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China’s Geostrategic Designs on Latin America
In the last 5 years China’s military activities in Latin America and the Caribbean have grown at an unprecedented rate. Beijing now regularly hosts officers from Colombia, Chile, Mexico, Peru and Uruguay in its military academies, has expanded arms sales and technology transfers to countries like Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil and Venezuela, and in October last year even sent a navy ship to the Caribbean.
Is China—now Brazil and Chile’s number-one trade partner—buttressing its economic interests in the Western Hemisphere with military ties and alliances? Is this the Middle Kingdom’s equivalent of President Barack Obama’s Pacific pivot to balance China’s saber rattling in Asia?
There’s no doubt that China’s torrid economic growth rate and its arrival as an emerging—if not already emerged—global economic superpower has shifted the international system and brought a more muscular Chinese foreign policy. That policy—part of what the Chinese labeled its “Going Out” strategy—has come with a growing Chinese diplomatic, economic and even military presence in many of its closest trade partners. Given China’s need for raw materials to feed its manufacturing growth and urbanization—gobbling up everything from iron, to oil, to soybeans and frozen chicken—the country’s rise has been felt most obviously (at times with alarm) in Read more…
47 Signs That China Is Absolutely Destroying America On The Global Economic Stage
Have you ever watched a football game or a basketball game where one team dominates the other team so badly that calling it a “blowout” would be a huge understatement? Well, that is what China is doing to the United States. China is absolutely destroying America on the global economic stage. Once upon a time, the Chinese economy was a joke and the U.S. economy was the most powerful the world had ever seen. But over the past couple of decades the U.S. economy has decayed and declined while the Chinese economy has skyrocketed. Today, China makes more steel, more automobiles, more beer, more cotton, more coal and more solar panels than we do. China has the fastest train in the world, the fastest computer in the world and they export twice as much high-tech equipment as we do. In 2011, our trade deficit with China was the largest trade deficit that one nation has had with another nation in the history of the world, and China has now accumulated more than 3 trillion dollars in foreign currency reserves. Every single day, we lose more jobs, more businesses and more of our national wealth to China. In technical economic terms, China has “taken us out behind the woodshed” and has beaten the living daylights out of us. Unfortunately, most Americans are so addicted to entertainment that they don’t even realize what is happening.
If you do not believe that China is wiping the floor with America in front of the rest of the world, just keep reading. The following are 47 signs that China is absolutely destroying America on the global economic stage…. Read more…
Gold and Silver Are Headed for Record Highs
Gold and silver are on fire.
The yellow metal is finishing up the month of January with a gain of more than 10%.
But silver is the star… It’s going to double the performance of gold for the month.
In fact, silver is up 21.5% in January!
To put that into perspective, silver’s January gain has outperformed the Dow’s 2011 performance. It also outperformed last year’s gains in the NASDAQ and S&P 500.
You might think that since these metals are up so much for the first month of the year, they’re ripe for a pullback. And that may be correct.
However, the charts of both gold and silver — but especially gold — are insanely bullish…
This is a weekly chart of gold going back nearly three years:
As you can see clear as day, gold is forming an Read more…
China’s Love Of Africa
THE $200 million new headquarters of the African Union – a gift from China – is another confirmation of the continent’s inability to get things done by itself. Almost 50 years after the formation of the Organisation of African Unity, OAU, the AU’s forebear, the continent could not afford the AU’s new edifice that has cast a permanent role for China in Africa.
Disgraced Libyan despot Moammar Gadhafi could be largely thanked for the new building. As AU Chairman in 2009, he was planning to move the AU’s headquarters from Addis Ababa to his native Sirte. The Ethiopians, who have been close to China, secured the AU headquarters with the offer from China, which built and furnished it.
The new African Union headquarters built and fully funded by the Chinese government at a cost of $200 million. The building hosted this year’s AU Summit in the Ethiopian capital. The towering building – Addis Ababa’s tallest – symbolizes China’s strengthening ties with Africa, a major source of foreign investment from China. AFPAddis Ababa has been Africa’s diplomatic capital since the Read more…
Weather Satellite Surveillance?
