CCP Economic Warfare

[GURPS]

China Restricts Export On 2 Minerals That Could Damage Economy​

The minerals — gallium and germanium — and dozens of other related metals will be subject to new export regulations that are aimed at punishing the West for restricting China’s ability to access advanced semiconductors.

China dominates the global market as leading producer for both of the minerals, an advantage that they gained by “suppressing the price,” according to Christopher Ecclestone, principle at the natural resource research firm Hallgarten & Co. When they stop suppressing the price, “it suddenly becomes more viable to extract these metals in the West, then China again has an own-goal,” Ecclestone said.

“For a short while they get a higher price, but then China’s market dominance gets lost – the same thing has happened before in other things like antimony, tungsten and rare earths,” he added.

Gallium is a soft metal that is used in aerospace applications, consumer goods, industrial equipment, military equipment, medical equipment, and telecommunications equipment, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Germanium is used in the production of solar cells and fiber optics.

One Chinese semiconductor said that they thought the the move could backfire on China. “It may affect the business of Chinese manufacturers instead during the economic downturn, but with a limited impact on the international market in the short term,” the executive said.

The Eurasia Group said that the move by China was “a warning shot, not a death blow.”

 

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Red China won Cold War II. As Sun Tzu said 2,500 years ago, “The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.”

Chairman Xi did so by using a bioweapon and bribes to eliminate the leader who opposed him. Xi replaced him with Biden who he bought off a few years earlier for a lousy few million dollars.

The Jerusalem Post reported, “China deliberately engineered the coronavirus virus as a bioweapon, a Wuhan Institute of Virology researcher claimed this week in an interview conducted by Chinese-born human rights activist and author Jennifer Zeng.

“Researcher Chao Shao asserts that the virus was deliberately engineered by China as a bioweapon, and that his colleagues were tasked with identifying the most effective strain for spreading among various species, including people.”

Hmm, by various species does this include bats? If so, it was not bats giving man a virus — as the media and its deep state masters insisted — but man giving bats a virus. Which is more logical?

The story said, “During the exclusive 26-minute interview, Chao Shao shared an anecdote involving another researcher named Shan Chao, who allegedly admitted to being provided with four strains of coronavirus by a superior.”

The bioweapon that elected Biden

Red China won Cold War II. As Sun Tzu said 2,500 years ago, “The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.” Chairman Xi did so by using a bioweapon and bribes to eliminate the leader who opposed him. Xi replaced him with Biden who he bought off a few years earlier for a lousy...

donsurber.substack.com

 

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U.S. manufacturers may eventually have no choice but to discontinue certain product lines if they are unable to access the necessary rare earth minerals in the event of further escalation, according to Electropages.

The U.S. would either have to warm up to the idea of buying the minerals from China, or seek to open its own rare earth mineral mines for sourcing, according to Electropages. Western mines would have to account for high labor costs and comparatively stricter regulation by increasing the price of the extracted minerals, which in turn would make electronics more expensive for Western consumers, according to Electropages.

China limited exports of rare earth minerals to Japan in 2010 amid a territorial dispute, according to Reuters. China claimed at the time that environmental concerns drove the decision to restrict rare earth mineral exports, and the sudden restrictions led to a significant global price spike for the minerals, according to Reuters.


China produces about 60% of the global germanium supply and approximately 80% of the world’s gallium, according to Reuters. Germanium consumption increased 10% in 2022 relative to 2021, according to Reuters, and China exported 25% more gallium in 2022 than it did in 2021, according to International Netherlands Group.

China’s Latest Move Could Send Electronic Prices Skyrocketing For Americans

China's decision Monday to implement export controls on two specific minerals could have drastic and far reaching consequences for Americans as tension mounts.

dailycaller.com

 

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The Chinese Communist Party is rewriting the Bible​

As part of a push to "sinicize" religion, the Chinese Communist Party has embarked on a 10-year project to rewrite the Bible and other religious texts.

