Posted on by bugsy122019

WOLF WARRIORS

In 2015 the movie, “Wolf Warrior,” about an elite unit of the PLA, was a box-office smash in China, followed in 2017 by Wolf Warrior II. These days, the term “Wolf Warrior” describes an extremely aggressive approach that China is using around the world. While most nations are focused close to home, Beijing is expanding its tentacles in numerous parts of the world. There are no interesting pictures today, just serious words which we should not forget, even as we deal with problems in our own backyards. (I promise pictures next time!)

South China Sea. In March and April, China carried out training exercises in the South China Sea around one of their artificial island. They have increased the size of one, and created several new ones. They built installations on Woody Island, and currently dispute both the Spratly and Paracel Islands. They unilaterally banned summer fishing in disputed waters in Vietnam, and are causing serious issues with the Philippines. Vietnam, Japan and the Philippines are pushing back, and are working with the US to maintain the international freedom of the seas.

East China Sea. China is disputing not one or two, but eight islands there. Japan recently discovered a Chinese submarine sailing around both the Mayakovsky and Senkaku Islands, both owned by Japan. Tension has grown, and both countries have ramped up their radar and others military activities in the area.

Hong Kong. Sadly, things in Hong Kong have gone from bad to worse. Once the new laws and so-called security measures were passed by Beijing, it only took a few weeks for them to move security forces into Hong Kong. Well over 500 people have already been rounded up. More is coming. Police have told restaurant owners to get rid of pro-democracy posters. City officials have offered 1 Million Hong Kong dollars to anyone who helps in the arrest of a “subversive.” Despite significant US and UK sanctions, Beijing is taking Hong Kong apart. The UK has offered 3 million visa to Hong Kongers, though Beijing will not make it easy for the best and the brightest to leave. There’s an uneasy quiet in Hong Kong—most of the protests have gone underground. Many China-watchers expect that they’ve moved on to insurrection.

Tibet. Mao Zedong seized Tibet in 1949. In 1976, at the end of the Cultural Revolution, PLA troops built several roads up the high plateau to Tibet. Hundreds of men died along the way—didn’t matter. As soon as the PLA arrived in Tibet, they squelching any unrest at all, and started to close monasteries. Resentment built until there were riots against the Chinese in 2008. Beijing upped it’s game. Since 2011 virtually everyone has been barred from entering Tibet. Tibetans may only speak Mandarin Chinese anywhere outside the home. Beijing has been moving a great number of Han people into Tibet as teachers and virtually everything but the most menial laborers. Anyone wanting to become a monk has to pass stringent requirements to become a “patriotic, pious, expert.” Buddhist are badly mistreated on a daily basis.

Uighurs. The Uighurs are Muslims living in the area called East Turkmenistan, Uighuristan, or Xinjiang province which Mao grabbed in 1949. In the past twenty years, Beijing has destroyed Uighur mosques, and been more repressive than even in Tibet. Currently 1.3 million people are held in more than 85 massive detention camps—basically concentration camps with slave labor, torture and death. Those Uighirs who are not in the “reeducation camps” work under the harshest conditions with drones and massive cypher-security keeping track of everyone all the time. Currently, Beijing has started, preemptive pregnancy checks, forced sterilization, abortions, and forced birth control. Ultimately, it’s genocide

Sino-Indian Skirmishes. The short India-China War lasted from October 20, 1962, to November 20, 1962, leaving the Line of Actual Control in the area around Ladakh and Sikkiman near the Galwan Valley. Recently India has begun some large infrastructure projects, and in a preemptive move the Chinese sent troops to the area. On June 15, 20 Indian soldiers were killed, and 10 were held by the Chinese until June 18. It’s unknown how many, if any, Chinese were killed or wounded because Beijing refuses to divulge the information. The entire Indian nation is infuriated on every level because it’s become clear that Beijing wants to encroach on Indian sovereignty. India is pushing back. Interestingly, they have stopped using about 50 apps, including the seemingly fun TikTok, because those apps provide a back door for a huge amount of data that goes straight to Beijing. At the same time a number of nations are sending weapons and materiel requested by India, making it clear to China that it’s in for a fight if it goes any further.