Since its inception in 1988, the Fengyun (FY) program has become an international symbol of China’s burgeoning ambitions in space. China’s weather satellite program began with Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai’s 1970 approval of a Central Military Commission proposal to initiate research and development on weather satellites. With the launch of the first FY-1A in 1988, China became only the third nation to launch its own meteorological satellites. Since then, China has launched four FY-1 weather satellites into polar orbit, five FY-2 geosynchronous weather satellites, and two FY-3 satellites that were boosted into polar orbits on Long March-4 launch vehicles.The FY series appear to be roughly analogous to those associated with the U.S. Defense Meteorological Satellite Program. The FY-3, equipped with almost a dozen all weather sensors, is China’s most advanced space asset providing meteorological support to the People’s Liberation Army. The system also could provide measurement and signature intelligence data to China’s emerging anti-ship ballistic missile (ASBM) targeting architecture. In addition to five additional Read more…
China infuriated by US-Philippines defense plans
The US decision to station forces in the Philippines could have dangerous repercussions. Beijing may enact economic sanctions after Manila invited in US troops in response to an escalating territorial dispute over the South China Sea.
Dr. Pak-Nung Wong of the City University of Hong Kong told RT that the Philippines is merely cashing in on America’s move.
“At the international level, the Philippines knows that the US has definitely returned to Asia – refocusing its military and security deployment in the Middle East and Asia-Pacific, targeting China and Iran as the primary security concern,” he said.
“At the regional level, the Philippines also sees that there are recent changes in the regional politics, particularly in Read more…
US negotiating larger presence in Philippines
With an eye toward China’s growing influence in the South Pacific, President Obama and the Philippines are negotiating a greater US military presence on the island nation, the Washington Post said.
Discussions are to continue Thursday and Friday in Washington, but it appears the US military will return to the Philippines 20 years after losing its foothold there.
“We can point to other countries: Australia, Japan, Singapore,” a senior Philippine official told the Post. “We’re not the only one doing this, and for good reason. We all want to see a peaceful and stable region. Nobody wants to have to face China or confront China.”
American troops left Subic Bay in Philippines in 1992 because a new treaty could not be signed. A volcanic eruption a year earlier forced them from Clark Air Force Base.
Now the American plan is for Read more…
Strategic Importance of Iran for Russia and China: Eurasian “Triple Alliance”
CONFRONTATION BETWEEN MILITARY BLOCS: The Eurasian “Triple Alliance”
Despite areas of difference and rivalries between Moscow and Tehran, ties between the two countries, based on common interests, have developed significantly.
Both Russia and Iran are both major energy exporters, they have deeply seated interests in the South Caucasus. They are both firmly opposed to NATO’s missile shield, with a view to preventing the U.S. and E.U. from controlling the energy corridors around the Caspian Sea Basin.
Moscow and Tehran’s bilateral ties are also part of a broader and overlapping alliance involving Armenia, Tajikistan, Belarus, Syria, and Venezuela. Yet, above all things, both republics are also two of Washington’s main geo-strategic targets.
The Eurasian Triple Alliance: The Strategic Importance of Iran for Russia and China
China, the Russian Federation, and Iran are widely considered to be allies and partners. Together the Russian Federation, the People’s Republic of China, and the Islamic Republic of Iran form a strategic barrier directed against U.S. expansionism. The three countries form a “triple alliance,” which constitutes the core of a Read more…
Chinese supertankers hired for Iran oil
Clarkson Research Services Ltd., a unit of the world’s largest shipbroker, announced the two supertankers were booked to carry about 2 million barrels of crude from Iran’s Khark Island to China.
Qi Lian San, a large crude carrier anchored near Singapore, was booked to load 270,000 tons of crude at Khark Island from Feb. 3 to Feb. 5 and carry the cargo to China, Clarkson said.
The Chinese oil trader, Zhuhai Zhenrong Co., also booked an unidentified ship owned by the National Iranian Tanker Co. to load 265,000 tons of crude in Khark Island on Jan. 29 and sail to Read more…
Man dies of bird flu in southwest China: Report
The current strain of H5N1 is highly pathogenic, kills most species of birds and up to 60 per cent of the people it infects.
BEIJING — A man in southwest China died of bird flu on Sunday after three days of intensive care treatment in hospital, the official Xinhua news agency quoted the Ministry of Health as saying.
The 39-year old — who died in hospital in Guiyan, capital of Guizhou province — began suffering from fever on January 6.
Xinhua said China’s centres for disease control and prevention at provincial and national levels confirmed the man had died after being infected with the H5N1 bird flu strain.
The man had had close contact with 71 individuals, but none had shown unusual symptoms, the health ministry told Xinhua. The report did not mention whether the man had been in recent contact with birds.
The virus is normally found in Read more…
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