By Drago Bosnic | July 12, 2023

It seems that China has finally had enough of foreign attempts to slow down or effectively stop its technological advances. The Asian giant is now making very concrete moves against the United States and its numerous vassals and satellite states, targeting their own high-tech industries, including their massive Military Industrial Complex (MIC). The troubled Biden administration (but also the previous one) has started an essentially suicidal economic confrontation with Beijing, particularly against its high-tech sector, by far the fastest growing in the world. This includes a US attack on Chinese semiconductor advances.

In response, last week Beijing decided to impose export restrictions on two rare-earth elements it produces in abundance (up to 95% of global production, depending on the source) gallium and germanium. The two metals are heavily imported by the countries of the political West and its satellites, particularly for semiconductor production. It also seems that Chinas timing for this was perfect, as it greatly strengthened its negotiating position, particularly as it came mere days before US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen visited China last week. In other words, Beijing is finally capitalizing on its absolute dominance in rare-earth mining and refining.

As such capacities are sorely lacking in the political West, China believes that this move would finally open up talks and help convince the US that any future restrictions on microchip and semiconductor development in China will be equally (if not more) painful for the political West. On July 7, The Wall Street Journal reported that Yellen and the Chinese Premier Li Qiang discussed economic competition that would benefit both countries and precisely this was almost certainly one of the hotly debated topics during closed doors talks. The US has a very clear and easy choice in this regard. Unfortunately, its extremely likely to choose confrontation once again.

Chinas pushback is already yielding results, as the global prices of the aforementioned rare-earth elements have already spiked and continue to grow. Gallium soared 27% last week, traders who spoke with Bloomberg complained, adding that the gallium market, although well-supplied for the time being, will eventually be hit by export controls starting next month, causing a flurry of panic buying as traders are scrambling to purchase the metal in greater quantitie...

All nations understand that they must deal with outside pressures from other states, but Vietnam knows this better than most from their past experience with French colonialism, the Second Indochina War with the United States, and violations in their maritime waters by Chinese vessels.

Strong headwinds never fail to deter Chinese coast guard vessels and fishing trawlers from sailing into Vietnams exclusive economic zone (EEZ). While most policy analysts simply regard Beijings brazen acts of intimidation as routine, Vietnamese citizens recoil since they are all too familiar with Chinese advances into their sovereign territory.

Last month, a Chinese research vessel, Xiang Yang Hong, protected by an entourage of a dozen other ships, was dispatched into Vietnams EEZs oil and gas fields. This expansion of Chinas maritime militia has been widely recognized as a maneuver to achieve their control in disputed waters.

This unauthorized survey action was met by a rare public protest and resulted in the ships departure from the area.

In a Voice of America interview, Van Pham, head of the nonprofit South China Sea Chronicle Initiative says, Exploring the deep South China Sea has become Chinas strategy for obtaining valuable information for economic and military intelligence.

Pham and other commentators may recount the founder of modern Vietnam, Ho Chi Minhs quote, Land is the house, and sea is the door. How can we protect the house without guarding the door? The nations revolutionary leader and the Communist Party (CPV) acknowledge that their East Sea (SCS) is central to its national security and territorial integrity.

By guarding the sea, Vietnam seeks to safeguard its maritime sovereignty and protect its territorial claims. Despite its remarkable economic, industrial, and technological strides achieved over the past two decades, Vietnam faces real challenges in preventing Chinese vessels from entering its waters.

The sheer vastness of the maritime area, the complexity of disputes, and the disparity in naval capabilities between Vietnam and China make it difficult for Vietnam to keep Chinese boats out of their East Sea.

In 1974, in a bloody conflict, China annexed the Paracel Islands. It also failed to honor all of its law of the sea agreements including one reached in 2011 that sought to contain the dispute over the sea and the Paracels.

China, as a major super regional power, continues to rewrite the rules of freedom of navigation as it bolsters its maritime claims and exploits vital marine resources. Of the more than 3.1 million fishing vessels in Asia, China operates 864,000 of them according to a...

 Two stern warnings must be given to the arrogant NATO: Global Times editorial

Global Times Editorial

July 12, 2023: Information Clearing House -- The NATO summit is being held in Vilnius, Lithuania, from Tuesday to Thursday. The meeting focuses on plans to "counter the threat" from Russia, including discussions on NATO's expansion and Ukraine's future membership to NATO. Meanwhile, NATO's strategic impulse to meddle in the Asia-Pacific region is also imminent at this summit. Expanding cooperation with the four "Asia-Pacific partners" - Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand - is another major topic of the summit. In this regard, the US media boldly stated that NATO is trying to "deter China's strategic ambitions."

This is the second year that Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand have been invited to the NATO summit. In order to firmly rope in these four countries, NATO imitated the "Quad" mechanism of the US, Japan, India and Australia at last year's summit, and specially created a new name for these four countries called "Asia-Pacific Four (AP4)." This aims to institutionalize the cooperation between these four countries and NATO, and make them de facto new allies of "NATO+" in the Asia-Pacific region. According to sources, the joint statement to be issued in Vilnius will change the name of AP4 to "Indo-Pacific Four (IP4)," which is undoubtedly more in line with Washington's tone.

There are 31 NATO members, but they have never been monolithic and have different views on many international issues. However, they are in general dominated by the will of the US. Now they have been kidnapped by the panic and tension instigated by the US, becoming "Washington's axe, spears and shovels." Wherever NATO goes, wars are likely to break out. These are not only the subjective impressions left by NATO, but also objective facts to a large extent. This situation is actually more worthy of the high vigilance of those member states within NATO that have no intention of being pa...

  NATO is malicious poison former Australian PM

The Island of Taiwan has been turned into a powder keg by the infusion of U.S. weaponry, pushing the Taiwanese people into the abyss of disaster.  These are the words of the Chinese Defense Ministry in reaction to the recent $440 million sale of U.S. arms to the island. And now the U.S. is also Continue reading "Arming Taiwan is an Insane Provocation"

The post Arming Taiwan is an Insane Provocation appeared first on Antiwar.com Original.

Via: Summit News: Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr declared Monday that he believes the CIA was involved in funding the Wuhan lab where the COVID pandemic originated. In an interview with Fox News Jesse Watters, Kennedy suggested that the Biden administration is not interested in punishing China for covering up the lab leak because []

BY ANDREW KORYBKO | JULY 11, 2023

Theres a growing consensus that the failure of Kievs NATObacked counteroffensive and Moscows edge over NATO in their race of logistics/war of attrition will result in the resumption of Russian-Ukrainian talks in some form by the end of the year as was explained here. This will at the very least be aimed at reaching a ceasefire, but Zelensky is prohibited by the Rada from conducting talks with Russia, ergo the need for a mediator. Here are five reasons why India could play this role:

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1. The US Wants To De-Sinify The Peace Process

China has the diplomatic power to implement its plan for freezing the NATO-Russian proxy war, but only if the US allows Kiev to participate in talks under its aegis, which is unlikely to be approved. Theres no way that Washington would let its systemic rival go down in history as the country that helped end the most geostrategically significant conflict since World War II, with it instead preferring to de-Sinify the peace process by having someone else play this role in order to deprive Beijing of that diplomatic victory.

2. Russia Might Not Trust Turkiye To Mediate Again

Turkish President Erdogans violation of the Azovstal deal that he reached last year with his Russian counterpart might have irreparably damaged trust between them to the point where President Putin no longer feels comfortable with Turkiye mediating between it and Kiev e...