Octopus Overlords

Daehawk wrote: Thu Mar 23, 2023 11:00 am I still read this thread title when I see it as All things: Cheeiina.

China’s global campaign to win friends and influence policy has blossomed in a surprising place: Utah, a deeply religious and conservative state with few obvious ties to the world’s most powerful communist country.

An investigation by The Associated Press has found that China and its U.S.-based advocates spent years building relationships with the state’s officials and lawmakers. Those efforts have paid dividends at home and abroad, the AP found: Lawmakers delayed legislation Beijing didn’t like, nixed resolutions that conveyed displeasure with its actions and expressed support in ways that enhanced the Chinese government’s image.

Its work in Utah is emblematic of a broader effort by Beijing to secure allies at the local level as its relations with the U.S. and its western allies have turned acrimonious. U.S. officials say local leaders are at risk of being manipulated by China and have deemed the influence campaign a threat to national security.

Beijing’s success in Utah shows “how pervasive and persistent China has been in trying to influence America,” said Frank Montoya Jr., a retired FBI counterintelligence agent who lives in Utah.

“Utah is an important foothold,” he said. “If the Chinese can succeed in Salt Lake City, they can also make it in New York and elsewhere.”

Security experts say that China’s campaign is widespread and tailored to local communities. In Utah, the AP found, Beijing and pro-China advocates appealed to lawmakers’ affiliations with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, better known as the Mormon church, which is the state’s dominant religion and one that has long dreamed of expanding in China.

More people are mad at French President Emmanuel Macron.

After weeks of protests over an unpopular pension overhaul plan at home, the French president now faces outrage from allies abroad over his chummy trip to China and remarks on the need for Europe to stand apart from the United States on Taiwan and other issues.

The visit and its aftermath have angered politicians and analysts on both sides of the Atlantic, highlighting gaps between the U.S. and French approaches to China, showcasing division within the European Union — and probably delighting Beijing.

The interview in question took place during a three-day visit to China that raised eyebrows for its surprisingly upbeat tone, considering that Beijing has yet to condemn Russia’s war in Ukraine.

As his presidential plane traveled from Beijing to the southern city of Guangzhou, where he was booked for tea with President Xi Jinping, Macron took questions from Politico and French daily Les Echos, including a question about Europe’s position on Taiwan.

“The question we Europeans are asking ourselves is the following: Is it in our interest to accelerate when it comes to Taiwan? No,” he said in the interview. “The worst thing would be to think that we Europeans must become followers on this topic and take our cue from the U.S. rhythm and a Chinese overreaction.”

Europe, Macron said, risks getting “caught up in crises that are not ours, which prevents it from building strategic autonomy.” He also said that Europe was at risk of becoming a “vassal” and that the continent should reduce its dependence on the “extraterritoriality of the U.S. dollar” — all Beijing talking points.

Over the past two weeks, Chinese Communist Party Chairman Xi Jinping has been holding court for visiting European dignitaries. In late March, Spanish President Pedro Sánchez was the first European statesman to meet the Chinese leader after his summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow. French President Emmanuel Macron followed last week together with EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. The only winner from these visits is Xi. Not only did he not make any concession on any issue vital to European interests, from Russia’s war to economic relations, his European visitors treated Xi to a display of European and transatlantic disunity serving the Chinese leader a major strategic objective on a silver platter and leaving Europe’s China policy in disarray.

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It was not supposed to be this way. The plan of European leaders was a good one in theory. They wanted to take advantage of reopening after the end of China’s “zero covid” regime and personally press important concerns with Xi, in particular Russia’s war. Macron had invited von der Leyen to join him in Beijing to celebrate European unity and met her for a preparatory lunch in Paris before the trip. The French president clearly seemed to want to signal that he is a more committed European than German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who had embarked on a solo trip to Beijing in November 2022, after rejecting Macron’s offer to go together. Von der Leyen had done her part to signal a determined European approach.

