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Claims Of Chinese ‘Debt Trap Diplomacy’ Are Propaganda – (Told You So)
In June 2018 we debunked a New York Times piece which accused China of 'financial imperialism'.
China's Port In Sri Lanka's Is Good Business – The NYT's Report On It Is Propaganda
The core of the NYT piece was about the Chinese financed development of the Hambantota port in Sri Lanka:
'China's financial imperialism' is a relatively new genre in western journalism. China is providing loans to other countries to build infrastructure. If those countries can not pay back the loans, China offers to lease and manage the infrastructure built with its money. That somehow is supposed to create a "debt trap for vulnerable countries".
Yesterday the New York Times lamented about Sri Lanka's Hambantota Port Development Project:
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The port is in a strategic location right alongside the shipping lines between Asia and the Middle East and Africa.
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There were several inconsistencies in the NYT piece. It used old statistics to claim that the port was rarely used. However up-to-date statistics proved the opposite. It also lied about Sri Lanka's debt burden only 10% of which was to China.
Thirty two months after Moon of Alabama debunked the piece, and twenty nine months after Peter Lee (aka Chinahand) did similar in greater detail, The Atlantic sets out to do the same:
The Chinese ‘Debt Trap’ Is a Myth
The narrative wrongfully portrays both Beijing and the developing countries it deals with.
It notes that the New York Times anti-China propaganda piece was often used by the Trump administration to attack that country:
Cont. reading: Claims Of Chinese ‘Debt Trap Diplomacy’ Are Propaganda – (Told You So)
U.S., Taiwan Manipulate Chip Supplies To Press For War With China
The current government of Taiwan is trying to break the U.S. and Europe's One-China policy to become an independent country under U.S. and NATO protection.
The Peoples Republic of China, the mainland, insist, historically correct, that Republic of China, Taiwan, is a part of mainland China.
Since 1972, when Nixon went to China, the U.S. has supported that position:
In the case of the United States, the One-China Policy was first stated in the Shanghai Communiqué of 1972: "the United States acknowledges that Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is but one China and that Taiwan is a part of China. The United States does not challenge that position."
The ruling Taiwanese nationalist Democratic Progressive Party under President Tsai Ing-wen's leadership now has a plan to break that policy. Despite regime change in Washington DC it has support from U.S. anti-China hawks:
[Taiwan's Representative to the US] Hsiao’s invitation to Biden’s inauguration, taken together with Blinken’s language at the confirmation hearing, indicates that the Biden administration is willing to adopt a large chunk of the Trump administration’s Taiwan policy.
While in office, Pompeo pushed back against China and acted as a guarantor to Taiwan — Beijing viewed him as an outright enemy.
Through well planned economic development policies Taiwan has achieved a near monopoly in the production of computer chips. There were until recently three companies which could mass produce computer chips with the most tiniest structures. Then the U.S. company Intel screwed up its development of a production process for 7 nanometer chips. It is now at least two years behind the competition. Its newest chips are no longer the most powerful in the market. The CEO and the technical leadership have since been fired but it still will take years, if ever, to regain the leadership. A second big production facility is owned by the South Korean Samsung conglomerate. It is mainly used to produce the chips for Samsung's own products.
The third and by far biggest producer of chips is the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC). TSMC does not produce consumer products. It manufactured, until recently, for everyone in the global industry. It is the go-to producer for high-end chips other companies need. It has now become a weapon in the hand of the Taiwanese government.
Under pressure from Trump, who put sanctions on Chinese companies including Huawei, TSMC reduced its sales to China. It also had to commit to open a production facility in the U.S. Trump's use of the chip production capacities as economic and political weapon has given the government of Taiwan new ideas:
Cont. reading: U.S., Taiwan Manipulate Chip Supplies To Press For War With China
The MoA Week In Review – OT 2021-011
Last week's posts at Moon of Alabama:
> Lavrov: Power pressure, ultimatums, sanctions and penalties through exterritorial restrictions on those who want to develop normal relations are methods and instruments from a colonial past.
