Geography Archives: Taiwan

In Asian media this week: Dangerous turn adds new anti-Beijing flashpoint. Plus: Bangkok banks used to supply Myanmar military; Why Hindu nationalists back Israel; Thais opt for neutrality in great-power war; How to stop China slipping into Japan trap; Online gambling an Indonesian epidemic.

The Green Berets are training Taiwanese forces on the use of military drones including the Black Hornet Nano, like those being used by U.S.-advised forces in Ukraine.

When the election results for Taiwan’s president and legislature were announced on January 13, the U.S. corporate media seemed jubilant.

While the sanctions regime has hit Chinese companies, especially Huawei, hard and exposed weak links in China’s chip supply chain, the last year has seen significant progress by Chinese companies.

It is almost unanimous, then. Most Western media have given us the lowdown.

The Singaporean shipping company, ONE, declares that it would be ceasing all shipments to the Occupation’s ports, according to reports by Israeli media.

A series of announcements by the US reflect its large and still growing military presence across Asia-Pacific, particularly in East and Southeast Asia. Together, they reflect a continued and increasingly desperate desire by Washington to encircle and contain China.

Amid a controversial visit from Vice President William Lai (the front-runner to be his country’s next leader), official documents reviewed by “MintPress News” show that the Taiwanese government is attempting to drum up anti-China hostility, influence and intimidate American politicians and is even working with the FBI and other agencies to spy on and prosecute Chinese American citizens.

This is the first part of a $1 billion weapons transfer directly from Pentagon stockpiles to Taiwan this year.

Interview with antiwar writer John Walsh.

Pentagon strategists have been beefing up their military presence in Asia and building alliances in preparation for an all-out war against China.

The Chinese-brokered agreement emerged in retaliation to the U.S. as the latter continues to wage a series of provocations aimed at destabilizing China’s domestic stability with regard to Taiwan.

Chris Bambery examines the grim logic of great-power competition.

Former Pentagon official Elbridge Colby was interviewed on The National Review’s Charles CW Cooke Podcast, where he provided some very high-level analysis on the tensions around China, Taiwan, and the United States.

French President Emmanuel Macron’s statement in China about developing “strategic autonomy” from the United States is empty posturing intended for the domestic French market.

Although it was widely believed that the U.S. continued to secretly deploy nuclear weapons in Korea, this move by the Biden administration is a blatant violation of the denuclearization treaty.

While the U.S.-NATO war against Russia in Ukraine continues unabated, the U.S. is preparing at breakneck speed for war with China, using Taiwan as the excuse. Taiwan, like Ukraine, is a pawn. The military and economic threats on both China and Russia are a desperate bid to quash the emergence of a multipolar world.

The U.S. knows from its experience in defeating Germany, Japan, and the “Asian Tigers,” that a decisive way to slow a competitor’s growth rate is to get it to reduce its level of investment, which is what it is now trying to do to China.

The Joe Biden administration invited numerous authoritarian far-right leaders to the U.S. State Department’s so-called “Summit for Democracy”, including Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu, Poland’s Andrzej Duda, India’s Narendra Modi, Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, and Pakistan’s coup regime.

The United States will quadruple the number of US forces stationed on Taiwan, which China claims as its own territory, in an effort to provoke a war with Beijing along the lines of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.