environment of thousands of species of fish and coral. Since China moved in and began to dredge to create its islands, “fisheries are collapsing,” a marine biologist warned last year.

John McManus of the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science in Miami told Radio Free Asia (RFA) that dredging has destroyed significant fish habitats, killing many that get swept up in the sand.

“Millions of Southeast Asians depend on the sea’s fishing grounds for their food security,” RFA noted at the time. “According to McManus, the decline of the fisheries worries all of the nations involved, particularly because of the implications for huge numbers of potentially unemployed fishers.”

The Georgetown Environmental Law Review warned in a blog post last year that China’s methods in the region could lead to environmental disaster.

“China uses an especially harmful process to build these islands,” the post read. “Second, the conflict has caused claimant-countries to encourage their people to fish with the goal of strengthening the territorial claims of these countries. … Third, the militarization of the South China Sea dispute has increased air and water pollution.”

The London-based International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS) found evidence last year that, independent of the dredging and building of artificial islands, China is working to flood the South China Sea with military vessels, including “maritime militia” ships that appear superficially civilian, to wholly control the region. The South China Sea is one of the world’s most trafficked industrial sea routes, meaning controlling its waters would empower China over a significant percentage of global trade.

China insists, without evidence, that it has controlled the entire South China Sea for most of human history.

“The islands and reefs in the South China Sea are Chinese territory since ancient times,” Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping said in 2015. “They are left to us by our ancestors. The Chinese people will not allow anyone to infringe on China’s sovereignty and related rights and interests in the South China Sea.”

Follow Frances Martel on Facebook and Twitter.

Source: https://www.breitbart.com/asia/2019/06/07/expert-chinese-overfishing-south-china-sea-threatens-everywhere-southeast-asia/#

The post Expert: Chinese overfishing in South China Sea threatens ‘everywhere in Southeast Asia’ first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

BEIJING – Chinese officials appealed to U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Monday to repair relations they said have been damaged by U.S. tariff hikes and support for Taiwan, as their governments press North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons.

Pompeo said at the start of his talks with Foreign Minister Wang Yi that Washington has a “fundamental disagreement” and “great concerns” about Chinese actions and looked forward to discussing them. Reporters were then ushered from the room.

The polite but edgy tone underscored the plunge in U.S.-Chinese relations as the administration of President Donald Trump confronts Beijing over its technology policies and territorial claims in the South China Sea. Trump also approved a weapons sale to Taiwan, the self-ruled island the Communist mainland claims as its own territory, and sanctioned a Chinese company and its leader over an arms purchase from Russia.

Those developments came as the countries have raised tariffs on tens of billions of dollars of each other’s goods in a dispute over U.S. complaints that Beijing steals or pressures companies to hand over technology.

At the same time, the United States and China are cooperating on efforts to pressure North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to give up his country’s nuclear weapons and long-range missile programs.

Pompeo met Wang and Yang Jiechi, a senior Cabinet official and former foreign minister, after talks Sunday with Kim in North Korea’s capital, Pyongyang. Pompeo also visited Japan and South Korea, where he said Monday in Seoul that there had been “significant progress” toward an agreement for the North to give up its nuclear weapons.

Wang appealed to Pompeo to cease actions that Beijing sees as threatening its interests in order to avoid disrupting cooperation over North Korea and other issues.

“While the U.S. side has constantly escalated trade frictions with China, it has also taken actions regarding Taiwan that harm China’s core interests,” Wang said.

In their later meeting, Yang expressed Chinese frustration with Washington while avoiding specifics, telling Pompeo relations are “facing challenges.” Washington and Beijing “should and must make the correct choices,” Yang said.

“We hope the United States and China can meet each other halfway and conscientiously fulfill the important consensus reached by the leaders of both countries,” Yang said.

In Seoul, Pompeo said he and Kim had agreed to soon begin working-level talks on details of denuclearization and placement of international inspectors at one of North Korea’s main nuclear facilities.

