From the start, the CCP’s history was written in blood — from purges and power struggles to policies that inflicted immense suffering on China's people. //

In July, the Chinese Communist Party will celebrate its centenary. The birthday presents it gave itself included re-written party history and a hotline for Chinese people to snitch on fellow citizens who dare to raise any questions about the newly revised party history. Such behaviors remind everyone the CCP cannot be considered a trustworthy partner in addressing international affairs, such as finding the true origin of the coronavirus. //

The CCP’s attempt to re-write history and turn Chinese people into government informants will cause anger and frustration among the Chinese people, further damage the CCP’s international reputation, and reinforce the belief that the CCP is not a trustworthy partner. After celebrating its centenary, the CCP will begin its new century on very shaky ground.

The greatest threat the digital yuan poses to the United States is that it endangers the international financial system America has led since World War II. //

Communist China became the first major economy to create a government-sanctioned digital currency — digital yuan. Such a move will significantly impact the great power competition between the United States and China and may reshape the dollar-dominated global financial structure forever.

When Xi Jinping, the Chinese Communist Party General Secretary, talked about returning China to a world superpower status, he always envisioned China’s currency (the yuan) would achieve a global reserve currency status akin to what the U.S. dollar has enjoyed since the end of World War II. //

Yet, despite the Chinese government’s relentless efforts, the Chinese yuan currently accounts for only 2 percent of global foreign exchange reserve assets while the dollar’s dominance remains unchallenged. Close to 90 percent of foreign-exchange transactions entail U.S. dollars, and more than 60 percent of all global central-bank reserves are held in dollar-denominated assets. China’s digital yuan, however, presents a challenge. //

The biggest threat the digital yuan poses to the United States is that it presents an alternative to the existing international financial system America has led for two generations. Individuals under U.S. sanctions will avoid suffering any financial pain by using digital yuan to access their assets thus rendering typical economic sanctions toothless.

America’s adversaries, such as North Korea, Iran, and Russia, will likely use digital yuan to exchange money, settle trades, and engage in weapon sales or other illicit activities. Doing so will enable them to bypass the existing financial system entirely, meaning American intelligence agencies won’t be able to monitor such activities and hurting the ability of the United States and its allies to anticipate potential threats before they metastasize. //

There are at least three things the United States should be doing in responding to the digital yuan. First, the Security and Exchange Commission should approve the existing requests to launch exchange-traded funds focusing on cryptocurrencies. Such funds will bring an inflow of fresh capital, stimulate the development of digital currencies and digital assets, and make them more accessible to the general public.

Second, the Fed should consider accepting some of these well-established cryptocurrencies into the U.S. financial system. Some well-known businesses such as Tesla and the Dallas Mavericks basketball team have already announced they would accept specific cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin or dogecoin as an alternative means of payment. As more businesses embrace digital currencies every week, the Fed may ultimately not have much choice but to adopt at least some type of digital currencies. If that’s likely to be the case, it’s better to do so now rather than later.

Finally, the Fed can issue a digital dollar as long as there are sufficient privacy protections in place to prevent some ambitious politicians from using the digital currency the way the CCP does as a means to control the American people.
Competition produces better goods and services at lower prices. The more free-market choices of digital currencies we can offer, the less likely China’s digital yuan will replace the U.S. dollar and gain international dominance as the CCP intended.

The individual Chinese man, woman, and child of the more than 1 billion people in China are mere cogs in the CCP machine, easily silenced or dispensed with if they harm the party. That is why the Chinese government has been lying about the origins of the COVID-19 virus even as it infected millions, and perhaps more importantly, why they behaved at the onset of the pandemic as though they did not mind the virus spreading outside their borders. It’s why the CCP is engaged in genocide of the Uighur Muslims, and it’s why the CCP forces companies to comply with their authoritarian policies and guidelines.

