Day: March 21, 2023

China’s Ukraine plan ‘an effort to show it backs peace rather than Russia’

Chin@Strategy

Its peace proposal, however, was widely seen in the West as pro-Russian because of its failure to condemn Moscow or to ask it to withdraw from Ukraine, despite Beijing’s claims of neutrality. Tuesday’s joint statement condemned bloc confrontations, accusing the US and Nato of undermining the peace process. Advertisement China’s strong ties with Russia have further strained its relations with the United States and Europe over the past year. Washington accused Beijing of considering supplying lethal aids to Moscow, which China denies, while the EU is not convinced by China’s…

A tale of two visits: Kishida and Xi tread starkly different paths on Ukraine

Chin@Strategy

On Tuesday, Japan’s prime minister laid a wreath for the dead outside a church in the blasted Ukrainian town of Bucha, while 800km away in Moscow Xi Jinping was treated to an opulent state dinner by Vladimir Putin, underscoring the division in Asia over Russia’s invasion. The first Japanese leader to visit a country in conflict since the second world war, Kishida toured Bucha, a town that has become synonymous with Russian brutality, and where the mayor has said more than 400 civilians were killed. “The world was astonished to…

Opposition activists arrested in Phnom Penh after online comments about king

Chin@Strategy

Police on Tuesday arrested two opposition activists who are close to opposition party leader Kem Sokha after they posted unfavorable comments on Facebook about how the government has treated Cambodia’s constitutional monarch. “According to the people at the coffee shop, today we clearly know who is truly the King,” Yim Sinorn wrote. The second activist, Hun Kosal, later wrote that it has been sad “to see they have hurt the King’s heart and degraded the King’s power in all aspects,” a reference to how Prime Minister Hun Sen’s government has…

Experts: North Korean Full Range ICBM Test Could Challenge U.S. on Interception

Chin@Strategy

Washington —  Western experts analyzing North Korea’s latest intercontinental ballistic missile tests are watching to see whether Pyongyang will follow up by firing an ICBM into the Pacific Ocean on a flat trajectory more like a real attack on the United States. Such a test would be intended to demonstrate North Korea’s ability to reach the mainland United States with a nuclear weapon as well as to gauge whether the Biden administration would try to intercept it, the experts told VOA’s Korean service. North Korea said it launched a Hwasong-17…

China’s Strategic Support Force Brings Hybrid Warfare to Space, Cyber, Politics

Chin@Strategy

Washington —  The Chinese spy balloon that drifted over the United States early this year bore the earmarks of an operation by China’s Strategic Support Force (SSF), a little-known hybrid branch of the People’s Liberation Army that incorporates elements of cyber, electronic, space and psychological warfare. Founded on the last day of 2015 as part of an armed forces restructuring introduced early in the rule of Chinese leader Xi Jinping, the SSF has no exact counterpart in any other country, said Dean Cheng, a senior adviser on China at the…

Vietnamese Activists Say Hanoi Adopting China’s Model on Religious Policy

Chin@Strategy

Days after Hanoi released its first white book on religious policies in 16 years, Vietnamese activists are pointing to its similarities to China’s policies. The white book, Religion in Viet Nam, catalogs the religions practiced in the country and outlines the “comprehensive” policy of the Communist Party of Vietnam guaranteeing religious freedom. A white book gathers rules and standards often in the form of an official government report that takes its name from the binding color. Nguyen Tien Trong, deputy head of the government’s Committee for Religious Affairs, said at…

US Says China Should Push Russia to End the War in Ukraine

Chin@Strategy

washington —  U.S. officials are reacting to the joint statement by China and Russia on the Russian war on Ukraine. A statement was issued Tuesday in Moscow, where Chinese President Xi Jinping held two days of talks with his host, Russian President Vladimir Putin. National Security Council spokesman John Kirby, at the White House press room lectern on Tuesday, said there is nothing from the talks and agreement between the Chinese and Russian leaders that gives hope the war in Ukraine is going to end any time soon. “If China…

Xi and Putin Bind China and Russia’s Economies Further, Despite War in Ukraine

Chin@Strategy

MOSCOW — President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, declared an enduring economic partnership on Tuesday, promising to bring more Russian energy to China and more Chinese companies to Russia as the two leaders sought to insulate their countries from Western sanctions and other consequences of the war in Ukraine. The economic pledges, trumpeted by the leaders on the second day of Mr. Xi’s state visit to Moscow, were a sign that China would continue to do business as normal with Russia and that Moscow…

Pulling the Plug on TikTok Will Be Harder Than It Looks

Chin@Strategy

In the summer of 2020, in full re-election mode and looking for new ways to punish China, President Donald J. Trump threatened to cut off TikTok from the phones of millions of Americans unless its parent company agreed to sell all of its U.S. operations to American owners. The effort collapsed. Now, more than two years later, after lengthy studies of how Chinese authorities could use the app for everything from surveillance to information operations, the Biden administration is attempting a strikingly similar move. It is better organized, vetted by…