European Union Investigates Chinese Electric Cars
News on China No. 165
This week’s News on China.
• EU investigates Chinese electric vehicles
• High-speed train to Taiwan
• G77+China Summit
• The elderly in the digital age
Latest articles
Mission to Free Assange: Australian Parliamentarians in Washington
It was a short stint, involving a six-member delegation of Australian parliamentarians lobbying members of the US Congress and various relevant officials on one issue: the release of Julian Assange. If extradited to the US from the United Kingdom to face 18 charges, 17 framed with reference to the oppressive, extinguishing Espionage Act of 1917, the Australian founder of WikiLeaks risks a 175-year prison term.
Nationals MP Barnaby Joyce, Labor MP Tony Zappia, Greens Senators David Shoebridge and Peter Whish-Wilson, Liberal Senator Alex Antic and the independent member for Kooyong, Dr. Monique Ryan, are to be viewed with respect, their pluckiness …
When China’s Safety Concerns Meet US Hegemony in South, East China Seas
Illustration: Liu Rui/GT
The South and East China Seas are among China’s major security concerns in its neighborhood. Despite this, the US still hypes up competition with China in these regions to cover up the tendency of its hegemonic expansion.
The US Congressional Research Service (CRS) recently published a report which pointed out that the South China Sea in the past 10 to 15 years has become the arena of US-China strategic competition, while actions by …
Canada’s Envoy to Defend Apartheid gets Israel Medal
Canada’s special envoy to combat antisemitism is actually a government emissary to promote Jewish supremacy. In a stark example of the Liberals’ anti-Palestinian policies, they have given public resources and prestige to an aggressive apartheid proponent.
Last Friday foreign affairs minister Mélanie Joly tweeted, “I spoke with Canada’s Special Envoy on Preserving Holocaust Remembrance and Combatting Antisemitism Irwin Cotler today, where I congratulated him on his Israel Presidential Medal of Honour. Irwin, Canada is stronger because of your work to advance human rights everywhere.”
Cotler was one of 13 individuals recently given a prize by President Isaac Herzog for making “…
Wake up, Uncle Sam: Is the US Military Ready to Take on Russia and China?
30 years after achieving total dominance, has the Ukraine conflict exposed the limits of American power?
FILE PHOTO. © Luke Sharrett/Getty Images
The failure of Ukraine’s much-hyped counteroffensive – which began in June of this year and has stuttered for over three months – has by now become a universally recognized fact. It has been acknowledged not only by Russian officials, including President Vladimir Putin, but also by Western media and experts. However, the summer campaign has made the world reconsider not only the capabilities of Kiev’s armed forces, but also the power of the country’s main sponsor – the United States, when it comes to waging a large-scale …
Government Debt is Not the Problem
Polarization of the American public reflects the polarization of its political Parties, both of whom strive for ascendancy by demeaning, contradicting, and formulating proposals to wrong the other; each Party wrongs itself and the American public.
The recent and periodic arguments concerning the proposed federal budget, an entrance for initiating threats to “close the government,” highlight how both political sides of Congress wrongly portray the fiscal deficits that have become implicit in federal budgets. Two wrongs do not make a right, and, in this case, they have caused misunderstandings and problems.
Start with the Republican Party
Republicans refuse to admit that an expanded …
The Impact America’s Defeat in Ukraine Will Have on the 2024 U.S. Presidential Election
If Joe Biden will become the Democratic Party’s nominee for the Presidency, then almost any Republican nominee would likely beat him because he had committed America’s Government to victory in Ukraine — done it is such a way that there can be no going back on it that won’t strip him of the public’s respect for him on account of America’s loss in that war:
21 February 2023: “Ukraine will never be a victory for Russia. Never. (Applause.)”
13 July 2023: “We will not waver … for as long as it takes”.
24 August 2023 …
Stages of Grief, Disempowering the Abuser, Healing
When the bureaucratic well runs dry, you as survivor of DV are on your own, especially when family and friends are riding in their own Private Idaho.
Preface: According to band member Kate Pierson, “Private Idaho” was inspired by the feeling of being trapped and isolated, like a prisoner in solitary confinement. The song …
Why There is No Illegal Immigration in China
China has a comprehensive immigration policy
What is illegal immigration?
Every healthy scientific contradictory debate starts with a clear definition. Illegal immigration is defined as the migration of people across national borders in a way that violates the immigration laws of the destination country.
The most common but informal term for “foreigner” in China is 老外 (lǎowài) It usually is respectful or neutral but sometimes, in certain circumstances, it can be impolite.
Scientific research on immigration in China
Prof. 续聆毓 Xù Língyù (Anhui University in Hefei) wrote that in China, there’s a variety of …
The Priesthood of Expertise
It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.