In the Gospel of John, Jesus famously confronts the accusers a woman caught committing adultery, saying "let the one among you who is guiltless be the first to throw a stone at her."

The chastened accusers slink away and Jesus says to the woman, "‘Has no one condemned you?' 'No one, sir,' she replied. 'Neither do I condemn you,' said Jesus. 'Go away, and from this moment sin no more.'"

A beautiful story of forgiveness and mercy.

 

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A bounty of 1 million Hong Kong dollars (roughly $125,000 USD) has been placed on eight pro-democracy activists who fled the city in the aftermath of a government crackdown on the Hong Kong protests of 2019-2020. The dissidents, who currently reside in the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia, have been accused of violating Hong Kong’s national security law, which criminalized calls for secession or subversion of the Chinese government.

“Our action is to tell everybody that endangering national security is not something we will tolerate,” Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee told the press during a weekly briefing.

Hong Kong was seized from China by the British during the First Opium War and was administered as a British colony for nearly a century and a half. During that time it became a major trading center, and for decades it was consistently ranked highly on measures of economic freedom and human development.

Hong Kong was ceded back to China in 1997 after a 99-year lease for a portion of the territory expired. Britain was technically entitled to parts of Hong Kong in perpetuity, but for political and logistical reasons, agreed to transfer control of the entire territory to the Chinese Communist Party on the condition that Hong Kong would retain some autonomy for at least 50 years.

China Places Six-Figure Bounty On Overseas Dissidents

Chinese officials have announced a considerable cash reward for any information that could lead to the arrest of eight dissidents who fled the country — including three former lawmakers. A bounty of 1 million Hong Kong dollars (roughly $125,000 USD) has been placed on eight pro-democracy...

www.dailywire.com

 

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Finally, the Chinese are taking the gloves off, and telling some hard truths. In this recently-posted clip, that you won’t see in US corporate media, the Chinese Foreign Minister accused the United States of destabilizing the world. He used facts.

Among other things, he said:

“What is truly concerning is the destructive role the U.S. has played to peace and stability in the world. The U.S. is the number one warmonger in the world… The U.S. accounted for about 80% of all post-World War II armed conflicts. The U.S. is also the number one violator of sovereignty and interferer in the internal affairs of other countries. According to reports, since the end of World War II, the U.S. has sought to overthrow more than 50 foreign governments, grossly interfered in the elections of at least 30 countries, and attempted to assassinate over 50 foreign leaders.

In fairness, many of the alleged interferences in foreign countries and so forth occurred during the Cold War, when we were beating back global communism. Some of those conflicts may appear questionable in hindsight, but many people would agree most of the conflicts were reasonable, or at least, arguably reasonable.

But the Cold War is over. The problem seems to be that we never dismantled the Cold War ":"dirty tricks” apparatus. Our CIA’s continuing facilitation of color revolutions around the world, like in Ukraine, does not appear reasonable, and opens us up to attacks like this one from the Chinese Foreign Minister. We do not need to be “number one” in any of those questionable categories.

We need to start minding our own business, which incidentally needs a lot of minding right now.

☕️ HANSEN’S PSYOP ☙ Saturday, August 5, 2023 ☙ C&C NEWS 🦠

Corporate media exploded with news of a leprosy outbreak in Florida. But doctors are baffled. I'll give you one guess what connection I found. And tough talk from the Chinese about our recent record.

www.coffeeandcovid.com

 

[BOP]

China Restricts Export On 2 Minerals That Could Damage Economy​

The minerals — gallium and germanium — and dozens of other related metals will be subject to new export regulations that are aimed at punishing the West for restricting China’s ability to access advanced semiconductors.

China dominates the global market as leading producer for both of the minerals, an advantage that they gained by “suppressing the price,” according to Christopher Ecclestone, principle at the natural resource research firm Hallgarten & Co. When they stop suppressing the price, “it suddenly becomes more viable to extract these metals in the West, then China again has an own-goal,” Ecclestone said.

