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Atlantic
3 hours ago
- Politics
- Atlantic
The Pentagon Against the Think Tanks
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has scanned the horizon for threats, and sure enough, he has found a new group of dangerous adversaries: think - tanks, the organizations in the United States and allied nations that do policy research and advocate for various ideas. They must be stopped, according to a Defense Department announcement, because they promote 'the evil of globalism, disdain for our great country, and hatred for the president of the United States.' This particular bit of McCarthyist harrumphing was the rationalization the Pentagon gave more than a week ago for pulling out of the Aspen Security Forum, a long-running annual conference routinely attended by business leaders, military officers, academics, policy analysts, foreign officials, and top government leaders from both parties, including many past secretaries of defense. For good measure, the Defense Department spokesperson Sean Parnell invoked the current holy words of the Hegseth Pentagon: The Aspen forum, he said, did not align with the department's efforts to 'increase the lethality of our war fighters, revitalize the warrior ethos and project peace through strength on the world stage.' The Aspen gathering is not exactly a secret nest of Communists. This year's roster of speakers included former CIA Director Robert Gates, former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper—a Trump appointee—and a representative from Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán's office, among many others. John Phelan, the current secretary of the Navy, and Admiral Samuel Paparo, the head of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, were set to attend as well. Nor is Hegseth content just to stop America's intellectual enemies cold at the Rockies: The Pentagon last week suspended Defense Department participation in all such activities, functionally a blanket ban on any interaction with think tanks or other civilian institutions that hold conferences, convene panels, and invite speakers. The New York Times reported that the order to pull out of Aspen came from Hegseth personally. And as Politico first reported, the lager ban appears to extend 'to gatherings hosted by nonprofit military associations, such as Sea Air Space, which is led by the Navy League, the military service's largest veteran organization, and Modern Day Marine, a similar trade show for the Marine Corps.' The Pentagon also 'specifically banned attendance at the Halifax International Security Forum, which takes place in Nova Scotia each winter and where the Pentagon chief is usually a top guest.' Take that, Canada. Right now, no one seems certain of how this new policy works. Hegseth appears to have suspended all such participation subject to additional review by the Pentagon's public-affairs office and general counsel, so perhaps some defense officials could one day end up attending conferences after their requests have been vetted. Good luck with that, and best wishes to the first Pentagon employee who pops up out of their cubicle to request a pass to attend such meetings. At some point soon, this prohibition will almost certainly be lifted, but why did Hegseth's Pentagon impose it in the first place? I am a former Defense Department employee who, over the course of my career, attended (and spoke at) dozens of conferences at various think tanks and other organizations, and I will make an educated guess based on experience: The main reasons are resentment, insecurity, and fear. The most ordinary reason, resentment, predates Hegseth. Government service is not exactly luxurious, and many trips are special perks that generate internal gripes about who gets to go, where they get to stay, and so on. (These trips are not exactly luxurious either, but in my government-service days, I learned that some people in the federal service chafe when other employees get free plane tickets to visit nice places.) It's possible that someone who has never been invited to one of these things convinced Hegseth—who seems reluctant to attend such events himself—that these meetings are just boondoggles and that no one should go. Bureaucratic pettiness, however, isn't enough of an explanation. One hazard for people like Hegseth and his lieutenants at a place like Aspen or the International Institute of Strategic Studies or the Halifax conference is that these are organizations full of exceptionally smart people, and even experienced and knowledgeable participants have to be sharp and prepared when they're onstage and in group discussions. The chance of being outclassed, embarrassed, or just in over one's head can be very high for unqualified people who have senior government jobs. Hegseth himself took a pass on the Munich Security Conference (usually a good venue for a new secretary of defense), and instead decided to show videos of himself working out with the troops. We can all admire Hegseth's midlife devotion to staying fit and modeling a vigorous exercise regimen for the troops (who must exercise anyway, because they are military people and are ordered to it), but America and its allies would probably benefit more from a secretary with an extra pound here and there who could actually stand at a podium in Munich or London and explain the administration's strategic vision and military plans. The overall prohibition on conferences provides Hegseth and his deputies (many of whom have no serious experience with defense issues) with an excuse for ducking out and avoiding making fools of themselves. But perhaps the most obvious and Trumpian reason for the Pentagon's brainpower lockdown is fear. Officials in this administration know that the greatest risk to their careers has nothing to do with job performance; if incompetence were a cause for dismissal, Hegseth would have been gone months ago. The far greater danger comes from the chance of saying something in public that gets the speaker sideways with Trump and turns his baleful stare across the river to the Pentagon. 'The Trump administration doesn't like dissent, I think that's pretty clear,' a Republican political strategist and previous Aspen attendee told The Hill last week. 'And they don't like dissenting views at conferences.' The problem for Trump officials is that 'dissent' can mean almost anything, because the strategic direction of the United States depends on the president's moods, his grievances, and his interactions with others, including foreign leaders. Everything can change in the space of a post on Truth Social. To step forward in a public venue and say anything of substance is a risk; the White House is an authoritarian bubble, and much like the Kremlin in the old Soviet Union, the man in charge can decide that what is policy today could be heresy tomorrow. In the end, banning attendance at meetings where defense officials can exchange ideas with other intelligent people is—like so much else in this administration—a policy generated by pettiness and self-protection, a way to batten down the Pentagon's hatches so that no one speaks out or screws up. If this directive stays in place for even a few years, however, it will damage relationships among the military, defense officials, business leaders, academics, and ordinary Americans. Public conferences are part of the American civil-military relationship. Sometimes, these are events such as Aspen, where senior officials present policies or engage their critics under a national spotlight; other gatherings at various nongovernmental organizations help citizens understand what, exactly, their government is doing. At academically oriented meetings, members of the defense community gather ideas, debate, discuss, and sometimes establish contacts for future research and exchanges. Retired Army Colonel Jeffrey McCausland, who served on the National Security Council staff and as the dean of the Army War College, told me that the Pentagon's shortsightedness could prevent important civil-military exchanges about national defense, and he wonders how far such prohibitions will go: Might the new directive mean that the 'guy who teaches history at West Point or a war college,' for example, 'can't go to a history conference and be a better history professor?' Maybe someone is mad that they didn't get to go to Colorado or Canada; perhaps someone else is worried that accepting an invitation could be career suicide. Somehow, the Pentagon has managed to engage productively in such events for decades, under administrations of both parties. But Hegseth, after a string of embarrassments—McCausland points to the lingering 'radioactivity' of Signalgate —has apparently chosen a safety-first approach. Unfortunately, the secretary still has to appear in public, and the chances of yet more stumbles from him and his team are high. But at least he'll be able to reassure the American public that the upright employees of the Pentagon won't be wined and dined by politically suspect eggheads.
