Italy has become the battlefield over Chinese influence in Europe; and the strange case of a Pakistani terrorist creates a dilemma for China at the UN and its relations with India and Pakistan.

There are two ways of looking at the US-led confrontation with the People’s Republic of China now playing out in Europe and South Asia.

The first is classic great power politics.  China is getting bigger and stronger; the US doesn’t like that and is pushing back with the help of its friends and allies.

China has the advantage over the United States in the great power jostling frame.

That’s because China, as a matter of policy and necessity has avoided war and military adventures at the same time the United States has been absolutely ferocious and unprincipled in pursuing its global interests at the cost of millions of lives ended or ruined, particularly in the Middle East, North Africa, Central Asia, and South America.

On the economic side, the United States led the world off a financial cliff in 2008 and China’s half trillion-dollar stimulus spending played a big role in saving the world from a global recession.

China, in other words, has been a more responsible and clever “stakeholder” in the current world order than the United States in the last two decades.

And as late as 2018 the PRC was making good headway globally with a foreign policy keyed on economics and non-interference, at least military non-interference, in the internal affairs of sovereign states.

This state of affairs, of course, made Uncle Sam “Uncle Sad” and created the need for a new framing that put China at a disadvantage.

The result is what I’d call “influence threatmongering”, basically the idea that the biggest threat to the world order is not the US blowing up your country: it is unconventional Chinese aggression via economic infiltration and social and political corruption.

That’s a tough sell in the era of Trump.

And other countries have different ideas about how to manage the opportunities and threats of engagement with China

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Show notes

Italy slips into recession for third time in a decade

China’s Cosco Makes Piraeus 2^nd Largest Port in Mediterranean

Trade balance with China by member state, 2017

Germany’s opposition to Italy’s belt and road deal with China ‘unfair’ says  former diplomat

China needs solid proof in Azhar case

In the Shadow of Lal Masjid

Bringing Back the Dead: Why Pakistan Used the Jaish-e-Mohammed to Attack an Indian Airbase

Policia & CNI vinculan con la CIA a dos asaltantes a la Embajada norcreana en Madrid

CIA implicated in attack on North Korean embassy in Madrid (abbreviated from Spanish-language report)

Who Ordered the CIA to Assault North Korea’s Embassy in Spain?

CIA Blames Its Proxy for Its Raid on North Korea’s Embassy in Spain

Special China Watch reports on Korea

Perhaps no foreign affairs issue in recent history has been so thoroughly misunderstood as the backstory of U.S. engagement with North Korea.  That’s because U.S. machinations relating to North Korea are about as dirty, unsuccessful, and embarrassing as can be imagined.

Here’s your chance to understand the context of U.S.—North Korea relations: a trio of special reports I have prepared on the untold story of U.S. duplicity and failure on North Korea.  Unknown, that is, to Western observers who rely on the selective historical memories of American policy makers and pundits; but deeply known and felt reality to North Korean and Chinese policymakers for whom U.S. bad faith and betrayal is the default setting in Korean affairs.

The Deep State Plan to Sabotage Korean Peace (full episode available on Youtube)

John Bolton’s presence on the White House staff is a red flag to Chinese and North Korean policymakers.  That’s because John Bolton’s core competency is sabotaging the stated and perhaps genuine intentions of the President of the United States to pursue peace on the Korean Peninsula, and substitute “active measures” to promote regime change. 

One of the most consequential failures in modern U.S. diplomacy (or anti-diplomacy) if you prefer, was a disastrous foray into financial secondary sanctions targeting North Korea during the George W. Bush years when John Bolton ruled the North Korea regime-change roost.  The sanctions gambit—targeting a tiny, China affiliated bank in Macau—backfired and literally birthed North Korea’s first atomic bomb.

It’s history that the Chinese and North Koreans know deep in their bones, even as the U.S. government tried to deny and ignore the reality of the fiasco.  To understand the deep distrust and reflexive caution of Kim Jong Un and Xi Jinping in dealing with the United States, you need to know about the Banco Delta Asia gambit of 2005.

This is a non-paywalled China Watch offering posted on the Newsbud youtube channel per the link.  Please circulate it among your friends and encourage them to subscribe to Newsbud and get the full story of America’s North Korea boondoggle.

Shame in San Francisco: At the Olympics, South Korea Says “Enough” to a Century of Japanese and U.S. Betrayal

My Asia Brief audio report on the history Americans don’t know… but drives current events on the Korean peninsula.  Resentment at the sacrifice of Korea to U.S. Cold War ambitions and the Japanese alliance runs deep…and Koreans in the North and South are finally able to do something about it.

General MacArthur’s Conspiracy to Start a War with China! New Documentary Release & Interview! For purchase at Newsbud Store or for Purchase or View via Amazon or Vimeo

The Korean War was a desperate and dubious battle in which the US was ready to try anything and everything to overcome its strategic and tactical disadvantages.  Biological weapons, nuclear weapons…and Douglas MacArthur’s plans for a strategic breakout via escalation of the Korean conflict to a regional war.  Everything was on the table.

Douglas MacArthur made the first US attempt to parlay a Korean crisis into an existential confrontation with the People’s Republic of China.  With the US milsec establishment, his ideas are more popular—and dangerous—than ever.  My documentary uses first hand testimony and declassified archives to finally reveal the truth behind this long-suppressed event.