Category: international affairs

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defense & war general freedom international affairs

Does China Want War?

China, Taiwan, war, invasion

“WARNING,” it began, “THIS VIDEO MAY BE UPSETTING TO SOME VIEWERS.”

Just the all-​caps was upsetting, I thought to myself.

Still, I was all ears and eyes for Johnny Harris’s “Here’s What Happens If China Invades Taiwan,” which garnered seven million views since February. 

Harris was “a little bit conflicted making this video,” because he “feels very against the machismo fascination with conflict,” telling viewers that “we’re talking about people’s lives” and “entire societies being ripped about by a power struggle.”

Declaring that “China doesn’t want war,” Harris hazards that Mainland China “will probably try much less violent ways to try to force Taiwan to the negotiating table before resorting to all-​out invasion.” 

Masters of benevolence, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) will … accept surrender!

Mr. Harris points out that the CCP has passed a law saying they “must” invade Taiwan if peaceful reunification is not possible. Explaining the dearth of support in Taiwan for joining their totalitarian neighbors, he notes “the interpretation of this law [is] more and more on the side of China should do this forcibly.”

Why, it’s “a legal imperative.”

And protecting “this far away island,” asserts Harris, “is something the American public broadly would not be into.” (Though, ahem, recent polling says otherwise.)

“I really hope that we are past needing to resort to this version of conflict to settle our disputes at this time in our history,” he concludes. “But I’m not totally convinced that we are yet.”

The CCP part of “we” is clearly not there. 

“We can talk about it,” explains Harris. “We can find creative ways to solve this.”

My take? Don’t expect too much creativity from the CCP. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Biden Time with Bully

Taiwan, China, Pelosi

What’s more provocative: visiting friends or threatening a military invasion?

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is rumored to be visiting Taiwan in August, to see our friends who have made the most miraculous political advances of the last half century, from a repressive authoritarian society through four decades of martial law to arguably the most democratic and free nation in all of Asia.

Not to mention blossoming into an economic powerhouse that produces “roughly 90% of the world’s most advanced chips.” 

“[T]he chip industry is dominated by manufacturers in the small island of Taiwan,” informs Fortune. “Policy makers in the U.S. have started to see that as a problem.”*

What’s problematic? Well, Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), ruling over both the world’s most populous country and the world’s fastest growing armed forces, constantly threatens a military assault to conquer the “renegade Chinese province.”

They want us not to be friends with the Taiwanese. No talking. No holding hands.

Last week, Beijing warned the U.S. against allowing Pelosi’s visit. Chinese spokesman Ma Xiaoguang “said today that some people in the US government and Congress are constantly provoking and playing the ‘Taiwan card’ … and the mainland will ‘resolutely strike back,’” Taiwan’s government news service reported.

Asked about the possible trip, President Joe Biden offered: “Well, I think that the military thinks it’s not a good idea right now. But I don’t know what the status of it is.”

By any fair reading of all the gobbly-​gook produced by our State Department over the decades, the U.S. is treaty-​bound to defend Taiwan. 

Moreover, from U.S. statements and actions, all the world expects America to step up for democratic Taiwan against a violent takeover by totalitarian China.

Even China thinks so. 

And what does Pelosi think? “It is important for us to show support for Taiwan,” Pelosi told reporters.

She’s right.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Also last week, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo called a disruption of the supply of computer chips from Taiwan a “scary scenario” that would lead to a “deep and immediate recession.” Invasions can be quite disruptive. Where would the chips fall, then?

NOTE: More on Taiwan at ThisisCommonSense​.org.

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international affairs privacy

Delivering to Evil

China, privacy, donor, freedom

Will Americans who demand the outing of anonymous donors to political causes listen to Jianli Yang?

One reason that people donate to organizations anonymously — just as they want their votes and other personal information to remain confidential — is to avoid being harassed by political opponents.

But being bullied in a restaurant is hardly the worst that can befall donors stripped of anonymity.

Jianli Yang is a Chinese dissident. In 2008, after spending years in a Chinese prison for his activism, he founded Citizen Power Initiatives for China, a US-​based organization working to advance rights and democracy in China.

Yang notes that Chinese supporters of his organization, even if residing outside of China, “can face extreme consequences when they are identified by the Chinese government.” Without the right to protect donor privacy, affirmed in a July 2021 U.S. Supreme Court decision on the associational rights of donors, donors can end up being punished by the Chinese government.

The risk isn’t just theoretical. In April 2021, one Mr. Lee, a businessman, was forced to appear on Chinese television to “confess” to supporting Citizen Power Initiatives for China. The government also sentenced Lee to eleven years in prison.