— Upton Sinclair, I, Candidate for Governor: And How I Got Licked, 1935
In The Death of Expertise, national security expert Tom Nichols warns that knowledge is under attack by an ill-informed public determined to replace it with popular ignorance. Though this is not entirely possible – no society could survive such a transition – the breakdown in trust between experts and laypeople underlying this misguided ambition is making the U.S. …
Insurers Can Be Sentinels for Health and Safety
For nearly thirty-five years, a small nonprofit organization in Washington, D.C. has been having an outsized impact on highway and auto safety. It is Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety and it is funded by a dozen or more property-casualty insurance companies; with a board composed of consumer leaders and insurance company representatives.
Its origins were truly unique. After this industry lost a bruising California referendum in 1988 to consumer advocates, that brought successful regulation to the industry – saving motorists over $150 billion to date – some company executives wanted to look better to their customer public …
We Need Clean Air, Not Another Billionaire
The first time I heard the chant it was while helping to block the street in front of leading fossil fuel financer Black Rock in lower Manhattan last Wednesday the 13th: “We need clean air, not another billionaire!” The dozens of people I was taking action with also liked it, and we kept chanting loud and long while we watched the traffic back up and for when the police were going to move in on us.
Then there was the other one: “Tax the Rich, Tax the Mother-F—ing Rich!”, also a big hit all throughout the week of actions in New …
Melbourne’s 75th Nakba Exhibition in St Paul’s Cathedral
16 September to 27 October 2023: St Paul’s Cathedral in Melbourne holds 75th Nakba Exhibition
This year marks the 75th anniversary of the 1948 Nakba (Catastrophe) in which about 800,000 Indigenous Palestinians (57% of the Indigenous Palestinian population) were expelled from their homes and villages by Zionist colonizers.
From 16 September to 27 October 2023 there is a very moving Nakba 75th Anniversary Exhibition at St Paul’s Anglican Cathedral in central Melbourne (diagonally opposite to Flinders Street Railway Station).
Key numbers about the 1948 Nakba: Palestinians expelled (about 800,000 or 57% of the 1,400,000 total Palestinian population), massacres (over 70), people killed (15,000), villages …
It’s Either Cuba or Daniel Blake
The world is in turmoil. As the Western powers and their economic policies continue to tear apart the global whole, the countries of the South have united to demand justice.
This is a long story, one that continues and remains on a planet where human beings have gone straight into an invisible plane. Since the emergence of capitalism, we have witnessed the progressive destruction of people, their cultures, communities, their environment and their freedoms by oppressive forces that abuse in crescendo.
Is this what we human beings are destined for?
In 2016, the English …
The Angertainer Steps Down: Rupert Murdoch’s Non-Retirement
One particularly bad habit the news is afflicted by is a tendency to fall into discussions about itself. Its members, some of them at least, used to call it the “Fourth Estate,” an unelected chamber of scribblers supposedly meant to keep an eye on the other three, yet finding itself at times distracted, gossip-driven, and rumour filled by its own exploits.
The greatest distraction that weathered province falls is coverage of its own moguls and pop-representatives. When it came to covering, for instance, the wiles and frauds of Robert Maxwell, little could be trusted about the brow-beating bruiser’s exploits. You certainly …
Climate Emergency Update, September 2023
Earth’s climate system is in a state of emergency. Emergencies are defined by four specific elements; i.e., (1) seriousness (2) unexpected (3) dangerous, and (4) requiring immediate action. Based upon a new YouTube broadcast by the inveterate commentator Dr. Peter Carter, all those elements are in-play in a very big way.
Dr. Carter, expert reviewer of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and director of the Climate Emergency Institute, posted a 26:33 minute YouTube update on the status of our climate system: Climate Emergency Update September 2023. In his broadcast, the elements of an emergency are clearly related to the …
The Other Side of the Story
What role does independent media play?
Mr. Mike’s Mondo Imbroglio or How Not to Launch a Global Anti-Censorship Movement
So, I’ve been excommunicated from Michael Shellenberger’s global anti-censorship movement. It’s my own fault. I was sowing dissension. I engaged in harmful speech in the group chat. I was making people feel uncomfortable. I was not playing ball. I was not with the program.
The program, as you may recall, was launched in Westminster, London, in June, when Mike and Matt Taibbi and Russell Brand exposed the Censorship Industrial Complex …
… for 35 pounds sterling a head.
My readers may recall this piece I published about the secret gathering …
Syria and China: a New Pole in the Middle East
Peter Koenig – PressTV Interview – transcript
21 September 2023
Background
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is in China on his first visit since the war and foreign-backed insurgency gripped his country some 12 years ago.
President al-Assad arrived in the eastern city of Hangzhou where he will attend the opening ceremony of the Asian Games on Saturday. He and other foreign leaders will then meet Chinese President Xi Jinping there. The Syrian president will also travel to Beijing to discuss bilateral issues and China’s help to rebuild his war-ravaged country. Beijing, which has long provided Damascus with diplomatic support, says that Assad’s visit will …
NATO Destroyed Libya in 2011; Storm Daniel Came to Sweep Up the Remains
The Thirty-Eighth Newsletter
Shefa Salem al-Baraesi (Libya), Drown on Dry Land, 2019.
