The Official Chinese 🇨🇳 Espionage & Cold War Thread
Washington Post: Russia aims to create new world order via alliance with China
Russia is attempting to deepen its economic and diplomatic ties with China and the Global South to allow it to challenge the international financial system dominated by the U.S. and to undermine the West, the Washington Post (WP) reported.
Washington Post: Russia aims to create new world order via alliance with China
Sat, January 27, 2024 at 2:14 PM EST
Russia is attempting to deepen its economic and diplomatic ties with China and the Global South to allow it to challenge the international financial system dominated by the U.S. and to undermine the West, the Washington Post (WP) reported.
The Kremlin convened meetings in 2022 and 2023 to find ways to dismantle the post-World War II global financial system and undermine the U.S.' power over global transactions, documents obtained by the Washington Post showed.
“One of the most important tasks is to create a new world order,” one of the documents dated April 3, 2023, reportedly said.
“Western countries led by the United States have tried to impose their own structure, based on their dominance.”
While Beijing has supported Moscow diplomatically and economically despite the West's push to isolate Russia, although it has thus far appeared to refrain from providing direct military assistance.
Another document, reportedly written by a close ally of Security Council chief Nikolai Patrushev, advocated for more cooperation between China and Russia on artificial intelligence and cyber systems.
The document reportedly envisioned a new financial system and a Eurasian digital currency based on alternative payment systems between Russia and China to bypass the U.S. dominance of global financial transactions through the dollar.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov denied Russia aimed at undermining the U.S. dominance of the global financial system, but he admitted the Kremlin wanted to create an alternative.
Russian President Vladimir Putin allegedly told his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping during a meeting in March that Russia planned to continue its war against Ukraine for “at least five years,” Nikkei Asia reported on Dec. 28, citing its anonymous sources.
The article follows media reports suggesting that Putin may be ready for a ceasefire in case Russia keeps the territories it illegally occupies in Ukraine, while the West's strategy on supporting Ukraine is leaning towards preparing conditions for Kyiv-Moscow talks.
Putin's statement likely meant to imply that a prolonged war would benefit Russia and warn Xi not to change his pro-Russian stance, the media outlet added.
Xi traveled to Moscow on March 20 at Putin's invitation for his first state visit to Russia since the beginning of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February last year.
Read also: Russia, China and North Korea have new dynamics. And it’s bad for Ukraine
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Weakened China won’t overtake US economy ‘until 2080’
Rising debt, ageing population and ongoing property crisis to hold back Asian powerhouse
www.telegraph.co.uk
Weakened China won’t overtake US economy ‘until 2080’
Rising debt, ageing population and ongoing property crisis to hold back Asian powerhouse
Tim Wallace 31 January 2024 • 12:55pm
China’s crushing debt levels, ageing population and an ongoing property crisis means it may never surpass the US to become the world’s largest economy, according to a leading investment bank.
Nathan Sheets, global chief economist at Citi and a former US Treasury official in the Obama administration, said it was no longer “inevitable” that the size of the Chinese economy would surpass the US after Beijing lost major ground over the past two years.
Mr Sheets pointed out that China had in fact shrunk in comparison to the US. China’s economy is now equivalent to 65pc of America’s GDP, down from 75pc in 2021.
The Wall Street economist said many of the factors that powered China’s rise to become a global economic superpower over the past two decades were now fading.
The benefits of urbanisation, where millions of workers moved from the countryside to the cities, is now largely “tapped”, for instance. The country also has an ageing population, with almost a third expected to be over 60 by 2040 according to the World Health Organisation.
A debt-fuelled construction boom that helped power the domestic economy has also ground to a halt. Earlier this week a Hong Kong judge ordered the liquidation of Chinese developer Evergrande, the world’s most indebted property company, in a symbolic embodiment of the unravelling.
Mr Sheets, who served as the under secretary for international affairs at the US Treasury under President Obama, forecast that China’s economy would average growth of 4pc over the medium term, down from 10pc before the financial crisis.