In stark contrast, Taiwan is a flourishing liberal democracy of 24 million people, advocating dignity for each individual man, woman, and child. It has embraced pluralism and transparency, as well as religious, political, and academic freedom. The very existence of a free and successful Taiwan rebukes Xi’s vision and his insistence that Chinese Communism is a superior system of government to liberal democracy, and that ethnic Chinese are the ones to prove it. //

Should the PRC conquer Taiwan, China scholar Michael Mazza articulates the stakes:

The PLA would for the first time have unimpeded access to the Pacific Ocean, allowing it more easily to threaten Guam, Hawaii, and the continental United States. PLA ballistic missile submarines might ply the waters of the Western Pacific, allowing China to pose a more potent nuclear weapons threat to the United States. //

We also have an interest in trading and traveling safely in a region that will generate two-thirds of the global economy in the next ten years and want to do so as Americans, not as essentially Chinese serfs who need the CCP to grant us permission. If China can cut us off from the region, it would also seriously impede the United States from providing security assurances to allies like Japan and the Philippines.

If Japan loses confidence in America’s willingness and ability to come to their defense if China or North Korea attacks them with a nuclear weapon, we can be sure Japan will get their own nuclear weapons, which would kick off a domino effect of nuclear proliferation. The importance of the credibility of nuclear assurances made from the United States to our allies cannot be overstated. //

To state the obvious: the Chinese appear to not be intimidated by President Joe Biden. Chinese diplomats did not publicly preverbally slap around the United States’ most senior diplomats during the Trump administration the way they did of Biden officials in Alaska. //

Third, we must put a premium on better fortifying Guam to defend against an attack by the PRC. Any American fight with the PRC will rely on our ability to operate from Guam.

Fourth, the United States should quickly produce and work with allies to deploy “long-range fires,” ground-launched cruise missiles able to successfully hit targets as required on a challenging battlefield. President Trump withdrew the United States from the Cold War Treaty — the INF Treaty — because Russia was cheating on it. Now we can, and must, produce those missiles even as we work with allies on potential hosting agreements. //

Finally, we should emphasize close and very visible cooperation and solidarity with our regional allies and partners. China seeks vassal states. The United States has and respects sovereign allies that are indispensable for deterring China and winning if deterrence fails. The Trump administration did excellent work with the “Quad” and the Biden administration is continuing such efforts.

The CCP is determined to replace the United States and thinks it sees an opening now to make its move by swallowing up Taiwan. We must do everything we can now to convince the CCP that such an opening does not exist.

However, the number of confirmed cases in Chile, Turkey, and Pakistan, which chose to receive the Chinese Sinovac vaccine, has increased.

Chile administered nearly 9 million doses of the Sinovac vaccines in February, with an average of 47 doses per 100 people, making it the country with the highest vaccination rate in South America. However, the number of positive test results recorded in Chile rose instead of fell, and a new high of 7,626 cases was recorded in a single day on March 26, leading to a tight supply of hospital beds and a recent lockdown of the capital city of Santiago.

Turkey started to administer Sinovac vaccines in mid-January and at least eight million people have been injected with the vaccine, accounting for more than 10 percent of the population. But their case numbers also rebounded in late February, with 37,303 new cases recorded on March 30, the highest single-day figure since the outbreak on March 11 last year. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced on April 2 that there would be a curfew during the weekends throughout the month of Ramadan.

In addition, Pakistan, which has been using the Chinese vaccine since early February, is now experiencing a third wave of the pandemic, with the national positivity ratio rising to 11 percent, the highest level since the outbreak. More than 20 cities have been “closed” due to the severity of the outbreak. //

Pakistani President Arif Alvi wrote on March 29 that he tested positive after receiving the first dose of a vaccine produced by the Chinese National Pharmaceutical Group Corp on March 15. Prior to that, Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan also tested positive for the virus on March 18, two days after receiving his first dose of the vaccine manufactured by the same Chinese company. //

Earlier, former head of the National Institute of Health of Peru, Ernesto Bustamante, said in a local TV program that Sinopharm’s Wuhan strain vaccine had only 33 percent effectiveness, while the Beijing strain vaccine had 11.5 percent. Sinovac was also reported to be only 50.4 percent effective according to Brazil’s data. The frequent outbreaks of defective vaccines and fake vaccines in China over the years are even more common and shocking.

