Category: Australia

Australia is Walking a Fine Line between America and Communist China – a Dangerous Game

“America will lose, and China will win. America will cease to play a major strategic role in Asia, and China will take its place as the dominant power.” This is from a White Paper published from Australia. Whoever said this is a flaming idiot. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy from people who are either sinophiles or interested in China’s ephemeral (and largely non-existent) markets, all subject to Communist China’s vast manipulation and regulation, peremptory, if necessary for the Party’s benefit. This fatalistic approach in Australia has caused it to adopt a basically very troubling suicidal trajectory for some time.

Referring to a well-written article by Sushil Seth, a commentator in Australia, which appeared in the Taipei Times on December 30, 2017, p. 8 (“Counterbalancing Chinese Leverage”), I have the following observations.

President Obama withdrew the United States from world leadership because he is a weak, insipid, feckless and appeasing idiot (and of course he is the most admired man according to Newsweek because everyone just loves a sensitive, kind, understanding America – until they need someone to defend them, then they want the American juggernaut at their side). He was most uncomfortable being the world’s most powerful man, and his mistaken belief that he could extend an open hand to the world’s worst regimes, betray our closest allies, and sing Kumbaya backfired, and in the horrible vacuum he left, Russia and China leapt in. It will take some years to get that back.

Let me be very clear about one thing. Donald Trump’s presidency is the child of President Obama’s failures. Trump would never have succeeded if Obama has not driven the US bus so far to the left and so far from its role in the world that it disappeared over the horizon. Now we are dealing with that. But for all of his own idiosyncrasies, and they are many, Trump’s unpredictability does have an advantage (similar to Ronald Reagan’s “power”) to intimidate and in some sense have an effect on rogues, who would be far more comfortable getting up in Obama’s face, than Trump’s, because they knew Obama would never pull any trigger, and they also deeply fear that Trump is just itching to pull any trigger (not that he will).

Congress is 100% behind the US presence in Asia, and while the American president traditionally pussyfoots around with Russia and Communist China, the Congress never does. It supports Taiwan by vast majorities, and would also support Australia and Japan and Korea to the same extent. However, Australia has elected leaders who have been vastly at odds with American policies, and that has caused some dissonance. Australia is playing perhaps a dangerous game of both sides, feasting at Communist China’s trough, and expecting the US to protect it within America’s enormous penumbra.

Like it or not, the US is the only country in the world that can contain the likes of Communist China and Russia, North Korea and Iran and Syria, and Turkey, and the Arab world, and all of the other hot spots which pop up all over at any given time. For some reason I cannot understand, Australia has spent ten years pushing America away, and then complains that the US is not engaged in Asia. Huh? You cannot have it both ways. Australia is our deep ally, our long time friend, our brother in arms (sigh, sister, trans, whatever other words are necessary now). We hope for Australia to stop pushing the US away in order to feast in China, because the longer any country feasts there, the deeper into China’s trap they fall. It would behoove Australia to make up its mind what it is doing. If Australia thinks that a full blown democracy can become the ally of the world largest and most dangerous totalitarian government, good luck. You don’t stand a chance, because China’s trojan horse is already parked in Sydney and it has begun to manipulate the environment from within. You can do business with the Chinese Communist Party, you can trade with them, you can even smile with them, but you can never ever, ever, ever trust them.

The U.S. is not going anywhere. We are the only hope to help solve some of the world’s worst dilemmas. Europe is hopelessly indecisive and completely based on appeasement, which as we have seen, is useless against evil regimes, who simply lie, sign and breach (e.g. N. Korea, Iran, Communist China (already breaching the 50-year agreement with the UK regarding Hong Kong, as though Great Britain would do anything about it)).

I can tell you that out of 330 million people in the US, there are no more than a handful who believe “America will lose, and China will win”

These are tough times. Tough times call for resolute actions. Who else is going to be resolute? We’ve always relied on Australia to be right there by our side. We hope for that to continue for a long, long time as we love our friends from down under.

There are still “communist sympathizers” who believe China is their Eden…it is hard to believe, I know

I was reading posts regarding Communist China, and came across a post entitled “Is the People’s Republic of China a Force for Good?” https://wordpress.com/read/blogs/9954326/posts/12507, a post addressing an article discussing the People’s Republic of China’s influence in Australia.

The post is basically more than an apology for the People’s Republic of China, but actually a celebration of its communist roots and a system of government far “superior” to Western “bourgeois democracies”.  As soon as people start using “bourgeois”, I start getting nervous. I wrote a comment on the post, and you can read the original post yourself to see the depths to which an apologist for totalitarianism will go to justify it (even as against those evil human rights proponents such as Liu Xiaobo calling for democracy, because they are committing “treason”). As soon as people start saying it is treasonous to call for human rights, due process and democracy, you have reached that Twilight Zone called Communist China.