Pompeo said they came close to finalizing a date and venue for the next Kim-Trump meeting.

“It’s a long process,” Pompeo told reporters. “We made significant progress. We’ll continue to make significant progress and we are further along in making that progress than any administration in an awfully long time.”

Trump, tweeting from Washington shortly after Pompeo left North Korea, cited progress Pompeo had made on agreements Trump and Kim reached at their June summit in Singapore and said, “I look forward to seeing Chairman Kim again, in the near future.”

Pompeo said he and Kim had gotten “pretty close” to fixing the logistics for the summit but stressed that “sometimes that last inch is hard to close.”

“Most importantly, both the leaders believe there is real progress that can be made, substantive progress that can be made at the next summit and so we are going to get it at a time that works for each of the two leaders and at a place that works for both of them,” he said.

North Korea’s state-run news agency KCNA, meanwhile, said Monday that Kim had “expressed his will and conviction that a great progress would surely be made in solving the issues of utmost concern of the world.”

In an early Monday dispatch, KCNA called the talks “productive and wonderful” and said that “mutual stands were fully understood and opinions exchanged.”

In Seoul, Pompeo said Kim is expected soon to name Deputy Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui as a counterpart for his new special envoy for North Korea, former Ford executive Stephen Biegun, who accompanied him on the trip. He and Biegun both said they expected meetings at the working level to begin soon and become quite frequent before the next summit.

“We are starting to see a first wave of actions we can take on all four pillars of the Singapore communique,” said Biegun. He is to work with South Korea, Japan, China, Russia and other countries that have an interest in the talks.

In Pyongyang on Sunday, Pompeo and Kim met for about 3 1/2 hours, first in a business session and then in a 90-minute luncheon that the North Korean leader hosted at a state guesthouse.

Before visiting Pyongyang, Pompeo held talks in Tokyo with Japan’s prime minister. He pledged the Trump administration would coordinate and unify its strategy for denuclearization with its allies. Japan has been wary of the initiative, but South Korea has embraced it.

Pompeo has refused to discuss details of negotiations, including a U.S. position on North Korea’s demand for a formal end to the Korean War and a proposal from Seoul for such a declaration to be accompanied by a shutdown of the North’s main known nuclear facility.

The United States and Japan have pushed for the North to turn over a list of its nuclear sites to be dismantled as a next step in the process. The North has rejected that and South Korea has suggested it may not be a necessary next step.

Pompeo, however, played down the differences.

“I’ve never been involved in an international discussion where there weren’t differences of view, not only between governments but inside of governments,” he said. “But if you look at the approach, we are in lockstep with each of those two countries in terms of how we approach achieving the results that everyone is aimed at. And so there’ll be tactical places where we’ll have debates and disagreements. That is a necessary component of getting to the best deliverable.”

“But with respect to our relationship with the Republic of Korea and Japan on this issue, I have found that we are in lockstep on the most important issues and how to approach them,” Pompeo said.

Since the denuclearization effort got underway with a secret visit to the North by then-CIA chief Pompeo in April, there has been only limited progress, even since the June 12 Trump-Kim summit that many had hoped would jump-start the effort.

North Korea so far has suspended nuclear and missile tests, freed three American prisoners and dismantled parts of a missile engine facility and tunnel entrances at a nuclear test site. It has not taken any steps to halt nuclear weapons or missile development.

The North has accused Washington of making “unilateral and gangster-like” demands on denuclearization and has insisted that sanctions should be lifted before any progress in nuclear talks. U.S. officials have thus far said the penalties will remain in place until the North’s denuclearization is fully verified.

Also on Monday, South Korean President Moon Jae-in said he expects Kim to travel to Russia and for Chinese President Xi Jinping to visit North Korea soon amid a global diplomatic push to resolve the nuclear crisis.

Moon said a second Trump-Kim summit could be accompanied by major diplomatic developments that could contribute to the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and stabilizing peace.