The No.5 nuclear power unit in Fuqing, southeast Fujian province. China’s first nuclear power unit using Hualong One technology, a domestically developed third-generation reactor design, was connected to the grid and started to generate electricity in November last year. Photo: Xinhua
Companies

• Success of nuclear reactor Hualong One suggests it can compete with wind and solar to drive China’s decarbonisation
• With the first Hualong reactor delivered on schedule, the costs have come down, says Xiamen University’s Lin Boqiang
• China has a clear advantage over European rivals in the sector //

China’s uninterrupted construction of nuclear plants over the past three decades and its well-established supply chain mean it has a clear advantage over European firms, which have struggled to re-establish their supply chains after a two-decade hiatus from building reactors. //

Despite the safety and cost concerns, nuclear power’s potential as a clean source of energy with high supply consistency should not be underestimated, said Pan Chin, chair professor of nuclear engineering at City University of Hong Kong. “Of course, cost is an issue. But if we can ensure nuclear power’s safety and reduce nuclear wastes through technology improvement, we can broaden the public’s acceptance of nuclear power and then its cost can be reduced,” he said.

Jack Posobiec
@JackPosobiec
Opening remarks in Anchorage were agreed to be 2 minutes each

The CCP delegation opened with 20 minutes of blasting Biden's policies, BLM, division under Biden, and said the US is no longer a world leader

And Blinken and Sullivan had little to no response

Disaster
8:56 PM · Mar 18, 2021

Jack Posobiec
@JackPosobiec
CCP delegation came to US soil and told the US government to their face they are weak

Total disaster for unprepared Blinken //

Mike Pompeo
@mikepompeo
Strength deters bad guys. Weakness begets war.
8:18 AM · Mar 19, 2021

uplateagain

The real problem here is..... we have a president not capable of successfully negotiating his way through a three course dinner without help, being controlled by people who are compromised financially and ethically and only really concerned with retaining political power, totally inexperienced at dealing with serious adversaries. This crew can't handle effective governance within our system, and half of them (or better) would just as soon we were under a CCP-like system anyway.

Dig in, folks. This is only the start.

Now, let us look at the “historical rhymes” with respect to Taiwan in 2021:

• Xi Jinping’s Greater China is analogous to Hitler’s Greater Germany
• Xi Jinping is a totalitarian Communist; Hitler was a totalitarian Nazi
• Hong Kong is analogous to 1938 Austria, and the ChiComs continue to tighten the screws as they absorb the former British protectorate into the PRC
• Taiwan is analogous to the Sudetenland – both were/are flashpoints that could trigger a real shooting war //

What will the US, the Quad countries (US, India, Australia, and Japan), and other countries around the world (especially the UK and France) do to protect the sovereignty of Taiwan if the PLA and PLA-N decide the time is right for a cross-strait invasion? And there is no time like the present, given that the Biden regime is compromised in favor of Beijing from top to bottom, as described above. What would Biden do? //

Translation: it is in America’s best interests to let the PLA take Taiwan militarily without any US (or Quad countries) military support provided to the Taiwanese. That’s appeasement worthy of Neville Chamberlain. The author neglects to mention the other end results of his proposed scenario: the Taiwanese semiconductor industry which supplies the world will be taken over by the ChiComs, Xi’s Communist regime will be emboldened on the world stage, and the Quad countries will be demoralized and likely seek accommodations with Beijing because the US will have failed to support Taiwan’s sovereignty (while wondering what the US would do on their behalf when push comes to shove with the ChiComs).

Let us pray that Biden does not take that last bit of advice and blink on Taiwan. If he does, then the last comparison between Taiwan 2021 and Czechoslovakia will come true: Biden will have become Neville Chamberlain. And remember what happened after the 1938 Munich Agreement was signed.

The hard facts in that Newlines Institute for Strategy and Policy report cannot be wished away by a few platitudes and ridiculous excuses. It is up to the world to hold the ChiComs accountable for the Uygur genocide, and a complete boycott of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics would be a great start. Then we can move on to ChiCom indemnification of the rest of the world for the ChiCom virus that originated in the Wuhan Institute of Virology….

