In a recent briefing, the US Director of National Intelligence (DNI), Avril Haines warned, “I would characterize it as the Russians aren’t winning, and the Ukrainians aren’t winning, and we’re at a bit of a stalemate here.” So, where is… Read More ›
United States
China is defying global order to expand power, US admiral warns
The Chinese Communist Party and the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) are destabilizing international order in an effort to expand their global power, Adm. John Aquilino, commander of the Indo-Pacific Command, warned lawmakers during a House hearing on Tuesday. In his… Read More ›
Solomon Islands has Washington in state of alarm after a security pact with China
A tiny island chain in the South Pacific has Western governments scrambling after it agreed to a security pact with China that the United States and its allies fear could enhance Beijing’s military power in this strategically important region. The… Read More ›
Hypersonic weapons raise risk of nuclear war
Russia used a hypersonic missile against a Ukrainian arms depot in the western part of the country on March 18, 2022. That might sound scary, but the technology the Russians used is not particularly advanced. However, next-generation hypersonic missiles that… Read More ›
Shanghai to New York in two hours? China joins the hypersonic flight race.
Shanghai to New York in just a couple of hours? Not a problem when you fly in a hypersonic space plane. Beijing-based Space Transportation (aka Lingkong Tianxing in China) aims to make this prospect a reality with the development of… Read More ›
America must prepare for war with both Russia and China
As Russia threatens the largest land invasion in Europe since World War II, the most consequential strategic question of the 21st century is becoming clear: How can the United States manage two revisionist, autocratic, nuclear-armed great powers (Russia and China)… Read More ›
Russia and China’s plans for a new world order
The western alliance has threatened the Kremlin with “massive” and “unprecedented” sanctions if Russia attacks Ukraine. But, as the Ukraine crisis reaches boiling point, western efforts to isolate and punish Russia are likely to be undermined by the support of… Read More ›
Cadence Column Finished, February 7, 2022
It has been an amazing twelve years. The first political columns started in summer 2010. In 2011, I predicted that Taiwan would be recognized—a prediction which has not yet failed, but continues to push forward. Since 2014, the Times has… Read More ›
How US may get dragged into maritime clash with China
As China-US tensions ratchet up, the unthinkable – a military clash – becomes ever more likely. While neither likely wants a military confrontation, a perfect storm of circumstances could turn a relatively minor incident into a wider clash. While China’s… Read More ›
Pentagon plans to improve airfields in Guam and Australia to confront China
The Pentagon wants to improve bases in Guam and Australia to counter China following a review of U.S. military resources around the globe. The Global Posture Review (GPR), of which an unclassified version is set to be released later on… Read More ›
China targets ride-hailing operator Didi for delisting in New York
China’s internet regulator has ordered the operators of a major ride-hailing app, Didi Chuxing, to delist from the New York Stock Exchange, in an ongoing government crackdown on the country’s technology sector, international media reports said on Friday. The Cyberspace Administration… Read More ›
US sends warship through Taiwan Strait in message to China
The U.S. Navy’s Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Milius (DDG 69) sailed through the Taiwan Strait in a routine operation on Tuesday. The transit sparked anger from the Communist Chinese government, which considers Taiwan its territory, and it characterized the… Read More ›
Biden and Xi move back from the brink
The three-and-half-hour virtual summit meeting between President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping did not, and could not, solve the fundamental problems that have driven the two great powers toward confrontation. But both men clearly wanted to challenge the… Read More ›
China says its new stealth aircraft erodes U.S. advantages
The Chinese air force is developing new stealth aircraft and expanding the weapons-carrying capacity of its J-20 stealth fighter, the Pentagon said in its annual report on Chinese military power, issued Nov. 3. The Pentagon said U.S. advantages in the… Read More ›
Cadence Column: Asia, November 8, 2021
China tripped the alarm. Revelations of a US aircraft carrier-shaped target in China’s Taklamakan Desert doesn’t exactly resemble a friendly trick-or-treat visit. Congress is upset, calling this the closest we’ve ever been. Washington tries to use calm rhetoric, saying they… Read More ›
Cadence Column: Asia, November 1, 2021
China has been told, then told again. This week, China was told again again again. The EU gave a blistering rebuke to China’s unsolicited three cents about what other governments call their offices. Specifically, Taiwan is labeling it’s representative office… Read More ›
US, China sparring over Taiwan heats up anew
The United States and China are stepping up their war of words over Taiwan in a long-simmering dispute that has significant implications for the power dynamic in the Indo-Pacific and beyond. Amid a surge in Chinese military activity near the… Read More ›
Cadence Column: Asia, October 25, 2021