WIRED
7 hours ago
- Politics
- WIRED
Political Scientist Answers China Questions
If Russian bots exist, do Chinese bots also exist? I think first of all, you should look down at the comments in this video and you'll probably get a taste of whether there are any Chinese bots. I'm Michael Beckley. I study modern China. Let's answer your questions from the internet. This is China Support. [upbeat music] S-Sheepherder wants to know, What do westerners get wrong about China? Well, China's really big. There's 19 countries around China, and so that big military that China has is spread quite thin having to defend all of China's borders. Or the big economy, you have to feed one of the largest populations on the planet. You have to maintain control over those people. That all drains resources from the country and means just that it's much more complicated to analyze China. You have both a lot of assets, but also a lot of liabilities. @snoowlions wants to know, When did modern China start? Let's answer that with a timeline. Let's start in 1911 with the collapse of the Qing dynasty that ends thousands of years off and on of imperial rule. China then collapses into the warlord era, which is every bit as bad as it sounds. Then the Japanese in the 1930s really step up their aggression in China, conquering big parts of it, and basically starting World War II in East Asia. The Japanese are defeated in 1945, but at that point, the Chinese Civil War comes roaring back between the Communists and the Nationalists. The Communists win that Civil War in 1949. They found the People's Republic of China under Mao Zedong. China initially sides with the Soviet Union in the Cold War, but about halfway through, they realize that the Soviets are actually their main enemy. That paves the way for in the US President Richard Nixon to go to Beijing. And at that point, China and the United States basically become allies in the rest of the Cold War. The Soviet Union collapses in 1991 and that sets the stage for the US and China to become major trading and investment partners. That culminates in 2001 with China's entry into the World Trade Organization. But especially after the 2008 financial crisis, you start to see the United States and China looking at each other more like rivals feeling like their economies are under strain and that the trade relationship is not working out as well as they had hoped. And that really paves the way for the era that we're currently in, which is one of tremendous hostility between the United States and China. hecubiss asks, Why would China even want to invade Taiwan? So first of all, Taiwan is the seat of a rival Chinese government that is democratic, essentially tied security wise to the United States. And so if you're the Chinese Communist Party and you insist that this is all your territory, you can't have this renegade regime going in a different direction. Taiwan is where the nationalists fled to when they lost the Chinese Civil War. So they want to finish that job. It's smack-dab at the epicenter of the East China Sea and the South China Sea where about half of world trade flows through. So this is probably, pound for pound, the most strategic important waterway on the planet. And Taiwan itself is, you can see, the center cork of what the Chinese call the first island chain in East Asia that runs from Korea and the Japanese islands down through the Philippines. These are all American allies. They host American troops. China has no California, it has no west coast. Its only coast is completely hemmed in by rival powers that are allied with the United States. Smashing Taiwan and taking it over would give China an unsinkable aircraft carrier in the most important waterways, and blast a hole, not just geographically, in the US alliance system in East Asia, but really in the credibility of US alliances 'cause no one would trust the United States if the US just let Taiwan go down. Every single Chinese leader has said, It's only a question of time. We're gonna take Taiwan one of these days. Xi Jinping has said that it's a situation that cannot be passed down generation to generation, which some analysts worry means he intends to do this on his watch. BW asks, Is there something America can learn from China? Is there something that they're doing right? China is really good at mobilizing resources for national missions. For example, China has installed more solar and wind power than any other country. China is the world's largest trade power in the world and has forged trade relationships with the majority of the world's countries. And China has built infrastructure faster and on greater scale than any country in human history, then just the miraculous development of bringing hundreds of millions of people from living on less than $2 a day to average disposable incomes of 5,000 to $10,000 a year. That is a tremendous, almost miraculous undertaking that China has been able to pull off. And I think that only comes from having a sense of national unity and a willingness to pool resources for national purposes. The United States, it's a dynamic, open, decentralized system, but the downside is it also generally does not mobilize its resources on a national scale and unify unless it's really confronted with a crisis like a global war or a depression. So there are areas of the United States that are neglected in terms of infrastructure. There are neighborhoods that could be built up. There are education systems that are failing. And so that type of rallying resources and coming together is something that the US I think could look to to China. But obviously you don't want to go too far because part of what allows China to do that is just a lack of civil and political rights for the Chinese people. @greatshistorian asks, Who is winning the current trade war between America and China? China is very much an investment and export-driven economy. This trade war is really bad for a lot of those major export industries. There's been lots of closures, especially in eastern China. There's been mass layoffs even just in the short time that this trade war has been going on. Now on the American side, the consumer market is roughly three times the size of China's. So consumers are the ones who are being hurt by this trade war because they're gonna have to pay higher prices for goods that were manufactured in China. Xi Jinping cares a lot less about GDP growth. He cares about power and about developing self-reliant, strong industries. And if this trade war enables China to decouple and reduce its dependence on the West, I think he counts that as a win, even if it crimps economic growth in the short term. And for the United States under the Trump administration, they similarly want to decouple from China because they view it as a national security threat. I see these two countries as having a distinct interest in trying to get away from each other economically. These dependencies, they both seem to want to push those away. ChaseTheTaco. Serious question. Is China truly a Communist country? I know it seems crazy if you look at the Shanghai skyline, you fly in through the Beijing airport. That is the gilded veneer on the outside that's been built up. But if you look at the super-structure of the economy, what's actually the driving force behind it? It's a very strong state presence. All of the land in the country is owned by the Chinese Communist