China and Silk

Nancy Pelosi, then U.S. House speaker, center, gestures as she leaves parliament in Taipei on Aug. 3, 2022. © Reuters Kishore Mahbubani June 8, 2023 Outspoken Western leaders are putting region’s peace at risk A war over Taiwan would be disastrous for Asia. By contrast, it would have only a marginal impact on Europe. The total population of the 53 countries that make up the U.N.’s Asia and the Pacific Group comes to about 4.5 billion. By contrast, the total population of the 27 countries that make up the European Union comes to around 446 million, less than 10% as much. So whose voices are making the most noise about Taiwan? Originally published at NIKKEI ASIA on May 12, 2023 Asian leaders have generally had little to say about Taiwan, notwithstanding some recent statements made jointly with their U.S. counterparts. European leaders have been much more outspoken about the island. European Commission...

Zhang Lihua May 18, 2023 Traditional Chinese values directly influence China’s foreign policy and create a novel approach to resolving conflicts and conducting international affairs. Originally published at Carnegie Endowment on November 21, 2013 China’s traditional cultural values The cultural values of a country influence its national psychology and identity. Citizens’ values and public opinions are conveyed to state leaders through the media and other information channels, both directly and indirectly influencing decisions on foreign policy. The traditional cultural values that influence the psyche of the Chinese people are harmony, benevolence, righteousness, courtesy, wisdom, honesty, loyalty, and filial piety. Of these, the core value is harmony. Harmony means “proper and balanced coordination between things” and encompasses rationale, propriety, and compatibility. Rationale refers to acting according to objective laws and truths. Propriety indicates suitability and appropriateness. The value of harmony advocates “harmony but not uniformity.” Properly coordinating different things by bringing...

From: Une artiste confronte les différences entre l’Orient et l’Occident Alex Lo May 12, 2023 “Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,/ Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God’s great Judgment Seat;/ But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth,/ When two strong men stand face to face though they come from the ends of the earth!” – The Ballad of East and West, Rudyard Kipling When I was in university and the Asian tiger economies were just starting to roar in the 1980s, political leaders such as Lee Kuan Yew and Mahathir Mohamad started promoting what they called “Asian values”, that is beliefs, practices and norms that they claimed, underpinned the region’s success. They were mercilessly hounded. Western critics said there were no such things as Asian values, and Lee and Mahathir were just trying to justify...

We believe that public education about China is of great importance, not the least given the fact that so much of what the Western mainstream media focus on China is negative, condescending or otherwise unbalanced – some even pure propaganda, as we have shown in the TFF Smokescreen Report. We also believe that it is wrong to try to understand China – which is so very different in most ways from the West – by applying only Western concepts and values. It’s any concerned academic’s duty also to try to understand China on its own premises, its culture, history and ways of thinking. Here is a video – and there are many like it – that explains to you in just 7 minutes how China’s political system works. It also explains why China is neither a ‘dictatorship’ nor a Western-style democracy – how it is a completely different type of...

© Oberg PhotoGraphics 2022 Hussein Askary April 27, 2023 American political scientist Francis Fukuyama declared in his “End of History and The Last Man,” published in 1992,that the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War era in 1991 marked “not just the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such: That is, the end-point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.” Originally posted on the Belt and Road Institute in Sweden’s website on March 23rd, 2023 A utopian, rosy picture of a world living a submissive, silent, and in Fukuyama’s word “boring” life under what turned out to be a sword of the Western liberal democratic military power. The fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 was followed by the U.S. invasion of Panama a month...

Photo by David Dennis/Flickr Henry Heller April 19, 2023 The focal point of the world’s economy is shifting to Asia and Eurasia China’s place on the world stage advances year by year. It is arguably already the world’s largest economy. Its Belt and Road Initiative and its other international links like the BRICS have helped to magnify its economic but also its political and cultural influence worldwide. More and more countries in the Global South are benefiting from these connections and are looking to China for leadership on the basis of mutual benefit. There is every reason to believe these trends will continue. Moreover, we can see that the focal point of the world’s economy is shifting to Asia and Eurasia. Originally published at Canadian Dimension on March 27, 2023 At the same time, geopolitically, we are headed for a multipolar world with no country able to impose itself as a hegemon. Notably, the...