“For a short while they get a higher price, but then China’s market dominance gets lost – the same thing has happened before in other things like antimony, tungsten and rare earths,” he added.

Gallium is a soft metal that is used in aerospace applications, consumer goods, industrial equipment, military equipment, medical equipment, and telecommunications equipment, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Germanium is used in the production of solar cells and fiber optics.

One Chinese semiconductor said that they thought the the move could backfire on China. “It may affect the business of Chinese manufacturers instead during the economic downturn, but with a limited impact on the international market in the short term,” the executive said.

The Eurasia Group said that the move by China was “a warning shot, not a death blow.”

 

[GURPS]

A good, quick analysis about China’s serious internal problems​

By Andrea Widburg


See the UPDATE at the end of this post.

China is a problem. It’s an immediate problem for Taiwan, but it’s also a long-term problem for America, given that it’s our greatest geopolitical enemy (no matter what Democrats say about Russia! Russia! Russia!). However, Ben Shapiro has put together an excellent short video detailing the structural problems that bedevil China and that put it both at risk of implosion and explosion.

Over the years, I’ve written often about China, both the threat it poses and the weaknesses it has. I’ve covered its demographic problems, the way it’s overreached itself with its belt-and-road policies, its shaky internal economy, and its showy but surprisingly weak military.

China’s biggest problem, which few mention, and which affects its military and its economy, is that communism has turned China into an incredibly sloppy country. As you know from buying Chinese goods at Walmart and Home Depot, everything its manufacturing sector makes is garbage. Moreover, this is a country in which manufacturers have been known to poison children’s milk to make a buck (or meet a metric.) My rule of thumb is never, ever to buy food manufactured in China, so check those labels.

Still, China remains a force to be reckoned with. Despite its rapidly declining demographics and less-than-impressive military, it has the population size to absorb a lot of bullets. Also, while its belt-and-road policies are an issue, it still has planted its seeds around the world. Finally, while its economy is in trouble, it’s big enough to have huge resources on which it can draw.

 

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Amid pressure from some quarters of the Conservative party for a dramatic rethink, there has been something of a shift in policy. Lee, though never herself prosecuted nor arrested, was effectively called out publicly, as MI5 sent its alert around all Westminster.

This time a leak has emerged as Sunak attends the G20 summit in India, where China is of course present, even if President Xi Jinping is not. It is hard to conclude the timing is coincidental given Downing Street’s briefing of the rebuke.

That may help Sunak sound tougher on China following internal criticisms from hawkish Tory backbenchers, including the former prime minister Liz Truss, who have been unhappy that the UK has not been willing to describe Beijing as a threat, even though such language would take Britain beyond other western allies.

But it is unwise to be too cynical. Intelligence chiefs have been warning for some years that the threat from Beijing is increasing. In July, the UK’s foreign intelligence agency MI6 said it devoted more resources to China than Russia, even allowing for the invasion of Ukraine.

UK proves espionage is always political in calling out China ‘spying’ at G20

As Sunak challenges Chinese premier at summit, does alleged intelligence escalation from Beijing suggest a new cold war?

www.theguardian.com

 

[GURPS]

The US warns of a Chinese global disinformation campaign that could undermine peace and stability​

In a first-of-its-kind report, the State Department last week laid out Beijing’s tactics and techniques for molding public opinion, such as buying content, creating fake personas to spread its message and using repression to quash unfavorable accounts.

The Global Engagement Center, a State Department agency that’s tasked with combating foreign propaganda and disinformation and that released the 58-page report, warned that Beijing’s information campaign could eventually sway how decisions are made around the world and undermine U.S. interests.

“Unchecked, the (Chinese government’s) information manipulation could in many parts of the world diminish freedom to express views critical of Beijing,” said Jamie Rubin, who heads the center. He said Beijing’s efforts could “transform the global information landscape and damage the security and stability of the United States, its friends, and partners.”