Unfortunately, the European Union increasingly resorts to these instruments, which are a US invention. This is sad. <
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Other issues:
Cont. reading: The MoA Week In Review – OT 2021-011
New York Times Editors Lie, Obfuscate Facts, To Reinforce Their False Russia Narrative
It is amusing to what extent the editors of the New York Times resort to lying in their attempts to portray the incarceration of the right wing racist Alexei Navalny as a best thing that happened since the invention of sliced bread.
Today's editorial is as delusional as it can get.
Aleksei Navalny Is Resisting Putin, and Winning
The opposition leader was sentenced to prison, but he has mobilized a vast movement that’s not done growing.
Beyond being delusional the editorial is full of lies and disinformation:
A Russian court on Tuesday opened a new and fateful stage in the gripping power struggle between Aleksei Navalny, Russia’s tough-talking and internet-savvy opposition leader, and President Vladimir Putin, by sentencing Mr. Navalny to his first serious stint in prison.
On the face of it, this would appear to be a clear victory for Mr. Putin, who has effectively proclaimed himself president for life.
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But in this David v. Goliath saga, the 44-year-old Mr. Navalny has succeeded through raw courage and perseverance in putting Mr. Putin on the defensive. The imprisonment was Mr. Navalny’s move. Mr. Putin had tried for years to give him only brief sentences to avoid making him a martyr.
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The Kremlin attempted to give the court proceedings a veneer of legitimacy by moving them to a large courtroom in central Moscow and allowing Mr. Navalny to do all the talking he wanted to. But the outcome was preordained: Mr. Navalny was accused of violating parole from a 2014 conviction that the European Court of Human Rights had debunked as “arbitrary and manifestly unreasonable.” The accusation served to underscore the main reason Mr. Navalny couldn’t make the requisite visits to the authorities: Evidence suggests he was nearly poisoned to death in August by the secret police. He was subsequently evacuated to Germany.
The sentence in bold is an outright lie. On January 17 the Russian Foreign Ministry relayed a statement (in English!) by the Moscow Directorate of Russia's Federal Penitentiary Service which debunked that claim:
Cont. reading: New York Times Editors Lie, Obfuscate Facts, To Reinforce Their False Russia Narrative
Bashing Russia When One Needs It Doesn’t Work Well
Russia had recently said that it would take a more assertive stand against the sanctions and Navalny nonsense the 'west' is throwing at it.
Today the EU's foreign policy chief Josep Borrell visited Moscow. He had a talk with Russia's Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.
It was showtime:
Borrell said he had conveyed the EU’s unhappiness about the jailing of Navalny. “I have conveyed to Minister Lavrov our deep concern and reiterated our appeal for his release and the launch of an impartial investigation of his poisoning,” he said.
But his remarks were overshadowed by Lavrov’s forceful rebuke, in which he repeated his doubts about the West’s conclusion that Navalny was poisoned with a military-grade nerve agent — a conclusion that German Chancellor Angela Merkel personally announced in Berlin, where Navalny was treated. Laboratories in France and Sweden, as well as the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, confirmed the German findings.
Overall, it was a disastrous performance by Borrell, who acknowledged that the EU had not taken any step toward imposing new sanctions on Russia over the Navalny case. Borrell, a former foreign minister of Spain, then stood by silently and semi-smiling as Lavrov took the last word to slam the EU as “unreliable” and to say he hoped EU heads of state and government use a planned discussion about Russia at their March European Council summit to adopt a new path.
“We are getting used to the fact that the European Union are trying to impose unilateral restrictions, illegitimate restrictions and we proceed from the assumption at this stage that the European Union is an unreliable partner,” Lavrov said. “I hope that the strategic review that will take place soon will focus on the key interests of the European Union and that these talks will help to make our contacts more constructive.”