On March 30 in Brussels, she gave the boldest speech of any senior European decision-maker yet on how to deal with Xi’s China. The very fact that the EU Commission president chose to invite Berlin-based Merics, Europe’s leading think tank on China that had been put under sanctions by the Chinese party state in 2021, sent a clear message to Beijing. The speech itself was even clearer. Von der Leyen depicts a China that is “more repressive at home and more assertive abroad” where security and control trump all other concerns and that is quick to use political and economic coercion trying to exploit the very dependencies of other countries on China that it systematically seeks to encourage. She described a country that Xi prepares for a long-term violent “struggle” with the United States and that has the “clear goal” of “systemic change of the international order with China at its center.”

To prove her point, von der Leyen added that the recent “show of friendship in Moscow” says “a thousand words about this new vision for an international order.” No other European leader had ever presented such an accurate dissection of Xi’s agenda. As a European response, von der Leyen outlined an ambitious “derisking” strategy that puts economic security at the center of the relationship with Beijing and includes an instrument for outbound investment screening in technologically sensitive areas. Just as in 2019 when it introduced the notion of China as a “systemic rival” the EU Commission had again pushed the boundaries of Europe’s China policy. But straight away the China’s EU Ambassador Fu Cong voiced doubts whether most member states were ready for von der Leyen’s agenda. For him, it sounded like “two people quarrelling with each other,” he told the New York Times, meaning “Europe has not formulated a coherent policy toward China."

Both Sánchez and Macron worked very hard during their China trips to prove Fu right. In a speech at the Boao Forum, China’s version of Davos, the Spanish president praised China for its belief in “a strong, transparent, and rules-based multilateral system,” directly contradicting what von der Leyen had said about Beijing’s vision for international order.

Given France’s status as a permament member of the United Nations and Europe’s second-most important economic power, Macron could have offset these remarks by clearly aligning himself von den der Leyen’s derisking agenda. The French president instead chose to do his utmost to pull the rug from under von der Leyen’s feet during their joint visit in Beijing. Instead of derisking, Macron firmly stuck to illusions of reciprocity in economic relations with China, as if he learned nothing from the previous instances that he had pursued this approach only to find Beijing did not deliver. On Russia, Macron did not manage to extract any commitments that substantively go beyond the statement against the use of nuclear weapons that Scholz got from Xi in November. That is not surprising given Xi’s determination to stand by Putin’s side to keep Russia as an ally in the struggle against the United States.

Isgrimnur wrote: Sun Apr 16, 2023 2:22 am There is no “has to invade”. There is NEVER a “has to invade”.

From TikTok to Huawei routers to DJI drones, rising tensions between China and the US have made Americans—and the US government—increasingly wary of Chinese-owned technologies. But thanks to the complexity of the hardware supply chain, encryption chips sold by the subsidiary of a company specifically flagged in warnings from the US Department of Commerce for its ties to the Chinese military have found their way into the storage hardware of military and intelligence networks across the West.

In July of 2021, the Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security added the Hangzhou, China-based encryption chip manufacturer Hualan Microelectronics, also known as Sage Microelectronics, to its so-called “Entity List,” a vaguely named trade restrictions list that highlights companies “acting contrary to the foreign policy interests of the United States.” Specifically, the bureau noted that Hualan had been added to the list for “acquiring and ... attempting to acquire US-origin items in support of military modernization for [China's] People's Liberation Army.”

Yet nearly two years later, Hualan—and in particular its subsidiary known as Initio, a company originally headquartered in Taiwan that it acquired in 2016—still supplies encryption microcontroller chips to Western manufacturers of encrypted hard drives, including several that list as customers on their websites Western governments' aerospace, military, and intelligence agencies: NASA, NATO, and the US and UK militaries. Federal procurement records show that US government agencies from the Federal Aviation Administration to the Drug Enforcement Administration to the US Navy have bought encrypted hard drives that use the chips, too.