As if all that wasn’t enough, China is doing its best to get involved in Venezuela, parts of Africa, Iran and areas in the Middle East. And don’t forget Taiwan!!

So, why would I start discussing China on a national holiday? Because this is 4th of July weekend, and I’ve been rereading something George Washington wrote in 1799. “…make them believe that offensive operations, often times, is the surest, if not the only means of defense.” Beijing understands that. Even before the pandemic, China’s had serious economic problems, problems with the “belt and road,” problems in Hong Kong and Taiwan, etc. Now, most of the world is angry with China because even if it didn’t invent Covid-19, it didn’t alert anyone until it was much too late. What to do? Personally, I’d apologize profusely and do everything I could to be helpful. (But I’m a dog lover.) Xi Jinping is smarter than I am. And he’s a Wolf Warrior. When in doubt, attack—economically, culturally or militarily—especially when people are otherwise occupied. At the very least you can buy time. Best case, you get more of what you wanted in the first place. … Something to ponder.

Posted on by bugsy122019

Taiwan???

A friend called me yesterday and among other things we were talking about, she asked me, “so where is Taiwan and why is my husband so annoyed!?”

Deep breath.😔

Here’s the five minute version of what I told her.

Taiwan is an island on the South China Sea about 110 miles from southeastern China.

People are talking about Taiwan because their health authorities told the WHO (World Health Organization) on December 31, 2019, a month before the rest of the world heard about it, that there were human-to-human contacts in a pneumonia-type virus in Wuhan, China. Unfortunately, the WHO dismissed the information for another month. What a different world we’d be in if they had paid attention to Taiwan!! So why does the WHO, the UN, China, and all but 15 nations, ignore Taiwan?

Well, it goes back to the end of World War II. The war morphed into a Civil War between Mao Zedong’s communists and Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang (Nationalists) which had been fighting on and off since the 1920s. Toward the end of 1947, as Mao’s army seized large swaths of the country, the Nationalists gradually began to fall back toward the island nation, sometimes called Formosa. By 1949, what was left of the Nationalists fled across the South China Sea to Taiwan.

Interestingly, Taiwan, whose official name is the Republic of China, was one of the initial founders of the United Nations. It was ejected from that body in 1971 and replaced by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) because it had become a super-power. The PRC is still trying to take over Taiwan. Only 15 nations, including the United States, recognized Taiwan. The US, in particular, continues to try to include Taiwan in agencies of the UN, particularly the WHO. China, believing that Taiwan is simply one of their provinces, refused to allow it to participate at all. However, there was a bit of a thaw in 2009 when Taiwan got Observer Status as long as they allowed the WHO to call Taiwan either the ‘Taiwanese Province of China” or “Chinese Taipei.” That lasted until Taiwan’s 2016 elections, when President Thai Ing-wen took office and categorically refuses to discuss the same “one country, two systems” like that in Hong Kong.

When, on December 31, 2019, Taipei (capital of Taiwan) sent information to the WHO that they understood that the virus in China was a human-to-human issue, the WHO never even returned Taiwan’s call. However, Taiwan remembered the 2003 SARS epidemic and decided not to wait. By that evening they were already screening, testing and contract tracing anyone coming in to Taiwan from Wuhan, China. Yet it wasn’t until January 21 that China finally told the WHO that there was human-to-human contact—though they insisted that they had things under control. Ten days later, the US imposed the first bans of travel from China.

So it boils down to the fact that your husband is “annoyed” because the WHO followed China’s lead, rather than even looking into Taiwan’s information🤯Despite that, Taiwan has consistently provided all its information to the WHO and other countries, and has shared what it learned from SARS, and any current data, with the other 184 nations struggling with the Covid-19 virus.