“We don’t want to see an Orwellian mix of fact and fiction in our world,” he said. “That will destroy the secure world of rules and rights that the United States and much of the world relies upon.”

China over the weekend slammed the report, calling it “in itself disinformation as it misrepresents facts and truth.”

“In fact, it is the U.S. that invented the weaponizing of the global information space,” the Chinese foreign ministry said. It called the State Department agency “a source of disinformation and the command center of ‘perception warfare.’”

 

[GURPS]

Chinese Container Ship Suspected of Deliberately Damaging Estonia-Finland Gas Pipeline​

Finnish investigators are accusing a Chinese ship of disabling an undersea gas pipeline between Finland and Estonia and damaging two undersea telecommunications cables on October 8. The Balticconnector pipeline is a 94-mile-long pipeline that connects Finland's national gas grid with a major underground gas storage facility in Latvia.

And as the damage occurred days after the anniversary of the destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines (Photos Place Russian Submarine Rescue Vehicle and Mini Sub Near Nord Stream Explosion; Sy Hersh Hardest Hit—no, I really don't believe the US or Ukraine blew up the Nord Stream pipelines), there was some speculation of a symbolic connection.

Now, the investigation has taken a decidedly mysterious turn.

Finland said that a Chinese ship’s anchor had likely caused a mysterious rupture of an undersea gas pipeline in the Baltic Sea earlier this month that raised concerns about the vulnerability of European infrastructure to sabotage amid mounting tension between Russia and the West.
...
On Tuesday, Finland’s National Bureau of Investigation said that investigators had recovered a large anchor which had been dragged along the seabed. The anchor carried traces indicating that it had been in contact with the Balticconnector pipeline.
Police said it believes that the damage was caused by Newnew Polar Bear, a containership sailing under the Hong Kong flag and owned by a Chinese shipping company, which was in the area at the time of that incident.

 

[GURPS]

Under the Sea: Cables and Pipelines Under Attack​

Tramp cargo ships of murky registration love it when the world’s attention is focused on land-based conflicts. One looks very much like the other – ubiquitous rust buckets of the sea – floating serenely, aimlessly on ill-defined missions between ports. They also, being in such rough condition, could be expected to break down a lot…and so they seem to.

When no one’s looking, they’ll sometimes come to a stop over top of important things lying on the seabed beneath them. Like. for instance, the cables and pipelines that run communications, electricity, or natural gas between countries separated by seawater. In some cases, these are lifelines of one sort or another – like a huge power cable running to an isolated Swedish island, or natural gas to a continent that refuses to produce enough of their own.

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They’re also a security nightmare, which is becoming more and more apparent every single day.

On the same October 7th night when Hamas terrorists were rampaging through peaceful kibbitzes in Israel, both Russian and Chinese “cargo” vessels were in the “exact same location at the exact same time” when three subsea lines in the Baltic were damaged.

…On the night of 7 October, the 77-kilometre Balticconnector gas pipeline and a separate but close-by subsea telecommunications cable stretching between Finland and Estonia were damaged in the Gulf of Finland. A week later, it emerged that, on the same night, another subsea telecommunications cable—connecting Estonia and Sweden—had also been damaged.
…This case, however, appears to have been no accident.
Finland, Estonia and Sweden soon announced that the gas pipeline and cables had likely been deliberately damaged and were being investigated as related incidents.
At the centre of the investigation was a Russian state-owned nuclear-powered cargo ship, the Sevmorput. Russia has long posed a threat to vital subsea cables in the region, particularly since the start of the Ukraine war. The threat has escalated since the explosion of the Nord Stream gas pipeline in September 2022. Indeed, earlier this year Russia announced that it could damage subsea cables in retaliation for Nord Stream and European countries’ support for Ukraine. In June NATO even set up a subsea cable taskforce because of the high threat of Russian sabotage in the region. And with Finland recently joining NATO—and Sweden in the process of joining—it’s highly likely that Russia damaged the cables in retaliation.
However, another vessel was also reported to be under investigation—a Hong Kong–registered cargo ship, the NewNew Polar Bear, that had been travelling with the Russian vessel.