Manyin Li, a freelance writer and author of the forthcoming book, “Bearing Witness: Coming of Age in Mao’s China,” has translated excerpts of several speeches given by “high-profile Chinese scholar serving the Party” Jin Canrong, who is a professor at the Chinese People’s University in Beijing. Jin is considered an expert on the U.S. and is an adviser to the CCP’s Organization Department and United Front Department, Manyin says. His visa was suspended by the Trump administration’s State Department in January 2020. //

she lays out six “rhapsodies” that make up Jin’s basic belief about how China views the U.S. in both the short and long term. These “rhapsodies” involve everything from “enmeshing” the two countries so that the U.S. is powerless to disconnect itself from China; playing coy and waiting for the U.S. to involve itself in meaningless wars in the Middle East as a distraction while China builds its military; ingratiating itself to other nations to isolate the U.S.; and using the U.S. system of Democracy and its free press against it.

The entire piece is an absolute must-read

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/03/what-china-really-wants-a-new-world-order/

The investment conditions in the U.S. are more open and with larger volume than that of Japan and Europe. Laws in the U.S. are transparent, predictable, and protective.

Our government hopes that eventually China will have investments in each and every congressional district in the U.S., making it possible for China to control thousands of votes to influence congressional members’ stance toward China. In fact, the U.S. representatives can be controlled. The U.S. has 312 millions of people, who elect 435 representatives. That means 750,000 people in each district on average. The normal turnout rate is 30 percent, about 200,000 voters who determine who gets elected. Generally, the two contenders have about the same number of supporters, separated by only 10,000 votes or fewer. Therefore, if you control a few thousand votes, you would be his/her dad. China, if playing well, will be able to buy out the U.S., making the U.S. Congress the second Standing Committee of our People’s National Representatives. //

The CCP’s model includes a police state, high-tech surveillance, censorship of media and the Internet, speech restrictions, lifelong privileges for ruling-party officials, wealth concentrated in a small group of CCP officials’ clans, stark inequality, oppression of the religious, the Sinicization of all ethnic minorities with coercive measures, etc. (And let’s not forget that this system originated COVID-19 in the first place!) Would any people in the world like to live in such conditions? The answer is absolutely “No.” This kind of regime cannot even go on forever in China. Nevertheless, it could last for a while. Americans must be ready to face the reality with patience and wisdom.

It’s a sobering read for anyone wondering how a Biden Administration might be inclined to deal with an ambitious Chinese Communist Party. But a necessary one.

We’re building on hard lessons learned. Some of us previously argued for free trade agreements because we believed Americans would broadly share in the economic gains and that those deals would shape the global economy in ways that we wanted. We had good reasons to think those things, but we didn’t do enough to understand who would be negatively affected and what would be needed to adequately offset their pain or to enforce agreements that were already on the books and help more workers and small businesses fully benefit from them. Our approach now will be different. We will fight for every American job and for the rights, protections and interests of all American workers. We will use every tool to stop countries from stealing our intellectual property or manipulating their currencies to get an unfair advantage. We will fight corruption which stacks the deck against us and our trade policies will need to answer very clearly how they will grow the American middle class, create new and better jobs and benefit all Americans, not only those for whom the economy is already working. //

If Blinkin’s comments are a public recognition of this reality, and the need to treat China as a force of evil in the world that it truly is, then the Biden Administration will have gone a long way in gaining some level of respect from me on foreign policy. I will disagree with pretty much everything else they do, but I can hold my nose for much of it without too much complaint if they get things right on countering China.

In his 2018 book, Secret Empires: How the American Political Class Hides Corruption and Enriches Family and Friends, Schweizer exposed an alarmingly large number of other tight connections the McConnell family has to the Chinese Communist Party. //

The Inspector general’s report that Elaine Chao used U.S. government resources to handle purely private matters relating to China—including putting federal employees at the disposal of her father James—ought to give new life to Schweizer’s shocking allegations.

As Breitbart reported way back in 2018, every single one has been confirmed by at least one major mainstream media outlet.

However, the media could have ended Mitch McConnell’s political career years ago had they chosen to give his troubling family and financial ties to China the same kind of blanket coverage they routinely devoted to unsubstantiated rumors and other, by comparison, less than trivial matters concerning Donald Trump.

Heck, McConnell probably would have been finished had CNN and the rest given any of this stuff the same level of attention they gave to Trump’s eating a second scoop of ice cream for dessert.

I wonder why they didn’t bother?

“The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is probably the most ideologically intoxicated, most dogmatic political party of Leninist stripe in human history. Yet, we don’t tend to think of the CCP that way.”