Colin Mackerras April 20, 2023 The implication of AUKUS is that China constitutes a danger to Australian security. It borders on official Australian policy that China is an aggressive power bent on domination. But the history of the People’s Republic suggests its military is for defence, not aggression and that the cases where it has used external military force are very few. Under Xi Jinping it may be assertive and keen to extend influence, especially economic, but it shows no signs of political/military aggression. On the contrary, it is the U.S. that constantly uses external military force and is bent on maintaining domination at all costs. It was less than a year after the birth of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) on 1 October 1949 that the Korean War broke out. Korean history of the first years after World War II is too complex to pursue here. But essentially,...

Andi Olluri April 12, 2023 A recent Pentagon conference on psychological warfare noted that the forces of indoctrination “cannot wait until a crisis begins”. A high-ranking chief at the Department of Defence suggested a model for propaganda, in no way new: “Look at marketing … What makes people drink Coke, what makes people drink Pepsi?” In short, public “marketing”. “I think”, the chief lauded, that “the private sector has used the information domain through marketing to the Nth degree … And I think we, as a department and in the national security enterprise, need to be able to pull some of those lessons”. (1) In fact, the “lessons” of effective indoctrination and public persuasion have been perfected in the domain of US government propaganda in conjunction with a servile ‘free’ press. A natural prediction of this is that in discussions of war, peace, diplomacy, violence and so on, essentially any...

The story of the BRICS countries and their accelerating role in world affairs. Jan Oberg March 31, 2023 We bring you this 13:45 minutes video from US-based Sino Sphere on YouTube about BRICS – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. Watch it with your colleagues, friends or family and ask yourself why you hear so little about these tremendously important countries and changes in world history. Among many other facts, you’ll learn that BRICS is now economically bigger than the G7 countries… Recommended reading and viewing About BRICS Deutsche WelleA new world order? BRICS nations offer alternative to West Silk Road BriefingThe BRICS Has Overtaken The G7 In Global GDP China’s GovernmentBRICS 2022 China The New Development Bank, NDB (formerly BRICS Development Bank) – including a fine short video presentation.

Erni & Ola Friholt TFF Associates March 23, 2023 In 1904, in the run-up to World War I, with the Triple Alliance on one side and the Entente on the other, the Principal of the London School of Economics, Halford Mackinder, gave a lecture to the Royal Geographical Society. The title was ‘The Geographical Axis of History’. Mackinder explained that world power could not, as in the past, be won by controlling the seas, which had been the main route for Portugal, Spain, Holland, France and Britain to their colonial empires, which had lasted some 400 years. Now, he argues, it is about controlling the interior of the Euro-Asian landmass, to which he also counted Africa. This huge land mass he called an island, the World Island. Its heartland lies in the plains and forests of Asia and is so vast that it could only be ruled from its peripheral...

Photo: The Beijinger, Robert Rauschenberg in China If the West were not absorbed by negative energy – threats, sanctions, confrontation, re-armament and war – and if it understood the emerging multi-polar world – the West could produce similar documents and we could have a global dialogue. Jan Oberg March 2, 2023 As the editor of The Transnational, I find it important that we make three recent Chinese government statements available to you so you can read them directly – unfiltered by Western mainstream media. It is our conviction that when it comes to China, you simply cannot rely on Western mainstream media – which is what we have documented in TFF’s path-breaking “Smokescreen” report from 2022. Here is another critical analysis of their China-bashing operation. The wisest you can do is read, listen and then build your own opinion. It takes a bit longer, yes, but you won’t be fooled,...

The US has started raising concerns about possible Chinese military support to Russia. On Feb. 20, China, Russia and South Africa begin joint naval exercises off the coast of the latter. The BRICS countries will soon meet to decide on the admission of new members. This commentary attempts to link these three news items into one bigger picture. Concerns Both U.S. Secretary of State Blinken and Vice President Harris have recently expressed concern about possible covert Chinese military support to Russia. Harris added that this would thwart the U.S. goal to weaken Russia. These statements are in line with the US trade war against China and, therefore, not really surprising. However, both politicians should be smart enough to realize that it is pointless to attack China more and more economically, and on the other hand, expect China to support the US in its fight against Russia. So, why are we...