Adding an exclamation point to Borrell’s troubled visit, Russia expelled three EU diplomats — from Germany, Poland and Sweden — for attending demonstrations in support of Navalny, an EU diplomat said.
The Politico writer above has missed the point of today's visit.
Cont. reading: Bashing Russia When One Needs It Doesn’t Work Well
Why Do These Uighur Witnesses’ Stories Constantly Change?
Two months ago we documented astonishing changes over time in the testimony of a Uyhgur woman who had claimed to have been incarcerated in China:
Over the years [Sayragul] Sautbay has given several interviews. The details of her story continued to change in anti-Chinese directions.
- In early interviews Sautbay claimed to have been an instructor working in a re-education camp. In later interviews she claims to have been a detainee.
- In more recent interviews she claims that she had seen torture and violence in the camps. In earlier interviews she had refuted such claims.
- In one story she claims to have observed mass rape. In older interviews she insisted that she had observed no violence at all.
- While she now claims that detainees in the camp were forced to eat pork she had earlier claimed that no meat was served in the camps.
The changes in her story came after Sautbay had fallen into the hands of a propaganda group:
After she had gained asylum in Sweden Sautbay joint up with a U.S. financed Uighur organization. Her story then changed dramatically. The party member and language teacher had became a detainee. There was suddenly extensive violence in the camp and people who earlier never got meat were suddenly made to eat pork.
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The Swedish Uyghur association is part of the Munich-based World Uyghur Congress, a CIA affiliated organization that has in recent years gained prominence as part of the U.S. driven anti-China campaign.
A similar change can be observed in the testimony of another Uyghur woman who currently makes the rounds through the media. Tursunay Ziawudun, a Uyghur woman who last year moved to the United States, now claims to have observed mass rape in Chinese detention camps.
The BBC headlined yesterday: 'Their goal is to destroy everyone': Uighur camp detainees allege systematic rape
First-hand accounts from inside the internment camps are rare, but several former detainees and a guard have told the BBC they experienced or saw evidence of an organised system of mass rape, sexual abuse and torture.
Tursunay Ziawudun, who fled Xinjiang after her release and is now in the US, said women were removed from the cells "every night" and raped by one or more masked Chinese men. She said she was tortured and later gang-raped on three occasions, each time by two or three men.
Ziawudun was first interviewed (video) at the office of the Atajurt Kazakh Human Rights organization in Almaty, Kazakhstan, on October 15, 2019. An English summary of the interview is here. There are no allegations of rape or overly harsh treatment. The biggest problem seem to have been 'urinary disorders' which some people developed because the camp buildings were new and the concrete had not yet completely dried out.
The organization which did the first interview with Ziawudun acted as a broker between such persons and 'western' media:
Cont. reading: Why Do These Uighur Witnesses’ Stories Constantly Change?
Open Thread 2021-010
This Is Why They Attack Him – Putin Explains Why We Need New Economic Policies
The President of Russia Vladimir Putin has given a great speech to the Davos 2021 online forum organized by the World Economic Forum. As usual it created little echo in the 'western' media.
Putin sees a new danger of large international conflicts. Economic imbalances have caused socio-political problems in many countries which, when externalized, can lead to international conflicts.
To solve this one has to reject the laissez faire doctrines that caused the economic imbalances. The nation states must intervene more in their economies. The people must be seen as the ends, not the means of such economic policy. There must be more international cooperation through global organizations to enable this everywhere.
There is more in the speech than that. But the above is the core idea. U.S. neo-liberalism will of course reject such a program.
Following are excerpts that reflect on the above points.
The big picture view points to great danger:
The pandemic has exacerbated the problems and imbalances that built up in the world before. There is every reason to believe that differences are likely to grow stronger. These trends may appear practically in all areas.
Needless to say, there are no direct parallels in history. However, some experts – and I respect their opinion – compare the current situation to the 1930s. One can agree or disagree, but certain analogies are still suggested by many parameters, including the comprehensive, systemic nature of the challenges and potential threats.