He said: “Challenges loom from high-debt levels, stresses in the property sector, ageing demographics, and geopolitical headwinds.
“The government has responded by seeking to foster advanced manufacturing, high-tech production, and green infrastructure. But whether this push will be sufficient is an open question.”
Setbacks over the past two years mean Citi’s base case is that China’s economy will now only overtake the US in the “early 2040s”, Citi said. Just a year ago, the bank believed it would become the world’s largest “in the mid-2030s”.
Mr Sheets said it was “plausible” that it could take as long as “until 2080” for the switch to happen. He added: “We now believe that Chinese overtaking is ‘likely’ but we no longer see it as ‘inevitable’.”
Analysts have predicted for years that China would surpass the US as the world’s biggest economy thanks to its rapid growth rates and slowing expansion in the West.
Goldman Sachs began speculating in 2003 that China could overtake the US by 2041.
At the time, China was just 15pc of the size of the US. However, its economy grew rapidly after joining the World Trade Organisation (WTO) at the start of the millennium. As a result, many observers began to predict that China could overtake the US this decade.
However, Beijing’s zero-Covid policies have driven a major slowdown in recent years. Attitudes towards Beijing have also hardened in Congress, with both Republicans and Democrats calling for economic and financial ties with China to be severed, including the removal of the low tariffs introduced on Chinese goods when it joined the WTO.
A report published by the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party in December said China had carried out a “multi-decade campaign of economic aggression” that undermined US competitiveness.
As well as weakness in China, soaring prices have helped to inflate the size of the US economy in cash terms.
Mr Sheets said low Chinese inflation would make the challenge of surpassing the US harder if sustained. He highlighted that nominal GDP growth, which measures the size of an economy in cash terms, was unlikely to rise at the kind of double-digit rates seen in previous decades.
He said: “As the country’s economic development has progressed and per-capita incomes have risen, the pace of further gains has naturally diminished.”
The Centre for Economics and Business Research recently warned that China’s demographic decline and the scars of its zero-Covid policy meant the Asian powerhouse may never overtake the US. It expects India to become the world’s largest economy by 2080.
Citi’s warning came as official Chinese data showed manufacturing activity contracted for the fourth straight month in January.
The world’s second-largest economy continues to struggle with weak demand and is battling deflation. Efforts by Beijing to stimulate the economy by supporting stocks and freeing up more cash for banks to lend have so far failed to yield results.
Adding to Beijing’s woes is the size of the national debt. China’s debt continues to climb and stood at 272pc of GDP in 2022, according to International Monetary Fund data.
Mr Sheets said that the average Chinese person would likely remain poorer than the average US citizen even if the two countries did trade places in the race to be the world’s biggest economy. This is because China’s population is more than four times larger than the US, at 1.4 billion versus 340 million.
Why China is wary of opening up Afghanistan’s new road to Xinjiang
Observers said the Taliban’s hopes that the completed project will become a link to China’s vast network are unlikely to be shared by Beijing.
www.scmp.com
Why China is wary of opening up Afghanistan’s new road to Xinjiang
Published: 10:00pm, 26 Jan, 2024
The exact location of Afghanistan’s Little Pamir Road has not been disclosed, but it is understood to reach the Chinese border via the narrow and barely accessible strip of land called the Wakhan Corridor. Photo: AFP
The Taliban has completed its first road link between Afghanistan and China, but analysts expect Beijing to be cautious about giving its war-torn neighbour full access to its land border because of security concerns over terrorists and separatist militants.
At this stage, China has no customs facilities in the area – where Afghanistan meets the autonomous Chinese region of Xinjiang – and has said nothing to suggest it intends to add a formal crossing point.
Currently, only Chinese border guards patrol the Wakhjir Pass at the eastern end of the Wakhan Corridor, where the road is understood to be located.
The project – priced at around 370 million afghanis (US$5.07 million) – was conceived by the US-backed former government as a way to attract Chinese investment in the country’s untapped mining resources.
Construction began in May 2021 on the 50km (31-mile) Little Pamir Road in Badakhshan province but was soon suspended. Three months later, the Taliban retook control of the country.