Tracking the vessels and the registry shifts is a quick little, really intriguing detective story.

The Russians have pooh-poohed accusations of their part in it, but the Chinese are playing things close to the vest. The threat from these meandering unfriendly vessels present, however, is decidedly real.

…The risk was underlined last year with attacks by unidentified saboteurs on the Nord Stream pipeline. Again this month, Finland and Sweden said a subsea gas pipeline and telecommunications cables had been damaged, including a link between NATO members Finland and Estonia. Finland said its review of vessels in the area at the time found a Russian and a Chinese ship among them.
President Vladimir Putin has dismissed the idea Russia was involved as “rubbish;” the Chinese shipowner, NewNew Shipping, declined to comment.
The Netherlands and Denmark have both accused Russian ships of attempting to map what Sweden’s Prime Minister has called a “spaghetti” of critical infrastructure in their waters.

When much of your “critical infrastructure” runs undersea as opposed to being in your backyard with a fence around it and a guard on duty, yeah. Time to fret.

 

[GURPS]

China Evergrande has been ordered to liquidate. The real estate giant owes over $300 billion​

China Evergrande Group is one of the biggest of a series of Chinese developers that have collapsed since 2020 under official pressure to rein in surging debt the ruling Communist Party views as a threat to China’s slowing economic growth.

But a crackdown on excess borrowing has tipped the property industry into crisis, making it a drag on the economy, as scores of other developers ran into trouble, their predicaments rippling through financial systems in and outside China.

Global financial markets were rattled earlier by fears an Evergrande liquidation could cause global shockwaves. But Chinese regulators said the risks could be contained. Only a few billion dollars of Evergrande’s debt was owed to foreign creditors.

It's unclear how the liquidation order will affect China’s financial system.

Evergrande's Hong Kong-traded shares plunged nearly 21% early Monday before they were suspended from trading. But Hong Kong's benchmark Hang Seng index was up 0.9% and some property developers saw gains in their share prices.

China’s largest real estate developer, Country Garden, initially gained nearly 3% but was flat. Sunac China Holdings rose 2.4%.

 

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Speaking of history making events, and utterly predictably, the Chinese are not taking Biden’s new sanctions sitting on their rice mats. Bloomberg ran the largely ignored, record-setting story under the headline, “China Sells Record Sum of US Debt Amid Signs of Diversification.”



During 2024’s first quarter, China dumped a record number of US treasuries and bonds valued higher than the Great Wall, totaling a staggering $53.3 billion. In historical terms, this is the largest treasury sell-off ever recorded. Coincidentally, the US dollar declined to its current one-month low during the same period. Bad luck.

As China sells its US treasuries, it uses the money to buy up gold like it’s going out of style. China and the BRICS alliance were the largest buyers of gold in 2022, 2023, and even 2024. Last year alone, China added several tons of gold worth $550 billion to its reserves.





It might be connected to the war in Ukraine. “This suggests that gold purchases by some central banks may have been driven by concerns about sanctions risk,” an IMF official quoted for the story explained. In other words, BRICS is way ahead of Sleepy Joe.

Never mind, the country is in the best of hands. It’s a good thing Biden and Blinken are running the country. Forget about diplomacy, that’s for dog-faced pony soldiers. No peace until every inch of Ukraine is back in the CIA’s hands!

Meanwhile, Microsoft — all on its own, mind you — announced this week it is beginning to airlift its artificial intelligence team out of China. From the Wall Street Journal, Thursday:





Microsoft gave its Chinese employees a month to make up their minds. The tech giant “declined to comment on the reason behind the relocation offer.”