Moon also said there was a possibility of Kim holding a summit with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

Source: https://www.foxnews.com/world/china-tells-us-to-stop-criticism-says-relations-suffering

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President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un hold a signing ceremony at the conclusion of their summit at the Capella Hotel on the resort island of Sentosa, Singapore on June 12, 2018.Jonathan Ernst / Reuters file

WASHINGTON — China has steadily loosened restrictions on trade with North Korea in recent months, undercutting President Donald Trump’s effort to exert economic pressure on Kim Jong Un’s regime, former U.S. officials and independent experts told NBC News.

From coal shipments to revived construction projects to planes ferrying Chinese tourists to Pyongyang, China has reopened the door to both legal and illegal trade with the North, throwing the North Korean government a vital lifeline while derailing U.S. diplomacy. North Korea depends almost entirely on its larger neighbor to keep its economy afloat.

The increase in trade can be traced back to March, when the White House stunned Beijing by announcing plans for Trump to hold an unprecedented meeting with the North Korean dictator. Fearing a loss of influence with its often recalcitrant ally, China invited Kim to three successive summits in China, in March, May and June.

While China rolled out the red carpet for Kim, Beijing’s enforcement of U.N. sanctions began to soften and its limits on legal commerce also eased, according to regional analysts who track cross-border trade, foreign diplomats and former U.S. officials. As a result, the White House’s bid to impose “maximum pressure” on North Korea, in hopes of pushing the regime to abandon its nuclear and missile program, has been dealt a severe blow.

“The Trump administration’s much vaunted maximum pressure is now at best minimal pressure,” said Daniel Russel, a former senior State Department official who oversaw China policy. “And that means a huge loss of leverage.”

Trump’s rush to meet with Kim — before U.S. and North Korean officials had time to hammer out a clear agenda or commitments from Pyongyang — doomed a relatively united international front against the North that had been painstakingly assembled, Russel and other former officials said.

Now it could be almost impossible to reconstitute the pressure campaign. Apart from China’s reluctance, South Korea’s progressive Prime Minister Moon Jae-in is openly promoting economic engagement with the North and does not share Washington’s preference for strangling the regime’s trade prospects.

The shift is evident at the Chinese port of Longkou, where North Korean cargo ships have been spotted pulling into coal docks, according to data obtained by NBC News from Windward, a firm that uses commercial satellites and other data to track maritime traffic. At least 29 North Korean cargo vessels visited the coal docks in May and June. Prior to that no North Korean ships had paid a visit to the port since January.

Traffic has picked up on the border bridge to the Chinese city of Dandong, a main artery for North Korea. Small trucks carrying coal have been photographed moving across the border bridge, according to NK Pro, a specialist website that focuses exclusively on North Korea.

Coal is a crucial source of revenue for Pyongyang and U.N. sanctions bar North Korea from shipping coal to China or elsewhere.

There are other signs of an economic thaw.

Gasoline prices in North Korea, which had soared as China squeezed fuel supplies last year, have steadily dropped since March. The Trump administration has blasted North Korea for skirting sanctions by obtaining oil at sea, conducting at least 89 ship-to-ship transfers of fuel.

The unofficial exchange rate for the euro in North Korea also shot up in the winter of this year as sanctions began to bite, but the rate came back down by June and July, NK Pro reported. The rate rose to 10,000 North Korean won to one euro in February, and has now returned to about 8,000:1.

North Korea also appears to be defying U.N. sanctions adopted in December 2017 that prohibit it from selling fishing rights in its waters. Starting in May, maritime data has shown an increase in foreign fishing vessels in North Korea’s exclusive economic zone, Lucas Kuo, an analyst at C4ADS, told NBC News.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo shakes hands with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un at the Workers’ Party of Korea headquarters in Pyongyang on May 8, 2018.KCNA via KNS / Getty Images file

Construction activity has resumed in the North Korean capital, analysts said, and workers and heavy machinery have returned to a joint bridge project between the Chinese town of Tumen and the North Korean town of Namyang. The site had gone quiet last year and into the first quarter of 2018, experts at NK Pro reported.

