Category: Relations – Sino-American

Wikileaks: Hillary Clinton Considered It “Clever” To Sell Out Taiwan For Cold, Hard Cash

From today's Taipei Times:

… a personal e-mail of former US secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton recently leaked by WikiLeaks suggested an adviser, Jake Sullivan, once shared with her an article titled “To save our economy, ditch Taiwan” by Paul Kane, a former international security research fellow at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. [Emphasis added]

In the article, Kane suggested that US President Barack Obama could bolster US economic security by ending its military assistance and arms sales to Taiwan, in exchange for a write-off of US$1.14 trillion in US debt held by China.

“I saw [Paul Kane's proposal to sell out Taiwan] and thought it was so clever. Let’s discuss,” said Clinton… [Emphasis added]

The veracity of this is open to question, given Wikileaks' status as a likely Russian front group. It would therefore be helpful if America's supine press asked Secretary Clinton to confirm or deny whether it would have been the policy of her government to stab fellow democracies in the back.

Helpful, yes. But it's pretty difficult to picture this planeload of throne-sniffers ever asking the Haggard Queen any tough questions:

Postscript: Paul Kane's from the JFK School of Government? For real?

"Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty…Offer not applicable if one trillion dollar bribes are on the table." —John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Inaugural Address, probably

UPDATE: The original Wikileaks document. Not much different from the Taipei Times' account, though it does include Paul Kane's article in its entirety.

Shadowy Chinese-American Bund Delivers Communist Party Propaganda On U.S. Airwaves

Sounds like the CCP is circumventing few laws, if not violating them outright:

Su declined to describe how he makes money when most of the U.S. stations [delivering his Chinese Communist Party propaganda] air virtually no commercials. He also declined to say how he got the money to finance his radio leases and acquisitions.

UPDATE (Nov 6 / 2015): Some commentary from Forbes.

What Did The Chinese Steal When They Hacked The American Office Of Personnel Management?

John Schindler of the 20Committee briefly explains the value of the material the Chinese Communists plundered from the American government

How America Should Respond To Chinese Cyberspying

From Technology Review:

There’s still room for escalation. In the indictment they talk about the SOEs [state-owned enterprises] getting this stolen data but didn’t name them. But it’s pretty easy to figure out. These are massive, multibillion dollar companies in China. The next step could be to charge those SOEs. If you want to make an impact you go after the recipient of the information.

Communist China Leans On Western Media To Spike Unfavorable Coverage

Zhongnanhai frowns upon exposes of Princeling corruption:

Mr. Winkler defended his decision [not to publish an investigative report about Chinese Communist Party corruption], comparing it to the self-censorship by foreign news bureaus trying to preserve their ability to report inside Nazi-era Germany, according to Bloomberg employees familiar with the discussion.

Sinofascism is not a dinner party.

Thuggish Is As Thuggish Does

Did you think that Beijing would be selective in its rare earth trade embargo, wielding its market position against Japan (alone, among all the countries of the world) as a weapon of last-resort?

Think again:

American trade officials announced last Friday that they would investigate whether China was violating international trade rules by subsidizing its clean energy industries. The inquiry includes whether China’s steady reductions in rare earth export quotas since 2005, along with steep export taxes on rare earths, are illegal efforts to force multinational companies to produce more of their high-technology goods in China.

[…]

Hours later, according to industry officials, Chinese customs officials began singling out and delaying rare earth shipments to the West. [emphasis added]

Earlier this year, Taiwan's Chinese Nationalist Party signed a free trade agreement with China, all the while insisting that the Benevolent Butchers of Beijing would never abuse their economic power over Taiwan.

That proposition of theirs appears more divorced from reality with each passing day.

UPDATE (Oct 20/2010):  Daniel Drezner on China's rare earth embargo against the West —

"[This is] going to encourage some obvious policy responses by the rest of the world. Non-Chinese production of rare earths will explode over the next five years as countries throw subsidy after subsidy at spurring production. Given China's behavior, not even the most ardent free-market advocate will be in a position to argue otherwise." [emphasis added]

 

I’ll Huff and I’ll Puff and I’ll…Shamble Away Somewhere

Dalai Lama Heads for Washington As Beijing Seethes  (Feb 18, 2010)

Seething?  Certainly the image China's been trying to project.  But you'd hardly know it from the next headline:

Five U.S. Warships Dock in Hong Kong  (also Feb 18, 2010)

LOL

Tales Of The Gold Monkey

No, not the old TV show.  Turns out the Los Angeles zoo built an enclosure for some golden snub-nosed monkeys from China, only to have the deal go sour.  Now the zoo is left with a 7.4 million dollar boondoggle.

I'm tempted to say that the reason is that American officials blanched when Beijing tried to designate their country, "Chinese L.A."  But the real reason is more prosaic than that:

"[The Chinese] were resentful that federal policy on importing any endangered species required that any money exchanged for that animal had to be used to conserve the habitat and wild population of that species," said David Towne, a Seattle-based consultant who helped broker the original deal.  [emphasis added]

The Chinese certainly have point here.  The zoo was supposed to pay $100,000 a year for the simians, and none of it was supposed to grease the palms of Chinese Communist Party apparatchiks?

Hey, those guys gotta eat too, y'know!

A Quick Point About That Chinese Sub / American Sonar Collision

Recall back in March, when the Chinese pounded
their chests over the U.S.S. Impeccable's presence in China's EEZ. 
You're provoking us, they said.  How dare you violate our sacred waters?

Flash forward almost 3 months to the day, when a Chinese submarine struck the sonar array of the U.S.S. John McCain.  It sounds like the collision took place in Philippino territorial waters, but it's possible it occurred in the Philippines' Exclusive Economic Zone instead.

Either way, I'm pretty sure Manilla didn't grant Beijing permission to operate there.  Which clearly demonstrates that to the Chinese, only China's naval territory is inviolable.

UPDATE:  A good explanation of the Impeccable incident over at YouTube.