Party. The energy industry, the banking sector is state-owned, 90%+ of the financial assets flowing around the country, so these are all what Lenin called the commanding heights of the economy. And it can produce incredible output. It can produce shiny high-speed rail, it can produce gleaming skyscrapers. But this is sort of like a new modern form of a communist system where you still have the party running the show economically insisting on a one-party state and a dictator ruling over it all. Take Jack Ma, the former head of Alibaba, has a major company in China, and he gave a speech a few years back criticizing the way that the government was running the economy. He had his wings totally clipped. He was sent out to Tokyo, he had his empire completely dismantled and now has basically had to come crawling back. You've had many other billionaires simply just disappear. And so at the end of the day, even the high-flying titans of China's economy know that their livelihoods depend very much on their relationship with the Chinese Communist Party, which is why you see many of the top titans of industry in China in the National People's Hall during these major conclaves sitting next to Xi Jinping because they're effectively part of the same-party system that he operates. DizzyMajor5 wants to know, What do the Chinese people think of Mao Zedong? Is he considered good or bad? The standard answer taught in Chinese schools is that he was 70% right, but 30% wrong. Here's Mao as a young revolutionary. He was a journalist for a long time. He actually wrote a whole pamphlet in 1940 about democracy and freedom in China. Of course, once he becomes Chairman Mao, a lot of that stuff goes away. The 70% right was he unified the country which had been ripped apart by decades of civil war. He instituted a mass education campaign 'cause he wanted to lift China up. So that led to widespread literacy. He wanted women to be active participants in the labor force. Now, in terms of the bad, his so-called Great Leap Forward, which was this scheme to turn China into a superpower in just a few years, took millions of peasants off of their farms, put them in communes, had them melt down their pots and pans. As a result, the food supply ran out and 45 million people starved to death or were beaten or shot along the way. And then in order to insulate and protect himself, he then launched the Cultural Revolution where he basically turned the Chinese people on the Communist Party to purge many of his rivals. That probably killed another million to 2 million people. So ruthless, brutal, but effective in terms of bringing China together, which for much of Chinese history has not been the case. @SuperCoach137 asks, How did the one-child policy work out for China? It resulted in several hundred million abortions when people, starting in the late 1970s, weren't allowed to have more than one child. You'd be subject to massive fines, equivalent in some cases to a year or more of your income if you had a second child. In the '50s and '60s, China had a massive baby boom because Mao Zedong wanted to turn China into a superpower. So he encouraged Chinese families to have lots of children. So then when China did a 180 and implemented the one-child policy in the late 1970s, you had this baby boom generation coming into the prime of their working lives and they had relatively few children to take care of 'cause they weren't allowed to have them and they had relatively few elderly parents to care for because so many of them end up dying in the famines and the Cultural Revolution. So in the '90s and 2000s, you had anywhere between 10 to 15 working-age adults available to support every elderly retiree in China's population. That's two to three times the global average. It's five times what the United States currently has. And so as a result, China's population was primed for economic productivity and demographers think that alone explains about 25% of China's rapid economic growth over the last 30 to 40 years. The problem for China is now the situation is flipping where that huge baby boom generation are retiring and falling onto the backs of this tiny one-child generation. That 10:15 ratio is gonna collapse to 2:1. In the 2030s, China's gonna lose somewhere like 70 million working-age adults in the next 10 years and gain 130 million senior citizens. That's gonna be catastrophic for China's fiscal balance, for its economic productivity. @RightSideofMB says, Siri, what are Chinese ghost cities? Ghost cities refer to entire apartment complexes, airports, shopping malls that are either mostly or entirely empty. And it's a result of China's economic model, which is very much about collecting the resources of the Chinese people under the state and then plowing them into certain industries, including into the real estate sector. It works really well for an authoritarian government 'cause it's easy to pay off cronies who own the companies that are doing all of the building. The problem is it runs amuck. These companies, they're getting paid whether the apartments are occupied or not. So they build a bunch of stuff but then people aren't moving into them and now that China's population is declining, there is going to be ever-lowering demand for a lot of this base infrastructure. MehmetTopal wants to know, How much power does Xi Jinping hold personally? Is he an absolutist like Louis XIV or like Stalin? I'm gonna reserve a certain category for divine-right monarchs like Louis XIV and distinguish that from Xi Jinping. So Xi Jinping is probably the most powerful leader since Mao Zedong. He's made himself president of everything for life, but at the end of the day, he's one guy. And so his ability to pay attention to everything that's going on in his vast sprawling country is inherently limited. So the real estate crisis that's going on, he's demanded that people be more frugal and not speculate on real estate, but the market is kind of doing what it's going to do. And as a result, you still have that ongoing crisis. Zero COVID. You know, he locked down Chinese people in their apartments for months on end. At a certain point the Chinese people had it and you saw protests emerging that seemed to have encouraged Xi to back down and undo that policy. And he also has to worry about rivals in the party, which is why he's embarked on this massive anti-corruption campaign, purging more than a million senior CCP officials along the way. We do know a bit about his backstory. His father was a high-ranking official serving under Mao Zedong, but he was purged, and in fact, Xi himself and his family were purged during the Cultural Revolution. Xi was sent out to the countryside to basically dig a bunch of holes. His father was humiliated, Xi himself was denounced by his own mother, and his half sister died during the Cultural Revolution. It's all speculation, but people think this may have had a big effect on him and that's what he thinks of when he thinks of rule by the people, which may explain partially why he seems so committed to centralizing all power under himself and basically installing himself to the point that he's literally written himself into the constitution and obligates other people in China to read what he calls Xi Jinping Thought, which is his own sort of philosophy about how to guide the country. @nic_moneypenny wants to know, What was China's ultimate role in the COVID-19 