Chinese tourism, which is not banned under U.N. sanctions and has provided a valuable source of hard currency, had dramatically dropped off as Beijing scaled back passenger flights and suspended most travel tours. But tourism has surged since June, after Air China resumed full service to North Korea and Beijing authorities lifted restrictions on travel tours, experts said.

Passenger flights to the capital are regularly sold out and expanded train service must be booked at least two weeks in advance due to the high demand. The rise in visitors has caused delays for some tour groups at Chinese customs offices at the border and the North Koreans have struggled to mobilize tour guides to accommodate the thousands of tourists coming by train and plane, according to NK Pro and other analysts. North Korea has even opened a tourist office in Taiwan.

“Those tourists are a serious money-maker for North Korea, and also an important political signal,” said Russel, now at the Asia Society Policy Institute. “It’s a signal to anybody who has business interests with North Korea that there’s plenty of room to maneuver now.”

Trump, who once boasted his talks with Kim had eliminated the regime’s nuclear threat, complained last month that China was “not helping” with North Korea. His secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, and U.N. ambassador, Nikki Haley, have called on other countries to crack down on sanctions-busting, citing smuggling by sea and overland borders.

“When sanctions are not enforced, the prospects for successful denuclearization are diminished,” Pompeo said in July.

But the administration has mostly steered clear of publicly condemning China, defended its diplomacy with Pyongyang as successful so far and played down the idea that the sanctions regime is unraveling.

“We have not seen significant changes in the strength with which the international community is enforcing sanctions on North Korea,” a U.S. intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told NBC News. “Trade may go up, but the enforcement of sanctions, that remains.”

The Trump administration declined to comment on the record.

Dismayed by North Korea’s barrage of missile and nuclear tests, China last year backed the U.S.-led effort to impose “maximum pressure” on Pyongyang. The Chinese supported the sanctions partly out of concern over Trump’s threats of military action, the so-called “bloody nose” option. But those threats have receded amid a potential detente with Pyongyang. Meanwhile, the U.S. president has since launched a trade war with China, with both governments imposing tariffs on a vast array of goods amid threats to impose more.

Despite Trump’s olive branch to Kim, North Korea has taken no concrete steps to fulfill Washington’s demands to provide a full inventory of its nuclear arsenal, permit a verification of its capabilities or agree to a timeline to dismantle its weapons. But Kim secured the suspension of a U.S. military exercise, the relaxation of sanctions enforcement by China, reduced the likelihood of a preemptive U.S. military strike and forged a dialogue with South Korea for possible economic cooperation.

Victor Cha, a former senior diplomat who was at the negotiating table more than a decade ago the last time the United States tried to persuade North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons, said Kim has come out ahead after his summit with Trump.

The North Koreans “are getting everything they want right now,” said Cha, currently a professor at Georgetown University.

The regime has bought itself more time to advance its missile and nuclear technology, he said. “The status quo is great for them.”

The post China eases economic pressure on North Korea, undercutting the Trump admin first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

OVER the weekend, the US-China trade war turned worse as President Donald Trump linked it directly to the continued North Korean nuclear development program—despite the UN sanctions for violating the international reduction of nuclear armaments—and indirectly accused Beijing of using it as a weapon in their trade war.

In international news service reports from Washington, Trumped stopped the scheduled fourth trip of US State Secretary Mike Pompeo to Pyongyang for another round of denuclearization and peace negotiations with his counterpart until the US-China “…trading relationship is resolved.”

This latest geopolitical development came after the UN International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna reported that the “continued and farther development of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’s (DPRP) nuclear program and related statements by the DPRK are a cause for grave concern.”

