Biden was soft on China at the UN

[ad_1]

President Biden This week signaled that the Trump administration is stepping back from the harsh policies of the United States. Chinese and a return to the more accommodating approach of previous administrations.

At the United Nations on Tuesday, Mr. Biden made it clear in his address to the General Assembly that strategic competition with China will lag behind the administration’s more pressing priorities: addressing the pandemic and climate change. Mr Biden also made no mention of China and its role in the pandemic, and gave no indication that he plans to hold Beijing accountable for its role in the initiation and spread of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Instead of continuing to fight the wars of the past, we focus on dedicating our resources to the challenges that hold the keys to our common future: ending this pandemic; addressing the climate crisis; managing changes in global power dynamics; shaping the rules of the world on vital issues such as trade, cyber and emerging technologies; and it faces the threat of terrorism as it is today.”

Mr Biden suggested that he reverted to an old version of his policy for the Indo-Pacific region. President Barack ObamaA “leadership from behind” approach that seeks to reduce US leadership to allow allies and partners to take the lead in facing problems.

Ignoring the current reality of a compelling China trying to replace the US as the dominant power in the world, Mr. Biden emphasized that he is not looking for a “new Cold War” under a world divided into hostile blocs. Mr. Biden to the world’s most important states that support authoritarianism – Communist China or Vladimir PutinRussia. Instead, he noted the problem in Belarus, Cuba, Myanmar, Syria and Venezuela.

Both recent actions are signs of renewed appeasement-oriented policies towards China: Toronto’s Globe and Mail reports that the US Justice Department’s Huawei Technologies executive is in talks with China to resolve the extradition case. Meng Wanzhou. China has been aggressively pushed to drop all US charges and allow the “prince” ruler to leave detention in Canada and return to China.

Additionally, the Biden State Department retracted the Trump administration’s policy of allowing further official and military contact with Taiwan.

Republican Representatives Scott Perry Pennsylvania and Tom Tiffany The State of Wisconsin recently passed an amendment to its annual defense authorization law, which is now passing through Congress, that would exempt military members and Pentagon civilians from the new Biden administration’s restrictions on contacts with Taiwan. The draft amendment states that the June 29 Foreign Ministry memorandum has relaxed the contact boundaries for the island state, which China sees as a separatist province, and restricts official travel and communication.

The new restrictions require the Pentagon and military officials to obtain special permission from the State Department before traveling to Taiwan and to use tourist passports instead of official passports. The Pentagon is also prohibited from naming Taiwan as a country, displaying the Taiwanese flag, or playing the country’s national anthem at US government facilities.

Authorities were also banned from attending events at the Taiwan government representative residence in the District of Columbia and at Twin Oaks, Taiwan’s de facto embassy.

The White House press secretary was asked by a reporter flying from New York to Washington why Mr. Biden did not mention China once during his UN speech. Jen Psaki The president said he wanted to “work with” China and other states on issues of common interest, such as climate change, terrorism and cyber threats.

The US policy is “not towards any country, but towards any country that does not meet the bar, where we will keep the standard of democracy high, the standards of human rights high,” he said. “And you know, that’s a message that anyone who listens should hear.”

FBI raids Chinese crane delivery ship

FBI counterintelligence agents conducted a search of the Chinese merchant ship Zhen Hua 24, which delivered four gigantic shipping container cranes to the port of Baltimore last week. Informed sources said agents uncovered intelligence-gathering equipment on board during the search on September 15.

No details of the types of equipment found could be learned.

Zhen Hua 24 departed from Shanghai, home of the Shanghai State Security Bureau, the office of the Ministry of State Security, which conducts aggressive intelligence-gathering operations against the United States. The ship first moored near Annapolis and reconfigured the cranes to cross two bridges.

Huge cranes carried on board cleared the Chesapeake Bay and Key Bridges nearly 10 feet on their way to the Port of Baltimore. Transit halted at clearings on Thursday, the Associated Press reported.

Each of the four cranes is approximately 450 feet high, about 25 feet taller than existing port cranes used to move containers from the piers to commercial vessels.

An FBI spokesperson declined to comment. A Coast Guard spokesperson did not immediately comment.

The Coast Guard announced in a federal registration notice that it has established a temporary safety zone for the passage of Zhen Hua in the waters of the Chesapeake Bay and Patapsco River.

The zone prohibits any ships from coming within 500 feet of Zhen Hua, and the notice said that the enforcement of the security zone will be assisted by federal, state and local agencies.

“This action is necessary to ensure the safety of life in these mobile waters as M/V Zhen Hua 24 transports four new Super-Post Panamax container cranes to the Port of Baltimore,” the statement said. “This rulemaking will prohibit persons and ships from being in the safety zone unless authorized by the captain of the Port Maryland-National Capital Territory or a designated representative.”

China can launch nuclear missiles from space

Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall This week, it announced that China could build a Soviet-era nuclear strike system called “fractional orbital bombardment” from space.

Mr. Kendall, speaking at the Air Force Association conference, said there was a danger of the system being revived by China, which is busy expanding its nuclear arsenal to a large extent.

“There is a potential for launching weapons into space, then call this old concept from the Cold War a fractional orbital bombardment system (FOBS), which is basically a system that goes into orbit and then returns to a target,” said Mr Kendall.

“If you use this kind of approach, you don’t have to use a traditional ICBM orbiter,” he said. “A way to evade defense systems and missile warning systems.”

US officials recently announced that China is building three large ICBM sites in western China for silos that are expected to contain as many as 350 DF-41s, 10 warhead ICBMs. China also uses a number of space warfare weapons, including land-launched anti-satellite missiles and orbiting robotic satellite killers.

“There’s no question about the technical feasibility or technology to do this sort of thing,” Kendall said, noting China’s satellite, which has a robotic arm that can tear apart satellites.

Between the 1960s and 1980s Moscow deployed a small arsenal of fragmented orbital missiles designed to counter Western missile defense systems. According to experts, China also considered building a fractional orbital missile system in the 1960s, but abandoned the program.

Such missile systems can also be used to launch electromagnetic pulse attacks. EMP attacks use gamma rays created in a high-altitude nuclear explosion to disrupt all electronics in large areas; this is a way to attack an enemy without causing the kinetic destruction of an above-ground explosion.

Rick Fisher, a China expert from the Center for International Evaluation and Strategy said that the Chinese military is building a fragmented orbital missile system.

“Today China has multiple ICBMs and [space launch vehicle] Platforms to accomplish this mission – such as the massive CASIC KZ-21 – currently in development – ​​that can put 80 to 100 warheads into orbit,” Fisher said.

“It’s a way to defeat early warning systems and counter ABM systems,” he added. “So as [People’s Liberation Army] It is moving towards nuclear supremacy, ready to counter any US moves to increase missile defense.”

• Contact Bill Gertz on Twitter @BillGertz.

Sign up for Daily Newsletters



[ad_2]

Source link

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *