China’s defence minister has said war with the US would be an “unbearable disaster” for the world in his first major speech since taking on the role. At a security summit, General Li Shangfu said “some countries” were intensifying an arms race in Asia. But he said the world was big enough for both China and the US, and the two superpowers should seek common ground.
Earlier the US alleged “unsafe” manoeuvres by a Chinese destroyer near a US warship in the Taiwan strait. On Saturday the US navy said a Chinese destroyer sailed “in an unsafe manner” near an American warship as it transited the Taiwan Strait with Canadian vessels. China criticised both countries for “deliberately provoking risk”. The US and Canada said they were sailing where international law allows.
Gen Li, who became defence minister in March, accused the US of a “Cold War mentality” and said this was “greatly increasing security risks”. In his speech he said China would not allow naval patrols by the US and its allies to be “a pretext to exercise hegemony of navigation”. Asked about the incident in the Taiwan Strait, he said only that countries from outside the region were raising tensions. He was speaking at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, the Asia-Pacific region’s only annual security meeting. Beijing has rejected a US request for direct military talks in protest at sanctions placed on Gen Li by the US in 2018 over weapons purchases from Russia.
At the Singapore summit, US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin rebuked China for refusing to hold military discussions. Gen Austin and Gen Li shook hands and briefly spoke at the event’s opening dinner on Friday, but there was no substantive exchange, reports say. One of China’s delegates told AFP that the removal of US sanctions on Gen Li was a precondition for talks.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-65803311
Comment: Sounds like Li Shangfu is content with a state of intense competition rather than stumbling into a state of open warfare. I can live with that although the possibility of stumbling while intensely competing is still a danger. I would feel better if both sides talked with each other, but perhaps China’s giving us the silent treatment is part of their idea of competition.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine, the shockingly poor performance of the Russian war machine and the equally shocking unity of the Western nations is probably giving China pause in her pursuit of reunification by military means. The level of destruction and depletion of military stockpiles is certainly giving pause to both China and the West. Any conflict over Taiwan would be an air, sea and space confrontation. The level of unknowns is high on both sides. I believe China recently said they don’t feel they’d be ready for such a confrontation for five years. A lot can happen in five years. Tensions could rise. Tensions could fall. Our best course of action would be to seek some area of mutual cooperation in those five years. Perhaps an equivalent of the 1975 Apollo-Soyuz mission should be proposed.
TTG
China won the Cold War.
The US came in second place, but the clueless foreign policy establishment misread the result. And then proceeded to squander the next three decades pursuing an ideological vision increasingly unrelated to the national interest or, indeed, evidentiary reality.
So China will keep the Russians propped up indefinitely while the undemocratically positioned globalist clique in the Green Zone throws billions to re-establish a a border in Eurasia while they treasonously allow millions of invaders into the US.
Excellent Idea, TTG, really excellent. So right on I don’t know what to say. (I’m talking about the Soyuz proposal). It’s a great pity that we are led by paranoid and short sighted mediocrities, but it seems to be the case.
The world is big enough for both to exist according according to Gen. Shangfu? No it isn’t. One free and one communist. Sorry, but no. Let Xi free his people to build a worthwhile future for China and then the world be better served.
Happy Tiananmen Square massacre anniversary. Oh, we missed that one? Now a word from the victors of Tiananmen telling the subjects how to behave. Meanwhile the Chinese fishing fleets rape the oceans, and the rivers of China pollute the seas as much as their coal plants pollute the air. (Global warming, i.e. Climate Change is realz!) Don’t forget all those new maritime zones of control by artificial islands created by the “Peoples” Republic. I won’t even mention their use of Covid and funding Fauci &Co. to scam the West.
Fred –
Apt that you should mention Peking’s rape of the oceans. Today is International Day for the Fight against Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated (IUU) Fishing. 101 countries have joined the fight against #IUUFishing. China has not, and continues to fish illegally with neither regulation nor reporting, not only in international waters but also in the Exclusive Economic Zones of her neighbors.
China isn’t America’s rival because communism makes it so. In fact, China would be an ever stronger rival if it further embraced liberalism – free trade, free exchange of ideas. Which is why the US Government is trying to shut down China’s ability to have these things. This is the paradox of American liberal hegemony: the more we succeed in spreading liberalism to our enemies, the weaker we become, relatively speaking. So we need to keep our enemies illiberal.
According to some, over the past 50 years the American elite has raised China to its current status. It was the matrix of Davos, CFR, UN, etc, etc that has chosen China as the model for the New World Order. Pooteen was part of that club, groomed by Klaus himself since a “taxi driver” in St. Petersburg, however that leg of the stool isn’t holding up as expected.
