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For the visits today, we will
- Look in on the idea that military assertion of Chinese control over Taiwan is imminent
- Check in on Strategic Competition Act 2021
- Two different focus/takes about the act
- read one of the many articles attempting to explain US hostility towards China
- Check in on a paranoiud editor in Taiwan
- listen to another editor in different paper which talks about choosing war or peace
- Nip into a whorehouse amidst covid-19 outbreak
- Wonder why someone celebrating demise of a print paper
China - Taiwan:
The noise around imminent and Chinese using military to force unification has seen a big uptick recently. There have been more than 600 various bills/resolutions/acts just in the current 117th congress which is not even 5 months in to the session. Latest big one being the one called Strategic Competition Act of 2021 that is making its way through the US Senate (full text in pdf, 281 pages, available to download at the congress → Bill To address issues involving the People’s Republic of China.).
Given that China unification process has been on the agenda for last 71 years, and that the civil war has not actually ended, instead has been in a stalemet where no one is shooting at each other for decades, trade and cross province economic activity ishigh. However the situation is still that there are two governments claiming tobe the sole/sovereign authority over China. The government in Taipei even claims Mongolia as oart of Chinese territory.
So a few stuff about the topic.
Starting off at The Diplomat which is reliably anti-China (23 May 2021) Amitai Etzioni has an opinion piece The Chinese Are Coming – to Taiwan? There are risks in hyping a threat.
The May 15 cover story of the usually circumspect Economist calls Taiwan “the most dangerous place on Earth.” What happened? Are Chinese marines amassing on ships, the way Russian troops are on the border with Ukraine? Has China grabbed the two Taiwanese-owned islands, Kinmen and Matsu Islands, which are a mere three miles from the Chinese mainland, the way Russia grabbed Crimea or Turkey seized parts of Syria? Has China sent a message through back channels to the new Taiwanese government, which is less friendly to China than their previous one, calling for Taiwan to yield or else…?
Of course not. China did somewhat increase its harassment of Taiwan via overflights and ship maneuvers, but not by much. True, China seeks to incorporate Taiwan into the People’s Republic of China; however, this is a generations-old ambition. True, China is building up its military and, last year, it produced some more landing vessels and submarines, but it has been doing so for years.
What is new is that the Biden Administration, very keen to find a theme that can unite Americans and gain bipartisan support, finally found one. It is not curbing the pandemic, as horrible as its toll was and continues to be; it is not the rollout of vaccines, which allows for the reopening of the economy and a return to a semi-normal life. It is China bashing.
Strategic Competition Act 2021
UCSA (Union of Concerned Scientists) (20 May 2021) layout out in easy to understand format Top Ten Problems with The Strategic Competition Act of 2021
The “Strategic Competition Act,” introduced in the Senate last month, is an ill-conceived laundry list of anti-China provisions focused more on containing and weakening China than on improving the competitiveness of the United States. The bill would likely result in the racial profiling and persecution of Chinese Americans, as well as other Americans with personal, business or professional ties to China.
Although the measure does contain some positive provisions on Chinese human rights problems, it would be more effective for Congress to address those concerns through separate legislation. Including human rights language in a bill on competitiveness will make it appear, both to China and other nations, that Congress is seeking to weaponize human rights issues to win an economic and geopolitical contest and is unlikely to help human rights victims.
This week, the legislation’s sponsors will try to incorporate it, via amendments, into the Endless Frontier Act, a more constructive bill that focuses on improving U.S. competitiveness by reinvesting in U.S. science and technology.
Below are the top ten problems with the Strategic Competition Act.
You will need to pop in to the article toread the top ten.
Silk Road Briefing (29 Apr 2021) On the other hand has a different take on the Strategic Competition Act instead focusing on US domestic impact and seems to conclude that it will spur and accelerate decoupling leaving US behind China and Russia. Next Up in Global Decoupling: The US Strategic Competition Act 2021
Op/Ed by Chris Devonshire-Ellis
- Strong anti-China sentiments within an aggressive Bill presented to Congress
- Danger of US-China strategy being perceived as ‘un-negotiable’
- A further step forward to Global Decoupling – who will blink first?
Following on from this week’s earlier essay “Global Decoupling: The Map” in which I described how a future ‘new cold war’ world could look, comes news of the new US Strategic Competition Act 2021, which only ramps up the possibility of eventual decoupling. The 300 page bill seeks to counter China’s global influence through a range of political and business protective measures, and is specifically at aimed in the preface “To address issues involving the People’s Republic of China.”