How 2 years of Taliban rule have transformed Afghanistan back to the past
The 5 metre-wide road was completed around January 15, according to Mohammad Ayub Khalid, the Taliban governor of Badakhshan, in an interview with the Taliban-controlled Bakhtar News Agency. Asphalting would start “in the near future”, he said.
While Khalid gave no details of the road’s location, local travel agency manager Azim Ziahee said it reached the Chinese border via the Wakhjir Pass at the eastern end of the Wakhan Corridor – a barely accessible strip of land in the Pamir mountain range.
The former government had hopes that the road would link up with China’s vast network and boost commerce, imports and exports as well as cross-border transit.
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To the Taliban, it could pave the way for a more ambitious strategic corridor, connecting Afghanistan not only with China but also, in a wider reach, with Pakistan and central Asia’s Tajikistan.
According to Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid, the plan was raised by acting foreign minister Amir Khan Mutaqi and other senior officials from the regime, on the sidelines of a forum in Tibet in October, with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi.
But while the road was “symbolic” for the Taliban, it was of little economic interest to Beijing, observers said.
Terror threat to Chinese in Afghanistan ‘is challenge to our own’, Taliban vows
6 Oct 2023
Zhu Yongbiao, a professor with the school of politics and international relations at Lanzhou University, said the project was more about the Taliban showing its neighbours that it could govern the country.
“The road itself is largely devoid of practical access and economic value,” he said, adding that Afghanistan did not have the capacity to build highways in the high-altitude Wakhan Corridor.
Zhu said China had no customs facilities in the area, had only frontier border guards deployed along the Wakhjir Pass, and was unlikely to step in with an investment. “It is not only too costly, [the road] will not bring any economic value in the short term.”
China considers the Wakhjir Pass to be a major counterterrorism front line between Afghanistan’s militants and Xinjiang, with its predominantly Muslim Uygur population.
‘Vested interests’: why China is backing Taliban regime in Afghanistan
26 Oct 2023
“China must have its security considerations. This road is not economically worthwhile, but it must have security risks,” Zhu said.
China has taken a cautious approach to the Taliban since the US military’s 2021 withdrawal from Kabul. Like the rest of the world, Beijing does not formally recognise the regime but is deeply worried about terrorism spilling into Xinjiang.
According to a UN Security Council report published in May 2020, the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) – a separatist group founded by militant Uygurs – had around 500 fighters in northern Afghanistan, mostly in Badakhshan province.
Beijing, which blames ETIM for a spate of violent attacks in Xinjiang, has repeatedly urged the Taliban to make more progress in combating terrorism, while also pledging to improve trade ties with Afghanistan.
Last year Beijing hosted several senior Taliban officials, including acting commerce minister Haji Nooruddin Azizi, who attended the belt and road forum in October that marked a decade of the massive infrastructure initiative.
China’s Belt and Road, 10 years on
In a sign of Beijing’s willingness to further engage with the Taliban, China posted an ambassador in Kabul in September – the first foreign envoy to be stationed in Afghanistan since the August 2021.
In a reciprocal move, the Taliban’s ambassador to China arrived in Beijing in December.
Abdul Basit, an associate fellow of the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University, said China would face mounting pressure from local militants if it opened up access through the Wakhan Corridor.
“The areas adjoining the Wakhan Corridor also have the presence of militant groups … [China] will be confronted by the presence of ETIM in the Wakhan Corridor,” he said.
Chinese hackers would outnumber FBI cyber agents by 50 to 1 even if the agency threw all its resources at China: FBI chief
"The PRC has a bigger hacking program than every other major nation combined," FBI director Christopher Wray said at a congressional hearing.
www.businessinsider.com
Well...there's 1.5 billion Chinese. They do have an aging and older population but they would still outnumber the United States even in the future.
Chinese hackers would outnumber FBI cyber agents by 50 to 1 even if the agency threw all its resources at China: FBI chief
"The PRC has a bigger hacking program than every other major nation combined," FBI director Christopher Wray said at a congressional hearing.