The Washington reports attributed to the White House spokesperson quoted Trump as saying “…additionally, because of our much tougher trading stance with China, I don’t believe they (China) are helping the process of (North Korean) denuclearization as they once were (despite the UN sanctions which are in place).”

Of course, and naturally, China denies this and claims in its domestic and international propaganda/“information campaign” that its foreign policy is designed for global “cooperation and peace.” But it totally ignores world criticism of its military buildup in man-made atolls and reefs in the international waters of the disputed South China Sea region.

Beijing has anchored its foreign policy on the One Belt One Road (OBOR) technical and financial assistance offered to the world’s developing economies. Its aim is to directly link China’s sources of raw materials to its factories to turnout cheap—but inferior quality—products for its manufacturing-exporting hybrid economy.

The reports appear to be the first open admission by the White House, though in not so many words, in published reports that China has been using—and assisting—North Korea’s continued development of a miniature nuclear rocket capable of hitting American mainland cities, as a tool of Beijing in the ambition to be the world’s top superpower in his century.

This can mean one sure immediate future development: the fallout of the trade war will be harsher on underdeveloped or developing economies of the world, including the Asean member nations, and close neighbors of China, especially when and if a currency crises follow.

Researchers of government think-tanks and academic scholars can easily trace the consequences of the 1997 Asian financial crises, and the history of economic recessions since the late 1920s that led to World War 2 in 1939 through the geopolitical evolutions for lessons learned.

Hopefully, last week’s Beijing visit of Malaysian Prime Minister Mohammad Mahathir and the warning statement of President Rodrigo Duterte on the West Philippine Sea explorations are the start of a unified Asean action on China’s OBOR projects.

Mahathir scrapped the $22-billion OBOR project deal with China because it would drive Malaysia into a debt trap Kuala Lumpur could not pay. He was trying to renegotiate the agreement but President Xi Jinping obviously was not responsive that he had to cancel it. Mahathir said repaying Malaysia’s debts was his regime’s priority now, not the railway and pipeline projects.

The Malaysian statement issued in Beijing at the end of his visit said 88 percent of the cost of the two oil pipelines in Sabah and Kedah had already been “paid to the Chinese contractor despite only 13 percent [being]completed.”

Duterte warned China—after repeated Chinese warnings against Philippine military supply ships and planes delivering provisions to small Filipino communities in the West Philippine Sea—against exploring, and extracting, for oil and uranium in the area to avoid war. Besides, the Philippines does not pose a threat to China in any way.

He said “there will be trouble if China grabs for oil and uranium…” in the area.

These developments gain more importance because next month is the start of the negotiations to finalize the draft of the Code of Conduct (COC), in the South China Sea, the basis of a working agreement between China and the 10 individual Asean members as to how conflicts in the SCS will be resolved.

China has been delaying the negotiation for the last 15 years and does not want to sign any agreement with Asean as a group but as individual sovereign nation-states.

International geopolitical and economic analysts have warned against the OBOR offers of Beijing because of the danger of debt trap; huge financial and technical assistance could force the recipient economies into more national financial loans they can repay on the basis of a 50-year (or more) timeline only.

Now that China is internationally recognized as an “economic miracle” and a superpower, it is relevant for the Asean 10 to intensify their studies and research on how China uses all available instruments of diplomacy—to win friends and influence people—for its own national interest, aligned with or diametrically opposite ours.

This is imperative now, world history shows us, because of the dynamics of evolution and in this the information communication technology age. And whatever happens to the superpowers will certainly affect us all.

China is currently intensifying its drive to convince small countries still closely allied (and trading) with Taiwan although they recognize mainland China or the People’s Republic.

Take the case of Palau, a small South Pacific Island state about 500 miles east of Mindanao. Beijing banned Chinese tourists to Palau claiming it is an “illegal destination” for “lack of diplomatic status” (it is not yet a fully independent sovereign member country of the UN). China wants Palau to accept mainland China tourists only—a pressure it has been putting on Palau to formally acknowledge Taiwan as a province of China under Beijing’s one-China policy.