Some of the business measures include publication of a list identifying Chinese owned firms benefiting from involuntary or coerced tech transfers of IP from a company established in the US. The bill also proposes a list of subsidies to companies favored by China’s government or protected from overseas competition, and state enterprises benefiting from financial support by China’s government, and which give advantage to them over foreign competitors.
This latter point has been a bone of contention between China and the United States, with Washington long arguing that China subsidizes its SOEs in manners inconsistent with WTO agreements. China in fact changed its laws to prevent audited accounts of Chinese enterprises being admitted to subsidiaries external from China in moves to specifically introduce a lack of transparency to other nations auditors, and criminalized any attempt to do so, suggesting there were indeed WTO breaches to hide.
Over at Project Syndicate (21 May 2021): What Explains America’s Antagonism Toward China?
In the last few years, the view of China as a strategic rival has taken over the American political mainstream, with leaders largely choosing confrontation over cooperation. Two features of this shift stand out: how quickly it occurred, and the extent to which Americans – and their leaders – have united behind it.
SHANGHAI – Last month, the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee officially backed the Strategic Competition Act of 2021, which labels China a strategic competitor in a number of areas, including trade, technology, and security. Given bipartisan support – exceedingly rare in the United States nowadays – Congress will most likely pass the bill, and President Joe Biden will sign it. With that, America’s antagonism toward China would effectively become enshrined in US law.
The Strategic Competition Act purports to highlight supposed “malign behaviors” in which China engages to attain an “unfair economic advantage” and the “deference” of other countries to “its political and strategic objectives.” In truth, the bill says a lot more about the US itself – little of it flattering – than it does about China.The US used to take a sanguine view of China’s economic development, recognizing the lucrative opportunities that it represented. Even after China’s emergence as a political and economic powerhouse, successive US administrations generally regarded China as a strategic partner, rather than a competitor.But, in the last few years, the view of China as a strategic rival has taken over the American political mainstream, with leaders largely choosing confrontation over cooperation. Two features of this shift stand out: how quickly it occurred, and the extent to which Americans – and their leaders – have united behind it.
Checking in on editorials and opinion pieces in Taiwan,
Taiwan News (22 May), a reliably pro-independence aligned with DPP (Democratic Progressive Party) the one that has current presidency of Taiwan, sees something sinister in the way China is offering BioNtech vaccines (that one Pfizer is distributing) to Taiwan China seeks to exploit Taiwan's COVID outbreak for political ends
KAOHSIUNG (Taiwan News) — Earlier this week, the South China Morning Post published an editorial on the COVID-19 crisis in Taiwan.
The Hong Kong-based, English-language newspaper used to be highly regarded around the world for its frank and probing journalism. But much has changed since the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCPs) annexation of Hong Kong — and one thing that appears to have been lost is a free and independent press.
Once upon a time, a South China Morning Post editorial on a virus outbreak might have offered support and the hand of friendship, as well as unpicking any political or systemic faults that were in evidence. Now we see an editorial that could have been written by the "50 Cent Army" or even dictated from the desk of a Beijing bureaucrat.
“Taiwan has shown that border controls are not in themselves protection against the COVID-19 pandemic” the article says. "The only vaccine the island’s government had been able to secure was AstraZeneca did not help,” the article continues before outlining the unsubstantiated and exaggerated claims of health risks for the vaccination.
Funnily it thinks SCMP (South China Morning Post) is a pro-CCP media. That was very surprising to some of us who read SCMP regularly and watch the various columnists preach anti-CCP, and on domestic front bring contradictory arguements in columns. The best that can be said about SCMP is that is it decidedly pro-business with plenty sprinkling of anti-imperial stance,and a dose of nationalist pride. Oh and SCMP is still banned in China although you can nip over the border buy some copies and take them back.
Taipei Times, is a bit more prolific in opinion.editorialpieces andnumber of articles in general. originally i had intended to include one editorial, but between the time of reading that and getting round to typing this diary, another one has also turned up which I am loathe to omit,
So, (24 May 2021) Editorial/Opinion by Simon Tang, exhorting reform in Taiwan and to make a plan and decision Taiwan must choose war or peace
Some Taiwanese politicians have been saying that tensions in the Taiwan Strait are the result of provocations by the US and other Western countries supporting Taiwan and vilifying China.