Taiwan was thrust into a position without being asked. In 1971, the United Nations removed the Taipei-seated government known today as “Taiwan” and switched to recognizing the Beijing-based government known as “China”. The Taiwanese were elbowed out of the global… Read More ›
U.S. needs nuclear spacecraft to compete with China, NASA official tells Congress
A NASA official told Congress on Wednesday that the United States needs more nuclear spacecrafts in order to compete with China. “Strategic competitors including China are aggressively investing in a wide range of space technologies, including nuclear power and propulsion,”… Read More ›
Cadence Column: Asia, October 18, 2021
According to Chinese and US claims, China has a high-orbit, hypersonic missile that can hit a target within 24 miles. And, that’s why China is the new boss of the world and everyone else should hate America. The end. But,… Read More ›
‘We’ll meet you in the sky’: Chinese air force commander challenges US military
As China flexed its most advanced stealth fighter jets fitted with home-grown engines at the nation’s biggest air show, a Chinese commander responded to an American challenge with an invitation to the US military to meet the PLA “in the… Read More ›
China’s Xi Jinping a danger to American business
China’s rapid changes will impact many American businesses. Companies in the states import many products from China, and China is the third-largest market for U.S. exports. Financial investments also flow in both directions between the two countries. Changes in the… Read More ›
China’s weak, counterproductive, hostage-taking diplomacy
Last Friday, Meng Wanzhou, 49, Huawei’s chief finance officer and the daughter of the founder, agreed to a deferred prosecution agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice in which, according to the Associated Press, she “accepted responsibility for misrepresenting the… Read More ›
Chinese Arctic incursion spooks US lawmakers
China is using the Arctic and seas only miles away from Alaska as a staging area to undermine U.S. national security, top lawmakers and experts say. Newly released images reveal a fleet of Chinese warships conducting operations in American waters… Read More ›
China weighing occupation of former U.S. air base at Bagram in Afghanistan
China is considering deploying military personnel and economic development officials to Bagram airfield, perhaps the single-most prominent symbol of the 20-year U.S. military presence in Afghanistan. The Chinese military is currently conducting a feasibility study about the effect of sending… Read More ›
Turmoil in Afghanistan and India’s Calibrated Steps
As the dust settles on the erstwhile Kingdom of Gandhara, the attention shifts from the ongoing evacuation and the so-called American blunder, to ‘what next?’. Distant nations in the European Union and the Middle East are on guard as it… Read More ›
China’s reaction to the US military withdrawal from Afghanistan
US President Joe Biden has made a strategic decision to withdraw US forces from Afghanistan, after twenty years of military presence under the pretext of eliminating terrorism and spreading democracy. Twenty years later, the Taliban has become more powerful and… Read More ›
In Afghanistan, China is ready to step into the void
The speed and scope of the Taliban’s takeover in Afghanistan have prompted introspection in the West over what went wrong, and how, after billions of dollars spent on a 20-year war effort, it could all end so ignominiously. China, though,… Read More ›
The new US Air Force secretary wants to ‘scare China’
After being sworn in as the U.S. Air Force’s top civilian, Frank Kendall went straight to the budget books. Kendall, a former Pentagon acquisition chief who is well-acquainted with the world of military technology, immediately immersed himself in the Air… Read More ›
China jails Canadian businessman Michael Spavor for 11 years on ‘spying’ charges
Another Canadian national detained by the Chinese authorities days after the arrest of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou in Vancouver has been handed an 11-year jail term by a court in the northeastern province of Liaoning on spying charges. Michael Spavor,… Read More ›
West’s Anti-lockdown and China’s ‘Beyond Good and Evil’
Anti-lockdown protestors
USA edges China, takes home most gold medals from Tokyo Olympics
It took until the final few medal events of the Tokyo Olympics, but the United States pushed ahead of China to close the 2020 Games as the big winners. The U.S. took home more gold medals than any other country… Read More ›
2021 Olympic viewership: China vs USA
At least 4 reasons explain the differences between China and the USA on viewership of the 2021 Tokyo Olympic Games. While the viewing of the Games both live and via media reporting in Greater China — mainland, Taiwan Island, Hong… Read More ›
China Has Reportedly Launched a Little Baby Version of the US X-37B Spaceplane
A Chinese aerospace manufacturer hailed a successful test flight of a new spaceplane that will broaden China’s reusable spaceflight capabilities. The unnamed craft reportedly takes off like a rocket and lands like an airplane, much like the U.S. Air Force’s… Read More ›
China Discovers the Limits of Its Power
Beijing’s confrontation with Australia should have been an unequal contest. That’s not how it worked out in practice. “Chewing gum stuck on the sole of China’s shoes.” That’s how Hu Xijin, the editor of the Chinese Communist Party–run Global Times,… Read More ›
What have we learnt in the past century?