pandemic? We don't know for sure because China, the government, has gone to extraordinary lengths to cover up how COVID emerged and details about the virus. We know that in late 2019, they basically got rid of a lot of their virus samples that were related to coronaviruses. They floated conspiracy theories that a virus actually came to China from frozen food that was imported from outside of the country and they didn't really allow international inspectors until very late. And even then, when the WHO came to try to figure out where the virus came from, it was a highly scripted, almost sort of like North Korean tour around the facilities. And as a result, we just don't know where it came from. The two major theories are that it either emerged from this wet market in Wuhan because of the animals that were being eaten and slaughtered there. The other major theory is that it emerged from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which is China's premier place for studying coronaviruses. And we know the virus itself has certain features that you really only see if it's been modified in a lab rather than naturally. The bottom line is, we don't know, but there's a lot of circumstantial evidence that it was done in this lab, which is a center of not just Chinese research, but of a multinational research attempt to analyze coronaviruses. @JerryDunleavy asks, Whatever happened to Tank Man? And how many people did the Chinese Communist Party murder at Tiananmen Square? So what Jerry is referring to is that famous image of a man standing in front of several tanks that are rolling into Tiananmen Square to run over demonstrators, mainly students, that were protesting there in 1989. We have no idea what happened to Tank Man, he has never been heard of since. It wasn't just a crackdown in Beijing and Tiananmen Square, there were massive protests in basically every provincial capital around China. More than 80 cities had mass demonstrations that were then forcibly put down. According to the party, roughly 200 to 300 people were killed. But most Western estimates suggest it was 10 times that amount. The way that the Tiananmen Square protests are often portrayed is as a pro-democracy demonstration by the Chinese people. And certainly there were elements of that. A lot of the students in Tiananmen Square were calling for more democratic governance. They built a giant replica of the Statue of Liberty in the middle of Tiananmen Square. But really the crisis starts and the reason why it spreads across the country was economic. There was massive inflation. This led to massive demonstrations. A lot of people weren't being paid for jobs that they were employed to do by the state. And also keep in mind that communist regimes were starting to crumble, especially across Eastern Europe. So the tail end of the Cold War and this belief that the legitimacy, the functioning of a communist system is under question and led to mass demonstrations and even a split among the elites in the Chinese Communist Party. Since then, now the Communist Party is very much, We have to stay together. We either stay together or we hang separately. I think that informs a lot of the emphasis on repression put on in China today. MiltonMerloXD wants to know, How does censorship work in China? So there's an actual Propaganda Department, that's what it's called in China. They set guidelines about what is allowed to be said and what is not allowed to be said. It's all pretty predictable. You know, criticizing the Chinese Communist Party, promoting democracy, Western liberal methods are all kind of looked down upon and and squelched. What the regime then does is they have this vast great firewall to control the internet where they use a combination of artificial intelligence and then hundreds of thousands of people that are actually working to monitor China's internet, which is partially sealed off. What the censors really go after is not so much people going off and mouthing criticism about the leader, but much more about trying to organize politically, whether it's a house church, or student group or anything where you get people together who can then talk and then rally and potentially grow their numbers, that looks too much like the start of an alternative political party. And the Chinese Communist Party says, No. We have a monopoly on power. We're the only political party that's allowed to be had in this system. And that seems to be what the censorship regime is primarily dedicated to squelching out. @mbateman says, Wait, China's domestic surveillance system is actually called Skynet? I know, it's kind of on the nose. It is called Skynet. The idea is that there's hundreds of millions of surveillance cameras that have been set up around the country as if it's a net coming from the sky. China has pioneered methods to take all of the images that are being absorbed by these cameras and then use artificial intelligence and speech and facial recognition technology, even gait recognition, so how you walk can be identified. And at this point they're starting to export elements of this system to more than 80 countries. Cuba, Pakistan, Cambodia have all imported aspects of this system. And so some scholars think this is the emergence of a new type of authoritarian system that seems to have a lot of advantages in terms of population control. @Spencemo_c asks, How does China's social credit system work? So in addition to video cameras and speech and facial recognition technology, the Communist Party has access to your financial statements, to your police record, your education, any kind of disciplinary action. And so what they've done is basically created a dossier on every single citizen. And so what they can then do is instantly punish Chinese citizens by saying, Oh you, you jaywalked. That's a point. And so now you're gonna have to pay more if you want a loan or you may not be able to travel as freely or it may take longer to get your passport when you go to a government office. There essentially is like a score and sometimes they'll actually post names of people who have been blacklisted because they've committed certain crimes or they've been infraction of certain regulations encouraging people to report on each other. ItsAllOver_Again wants to know, Why is China so God-like in the world of manufacturing? Well, it's so God-like, because it's designed to be God-like. You have an authoritarian system that essentially obligates the Chinese people to put their life savings in a state-owned bank. That means the government has tons of money, a war chest that they can then deploy at what they call strategic industries. So they've spent hundreds of billions of dollars every single year for more than a decade. That's 10 times what other rich countries in the OECD or the United States spend as a share of their GDPs. So in for example, the electric vehicle sector, China has spent about $230 billion. Semiconductors, biotechnology, all of these key strategic industries. And at the same time, many foreign companies have sent over lots of investment and training. So Apple, for example, has spent about $275 billion in investment in China. That's more than the Marshall Plan that the United States used to help Europe recover from World War II. Apple also trained millions of Chinese workers, 28 million, which is more than the labor force of California. And also a lot of this is determined