Three days before the Abu Mansur and Al Bilad dams collapsed in Wadi Derna, Libya, on the night of September 10, the poet Mustafa al-Trabelsi participated in a discussion at the Derna House of Culture about the neglect of basic infrastructure in his city. At the meeting, al-Trabelsi warned about the poor condition of the dams. As he wrote on Facebook that same day, over the past decade his beloved city has been …
Conspiracy Theorist or Expert?
What does it mean when those derided as conspiracy theorists turn out to have been correct all along?
The Danger that Lawfare against Trump Presents to the Progressive Movement
Many have noted that the indictments of Trump ring of lawfare by the Biden administration. Donald Trump has now been indicted four times, and in blatant overkill, now faces 91 criminal charges. In New York alone he was hit with 34 felonies for the payments to Stormy Daniels. Trump also faces felony charges for claiming the 2020 election was the byproduct of fraud and then seeking to invalidate the outcome of that election through allegedly unlawful means.
These criminal cases rest on the assumption that Trump knew his claims of election fraud were false, making his actions to overturn …
The Mass-Media Memory Hole: Blair, Ukraine and Libya
A key function of state-corporate media is to keep the public pacified, ignorant and ill-equipped to disrupt establishment power.
Knowledge that sheds light on how the world operates politically and economically is kept to a minimum by the ‘mainstream’ media. George Orwell’s famous ‘memory hole’ from ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’ signifies the phenomenon brilliantly. Winston Smith’s work for the Ministry of Truth requires that he destroys documents that contradict state propaganda:
When one knew that any document was due for destruction, or even when one saw a scrap of waste paper lying about, it was …
A Return to Masking?
It looks like the Trudeau government in Canada is preparing to mandate masking again, despite the science, in randomized control trials, revealing no prophylaxis effect of masking compared to non-masking against respiratory viruses.
Dr. Theresa Tam, Canada’s chief public health officer, is setting up a return to enforced masking of Canadians.
Fighting the Diaspora: India’s Campaign Against Khalistan
Diaspora politics can often be testy. While the mother country maintains its own fashioned narrative, governed by domestic considerations, the diaspora may, or may not, be in accord with the agreed upon story. While countries such as China and Iran are seen as the conventional bullies in this regard, spying and monitoring the activities of their citizens in various countries, India has remained more closeted and inconspicuous.
Of late, that lack of conspicuousness has been challenged. On September 18, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau revealed that there were “credible allegations” that agents in the pay of the Indian government had murdered …
A few thoughts on the Russell Brand furore
Almost no one seems willing to hold their tongue on the latest claims. Here are my observations: not on the allegations, but on all the noise
There are times when we would all be best advised to keep quiet and wait. But given that almost no one seems willing to hold their tongue on the latest claims being made about Russell Brand, I feel compelled – wisely or unwisely – to make a few tentative observations: not on the allegations, but on all the noise.
Let me preface these comments with an additional observation: It should be quite possible to hold more than one thought in one’s head at the same time. In fact, it is normally a pre-requisite for having anything interesting to say.
A Nation of Snitches: DHS is Grooming Americans to Report on Each Other
There were relatively few secret police, and most were just processing the information coming in. I had found a shocking fact. It wasn’t the secret police who were doing this wide-scale surveillance and hiding on every street corner. It was the ordinary German people who were informing on their neighbors.
— Professor Robert Gellately, author of Backing Hitler, March 2002
Are you among the 41% of Americans who regularly attend church or some other religious service?
Do you believe the economy is about to collapse and the government will soon declare martial law?
Do you display an unusual number of …
Resisting Genetically Mutilated Food and the Eco-Modern Nightmare: Together, “Just You and Me”
This image is symbolic of everything that is wrong with modern society. A gas leak from Union Carbide’s pesticide plant in Bhopal in 1984 resulted in around 560,000 injured (respiratory problems, eye irritation, etc.), 4,000 severely disabled and 20,000 dead. Not only that, but the pesticides produced at the factory and the model of farming promoted has caused well-documented misery for farmers, harm to soil, water sources and the health of the population and a radical transformation of social relations in rural …
Brief for Murder: Pinochet’s Apologists Five Decades On
During the Cold War, assassinations most foul were entertained as necessary measures to advance the set cause. In Latin America, military regimes were keenly sponsored as reliably brutal antidotes to the Marxist tic, or at the very least the tic in waiting. Any government deemed by Washington to be remotely progressive would become ripe targets for violent overthrow.
To this day, the murderers of Chile’s socialist president Salvador Allende, (wait, we hear the first apologist mock, he was not murdered but suicided out of choice) along with thousands of innocents continues to receive briefs in their defence.
On September 15, Mary Anastasia …