A democracy guarantees freedom of expression, but it also has the right to protect itself, so here is a reproach to those politicians.
When domestic politics functions normally in a democracy, it is worth paying attention to public opinion polls. It is unlikely that the view of those politicians has entered mainstream public opinion.
However, the nation’s situation is unique, and politicians’ actions and statements often have a significant effect.
My US friends, fellow professors and students are not very sensitive to Taiwanese opinion polls and instead put a lot of weight in what the Taiwanese elite say. The following views are common among them:
First, if China attempts to invade Taiwan and Washington decides to get involved, the US military would need time to mobilize before it can provide assistance. If Taiwan does not fight the Chinese People’s Liberation Army or gives up halfway, the US might also revoke its decision to avoid war.
While you are there, take a look at Editorial which attempts to talk about covid-19 outbreaks due to sex working business aka whorehouses. EDITORIAL: Turning a new leaf on teahouses
Ever since the Central Epidemic Command Center on May 12 announced the first two COVID-19 cases linked to hostess “teahouses” in Taipei’s Wanhua District (萬華), it seems as though everyone has an opinion or joke to share about “person-to-person contact.” Yet as Wanhua emerges as the epicenter of the outbreak, it shows how the complicated industry is far from a joke.
At the teahouses in question, known as A-gong diam (阿公店) in Hoklo (commonly known as Taiwanese), hostesses, older than 40 on average, accompany predominantly male patrons in drinking, singing karaoke and chatting, and they sometimes also offer sexual services.
These establishments are a loosely kept secret, one of the few vestiges of the sex industry after then-Taipei mayor Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) ended legal prostitution in the capital in 1997. Most of the teahouses are registered as restaurants despite their true purpose, while law enforcement has long looked the other way.
Despite its legal status, Wanhua is well-known for its “red light district,” with more than 100 teahouses concentrated within just a few blocks. The two COVID-19 cases announced on May 12 — women in their 50s and 60s — work at different establishments a mere 300m apart.
Macau - The Casino City
The other forgotten bit of two governments system, and running a full on capitalism with distinctly Chinese characteristic. I was surprised to see an opinion piece in The Macau Daily Times, cross-posted by Zhang Zhouxiang, of China Daily who usually sticks toposting on China Daily,celebrating demise of a specific media in Taiwan called Apple Daily, China Daily | One Apple Daily keeps your IQ away
Tuesday saw Apple Daily in Taiwan suspending its print edition.
It’s such a relief to see a major source of rumors and brazen lies finally disappear. During the riots that ravaged the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region in 2019, the tabloid that once snapped photos of celebrities for blackmail suddenly turned political.
When the flames of the riots still singed the region, Apple Daily was the only media outlet that reported on rioters’ lies about nonexistent police violence in Prince Edward Station or fabricated rapes by police officers. They continued to peddle falsehoods even as the government repeatedly refuted them.
During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Apple Daily repeatedly pushed misinformation, such as falsely claiming that domestically produced vaccines were of poor quality, or that the DNA of Hong Kong residents was being sent to the Chinese mainland after nucleic acid tests. At a time when the whole world was fighting against the novel coronavirus, Apple Daily sided with the virus and against the people, those in Hong Kong included.
Hong Kong
Over at SCMP (24 May 2021) though perhaps US is not the main worry, Should China worry more about the EU than the US?
Just when the world needs to pull together to beat the pandemic, trade tensions seem to be breaking out again. Surprisingly, it’s not a resumption of friction between the US and China, but a souring of relations between the European Union and China.
With Joe Biden’s election as US president, there seems much better hope that Washington and Beijing can bury their differences and get the ball rolling again for improved trade relations. But, after seven years of careful negotiations, the EU has suddenly called a halt to ratifying the Comprehensive Agreement on Investment, which is aimed at boosting trade flows between Europe and China.
The impasse is being blamed on recent tit-for-tat sanctions by both countries. It’s bad timing for a world which is crying out for better multinational relations, faster bilateral trade flows and an early end to the pandemic-fuelled global economic crisis. It couldn’t have come at a worse time for global recovery.
I have not included CGTN, China Daily, People’s Daily stuff on this curation as they are likely tobe dismissed by most for being official Chinese papers
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