by their geography. China has a long coastline right in the heart of East Asia, which is the most economically dynamic region in the world. So many of the world's supply chains flow through these waters. In the 1970s and early 1980s, you had China setting up what they called Special Economic Zones, especially in the Southeast and places like Shenzhen as well as in Fujian province. In some industries, whether it's electric vehicles or in rare earths, China currently produces anywhere between 60 to 90% of the global market. And now China has ports lining up and down its coastline that serve as export platforms essentially for the rest of the world. In addition, China has extremely low labor costs because several hundred million people from the poor provinces in the west, they move to the richer east coast provinces to work in factories for very low wages. But that provides essentially a bottomless source of cheap-but-effective labor for China's manufacturing juggernaut. Roxi USA asks, What percentage of pharmaceuticals does the US import in from China? In terms of antibiotics, basic antibiotics, it's upwards of 90% that include at least some ingredients that are made in China. And so this has become another national security threat where the United States worries that China could potentially cut the United States off from basic pharmaceuticals if there's some kind of crisis over Taiwan. Whether China would actually do that remains to be seen. @toxiccowboy1 asks, Are we headed to war with China? It's not completely out of the question. In addition to the conflict over Taiwan, there's also the risk of a war around the Philippines. That conflict really stems over who controls the South China Sea where a lot of trade passes through where most of China's oil imports pass through. Under international law, the Philippines gets 12 miles out from their coastline that is their territory, and then another 200 miles out from their coastline that is their exclusive economic zone. China says, No. That is all, that's just all Chinese territory. And they've been building artificial islands there. They've been turning them into military bases and they formed what they call a maritime militia. So thousands of fishing boats, coast guard vessels and naval ships that are basically shoving other countries out of their exclusive economic zone and confining them to narrow bands along their own coastlines. The Philippines took China to court in 2016, the World Court, which ruled that China's historical claims to the South China Sea are null and void. And in recent years China's really been turning the screw on the Philippines, one, I think to invalidate that ruling and shatter its credibility, but second, 'cause the Philippines has started opening up new military bases for the United States 'cause they say, We need some protection from China so that we can have access to our territorial waters in our exclusive economic zone. The Chinese have a saying, You should kill a chicken to scare the monkeys. Meaning you should make a bloody example out of a relatively weak adversary to send a message to the more powerful ones. The Philippines have very little offensive air or naval capability. So you just have to worry that Chinese would look at them as a very juicy target; weak but symbolically important. @adamncheck asks, Is TikTok just a China app to make Americans do dumb stuff to get likes and views and keep us distracted while they take over? The Chinese version of TikTok, you're only allowed to use it for 15 minutes to an hour or so depending on your age and status. And they also try to insert educational wholesome content in addition to all the fun cat videos and everything else that people are watching. So I think the Chinese know that this system is maybe not the best thing that kids should be spending all day on. TikTok is owned by ByteDance, a Chinese company. Under Chinese law, ByteDance is required to hand over data to Beijing whenever and in however much it wants it. It's like putting a Chinese spy balloon in your cell phone with your biometric data, everything you've liked and disliked. There's been studies done suggesting that the algorithm in TikTok in the American version was promoting certain views like after the October 7th massacre in Israel, more pro-Hamas views were being amplified or pro-Russian views on the Ukraine conflict. @NOYK1847 asks, If Russian bots exist, do Chinese bots also exist? I think first of all, you should look down at the comments in this video and you'll probably get a taste of whether there are any Chinese bots. China, it's been well documented, it uses both bots as well as what is called a 50-Cent Army basically has a bunch of mainly kids and young adults who are paid 50 Chinese cents per internet post that they make to destroy, undermine the credibility of messages that maybe cut against the Chinese Communist Party. It's reported there's probably several hundred thousand people that are essentially employed as internet trolls by the Chinese Communist Party, in addition to obviously using artificial intelligence and bots. @Psalm_Sixtynine asks, Why would China want Tibet? I think it becomes very clear when you look at a map of China and you can see that most of it is the highest mountains in the world, the Himalayas, and a lot of it is also desert. And so most of China's population is packed in here and they're desperate for water as well as strategic space to defend themselves against enemies. And so Tibet, which is in this area here, is highly strategic. For one, a lot of the glaciers up in the Himalayas are where the major rivers of Asia start, both flowing down into China as well as flowing down into Southeast Asia and into India. So if China can control that territory, it controls the source of vital water supplies. At the same time, China and India, which is now the most populous country on the planet, have a longstanding rivalry, and Tibet is the high ground literally looking down onto India. In addition, the Chinese Communist Party essentially inherited the borders of the previous Qing dynasty empire, which included Tibet led by the Dalai Lama. And so when China took over Tibet and conquered it in 1951, the Dalai Lama fled to India and has been running a government in exile in India ever since. This next question is from TapestryGirl. Mom says China could take over the United States because they own our debt. China does own some US debt. It's in the 3 to 4% range. It topped out at about 7% about a decade ago, generally in the form of treasury bills. And a lot of this emerges just from the economic relationship between the United States and China where China is exporting a lot of goods to the United States. And the United States will often pay for that, essentially with a piece of paper that says IOU in the form of a treasury bill. Analysts have looked at whether they could use this as a course of weapon and basically concluded they'd be shooting themselves in the foot. The value of that asset would suddenly plummet. Japan owns more US debt than China does. So I don't think that this is a unique China thing or that they could use it as some type of weapon to coerce the United States. Let's take a question from Quora. Is modern China more influenced by Confucianism or Marxism? I would say both because they lead in similar directions. Marxism-Leninism stresses the idea of public or communal