We must fight both the CCP and their wannabe branch in DC. Things are nowhere near as bad in this country as in China. But we don’t know what threats we will face the day after tomorrow even from our own government.

We need every First Amendment protection we can get.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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folly general freedom ideological culture international affairs

Seppuku for Dutch Farmers?

farmer protest, Dutch, Netherlands, global warming, climate change

Two years ago, the Netherlands government was spending millions of euros to subsidize farmers and others hurt by pandemic policies.

Now it seeks to destroy many Dutch farmers by compelling them to drastically slash livestock herds to reduce nitrogen oxide and ammonia, thereby supposedly benefiting the environment. The government has also thwarted construction projects on save-​the-​planet grounds.

Farmers are protesting throughout the country. At one site, police opened fire. No one was hurt.

The prime minister objects to “intimidating” officials by, say, clogging highways with tractors — which protesting farmers have done.

Understandable, but shoe the other foot: Is using governmental coercion to destroy farmers a form of peaceful suasion?

Such irrational policies conform to ideologies that sure seem bent on the progressive destruction of civilization for the alleged sake of fine-​tuning the weather. Yet nothing the Dutch could do — not even mass seppuku — would appreciably affect our far-​more-​massive-​than-​the-​Netherlands global climate. But the government may succeed in making life harder for everyone in the habit of eating.

Just some overseas craziness that could never happen here?

It already is. Federal assaults on the oil industry have fueled skyrocketing fuel prices. Our current president says the burden is an acceptable part of “an incredible transition” to a world that will be “stronger and less reliant on fossil fuels.”

Will the U.S. government next decide that too many cows are emitting gases such as methane and mandate culling of herds here?

Who knows? It depends on the politics of the moment, how eager officials are to appease enemies of mankind, and other factors having nothing to do with respecting the requirements of human survival.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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‘Ideological Prejudices’

Xi, China, communism, foreign policy

“‘One country two systems’ has been tested and proved time and again,” Chinese ruler Xi Jinping told his hand-​picked Hong Kong audience last week, “and there is no reason to change such a good system.”

Twenty-​five years into that “good system” — created when the United Kingdom signed it over to the Chinese Communist Party with the proviso it would recognize basic civil liberties in Hong Kong until 2047 — Xi was taking a victory lap. 

He had successfully squelched freedom of speech and of the press.

“China’s government is,” Ian Easton writes in The Final Struggle: Inside China’s Global Strategy, “far more powerful and sophisticated than any that came before. Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, the Soviet Union, and Putin’s Russia all pale in comparison.”

Easton, who studies defense and security issues involving the U.S., China, Japan, and Taiwan at the Project 2049 Institute, also pointedly suggests that it is “of national importance that Hollywood begins to make movies about China that are not censored.”

Censored by Beijing, he means. 

China’s long list of tyrannies has gotten so bad that even NATO — yes, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization — has recognized the threat posed by the totalitarian country engaged in the largest military build-​up in human history. 

“NATO has listed China as one of its strategic priorities for the first time,” Al Jazeera reported weeks ago, “saying Beijing’s ambitions and its ‘coercive policies’ challenge the Western bloc’s ‘interests, security and values.’”

To which the Chinese objected, arguing the NATO statement “vilifies China’s foreign policy” and “China’s natural military development” and was “filled with … ideological prejudices.”

They have a point. It’s about time the West shows a bit of “bias” against totalitarianism and genocide.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights international affairs Internet controversy

The Coffee Connection

coffee, surveillance, China

We have another indication now that the Internet of Things can be a mixed blessing. Perhaps not every gadget in our homes should be linked to the Worldwide Everything?

The great thing about a coffee maker with a Wi-​Fi or Bluetooth connection is that you can set things up with a few taps on your smartphone. Brewing times, strength, temperature, etc., can all be arranged without ever having to trudge from bedroom to kitchen.

The horrible thing, though — in addition to the slim possibility that a hacker will take your coffee machine hostage — is that a Wi-​Fi-​capable coffee maker made in China may be spying on you on behalf of the Chinazi government.

This is the conclusion of Christopher Balding, a researcher who finds evidence that coffee machines manufactured by Kalerm in Jiangsu, China, collect a diverse array of data.

About their users. 

Stuff like the users’ names and general locations as well as usage patterns.

Balding doesn’t know for sure that the company simply turns over such data to the government. But Chinese companies must cooperate with any government demands, and Balding notes that China often gathers as much data as possible and figures out what to do with it later.

The data-​scavenging of the Chinese government is not exactly unique. Think Ed Snowden and the program he revealed, for example. But “the breadth and depth of their data-​collection efforts” are in a class by themselves, Balding says.

It seems that my lack of a connected coffee machine, coupled with my chronic dependence on Starbucks, is proving very wise indeed.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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