The disconnect between the Commerce Department’s warnings and Western government customers means that chips sold by Hualan’s subsidiary have ended up deep inside sensitive Western information networks, perhaps due to the ambiguity of their Initio branding and its Taiwanese origin prior to 2016. The chip vendor’s Chinese ownership has raised fears among security researchers and China-focused national security analysts that they could have a hidden backdoor that would allow China’s government to stealthily decrypt Western agencies’ secrets. And while no such backdoor has been found, security researchers warn that if one did exist, it would be virtually impossible to detect it.

El Guapo wrote: Wed Jun 21, 2023 5:17 pm Xi is a dictator, though. In fact, he's been working very hard to take power from the CCP generally and consolidate it in his own hands. Biden needs to be careful and listen to his foreign policy people, but I find it hard to fault him too much for speaking an obvious truth.

malchior wrote: Wed Jun 21, 2023 5:36 pm

El Guapo wrote: Wed Jun 21, 2023 5:17 pm Xi is a dictator, though. In fact, he's been working very hard to take power from the CCP generally and consolidate it in his own hands. Biden needs to be careful and listen to his foreign policy people, but I find it hard to fault him too much for speaking an obvious truth.

It isn't about speaking truth. It is the spectacle of sending your Secretary of State somewhere and then cutting his legs out from under him. He put Blinken in a terrible spot. It is bad leadership. It is bad foreign policy. He absolutely deserves to get burned for this gaffe. This is the sort of amateur hour shit we'd ascribe to Trump.

malchior wrote: Wed Jun 21, 2023 6:03 pm But what does calling him a dictator get anyone? Nothing. The downside is it possibly hardens an adversary against us or makes it more difficult for them to cooperate or compete fairly with us. Why send Blinken at all if you are going to make it pointless?

Also this isn't something that happened in isolation. Biden has made significant foreign policy errors with his mouth. Honestly I just want a competent leader who doesn't constantly blurt out pointless facts counterproductively.

El Guapo wrote: Wed Jun 21, 2023 9:54 pm

malchior wrote: Wed Jun 21, 2023 6:03 pm But what does calling him a dictator get anyone? Nothing. The downside is it possibly hardens an adversary against us or makes it more difficult for them to cooperate or compete fairly with us. Why send Blinken at all if you are going to make it pointless?

Also this isn't something that happened in isolation. Biden has made significant foreign policy errors with his mouth. Honestly I just want a competent leader who doesn't constantly blurt out pointless facts counterproductively.

Like I said, I'm skeptical that this is going to make any substantive difference in U.S.-China relations, although I'm sure that China will continue to bluster about it.

But all I'm saying is that I'm not inclined to knock someone too hard for speaking the truth.

YellowKing wrote: Wed Jun 21, 2023 6:44 pm Yeah we get it, you hate Biden. But unfortunately we live in a world where the alternative is Trump.

malchior wrote: Thu Jun 22, 2023 10:17 am Unfortunately the times called for a great President.

El Guapo wrote: Wed Jun 21, 2023 9:54 pm

malchior wrote: Wed Jun 21, 2023 6:03 pm But what does calling him a dictator get anyone? Nothing. The downside is it possibly hardens an adversary against us or makes it more difficult for them to cooperate or compete fairly with us. Why send Blinken at all if you are going to make it pointless?

Also this isn't something that happened in isolation. Biden has made significant foreign policy errors with his mouth. Honestly I just want a competent leader who doesn't constantly blurt out pointless facts counterproductively.

Like I said, I'm skeptical that this is going to make any substantive difference in U.S.-China relations, although I'm sure that China will continue to bluster about it. And there are some foreign policy costs that can come from being seen as too willing to cater to the sensitivities of dictators.

But all I'm saying is that I'm not inclined to knock someone too hard for speaking the truth.

Blackhawk wrote: Thu Jun 22, 2023 11:42 am And as for 'telling it like it is', consequences be damned - isn't that the same thing that the MAGAs praised about Trump? I'm not sure that that's an example I want our leaders to follow going forward.