ownership of the means of production to produce wealth. That is owned by the state in China. It's led by what Lenin would call the vanguard party staffed by a top leader that is making decisions on behalf of the people. And that's consistent with certain elements of Confucianism. Confucianism obviously has a long lineage, thousands of years in China. Confucius, a philosopher who emphasized a natural harmony, people knowing their place in society, that everyone has a certain role to perform in that society, and that you have to have a benevolent leader that leads on behalf of the people. That obviously appeals very much to Chinese dynasties over the millennia. You have Xi Jinping today grafting that on to a Marxist-Leninist structure of the party. @Gus_802 asked, What happened with the Chinese spy balloon hysteria? In January, 2023, the United States detected a balloon floating over areas including a nuclear missile silo in Montana. What it was carrying was all this advanced surveillance equipment that was about the size of a regional jet airliner. So we're talking about a major piece of hardware floating around. China's done this in more than 40 countries, in Japan, over Taiwan, they've been floating balloons even over potentially over American bases in Europe. And there's a fear that China is testing out this alternative surveillance system. Because balloons emit almost no radar signature, they're really hard to detect. They hover around 60,000 feet, which is higher than a commercial airliner but below satellites in this area where people really aren't looking. It gives China eyes and ears over sensitive US sites that otherwise they wouldn't have. The US sent a fighter jet up eventually to shoot it down and then the US grabbed all of the technology that was there and observed the balloon's flight. That might have actually helped US intelligence more than Chinese intelligence. @all4stops asks, Who is winning the tech war between China and the United States? I think they are each dominating different types of technologies. The United States is still doing quite well in high-value areas. So advanced computer chips, aerospace, the complicated jet engines that you need to fly a jumbo jet or a fighter. China on the other hand dominates scale taking existing technologies from other countries and then mass producing highly effective, cost-efficient electric vehicles, run-of-the-mill computer chips, rare earths, pharmaceuticals, medical PPE. There's so many areas where China can just flood the market with sheer scales. Both of those types of technologies are really important for a modern economy. They're also very important for military power. So each in their own way is sort of winning in some ways but also has major vulnerabilities. @JoeBart85120716 asked, Does China own American farmland? Yes, China does own American farmland. It's like 0.05% of American farmland. But some of this farmland is near American military bases, especially Air Force bases including some of those where American strategic forces, nuclear forces could be taking off. And so there is a fear that if China has this land, they can put things on it, explosives, missiles, that could potentially attack American bases if there is some kind of major war and destroy US aircraft on the ground before they even get up into the air. We don't know the details on that. You'd have to get classified information, but the amount of farmland is small, the location is a little bit scary and questionable. cakeba asks, Can someone explain Hong Kong to me? So Hong Kong was a British colony after the first Opium War in 1839 all the way up until 1997 where Britain agreed to hand back Hong Kong to China and in exchange, China pledged to grant Hong Kong a, quote, High degree of autonomy. 'Cause within Hong Kong there was a different rule of law. There was an independent judiciary. So you saw massive protests there over the last five or six years when China was basically trying to erode a lot of those freedoms, crack down on the press, crack down on the free flow of investment, and also on the way that the Hong Kong government is selected and the Chinese government passed national security laws that made it possible for them to remove protestors, take them to mainland China. So at this point it seems like Hong Kong has basically become another large cosmopolitan, but ultimately Chinese city run by the Chinese Communist Party. IronLover64 asks, How does the quality of life for the low class in China compare to that of the United States, let's say in a red state. So why don't we compare the poorest of the poor in China to say average wages in Mississippi, which is the poorest state. For China, roughly half the country is living on something like $5 to $10 a day. In Mississippi, that's gonna be three to four times that amount. There's a lot more obesity in a place like Mississippi than there is in China. On the other hand, in rural China you have a severe problem of malnourishment and rudimentary healthcare. Researchers at Stanford went out and they found that roughly a third of rural children, their IQs are around 90, which is really low, because of malnutrition from a young age, a lack of education. The average education level is about an eighth grade or seventh grade level in rural China 'cause high school costs money. And so a lot of Chinese families, their kids will just drop out of school. And the other issue is that your citizenship in China is tied to your locality. And so if Mom and Dad go to an eastern rich coastal province to work in a factory, they can't bring their kids with them 'cause they won't be allowed to go to school. So they're just sending money back and maybe only seeing their kids a few times or maybe only once a year. So just in terms of the basic healthcare and education level and then just in terms of the amount of wealth that someone in Mississippi might have versus someone in poor rural China, it's a very stark difference. @Captaintrips333 asks, What's going on with the Uyghur Muslim population in China? So there's about 10 to 12 million Uyghur Muslims. They live mainly in a province called Xinjiang, which is in the western part of China. Basically since 2017, China set up what they call reeducation centers or vocational education centers, what people in the West have called concentration camps, and what the US government deems an attempt at genocide and basically put in a million to a million and a half Uyghur Muslims, so a substantial part of the population, in these centers. We've heard from people that have come out of them that there's a lot of indoctrination, that they are enforced to renounce their heritage and to learn Mandarin and basically to assimilate with Chinese society. A big part of what the Chinese Communist Party is about is making sure a Soviet-style collapse never occurs in China. And one of their theories about why the Soviet Union broke apart was that the Soviet Union was like one of those Hershey chocolate bars that's divided into little squares that you can break apart. It was these disparate republics that all went their own way when they suddenly could. So there was a fear that a minority region like Xinjiang where these Uyghurs were living was going to try to separate from the mainland or was gonna become a base of terrorism directed at China. So unfortunately the Uyghur Muslims are experiencing severe repression right now under