Here is my comment on the post in full. I am not sure it will be published there:

“I suppose it is ironic this was posted on June 4th, the day on which the rest of the world remembers Tienanmen Square’s massacre, another dark day in the totalitarian history of murder and oppression in The People’s Republic of China, which is basically the most horrendous “communist” dictatorship, in this case run by the Chinese Communist Party. The only tie remotely between communism and the People’s Republic of China is that it is both a totalitarian nightmare, like every communist regime in history, and the state owns and controls everything, including speech, thought and actions. To pretend, like some book group discussing the writings of Marx, that the PRC is some benign and beneficial nation of peace and harmony requires checking one’s brain and entire nervous center before waking. China is not “cooperating” with the West, it is co-opting the West with its basic capital, which is blackmail, propaganda and prevarication, undertaken under the guise of trade and economic development, using such projects as the One Belt One Road (One Noose One Way), which is a web of influence which will allow China to affect the thinking and policies of all the nations involved and affected. China has corrupted the United Nations into becoming a Communist China mouthpiece and automaton. If people with the principles discussed here reject Liu Xiaobo in favor of Xi Jinping, I really don’t know what to say, except trying having a discussion about Liu in a coffee shop in Beijing and see how long before you end up in jail. And that is free speech with Chinese characteristics. By the way, this website is not available in the PRC, and “Communist Heaven” is actually a room without light in a special corner of Hell.”

Beijing’s Trojan Horse Strategy – foreign college campuses, Chinese non-profits, Hollywood acquisitions and influence

Stephanie Saul’s article for the NY Times Service on Sunday describes Beijing’s use of Chinese students studying abroad and the Chinese Students and Scholars Association as one method for affecting the discussion on campuses in the United States, and elsewhere of Communist China and its policies.

In truth however, Beijing has been constructing these Trojan horses for decades. They take the form of Chinese student organizations, Confucius Institutes, and other organs which offer subtle propaganda to show Beijing’s supposedly kinder, gentler side, its “peaceful rise”.

But make no mistake. China’s aim is to squelch all discussion, all mention, all free speech about its evils. These Trojan horses are in fact filled to the brim with propaganda about how benign is Beijing’s dictatorship, its denial of all freedoms to its people, its oppression of its people, denial of justice, its absolute protection of Chinese companies over foreign companies doing business in China, its anti-democratic policies, hegemony, oppression of Hong Kong, hatred and genocide in Tibet and effort to smear, destroy and replace the Dalai Lama, its murder and abuse of Falun Gong followers, its South China Sea aggression, and its attempts to sideline Taiwan, render it invisible or irrelevant, and destroy Taiwan’s democracy, and most of all its intentions for world peace with Chinese Characteristics (which means peace on its terms, in other words “no peace”, a world led by China’s totalitarian system).

Communist China has vast plans in place to affect perceptions about it around the world, to infect public discourse about its tyranny by whatever means possible. Whether it takes the form of spying through acquisition of businesses (or in the case of Australia, leasing a port in Darwin for more than three hundred million Australian dollars close to an American military installation), or trying to filter any negative mention of China, usually imposing its will on those who fear losing money (as mentioned regarding Australia recently), but certainly true in Europe, Latin America and around the world. Any time a Chinese company (every company no matter private or government run is captive of the Beijing government’s control) attempts to acquire a foreign entity, there is usually a strategic reason for it tied in some way to expanding China’s influence in that area, or infecting the industry or commerce with pro-China influence, or spying.

In Stephanie Saul’s article, when reading it, I felt I was reading not about a student organization, but more about a Communist Chinese platform, a Trojan horse designed to affect free speech on American campuses (something popular these days among the politically correct ultra-left who also seek to squelch discussion of subjects and positions with which they disagree), to basically stop any campus organization or event from even mentioning the Chinese Communist Party’s pet sensitivities, Taiwan, the Dalai Lama and Tibet and China’s longstanding cultural genocide in Tibet, strict limitations on Hong Kong’s democracy, Falun Gong mistreatment and murder in China, Xinjiang’s muslim population and China’s attempts to destroy their culture there. These taboo subjects must be avoided in order to stay within Beijing’s good graces, and disobedience may result in China pulling back students and their foreign student tuition (much as China has done in Taiwan with not just education, but tourists, and business opportunities). The commercial blackmail is one of Beijing’s favorite intrigues.