Under Biden Administration rules, neither OpenAI’s ChatGPT nor Microsoft’s AI ‘Copilot’ are available in China. Decide for yourself which country is better off under that arrangement.

☕️ STORMY WEATHER ☙ Saturday, May 18, 2024 ☙ C&C NEWS 🦠

2024 is shattering weather records, both on Earth and in Space - why?; another barge-bridge meetup; unexpected pardon for justice seekers; China makes sanctions moves; Congress reigns in FAA; more.

www.coffeeandcovid.com

 

[GURPS]

China Tightens Grip on African Media, Pushes Anti-America Messaging​

JOHANNESBURG—The Chinese communist regime has annexed media spaces across Africa, severely restricting citizens’ access to fair and accurate news, while allowing Beijing to spread anti-American messaging at will, according to separate research completed by two authorities on China’s activities on the continent.

Reports from Paul Nantulya, at the Africa Center for Strategic Studies in Washington, and Joshua Eisenman, senior fellow for China studies at the American Foreign Policy Council, paint a disturbing picture of the Chinese regime’s success in spreading propaganda, misinformation, and disinformation in Africa.

The experts’ research shows that the U.S. government has done little to counter China’s dominance of African media landscapes. To the contrary, budget cuts have forced the U.S. government’s international broadcaster, Voice of America (VOA), to shutter African bureaus and severely limit reporting from staff and freelancers on the continent.

In his report, Mr. Nantulya said media controlled by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) are now “embedded” in news and information ecosystems across Africa, “distorting” the truth and limiting access to “independent information shaping citizen debates on a host of issues ranging from governance, society, and the economy.”
Mr. Nantulya’s and Mr. Eisenman’s research reveals that CCP agents have recruited hundreds of African media personnel to work at four major news outlets operating across the continent.

These are Xinhua, China Global Television Network (CGTN), China Daily, and China Radio International. Xinhua and China Radio International are both state-owned CCP official mouthpiece, while the other two outlets are controlled by the regime’s Publicity Department

The studies reveal the Chinese organizations recruit high-profile African media personalities, offering them high salaries to give its propaganda “credibility.”

 

[GURPS]

Fufeng’s short-lived appearance in Indiana was a smoking gun. What else is going on? The Indiana Economic Development Corporation (IEDC), an unelected upgrade to the traditional commerce department, helps select and develop businesses in Indiana. The IEDC has set up many China-owned companies in the state, including 25 currently operational, according to the IEDC general counsel.

The trend of China-based companies in Indiana has not developed organically but through centralized planning with the help of a Chinese Communist Party-linked nonprofit. A contract on the IEDC’s website shows that it has been paying the America China Society of Indiana (ACSI) to facilitate deals with China-owned businesses. The contract outlines IEDC’s interest in “identifying and creating a pipeline of [foreign direct investment] prospects in China” and preparing trip itineraries, among other tasks.

A state contract to fill a requested “pipeline” of China-owned businesses wishing to engage in foreign direct investment, including the purchase of U.S. land, is concerning. The 2017 National Intelligence Law of the People’s Republic of China directs that “any organization or citizen shall support, assist, and cooperate with the state intelligence work” and “state intelligence work institutions shall collect and handle the acts or acts of foreign institutions, organizations, and individuals….”

In other words, China-owned companies operating in the United States are expected to collect intelligence on the United States. Further, most large Chinese companies, especially those allowed to expand into the United States, have CCP members or even party committees within them ensuring loyalty to the CCP’s goals.

Beyond the concerns with Chinese companies taking root in the United States, an organization such as ACSI introduces additional issues when attached to state-level government. ACSI has implemented a series of influence operations and public relations events that may have compromised state decision-making through pressure, gain, or both.

Indiana Is Paying For 'Pipeline' Of Communist Chinese Businesses

The trend of China-based companies in Indiana has developed through centralized planning with the help of a CCP-linked nonprofit.

thefederalist.com

 

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