the Chinese Communist Party. loefferrafael asks, Does China support or promote communism around the world? I don't think China's promoting communism anymore the way that the Soviet Union used to bankroll revolutionary movements. They have engaged in this Belt and Road Initiative where they've loaned out more than a trillion dollars to more than a hundred different countries, mainly so that those countries can employ Chinese companies to build infrastructure on their territory. So whether that's building ports or roads or soccer stadiums or what the Chinese call smart city systems. There's a port in Greece for example, that is highly profitable, it's an important, valuable piece of infrastructure that China helped fund and build. One out of every three infrastructure projects in Sub-Saharan Africa over the last 20 years has been built partially or entirely by Chinese companies. So you see a massive spread of infrastructure and part of the reason really stems from the 2008 Financial Crisis and the resulting trade protectionism that was emerging, backlash against Chinese products. The Chinese decided, We need to open up new markets. We can also get these countries more hooked on our ecosystem of technology standards, 5G networks, smart city systems, and that way we'll have dominant market share in a lot of these areas that are gonna be really the growth of demand in terms of consumption going forwards. They also bring that surveillance system that allows would-be dictators to keep easier tabs on their populations. @ostenati asks, What happens when Xi dies? Who's next in line? And will they be good for China? I think chaos could potentially ensue because he has not designated a successor. He's written himself into the constitution. He's basically treated like a demigod in terms of Chinese propaganda. And if you look at the history of the Chinese Communist Party, there has only been one completely orderly and peaceful transition of power. And that's when Xi himself came to power. All of the previous leaders, it was a vicious power struggle and there were split authorities. So for example, Deng Xiaoping is purged and then eventually comes back to power and has to put down his enemies and imprison them in order to take the helm. Then Jiang Zemin comes to power after the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989, basically 'cause the Party realizes it needs to unify behind a candidate or they're just gonna disintegrate. Then when Hu Jintao comes to power, Jiang Zemin is not willing to give up a lot of his power and he keeps himself as commander in chief even after Hu Jintao becomes president and general secretary of the country. It'd be like as if Joe Biden was still head of the Pentagon and the military and commander in chief, even though Donald Trump is now president here in the United States. In other words, in Chinese politics it's very rough-and-tumble, even though it happens behind closed doors. Chaos is entirely possible. And if you just look at the broad sweep of Chinese history, vicious power struggles tend to ensue. Some people hope that you'll get a Chinese Mikhail Gorbachev, you know, the Soviet leader who made nice with the West and liberalized a bit at home. I think you might actually get a Chinese Vladimir Putin. It seems like the one thing that everyone in the Chinese Communist Party can agree on is that the Chinese Communist Party should continue to rule China in perpetuity. So those are all the questions for today. Thanks for watching China Support. [upbeat music]
Hindustan Times
10 hours ago
- Politics
- Hindustan Times
Like Nehru for 1962 War, Panikkar became easy scapegoat on China policy: Shivshankar Menon
New Delhi, India's first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru and and its first ambassador to China KM Panikkar shared one thing. Both are still criticised for their policies and they can't defend themselves as they are dead, says former NSA Shivshankar Menon. Like Nehru for 1962 War, Panikkar became easy scapegoat on China policy: Shivshankar Menon Speaking at the India International Centre on Monday during the launch of historian Narayani Basu's biography of Panikkar "A Man for All Seasons", Menon argued that Panikkar's reputation suffered largely because history judged him with the benefit of hindsight, while he and the government were navigating uncharted waters with limited information at the time. "Nehru gets blamed for 1962, but nobody asks, 'What is everybody else doing?' 'Why wasn't anybody else doing their job?' Because it's much easier - the man is dead, he can't defend himself, so they blame him. Then nobody else has to reform or change or do anything. "I think the same applies to Panikkar and China policy. It's convenient to have a scapegoat, and scapegoats are useful to societies, especially to bureaucracies," said Menon, who himself served as ambassador to China from 2000-03. Panikkar was appointed ambassador to China in April 1948. The Communists took over in the country the year later. His role in dealing with China's new government became highly controversial, with accusations that he misled Nehru about the Chinese military campaign into Tibet. China invaded Tibet in 1950. The Chinese People's Liberation Army entered Tibet in October 1950, leading to the eventual incorporation of Tibet into the People's Republic of China. "One of the reasons why Panikkar's reputation on China policy suffered is because we already knew how the story ended. The trouble was, he didn't know where it was going - frankly, none of them did," Menon said in his defence of Pannikar. Giving a glimpse into the period when Panikkar served as ambassador to China, Menon described it as marked by chaos and uncertainty, with no officials for Panikkar to engage with since the new Communist regime had not yet been recognized by India. He highlighted that cables from that era reveal "complete confusion both in Delhi and on the ground", made worse by Panikkar's lack of diplomatic experience and limited sources of intelligence. "He wasn't a professional diplomat, so he wasn't cynical about people," Menon explained, noting how Panikkar had to rely on Chinese officials for information during China's move into Tibet with no alternative channels for verification. Menon cited Basu's book to highlight how directives to Indian diplomats about Tibet shifted nearly every week, emphasizing that the government's stance on the issue was constantly evolving. Despite this, Menon argued that Pannikar right from the beginning foresaw the challenge posed by revived Chinese nationalism. "Some of his early dispatches from China, just before the Communist takeover, were quite prescient," Menon added, lamenting that Delhi did not heed these warnings. Describing Panikkar as someone "difficult to pigeonhole", Menon credited him with being the first to highlight the "maritime dimension" of how India views and engages with the world. "In fact, the 'Look East' and 'Act East' policy is the logical end of where he started us off," he added. "A man for All Seasons", published by Westland, draws on Panikkar's body of work, as well as on archival material from India to England, from France to China, and from Israel to the UN to present a "vivid, irresistibly engaging portrait of this most enigmatic of India's founding fathers". This article was generated from an automated news agency feed without modifications to text.