Palau is unmoved and sticks to Taiwan as a close traditional ally and trading partner.

Or Sri Lanka, which reportedly agreed to its OBOR railway project with Beijing payable in 99 years. Now China wants a naval base instead and is reportedly putting pressure on Colombo to agree.

Or Djibouti by the southeast entrance to the Red Sea and the Suez Canal from the Arabian Sea, where the China’s People’s Liberation Army—the world’s largest armed forces—now has its first naval base outside its sovereign territory.

Beijing wants naval bases and roads to prevent rival economies –and this is primarily the US and its allies, which it believes are dedicated to prevent China from succeeding on her “predestination in this century”—from controlling choke points in the high seas to have sustained raw supplies for energy and the Chinese factories.

Aseans must be always on the alert for any negative developments in the domestic politics of the superpowers to strategically anticipate and choose their individual and collective options to survive any backlash or war. Because while nobody wants a world war, it is not automatically erased as a possibility in the present environment.

Source: https://www.manilatimes.net/us-china-trade-war-worsens/434942/

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The post South China Sea emerging as a dangerous flashpoint first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

The Pentagon announced Tuesday that Ulchi-Freedom Guardian, an intensive military readiness exercise involving tens of thousands of U.S. and South Korean troops, would not take place this August. This confirmed one of the most remarkable outcomes of the June 12 Trump-Kim summit — when President Trump announced at a news conference that the United States would suspend military exercises with South Korea.

Calling these exercises “provocative” and “expensive,” Trump also suggested that he was willing to consider removing all 28,500 U.S. troops stationed in South Korea in exchange for North Korean advances toward its denuclearization pledge.

Skipping a single military exercise is unlikely to dramatically change the status quo

Missing or postponing one exercise won’t transform the U.S. force posture, relations with allies or adversaries’ security policies. The United States and South Korea have suspended joint military exercises before, in the 1990s. This year, the two allies agreed to delay by several weeks a different set of military exercises during the PyeongChang Winter Olympics.

But military exercises serve multiple functions and aren’t just a bargaining chip. There are multiple audiences carefully observing — and calculating — what Trump’s statement might mean.

In the front row are South Korea, Japan and China. The abrupt cancellation — and the possibility of reducing or removing U.S. troops from Korea altogether — could have deeper consequences. Here are some key issues that may be at stake.

[Abe is back to talk to Trump — with a list of Japan’s concerns about North Korea]

Surprise policy reversals don’t sit well with U.S. allies

Neither U.S. allies nor the U.S. Forces in Korea (USFK), it seems, received advance notification of the U.S. intent to suspend large-scale military exercises. So it’s not surprising to see the alarm evident in statements from Seoul and Tokyo.

The South Korean military, apparently caught off guard, issued a brief statement on June 12 that “there is a need to discern the exact meaning and intent of President Trump’s comments.”

Speaking to reporters a few days later, Japanese Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera stated that the joint military exercises are “important pillars in maintaining regional peace and stability.”

[Making sense of the canceled North Korea summit]

The concerns of U.S. allies may be justified, given historical precedents of Washington’s key policy reversals without advance notice — from Trump’s announcement in May that the summit was canceled all the way back to the Nixon administration’s quest to normalize relations with the People’s Republic of China in the early 1970s and perceived “abandonment” of Taiwan in the process.

This “Nixon shock” was compounded by the fact that more than 40,000 South Korean troops were fighting alongside their U.S. allies in Vietnam at the time. Fears of a weakened alliance helped spur a five-year military modernization plan, including secret plans for a nuclear development program in South Korea and increased support for Japan’s defense buildup plan — the National Defense Program Outline — launched in 1972.

Here’s the big issue: Whether intended or not, the cancellation of military exercises and mention of U.S. military retrenchment can signal a decline in U.S. commitment to the defense of Korea — and Asia.

