China and Silk

“Mops And More” © Jan Oberg 2023 Jan Oberg October 20, 2023 I assume that most readers here know me as a peace and conflict researcher and as co-founder and director of the Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research, TFF. However, since 2009, I’ve also worked as an art photographer, done projects, and arranged almost 30 exhibitions in my studio here in Lund, Sweden. See more on Oberg PhotoGraphics. I grew up with contemporary art; it’s always been an essential, joyful interest of mine. And in 2002-2003, I found out that I could reach people not only with texts but also with images. Back then, I went on fact-finding in Iraq and interviewed some 160 people at all levels and also took photos with an early digital low-resolution camera – of people, cafées, nature, streets, children, cultural places, museums and… life in general, nothing special. It was merely snapshots...

Illustration: Craig Stephens The US isn’t serious about detente or any form of reconciliation. Instead it has been laying the foundation for a cold war or worse, and fabricating a moral high ground Josef Gregory Mahoney October 2, 2023 American efforts to foster detente with China have failed: it’s time to acknowledge this and move on. This argument has emerged in recent weeks in several important publications, including The Washington Post and Foreign Affairs, expressed by key opinion leaders considered close to the Biden administration and those representing more conservative positions. These views have not been endorsed officially by the administration but suggest a consensus coalescing on both sides of the American political spectrum. They seem to express the next chapter of a dark narrative arc established when Joe Biden took office. The arc points especially to the Xi-Biden meeting on the sidelines of last year’s G20 summit and the...

Jan Oberg Originally published by Global Times, Beijing, on September 5, 2023 September 28, 2023 A couple of years ago, The Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research, TFF, in Sweden, of which I am the director, published ”Behind The Smokescreen. An Analysis of the West’s Destructive China Cold War Agenda And Why It Must Stop” (130 pages). Among several perspectives of the U.S./Western accusation industry, we looked into the medialised stories about genocide in Xinjiang, forced labour, and Taiwan and nine mainstream media manipulation methods that aim to manufacture a systematically negative image of China in the Western mind. We found that the Cold War happens by attempts to influence the ’free’ press – also the Western state press – through three main mechanisms: a) Fake or fabricated stories, b) Omission – for instance, of every positive aspect of China’s developments, and c) Source Ignorance: using the same few...

© Jan Oberg “Biking Mom in Xian” Collage – 2023 Certainly, China has evolved continually and progressively, step by step. My expectations were high when I visited this autumn, my first trip post-pandemic. Between 2015 and 2020, I had visited this vast country almost 20 times. Each visit revealed positive changes and swift progress. Allow me to share some observations from my daily experiences there. Firstly, what remains unchanged is their absence of cheese (!). This tradition stems from their historical lack of cattle farming, prioritizing crops and vegetables. However, cows are now present, particularly in Hebei province’s highlands. They’ve even adapted to the sound of wind windmills, unlike the reindeer in Norway’s Sami-land. Another crucial observation is the deep integration of mobile phones into daily life. You can hardly catch a taxi without a mobile app, and ordering coffee from the highly successful chain, Luckin Coffee, also necessitates an...

It’s an old US playbook. My assessment is that the US attempt to contain China is not only wrongheaded in principle, but destined to fail in practice. Jeffrey Sachs September 18, 2023 China’s economy is slowing down. Current forecasts put China’s GDP growth in 2023 at less than 5%, below the forecasts made last year and far below the high growth rates that China enjoyed until the late 2010s. The Western press is filled with China’s supposed misdeeds: a financial crisis in the real-estate market, a general overhang of debt, and other ills. Yet much of the slowdown is the result of US measures that aim to slow China’s growth. Such US policies violate World Trade Organization (WTO) rules and are a danger to global prosperity. They should be stopped. Originally published on Jeffrey Sach’s homepage on August 22, 2023 The anti-China policies come out of a familiar playbook of...

US lawmakers say the alliance’s movement into Asia is “inevitable.” It’s actually a completely avoidable, completely bad idea. Branko Marcetic September 15, 2023 A little over a century ago, rising inter-imperial tensions coupled with a complicated, evidence board–like set of alliances pulled Europe into the most disastrous, pointless war the world had ever seen up to then, World War I. Today, a ’roided-up version of that scenario is looming, as US-China relations deteriorate and the NATO alliance begins to dip several toes in Asia, nearly six thousand miles away from its headquarters in Brussels. Originally published at Jacobin on July 29, 2023 This isn’t an exaggeration. Asked recently at a joint appearance on Meet the Press whether NATO’s expansion into Asia was “inevitable,” Senators Tammy Duckworth (an Illinois Democrat) and Dan Sullivan (an Alaska Republican) answered yes. “Oh, I think it is,” said Sullivan. “I agree with my friend,” said Duckworth. They had good...