Tonight, we sit down with Miles Yu, who served as Senior China policy adviser to Mike Pompeo when he was secretary of state. While many today still harbor illusions about the Chinese regime, the CCP seeks to “replace the U.S.-led international order with its own authoritarian model of governance,” Yu says. And “their internal designation of the United States as chief adversary has never changed.”

Miles Yu grew up during China’s Cultural Revolution, a decade of revolutionary change and violence in which millions were killed. In 1985, he came to the United States as an exchange student.

He’s been a professor at the U.S. Naval Academy for 26 years and after finishing his time at the State Department, he’s now a senior fellow with the Hudson Institute.

Religious dissident Sun Yi, locked up by China in the Masanjia Labor Camp, used his sparse English vocabulary to pen numerous SOS letters -- one of which was found by Julie Keith.

As noted at the top, the Summer Olympics of 2024 is set for France. If there is a boycott of the China Winter Games over geopolitical tensions like the Uyghur issue or Chinese aggression towards its neighbors, it is a near certainty that China would respond in kind — maybe even stage an alternative set of Summer Games and lean heavy on countries over whom is has great financial leverage to come to China and skip the Games in Paris.

If that situation comes to pass, the possibility becomes quite real that the Olympics as we have known them for over 100 years will not continue in their present form.

But Biden apparently doesn’t care, likely forcing “[r]efiners in the Midwest and the Gulf Coast…to buy more oil from adversarial states like Russia and Venezuela.”

Trump provided by executive order a protection against using foreign equipment in the power grid, particularly looking at China, known for building back doors into things to gather information. //

“I’ll have to — I think the President’s view on our relationship with China I tried to do my best to convey to all of you. I’ll have to check on that specific piece, and we’ll — we’ll circle back with you directly.”

She had no real answer. She couldn’t explain why such a significant protection against China had been gutted, at least for three months or if that gutting would continue.

Trump prohibited,

utilities that supply critical defense facilities (CDF) from procuring from the People’s Republic of China, specific BPS [Bulk Power System] electric equipment that poses an undue risk to the BPS, the security or resilience of critical infrastructure, the economy, national security, or safety and security of Americans. //

Well, you and I may agree with Trump’s Secretary of Energy here, but apparently Joe Biden or whoever’s pulling his strings demurs.

Think about that for a second. One of Joe Biden’s first acts in office was to cancel an EO that Trump’s administration used to stop China from being able to sabotage our power grid.

CBS’ Catherine Herridge is dropping some intriguing information from the U.S. State Department. They’ve come out with a fact sheet with previously unknown facts about the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

What immediately catches your attention is this incredible passage:

1. Illnesses inside the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV):

The U.S. government has reason to believe that several researchers inside the WIV became sick in autumn 2019, before the first identified case of the outbreak, with symptoms consistent with both COVID-19 and common seasonal illnesses. This raises questions about the credibility of WIV senior researcher Shi Zhengli’s public claim that there was “zero infection” among the WIV’s staff and students of SARS-CoV-2 or SARS-related viruses.

Accidental infections in labs have caused several previous virus outbreaks in China and elsewhere, including a 2004 SARS outbreak in Beijing that infected nine people, killing one.

The CCP has prevented independent journalists, investigators, and global health authorities from interviewing researchers at the WIV, including those who were ill in the fall of 2019. Any credible inquiry into the origin of the virus must include interviews with these researchers and a full accounting of their previously unreported illness.

One might think that having one’s fealty to China out in the open might make one less likely to openly kowtow to the Middle Kingdom. Not so, in Biden’s case. The Chinese have all the details and documents and the recordings of Biden’s doings while in China. If you think there is no video of Hunter Biden engaged in questionable activities, I will contend you are willfully blind about Hunter Biden’s well-established nature. If The Big Guy crosses Xi, then Hunter goes to prison.

China will resume its aggressive activities in the South China Sea and against Taiwan and India. It will shield North Korea from any repercussions of its actions. It will return to the industrial-scale theft of US intellectual property. It will expand its use of slave labor to serve some US companies. It will continue to intimidate and corrupt Chinese nationals living or going to school in the US. Just as Ronald Reagan once demanded to speak because he was “paying for this microphone.”