Governments rely on a mix of both verbal intent and demonstrative behaviors to signal credibility, which is why North Korea conducted six nuclear tests even after declaring its nuclear status. In a similar vein, military exercises can be a type of costly signal — to reassure allies and to deter aggression from adversaries.

And what about China?

China ends up one of the immediate beneficiaries of the summit. On North Korea, the Xi Jinping government has consistently pushed two main agendas. The first is a policy of “double suspension” — North Korea halts its nuclear and missile tests in exchange for the U.S. suspension of military exercises. The second is a “dual-track approach” of denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula while building a permanent peace system in East Asia — one that may see a reduced role for U.S. troops in the region.

[Three takeaways from Kim Jong Un’s trip to China]

The Trump administration rejected the double-suspension proposal last year, and a State Department spokesman suggested that the United States and China had agreed that they would not endorse this type of “freeze-for-freeze” deal. Beijing, however, quickly rebutted this by maintaining that the double-suspension policy remained the “best option.”

China has also been a vocal critic of South Korea’s decision to deploy the U.S.-designed Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile defense system. While the United States and South Korea maintain that THAAD is a legitimate means to counter a threat from North Korea, Beijing sees the deployment as the latest symbol of a strengthened U.S. military presence, potentially undermining China’s nuclear deterrence. Recent events could embolden China to demand the removal of THAAD from South Korea. 

Avoiding costly long-term consequences

Trump rationalized the suspension of these military drills as a cost-saving measure and negotiation tactic. Former and current military officials, though, argue that such exercises help maintain combat readiness, tactical and operational coordination, and strong alliance relations.

While welcoming the peace-building momentum, the South Korean public has concerns about the future of the alliance. A recent survey shows that 93 percent of respondents oppose the reduction or withdrawal of U.S. forces in return for North Korea’s stated intent to denuclearize.

Governments adjust the frequency and intensity of military exercises as needed. And we have seen escalation — and de-escalation — of these exercises in the past, but in conjunction with other negotiation tools, such as sanctions, and in service of broader strategic goals.

Here’s an example — Max Thunder was introduced in 2009 as a new, force-projecting form of joint U.S.-South Korea military exercise, partly in response to North Korean nuclear activities. Conversely, in 1992, the United States and South Korea skipped the annual Team Spirit military exercise, a quid pro quo for Pyongyang allowing the International Atomic Energy Agency to inspect its nuclear reactor site. When North Korea resumed nuclear activities after this apparent breakthrough, the United States and South Korea promptly restarted joint drills.

Such a coordinated action-for-action mechanism can be a prudent guide — not only for future negotiations with North Korea but also to sustain healthy alliance relations.

Seo-Hyun Park is associate professor of government and law at Lafayette College. She is the author of “Sovereignty and Status in East Asian International Relations” (Cambridge University Press, 2017). 

Il Hyun Cho is assistant professor of government and law and Asian studies at Lafayette College. He is the author of “Global Rogues and Regional Orders: The Multidimensional Challenge of North Korea and Iran” (Oxford University Press, 2016).

Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2018/06/21/the-pentagon-has-now-officially-canceled-military-exercises-with-south-korea-heres-what-comes-next/?noredirect=on

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At the same time, it is a big media event for Kim Jong-un. It will no doubt boost his international standing and strengthen his position at home. North Korea is the biggest winner, thanks to the calculating Kim and the disappointing Donald Trump. The immediate gain is the likely relaxation of economic sanctions against the country.

Other than these two points, one has to fall back on faith in Trump’s instinct that North Korea is earnest in denuclearisation on the Korean peninsula. He seems to have taken a sudden liking to Kim, someone he described as a “madman” after the death of American student Otto Warmbier, who was imprisoned during a visit to North Korea.

Somehow, Trump has forgotten that, in politics, interests are more decisive than personal relationships. But that is understandable as he is more a showman than a politician.