Jerry Grey August 30, 2023 British born Australian Jerry Grey describes himself in this way on his YouTube Channel “Jerry’s Take On China”: “Over the last 18 years I’ve lived, worked, married, studied and now retired in China. I’ve travelled about 30,000 kilometres on a bike around China and there are only 3 mainland provinces I haven’t visited yet.I may not be an expert, no one is and anyone claiming to be certainly isn’t. However, I have opinions, I research facts and I won’t tell you lies on this, or any other channel.This is my China – the good (mostly) the bad (sometimes) and the Ugly (rarely, China is beautiful and so are the people).” By the way, Jerry Grey is a former police officer in London and has an MA in Cross-Cultural Change Management. He also writes articles – mainly about China – on Medium. In this short video...

A video conversation with Chas Freeman August 10, 2023 Chas Freeman is a legend of US diplomacy – since he served as interpreter for Kissinger and Nixon during their visit to China in 1972. He is also an academic and prolific writer and commentator. An intellectual that offers so much more than anybody serving as an ambassador in today’s NATO countries. You will find his homepage here with much about him and his thoughts. Although a staunch American, he is not the type Western mainstream media would turn to since he has the ‘wrong’ views on several essentially important things. I’ve also come to appreciate Neutrality Studies’ YouTube Channel. Browse it when you are anyhow there, but – first – listen carefully to this conversation that starts out with Henry Kissinger’s visit to China and moves on to very important aspects of Taiwan and beyond. Jan Oberg, Editor

Terry Gou July 22, 2023 Editor’s introduction I believe there is great confusion in the minds of many Westerners about Taiwan, its relation to China and the US’s real Taiwan policy. TFF has written about some of it in our Smokescreen Report here but you may also like to read this Wikipedia entry about the 1992 Consensus – and its problems – as well as the Chou Enlai-Nixon talks and agreements in February 1972 here and here. I would like, therefore, to recommend the article below by Terry Gou – a very successful Taiwanese businessman and politician who here promotes a peace and win-win perspective in contrast to his own government leadership and the Biden administration. Interestingly, it was published by The Washington Post (on July 17, 2023). Click! Jan Oberg, TFF director and editor

Einar Tangen on infer July 6, 2023 There is woefully little trust between the world’s two giants – the United States and China. US-born Einar Tangen deals with that issue in a manner that more people should be inspired by – also at the highest level. I would like to alert our readers here also to my own recent analysis of the concept of trust kindly published by China Investment in English and Chinese – “Looking ahead, where does trust come from?” More about Einar Tangen and the Taihe Institute in Beijing that he has recently joined.

And you should listen carefully to how far he is from Western media and policy-makers who know close to nothing. A Cyrus Janssen Interview July 1, 2023 0:00 – What’s China Like in 2023? 0:53 – Who is Shaun Rein? 1:58 – China is Normal and Not Normal Right Now 4:03 – Why is Consumer Spending Down in China? 5:15 – How Geopolitics Are Changing Chinese People’s Mind 6:58 – Chinese Shopping Habits Have Changed 7:38 – How International Companies Are Looking at China 10:00– Can US and China Work Together? 11:15 – Why China is Turning to Global South 12:07 – Could Trump Solve US/China Tension? 13:37 – How Americans Are Being Conditioned to Hate China 15:05 – Where Should We Criticize China? 16:44 – Do Chinese Truly Support the Chinese Government? 19:36 – The Truth About Xinjiang and Uyghur Families 21:30 – What Do You Want the World...

Alex Lo & Daniel Bell June 24, 2023 “It’s quite clear from recent policies that the US aims to curb China’s economic development and encircle the country with military bases in unfriendly (from China’s viewpoint) countries. Such demonisation only reinforces repressive trends in China and benefits security-obsessed hardliners in China’s political system. That’s why “de-demonisation” can help those in China who favour a more open and humane social and political system. I have yet to meet a single academic, for example, who favours more rather than less censorship and “de-demonisation” can help to strengthen such forces”, says Daniel Bell in a recent interview with Alex Lo. Published at johnmenadue.com on May 11, 2023 On the Confucian Communist Comeback in Contemporary China Once denounced as a fossilised ideology holding back China’s development, an updated Confucianism may be a guide to its future, according to Daniel Bell of the University of Hong Kong in...