China New World Order
https://www.corbettreport.com/mp4/ep297.mp4
Words are neither sticks nor stones, however, reshoring and eliminating all western trade with China, nationalizing Chinese properties and taking other aggressive economic actions are. Taiwan is the distraction – the dominance of the Eastern hemisphere is the prize. The infection of western governments is a poison that needs to be passed from the system.
A tad off topic maybe but is he right for a change?
Colonel Douglas Macgregor: Russia is going on the offensive
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16d9z0FlOaI
Whitewall,
He’s been wrong for a year and a half and continues to be wrong. Russia going on the offensive? No way. Russia making efforts to disrupt the Ukrainian counteroffensive? Absolutely, but they’re not doing too well with those efforts so far. Macgregor reminds me of that Beatles tune
He’s a real nowhere man
Sitting in his nowhere land
Making all his nowhere plans for nobody
He has gotten most things correct and admitted some things he got wrong like the initial invasion timeline which everyone got wrong on both sides. End of the day the sanctions failed and Ukraine is running out of bodies.
Babeltuap,
Macgregor has been crowing about the Ukrainian Army being surrounded and annihilated time after time since the first few days of the invasion. I don’t think he has a clue as to how wrong he ‘s been. The Ukrainians now have a million men and women under arms. They started the war with under 150,000. That’s how you do a mobilization.
I listen to both sides. Nobody has said Ukraine has a million men and woman. Just reports of them grabbing teenagers but believe what you want to believe.
If you believe it then it happened is par for the course these days. Believe masks work, vaccines work, no election fraud, no Biden treason, no laptop from hell, no mass western censorship…meh.
Toretsk and rhyzevka yum cha tonigjt
mcohen, what?
The Ukrainians can’t win but the Russians can lose. The country that will be best advantaged from the war will be the PRC. That assessment seems to be holding rather steady.
John Minehan,
Why can’t the Ukrainians win? For them winning is limited to removing the Russian occupiers from Ukrainian land. They don’t need to destroy the Russian military, overthrow Putin or take Russian land to win.
TTG,
I kind of figured so. An arsehole on another site this am was regaling anyone who would listen about the virtues of ‘Colonel Mac’ and his proclamations about the mighty Russians. I told him in my very best imitation BBC style accent that the Colonel was full of himself and would likely lick himself on camera if he could.
I like that Beatles reference as it is spot on. Thanks.
“A lot can happen in five years. Tensions could rise. Tensions could fall. Our best course of action would be to seek some area of mutual cooperation in those five years. Perhaps an equivalent of the 1975 Apollo-Soyuz mission should be proposed.”
This is unhinged thinking that ignores the current situation completely. Do you not understand that the US has moved into full-bore containment mode against China, including national security, economics, and geopolitics? An equivalent of the 1975 Apollo-Soyuz mission? Are you aware that the reason that China has built its own space station is that the US refused to allow it cooperate on the International Space Station? Have you ever heard of the Wolf Amendment? Are you aware of how the US is hamstringing China by forbidding the sale of semiconductor manufacturing machinery to the Chinese wafer manufacturing industry? This is not limited to US companies. It includes ASML, a Dutch company that produces the cutting edge lithography machinery, and TSMC, which gave up 12% of their revenue when the US ordered the Taiwanese company to halt sales of 5nm wafers to Huawei. Look for the angry comments from ASML’s CEO on the future for his company. First, he loses his fastest growing market. Next, the Chinese take the EUV lithography machines, the highest tech in the industry, and reverse engineer them. It will take time, but the ASML CEO is confident that the Chinese have both the financial and technological resources to accomplish it. Next, they satisfy the Chinese market, and eventually they start to export the machinery, undercutting the ASML prices by a substantial amount.
This man is a realist who hates the American refusal to allow a free market.
Now Lloyd Austin goes to Singapore and tries to lecture the Chinese in the usual arrogant, exceptionalist American way about how China had better reinstate military communication with the US. What does the article above say? Lloyd rebuked the Chinese! This style of communication, do you think it bodes well for the potential for harmony and “mutual cooperation”? And Li Shang Fu was sitting there, listening to Austin’s bluster, himself under US sanctions as an individual. And Austin thinks that this is fine. The Chinese military must talk to our military, even as we sanction the defense minister in charge of that military. And TTG calls for mutual cooperation. Do you not see your hypocrisy? How about rolling back sanctions from the US side first? How about promoting harmony? How about taking the steps necessary for better communication and eventually mutual cooperation? You and I both know that in today’s US atmosphere of hatred for China, it’s not happening. Just make sure you place the responsibility fairly when you look at the situation.