GreenGoo wrote: Thu Jun 22, 2023 11:59 am

Blackhawk wrote: Thu Jun 22, 2023 11:42 am And as for 'telling it like it is', consequences be damned - isn't that the same thing that the MAGAs praised about Trump? I'm not sure that that's an example I want our leaders to follow going forward.

I'll just point out that Drumpf never "told it like it was". He lied and hated and lied some more, and people loved him for it. At no point was he spewing hard truths.

GreenGoo wrote: Thu Jun 22, 2023 2:13 pm If you are 5, maybe.

One of drumpf's greatest sins is not just that he's a piece of crap, but that he's so bad at insulting people. When will an advisor explain to him that "poopy head" is a clever escalation for him?

GreenGoo wrote: Thu Jun 22, 2023 2:13 pm If you are 5, maybe.

One of drumpf's greatest sins is not just that he's a piece of crap, but that he's so bad at insulting people. When will an advisor explain to him that "poopy head" is a clever escalation for him?

Blackhawk wrote: Thu Jun 22, 2023 6:58 pm

GreenGoo wrote: Thu Jun 22, 2023 2:13 pm If you are 5, maybe.

One of drumpf's greatest sins is not just that he's a piece of crap, but that he's so bad at insulting people. When will an advisor explain to him that "poopy head" is a clever escalation for him?

For which I was mocking him.

GreenGoo wrote: Thu Jun 22, 2023 6:46 pm I have nothing but derision for drumpf's insults. I would crush him until he cried if we were to go at each other. And I know several family members that might be able to actually kill him with their words. He is the thinnest skinned man I have ever witnessed. He's also one of the slowest thinkers, and least creative. Honestly, I am flabbergasted that anyone views him in a positive light, ESPECIALLY about his ability to insult people. His game is weak sauce.

His insults might be effective, but that says more about his audience than his barbed wit.

GreenGoo wrote: Fri Jun 23, 2023 11:47 am Sure, but I mean...no one else does that because everyone else has a modicum of respect for other people, or at least hide their derision. Drumpf has no filters, but what he spews is puerile gibberish. I mean, sleepy joe? Lyin' Ted? Oh, he called a politician a liar? How crazily effective.

Again, drumpf is barely elementary school levels of...whatever you want to call what he does. That it works is the true sin, and it's not his sin. His sin is not being very good at it.

It's the presidential candidate version of libtards, or repugnicans, but not as clever. I would be fucking horrified and embarrassed if my political candidate issued direct personal attacks of such juvenile content. But apparently at least half of America has no shame. Like, literally no ability to be embarrassed (see any typical interview with drumpfites). How can so many people have no ability to be introspective?

edit: To be clear drumpf has plenty of "followers" in Canada as well. It's humanity that appalls me, not America.

Kurth wrote: Fri Jun 23, 2023 12:01 pm

GreenGoo wrote: Fri Jun 23, 2023 11:47 am Sure, but I mean...no one else does that because everyone else has a modicum of respect for other people, or at least hide their derision. Drumpf has no filters, but what he spews is puerile gibberish. I mean, sleepy joe? Lyin' Ted? Oh, he called a politician a liar? How crazily effective.

Again, drumpf is barely elementary school levels of...whatever you want to call what he does. That it works is the true sin, and it's not his sin. His sin is not being very good at it.

It's the presidential candidate version of libtards, or repugnicans, but not as clever. I would be fucking horrified and embarrassed if my political candidate issued direct personal attacks of such juvenile content. But apparently at least half of America has no shame. Like, literally no ability to be embarrassed (see any typical interview with drumpfites). How can so many people have no ability to be introspective?

edit: To be clear drumpf has plenty of "followers" in Canada as well. It's humanity that appalls me, not America.

Again, I don’t want to quibble, but it still seems to me like you’re asserting that he’s not “crazily effective.” But he is. His dumb insults are incredibly effective. So much so, that all the other spineless GOP candidate wannabes are (with the exception of Christie and the newly arrived Hurd) scared to death to take him on. You’re just flat wrong to say he’s “not very good at it.”

In contrast, you’re spot on where you decry the millions of people who fall for Trump’s crap.