The Hindu
2 days ago
- Politics
- The Hindu
CPI(M) pushes back against the ‘capital punishment' controversy centred around late V.S.
The Communist Party of India (Marxist) [CPI(M)] has pushed back against the 'capital punishment' controversy centred around the late leader and former Chief Minister V.S. Achuthanandan, who died at the age of 101 on July 21. The recent portrayal by two former CPI(M) insiders that the party had singled out Achuthanandan for harsh criticism during its 2015 State conference in Alappuzha, forcing the veteran to exit the venue in distress, sparked the dispute, which erupted, discomfortingly for the party, in the wake of the outpouring of public grief for the departed leader. The controversy flared last week after former CPI(M) legislator and dramatist Pirappancode Murali alleged that a young leader had rhetorically recommended 'capital punishment' for Achuthanandan, following the presentation of a 'chargesheet', accusing the veteran of pursuing a cult of the individual that undervalued the role of the party and the masses in the struggle for working-class goals. On Friday (July 25, 2025) last, CPI(M) State Secretary M.V. Govindan dismissed Mr. Murali's averments, terming them 'pure nonsense'. He noted that Mr. Murali was no longer a party member and alleged that the latter had stoked controversy to get traction for an upcoming memoir. He accused the 'right-wing' media of 'vilifying communist leaders when alive and canonising them when dead to weaken the party'. Nevertheless, the dispute appeared to gain some political momentum on Sunday (July 27, 2025), with CPI(M)'s former MP, Suresh Kurup, seemingly endorsing Mr. Murali's allegations in an opinion piece published by a leading Malayalam daily on the same day. In the article reminiscing about his long years in the CPI(M) with Achuthanandan, Mr. Kurup alleged that a 'young woman leader old enough to be Achuthanandan's granddaughter had recommended capital punishment' at the State conference for the leaders' perceived transgressions. General Education Minister and CPI(M) State Committee member rejected the accusations. 'The State conference elevated me to the State committee. No such thing transpired as alleged', he stated. Another CPI(M) State committee member, Kadakampally Surendran, said the accusations 'were startling and aimed at slurring the character of rising stars in the party, including M. Swaraj'. He said the 'right-wing media' hounded Achutnandan and Kodiyeri in their lifetime. 'Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan endured waves of spirited smear campaigns aimed at weakening the party. 'Kerala has historically dismissed such false and malicious campaigns against Communists. The current controversy will be short-lived', he added.
Time of India
3 days ago
- Politics
- Time of India
Tamil Nadu elections: EPS meets PM Modi at Tiruchirappalli airport; first meet since AIADMK and BJP alliance renewed
NEW DELHI: AIADMK General Secretary Edappadi K Palaniswami (EPS) received Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the Tiruchirappalli airport on Saturday night. PM Modi is on a two-day visit to Tamil Nadu to launch various projects. Sharing the photos on X, PM Modi said, "After the programme in Thoothukudi, landed in Tiruchirappalli to a warm welcome by various dignitaries. Looking forward to tomorrow's programme at Gangaikonda Cholapuram. " In the post, one picture sparked the question whether AIADMK and BJP is going to make alliance or not. EPS and PM Modi is meeting for the first time since the AIADMK and BJP renewed their alliance. The meeting came amid the war of words between the allies ahead of the 2026 Tamil Nadu Assembly elections. Earlier, EPS ruled out a coalition government with the BJP and said, 'Our alliance would achieve a grand success in 2026. AIADMK will be victorious and will form a govt on its own." This statement contradicts with Amit Shah's interview where he said that that the NDA led by the AIADMK in Tamil Nadu will form a coalition government. Recently, EPS reaffirmed that his party will form a government with an absolute majority in the upcoming assembly elections. "Stalin claims that the DMK alliance will win 200 seats. Instead, the AIADMK alliance will win in 210 seats. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Up to 70% off | Shop Sale Libas Undo AIADMK will form the govt with an absolute majority," he said. The ruling DMK has attacked the AIADMK for reviving ties with the BJP, saying that the saffron party would swallow EPS. EPS fired back and replied, "Stalin says BJP will swallow Palaniswami. Is Palaniswami a worm to be swallowed by a fish? You are the one swallowing many of your allies. Congress has diminished, Communists have disappeared, and VCK is sticking around with DMK." EPS also rebutted the criticism that AIADMK will be divided by BJP. "Stalin is warning us that AIADMK will break and that I should be careful. I would like to tell him that AIADMK will not break," EPS said. The AIADMK and BJP came together for the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. AIADMK walked out of the NDA in 2023, accusing Annamalai of insulting its leaders. After a bitter separation, the two parties came together on April 11.