A lot can happen in 5 years. A lot can happen in the next year. Perhaps people who really care about Taiwan, the Taiwanese people themselves, can forge a road that will prevent their island from becoming a battleground and their army and civilians proxy soldiers in America’s continued desire to be the global hegemon and unipolar power. The Presidential and Legislative elections in Taiwan next January COULD produce a new administration, one that steers a more careful course between China and the US. There’s no need to steer too close to China as Ma Ying-jeou did when he was president, but the current DPP Administration of Tsai Ying-wen is increasingly being seen by the Taiwanese as taking the path that leads to war, and believe me, the Taiwanese people have seen how the US has sent weapons and been top-notch cheerleaders while Ukraine has been destroyed.
Frankie P,
Apollo-Soyuz came about at the height of the Cold War, the height of the policies of containment and rollback. There was no trade what so ever between the US and the USSR. Both sides were ready for full on war in Europe. We still found a way to do Apollo-Soyuz. For a similar kind of project with China, we’d have to get past the law prohibiting cooperation in space with China.Baby steps, pal, baby steps.
Faulty analogy. The trade between China and the world and China and the US is colossal. C is the world’s factory. USSR wasn’t.
Father “Macgregor” writing the words to a sermon that no one well hear. What does he care…
The Stones gave us raunch. Yeah lets flk butt naked on the road shall we. The Beatles gave us thought. You d/n have to agree w/everything they produced. I did business w/a guy in Saranac Lake (Don Duso, long gone) who told me for years “Billy your transom is going to fall out”. About 6 years later it did. I defer to TTG on strategy and tactics BUT, it seems to me that if Ukraine can hold back the Russian for another fighting season it can only be good for Ukraine.
Looks like Ukraine’s Greatest Counteroffensive is going the way of Operation Citadel (no relation). TTG hardest hit.
N.B. Just kidding. Hardest hit are all of the people killed in this war. What makes it reminiscent of WWI is the assurance of rightness and principle. But notice that the rightness and principle of the Great War are unintelligible today.
drifter,
Sounds like it’s going rather well in spite of Russia’s claims of inflicting massive casualties and destruction on the Ukrainians. Still looks like shaping the battlefield with reconnaissance in force operations. One such RIF ended up capturing the town of Novodonetske on the road to Mariupol. Rybar said the attacking force was 10 AMX-10RCs and 40 to 100 infantry. A RIF should not be seizing towns, but what the hell. This was apparently a formation of the 37th Marine Brigade judging by the AMX-10RCs, one of the new brigades. Some of the Russian bloggers are misidentifying the wheeled AMX-10RCs as Leopard-2s maybe due to overhead views from drones.
I’ve been waiting for someone else to mention this, but no one yet has,
so I will.
It really seems extraordinarily remarkable.
INTELLIGENCE OFFICIALS SAY U.S. HAS RETRIEVED CRAFT OF NON-HUMAN ORIGIN
https://thedebrief.org/intelligence-officials-say-u-s-has-retrieved-non-human-craft/
The two named and photographed former DoD officials,
David Charles Grusch, 36 and
Karl E. Nell, a recently retired Army colonel,
sound pretty credible.
Of course, we will hear more about this in the future.
Several excerpts from the above-cited article seem worth noting:
And there’s lots more in this extensively, if often anonymously, sourced article.
Some concluding comments from me:
Based on what is in this article,
1. Grusch sounds totally credible.
2. His claims are of the greatest significance.
Keith Harbaugh,
Yes, he sounds credible and his claims are of the greatest significance. I don’t really understand why this isn’t causing more of a splash. Maybe it’s a general hesitancy to report on UAP stories or maybe it’s a humanity wide state of denial. This should be rocking the belief systems of modern religions. Those of the old ways, the shamanistic-animistic ways, may be able to incorporate the idea of intelligent life from beyond Earth far more readily.
TTG,
I think it is best explained by the “selective attention test”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJG698U2Mvo
It turns out that a lot of fact-checking and verification was executed on that Debrief story before it was published.
That checking is described rather thoroughly here:
https://thedebrief.org/fact-check-q-a-with-debrief-co-founder-and-investigator-tim-mcmillan-part-1/
Some of what they said:
Most of the article, of course, I cannot independently verify.
However, there was one part of it that overlapped with my experience.
“Grusch was a GS-15 civilian.”
Grusch was only 36.
When I was in the government, 36-year-olds might aspire to be a GS-13.
GS-15? That was for people in their 40s.
But maybe Grusch was a water walker, or NRO has different pay scales.
He certainly had some impressive jobs for someone in their early 30s.
Maybe tha
This is really an amazing story, by Michael Schallenberger.
It includes a pretty sophisticated analysis of how information can be withheld from AARO.
https://public.substack.com/p/us-has-12-or-more-alien-space-craft