Dragon's Eye

"Sorry, America, China has a bigger economy than you."

An inconvenient, unpalatable truth -- straight from the horse's mouth.

Actually, the CIA was the first among the imperial organs to recognize that monumental milestone, in 2014.

Its inevitable, incremental acceptance will trigger mental breakdowns across the West.

Sorry America, China has a bigger economy than you Measures that show the opposite have absurd implications and dangerous policy prescriptions

She had a greater impact on world affairs than Putin and Xi.

Thus spake an avatar of American news values and taste.

China becomes the global pacesetter in nuclear-power technology.

Nuclear energy is not only clean but safe － given the proper science, knowhow and systemic discipline. Especially for a nation with 1.4 billion people.

https://www.rt.com/news/588615-china-fourth-generation-nuclear-plant/

The Amboy-ruled Philippines sticks out like a sore thumb in Southeast Asia for its active abetment of US schemes to stir tensions regionwide by confronting China.

Even neocolonialist SCMP has noticed － and acknowledged as much.

By fervently embracing its American deity in the nefarious project, the Marcos regime is competing with Taiwan’s DPP rulers to become “Asia’s Ukraine.”

https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/3244100/asean-only-philippines-embraces-us-indo-pacific-strategy-trigger-south-china-sea-tensions

The rise of EurAsia.

Mapped: The Expansion of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization 🌏️

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/mapped-the-expansion-of-the-shanghai-cooperation-organization/

US hypocrisy stinks up the neighborhood again.

This is but a soft, mild part-answer to Washington’s shameless s**t-stirring in the South China Sea, with the complicity of Manila’s Marcos-Amboy regime.

“Chinese naval ships have arrived for a military exercise at a Cambodian naval port where the United States has previously expressed concern about the possible involvement of the People’s Liberation Army.

“It is the first time ships from a foreign navy are known to have used the new pier at Ream naval base, which Chinese companies helped build.”

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/military/article/3244083/chinese-warships-visit-controversial-cambodian-naval-base-joint-exercise

Colonialist karma: Is Britain the most unpopular country on earth?

The anti-dollar.

With restaurants serving Asian fare, I make it a point never to patronize Michelin-starred establishments.

They guarantee I would pay high prices for inauthentic Asian food.

Such places are for the West-is-besters of the world, happy victims of "foodie colonialism."

After all, what self-respecting food fan in France would fuss over what a Chinese authority says are the best French restaurants?

https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/food-drink/article/3243910/5-best-new-restaurants-shanghai-2-michelin-star-cantonese-place-branch-tokyos-narisawa-and-more

This doddering icon of dementia doesn't know the time of day or where he is at a given moment.

Or what comes out of his mouth when he opens it.

The benefits of being an integral part of the world's most powerful and dynamic economy continue to flow to Hong Kong.

And there's nothing the Western boosters of Singapore and India can do about that.

https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/hong-kong-economy/article/3244015/chinese-ev-battery-giant-catl-will-set-research-and-development-centre-hong-kong-win-government

The time-honored Israelite tradition of child murder, from the Old Testament.

For the details, see attached comment below.

No surprise here.

Unparalleled, nation-wide coverage has virtually turned China's high-speed rail network into a giant version of a city's metro grid.

As anyone who has taken them can attest, the trains are modern, clean and a lot cheaper than flying. They run at 300-350 kph.

Wait till the next generation of 600-kph Maglev trains come fully into service.

Only in China.

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3243951/are-high-speed-trains-becoming-xi-jinpings-preferred-way-travel-china

When disposal time comes, expendables are the first to be expended.

The UK’s ballyhooed BNO immigration scheme for Hong Kongers was always a puffed-up racket, anyway. For all the marketing, its real aims were to:

1) burnish Britain’s “credentials” as a good-faith democracy that supports “pro-democracy,” Sino-allergic Hong Kong folks;

2) embarrass and hurt China by luring away what the Brits hoped would be some rich or skilled immigrants from Hong Kong;

3) turn on the agitprop apparatus full-blast to persuade the world the first two goals had been achieved.

The joke has turned out to be on those who believed any or all of that, above all the Sino-skeptics who actually went to the Land of Little Hope and No Glory.

https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/society/article/3243995/hongkongers-seeking-citizenship-through-bno-visa-scheme-may-face-more-hurdles-under-uk-plan-cut

Political obituary.

