Mekong-US Partnership: Promoting Poverty, Driving Sinophobic Hostility
It’s no secret that the US is engaged in heated competition with China and openly aspires to “contain” China’s rise as a global power and its otherwise inevitable surpassing of US primacy. It should by now also be no secret that in order to do this, Washington has attempted to recruit China’s neighbours into various united fronts regarding...
US Huawei Claims Regarding Pakistan: A Perfect Propaganda Storm
The Western media has been reporting on a US-based software maker, Business Efficiency Solutions (BES, and its allegations that Huawei not only “stole” its technology, but also built in “back doors” into a law-enforcement project built in Pakistan. It’s a three-for-one allegation, cementing further an ongoing and so far...
US-Taiwan Arms Deal Undermines Not Upholds the Island’s Security
Twenty years ago, Taiwan counted the United States as its biggest export market, with Hong Kong and Japan in second and third place. Japan and the US also accounted for Taiwan’s largest import partners. Twenty years later, the numbers tell a different tale. China by far is now Taiwan’s largest import and export trade partner, and counting...
If US Can't Have Myanmar, No One Will
A South China Morning Post (SCMP article citing US corporate and government institution “associates” inadvertently gave away the entire game unfolding in Southeast Asia’s Myanmar. It is a conflict where US-backed armed opposition groups (previously depicted by the Western media as “peaceful” “pro-democracy” activists are fighting Myanmar’s central government...
Belt & Road: The China-Laos-Thailand Corridor
China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI reaches out in all directions, across Central Asia into Europe, up into Russia, through the seas and oceans of Asia, out to Africa and of course, deep into Southeast Asia. The Southeast Asian leg of BRI consists primarily of a now-under-construction high-speed rail (HSR line connecting China’s Yunnan Province with Laos, Thailand...
Myanmar’s Crisis Follows Predictable ‘Libya Model’ Pattern
All too predictably, the crisis in Myanmar has rapidly spiralled out of control with what we were told were “peaceful” “pro-democracy” protesters transforming into heavily armed militants fighting Myanmar’s central government, its police force and its armed forces with war weapons. Of course, the protests were never peaceful...
New Zealand Refuses to Accuse China of "Genocide"
New Zealand increasingly finds itself straddling East and West, balancing between participation in the rise of Asia and a strong economic partnership with China and pressure placed on it by the West, the United States and United Kingdom in particular, and their common goal of encircling and containing China. This balancing act was highlighted again recently when...
US Maritime Bullying Targets "Ally" India
Tensions temporarily spiked between Washington and New Delhi when US warships conducted a "freedom of navigation operation" (FONOP inside India's exclusive economic zone (EEZ in early April. The US' own 7th Fleet website in an announcement would claim: On April 7, 2021 (local time USS John Paul Jones (DDG 53 asserted navigational rights...
Australia's Self-Inflicted Economic Woes Continue
Australia had until recently been enjoying economic growth alongside the rise of China. This all changed when Canberra began following Washington's lead, antagonising China, and in what would snowball into a costly, self-inflicted economic crisis. Today, Australia not only faces mounting barriers to trade erected by China in response to Australia's systematic antagonism...
France Joins America's South China Sea Adventurism
France has recently sent one of its nuclear attack submarines over 10,000 kilometers to the South China Sea for a "patrol." It is the latest indicator of how strained the underlying credibility is of US foreign policy regarding the South China Sea and its growing conflict with Beijing. While Washington frames its involvement in the region as "championing" for claimants...
Myanmar's Military Takes Over
Headlines are abuzz with the military in Myanmar announcing that it would be taking power for a year, citing electoral irregularities that saw a landslide victory for the nation's defacto leader Aung San Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy political party. Western analysts have wavered between accusing the US and China of being behind the coup. Of course there is another possibility, that neither...
Is the US Isolating China? Or Itself?
Washington's predictable answer to Beijing's ongoing efforts to uproot US-funded unrest in its Hong Kong Special Administrative Region has been more sanctions. The New York Times in its article, "US Imposes Sanctions on Chinese Officials Over Hong Kong Crackdown," would report: The United States imposed travel bans and other sanctions on...