It is 100 years since we were supposedly getting over the war to end all wars, World War I, and forming the League of Nations with the purpose of preventing such a conflict and slaughter happening again. Regrettably, the only… Read More ›
US-China rivalry rooted in lost trust
As early as 2005 John Gersham and Melvin Goodman alerted against the trend of an over-militarized US foreign policy. The warning has been a recurrent theme of American debate, although it gained little traction. The debate recently spilled into mainstream media… Read More ›
The Nuclear Future of East Asia
In the face of North Korea and China’s continuous expansion and advancement in their nuclear arsenal in the past decade, the nuclear question for East Asian countries is now more urgent than ever—especially when U.S.’s credibility of extended deterrence has… Read More ›
US warns companies about doing business in Hong Kong
The Biden administration issued a blanket warning Friday to U.S. firms about the risks of doing business in Hong Kong as China continues to clamp down on political and economic freedoms in the territory. Four Cabinet agencies — the departments… Read More ›
U.S. Senate passes bill to ban all products from China’s Xinjiang because of forced labour
The U.S. Senate passed legislation on Wednesday to ban the import of products from China’s Xinjiang region, the latest effort in Washington to punish Beijing for what U.S. officials say is an ongoing genocide against Uyghurs and other Muslim groups…. Read More ›
Saigonisation of Afghanistan?
As the date of complete withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan nears, more and more often we hear comments in which this withdrawal is compared with (literally) the escape of US military forces from South Vietnam in the seventies of the… Read More ›
U.S. set to add more Chinese companies to blacklist over Xinjiang
The Biden administration is set as early as Friday to add at least 10 more Chinese companies and other entities to its economic blacklist over alleged human rights abuses and high-tech surveillance in Xinjiang, two sources told Reuters. The U.S…. Read More ›
Why did Biden’s contain-China G7 dream burst so fast?
President Macron and Chancellor Merkel jointly held a direct talk with President Xi via video conferencing on July 5 Monday, merely four weeks after the release of the G7 communique (VOA 2021 June 13). As regards the two European leaders’… Read More ›
Cadence Column: Asia, July 5, 2021
Everyone gets more serious about Taiwan. The US wants a special free trade agreement. China wants reunification, again. While China stockpiles nukes, the US shakes the finger, then China shakes its fist. But, Chinese on the inside are tired of… Read More ›
Chinese Space Station a Military Threat to US, Experts Say
China will use its space station to advance its military technology and strengthen its influence in foreign countries, experts and lawmakers warn the Washington Free Beacon. Three Chinese astronauts reached the Tiangong space station on June 17. The project ushers… Read More ›
US sanctions Chinese solar firms for Uighur human rights abuses
The United States on Wednesday restricted exports to five Chinese companies that it said were implicated in Chinese human rights violations, including large producers of polysilicon for the solar panel industry. The companies were listed over human rights violations and… Read More ›
After the Biden-Putin Geneva Summit
With little expectations, but a lot of combinations and nervousness, was the long awaited summit of the Presidents of America and Russia a failure? It was not. And can it be described as a success, as a breakthrough from the winter… Read More ›
China lacks capability and intent to invade Taiwan: top US general
China does not have the military capability or the intent to seize Taiwan by force in the immediate future, the top uniformed officer of the U.S. military told Congress Thursday. “China has a ways to go to develop the actual no-kidding… Read More ›
Russia, Not China, Is EU’s Threat – but Biden Warms up with Putin
Some media says that G7 communique singles out China to accuse, but is entirely ignorant of the communique’s severe attacks of Russia as Russia not China is G7’s EU members’ major threat. Therefore Defense One says in its report “NATO… Read More ›
Beijing power players poised to pull plug on prospects to go ‘all-electric’
Feckless far-left fantasies of trading away the 80% of American fossil-fueled energy independence and prosperity for technologies that are 80% dependent on China rare earth materials makes for a gullible green new deal that only Beijing beneficiaries can love. Included… Read More ›
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