The Trojan Horse is alive and well in Hollywood as well. Those studios needy enough to take Chinese funding suddenly self-censor so that no movie would dare put Beijing in a bad light (this is ironic considering Hollywood has no problem portraying American Presidents, and government officials, the CIA and FBI, and its military in a very bad light as part of many stories). Those studios selling larger stakes, close to being taken over, well, the censorship will be more direct. As for a Chinese company purchasing a major studio (such as China’s Wanda Group, which already acquired AMC and a piece of Legendary, tried to acquire Dick Clark Productions (including the Golden Globes), and was sniffing around Paramount Pictures), this would be a disaster of tremendous magnitude. Not only would this provide enormous power to the Communist Party regime, allowing it to hobnob with the elite in Hollywood, affecting Hollywood’s discussion of China’s brutality around the world, and its hegemony (Hollywood is quick to hate American government, making it ripe for acceptance of the sales talk by Beijing of its benign intentions), it would open the door to propaganda by the studio in the form of its by then major motion pictures portraying the free world poorly, and Communist China in illusions of grandeur and peace. Also, just to make the plan more horrifying, Beijing currently limits the number of foreign films it allows to be shown in China. A major studio would therefore be better off moving its movie-making to Wanda’s gigantic studio in China, completing the theft of international movie primacy, and killing jobs in Hollywood and the US.

Beijing’s cavalry of Trojan horses is on the march, and it is marching to a college or movie theater near you soon. I ask that you beware, and hold dear our hallowed principles of free speech and constitutional protections for freedom and free speech. Without that protection we are vulnerable to Beijing’s insidious Trojan horse machinations.

Caveat Emptor – Australia Should Stay Closer to Its Longstanding US Alliance While it Dallies in China’s Illusory Honeypot

The New York Times today, in an article by Damien Cave, suggests a quandary for Australia, having to choose between its longstanding alliance with the US and increasingly deeper economic ties to Communist China, a slippery slope for most countries beguiled by China’s imaginary endless markets, which are heavily regulated and controlled by the Chinese Communist Party along political trajectories.

There is no real conflict, it is an imaginary drumbeat to create issues because of Trump’s chaotic presidency. All intelligent people know that the US democracy elects a president every four years come hell or high water, and the country continues to function as the world’s only superpower whoever is sitting in the White House.

The notion that there is a difficult decision between survival (e.g. the century old military alliance with the United States, both vibrant democratic countries) and trade with China, a totalitarian behemoth which has traditionally operated politically in foreign affairs through blackmail and propaganda is a false issue. This is not really a choice. The dangers of becoming too dependent on China’s trade only mitigates in favor of not becoming “captive” of a totalitarian nightmare, especially a nation which can be economically suffocated by too many entanglements with China.

Of course, anyone can do business with China, but obviously doing business with China comes with conditions which require diplomatic decisions and concessions (often turning reality on its head, such as the One-China fiction) favoring the hegemonic plans China has more recently become bolder to pursue. The conflict is not whether Australia will continue to ally itself with the United States, a military and political alliance essential to Australia’s safety and high profile in international affairs, but whether Australia should be cautious when doing business with China, the world’s largest and most dangerous propaganda and blackmail machine, and one of the best regimes at floating a honey-trap for overly eager and unsuspecting trade partners, who may become addicted to what China allows to be doled out to further its own hegemony.

While China may be Australia’s largest trading partner, China allows that to be the case so long as Australia adheres to the policies China requires of it (which begs the question of “independence” the detractors from US influence in Australia (such as former PM Paul Keating (a serial sinophile, who sits on the advisory board of China Development Bank and has met with Chinese President Xi Jinping) who said Australia should not “put all its chips” on its relationship with the US.) are fond to argue – is it better to be influenced by the world’s strongest democracy, or by the world’s most horrific totalitarian dictatorship (having murdered as many as 80 million of its own people throughout its history, and currently stifles even the smallest hints of freedom of expression or speech, human rights, or justice, and stomps its heavy boot on the commerce of all around the globe who do not kowtow to its hegemony and fictional “One-China Policy”)?

It doesn’t seem to be such a difficult choice, unless too much emphasis has been made on doing business with the devil, and Australia has become hopelessly entangled with (or addicted to) Communist China beyond its own control. Caveat emptor, let the buyer beware.

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Strait Talk discusses issues affecting Taiwan, China, Hong Kong, Tibet, the United States specifically, and Asia and other related world issues in general. The content is intended to focus on government, democracy, justice, freedom and a host of other issues in a frank, and at times ironic way. Please bring your sense of humor for a visit.

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