The joint declaration merely reaffirms the same commitment to denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula that North Korea has repeatedly made since 1992.

As New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof has observed, there was “nothing about North Korea freezing plutonium and uranium programmes, nothing about destroying intercontinental ballistic missiles, nothing about allowing inspectors to return to nuclear sites, nothing about North Korea making a full declaration of its nuclear programme, nothing about a timetable, nothing about verification, not even any clear pledge to permanently halt testing of nuclear weapons or long-range missiles”.

If this is not disturbing enough, Trump announced after the summit that he wants to remove all US troops from South Korea, a major strategic move which the Pentagon had rejected outright for years despite Pyongyang’s repeated demands. Trump’s seemingly offhand announcement has perplexed American allies, particularly South Korea and Japan, and confused its own military establishment.

Why is the announcement so disturbing? Consider the following scenario. Supreme Leader Kim, aware that Trump’s current term of office would end in 2½ years, could embark on a cosmetic programme of denuclearisation, obliging Trump to respond by withdrawing the US military presence in South Korea.

Meanwhile, Trump’s successor could be boxed in by his vague agreement with Kim.

The retreat of US military forces would set alarm bells ringing in Japan. Political realities are more important than promises and treaties. If Japan were threatened, what should Tokyo do? The responsible thing would be to rely on itself, to build up its military and create a home-grown nuclear umbrella.

Can Abe get Japan back into the North Korea diplomatic game?

The biggest loser in the new situation would be South Korea. A nuclear-armed North Korea would easily impose demands on a South Korea without American military protection. The demands could range from reunification on Pyongyang’s terms to generous economic assistance from Seoul.

A US departure from South Korea would weaken South Korea to the extent that it may have to give in to the terms dictated by North Korea on reunification. A reunified Korea may well turn out to be a second reunified Vietnam, but with nuclear warheads. Taking either a short or long view of history, there is very little reason to believe that such a Korea would prove to be a friendly neighbour to China.

Even if Trump-Kim summit clicks, Koreans might never

Therefore, another big loser would be China, North Korea’s supposedly good friend. If Kim Il-sung, the grandfather of Kim Jong-un, could at times prove unpredictable for Beijing, the current supreme leader has exhibited features of a 21st-century Frankenstein. His modus operandi has often proved to be beyond the understanding of Chinese President Xi Jinping, a seasoned world-class political player.

Kim and Xi discuss a ‘new future’ and ‘true peace’: North Korea

It is an open secret that there has been no real fraternal relationship between the Chinese Communist Party and the Workers’ Party of Korea, as evidenced by the years of estrangement.

The recent summit in Singapore has not produced any substantive conditions to inspire real confidence that the North Korean leader will follow through on his claimed denuclearisation programme. North Korea’s failure to dismantle its nuclear weapons would represent a persistent nuclear threat on China’s doorstep. However, this is contrary to the view expressed by retired US Navy admiral James Stavridis, in a Bloomberg article: “For Beijing, the best outcome would be an agreed framework that puts off any actual relinquishment of North Korea’s nuclear weapons into the distant future. This will ensure the long-term survival of the Kim regime and the continuation of a divided peninsula.”

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“We’ll be meeting on June 12 in Singapore,” the president confirmed to reporters after hosting an hour-long meeting with a top North Korean official in the Oval Office. Following the announcement, White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders announced on Twitter on June 5 that the summit is slated to take place at the Capella Hotel on Sentosa Island.

In a May 24 letter, Trump announced that he would pull out of the much-anticipated summit.

“Sadly, based on the tremendous anger and open hostility displayed in your most recent statement, I feel it is inappropriate, at this time, to have this long-planned meeting,” Trump said in a letter to Kim, though he thanked the North Korean leader for releasing three American prisoners held in the country.

The next day, Trump tweeted that the two countries are having “productive talks” about reinstating the summit.

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