We are seeing a crisis of the previous models and instruments of economic development. Social stratification is growing stronger both globally and in individual countries. We have spoken about this before as well. But this, in turn, is causing today a sharp polarisation of public views, provoking the growth of populism, right- and left-wing radicalism and other extremes, and the exacerbation of domestic political processes including in the leading countries.
All this is inevitably affecting the nature of international relations and is not making them more stable or predictable. International institutions are becoming weaker, regional conflicts are emerging one after another, and the system of global security is deteriorating.
Klaus [Schwab] has mentioned the conversation I had yesterday with the US President on extending the New START. This is, without a doubt, a step in the right direction. Nevertheless, the differences are leading to a downward spiral. As you are aware, the inability and unwillingness to find substantive solutions to problems like this in the 20th century led to the WWII catastrophe.
Putin then goes into the details of the above theses.
What caused the current economic imbalances?
Cont. reading: This Is Why They Attack Him – Putin Explains Why We Need New Economic Policies
Lebanon – British Embassy Infiltrates Military Intelligence, Provides Snooping Equipment, Indoctrinates Young Palestinians
The British ambassador to Lebanon is 'very exited' to hand off some useless, half armored patrol vehicles to the Lebanese army:
Martin Longden @MlongdenUK – 12:25 UTC · Feb 1, 2021
Very excited to witness the arrival in Beirut of 100 armoured patrol vehicles, a donation from 🇬🇧 to @LebarmyOfficial. This is a great practical example of the 🇬🇧 🇱🇧 partnership, and of our longstanding support for the LAF's vital role in keeping the Syria border safe and secure.
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Keeping the Syrian border safe and secure is certainly not a British priority. Let's not forget that it was Britain which hired various companies, led by 'former' British intelligence officers, who then organized and ran the propaganda campaigns for the Jihadi onslaught on Syria.
The same companies were hired to secretly create 'civil society' groups in Lebanon that were then used to demonstrate for 'regime change' and to pressure the Lebanese government. It was also Her Majesties Government which hired such intelligence cutouts to embed into and undermine Lebanon's justice and security services.
Lebanon's army was another target of British intelligence efforts to gain control over Lebanon's policies.
'Anonymous' hackers have recovered and published a third batch of documents which show how Britain infiltrated Lebanon's Armed Forces Military Intelligence Department. Other documents show that Britain supplied spying equipment to the intelligence services it had infiltrated. Another secret program was designed to infiltrate Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon and to manipulate Palestinian youths.
For all this the British government is using company cutouts. A government's Terms of Reference document for the penetration of Lebanon's military intelligence describes how the vendor is supposed to proceed. The 'excuse' is to provide training and support for counter terrorism (emphasis added):
The objective of [British Embassy Beirut] is to increase the capacity, capability and Human Rights compliance of the LAF and Military Tribunal within the CT arrest to trial process. A compliant pathway through the Lebanese CT system is sought that could be used by UK law enforcement in the case of terrorism cases with UK links in Lebanon.
Requirement
An external supplier is required to deliver a two year programme on behalf of the British Embassy Beirut working primarily with the Lebanese Armed Forces Department of Military Intelligence, but with scope to engage with a broader range of security services here, to develop their investigative processes and evidential standards.
Working primarily via a embedded CT adviser, the successful supplier will also be expected to demonstrate a broad range of areas of expertise available on call down as necessary, to effectively project manage the programme while reporting into BE Beirut, and to demonstrate that they have built in rigorous and independent M&E processes throughout the programming timeline.
The British government offered £600,000 for the two year project which ran from July 2018 to March 2020 but has been extended to 2022. Importantly the 'supplier' had been told to keep the project secret:
Cont. reading: Lebanon – British Embassy Infiltrates Military Intelligence, Provides Snooping Equipment, Indoctrinates Young Palestinians
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