Pay attention, Scholz, Sunak, von der Leyen － plus Tsai, Marcos, Kishida, Yoon, Albanese ... and Modi.

https://aearnur.substack.com/p/zelenskyy-and-the-long-road-from

Awesome.

The US Empire’s proxy wars, first in Ukraine and then in Palestine, have had wonderful clarifier effects on the often-murky alignments of global geopolitics.

One of the most stunning revelations has involved India, long a champion of non-alignment and the Global South. Under the quasi-fascist Hindutva regime of Narendra Modi, New Delhi has increasingly abandoned that tradition to align with the Anglo-American Empire.

Almost inevitably, that would mean Indian backing for Israel’s genocidal slaughter of Palestinians -- which Delhi has duly given (story 1 below). Modi and Netanyahu are proud soulmates in Islamophobia.

Helping fuel India’s turnaround has been the Modi regime’s envy, fear & loathing of China. Indeed, under the Hindutvas, that longstanding chip on India’s shoulder has swelled into a boulder. They have even begun playing footsie with Taiwan and its China-hating DPP regime (story 2).

None of that is going to end well for India. The Empire is the world’s chief embodiment of the wrong side of history, a reflexive predator that invariably uses up and dumps its friends and vassals.

And sustained confrontation with neighbor China is simply a fool’s errand. Only one factor needs to be mentioned: Despite its relatively fast growth, the entire Indian economy is only as large as that of either the Yangzi River Delta or the Pearl River Delta in China.

The Hindutvas are taking India down a dark, dangerous path. Someone, something needs to rescue the country from them.

1) https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-israel-india-u-s-triangle/

2) https://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/3243814/how-narendra-modis-india-tiptoeing-towards-taiwan

This piece spells out cogently what the world outside the West already knows: the Western Empire is fully culpable for the atrocities and crimes against humanity being committed with such brazen impunity by the Zionist regime in Gaza.

US crocodile tears over the murder of Palestinian civilians and pretend-attempts to dampen Israeli murderousness fool nobody. All such American gestures must be seen for what they are: cynical ploys to give their Zionist cohorts political cover, as well as more time, to complete their Final Solution for the Palestinians.

When innocent civilians -- especially women and children -- are being slaughtered by the hundreds daily, such depraved bloodlust discredits more powerfully than anything else the openly racist, supremacist US, EU and Israeli regimes.

They are forfeiting their final slivers of humanity -- and all rights to be considered a part of our species.

“US President Joe Biden’s deputy Kamala Harris, speaking in Dubai on Saturday during her West Asia tour, said many innocent Palestinians have been killed in the besieged Gaza Strip since October 7, but hastened to add that the Israeli regime has a ‘right to defend’ itself.

“US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, addressing the Reagan National Defense Forum in Simi Valley, California on Saturday, said Israel has a ‘moral responsibility’ to protect Palestinian civilians, while swiftly giving the regime a free license to kill those fighting the illegal racist occupation.

“Biden himself, although he doesn’t know what he says, has also minced no words in recent weeks to project himself as the most Zionist American president ever, batting for the child-murdering regime.

“He has greenlighted the move to lift all restrictions on the regime's access to US weapons stockpile. A report in the Wall Street Journal on Saturday confirmed that Washington has delivered ‘bunker buster’ bombs and an array of other lethal munitions to the Tel Aviv regime for use against Palestinians.”

Blood on Biden's hands: United States is the one pulling the strings in Gaza As the Israeli regime’s aggression against Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip escalates, it is becoming increasingly evident who the real mastermind and protagonist of Gaza genocide is – the United States.

US military superiority － backbone of the American Empire － is palpably in retreat.

That’s increasingly evident not only from the Pentagon’s failed wars of the past two decades. It’s also clear from the growing litany of cost overruns, delayed projects, operational accidents, low morale and declining production capacities.

The proud US Air Force isn’t exempt from the woes, as the account below from a US military-affairs outlet makes clear. Top Gun no longer has top guns. Maverick would not be amused.

“In September, the United States Air Force celebrated another birthday. At age 76, it is in bad shape.

“Despite lowering qualification standards, it cannot attract enough recruits to fill its ranks. The size and serviceability of its combat aircraft are at all-time lows. And truncated training has weakened pilot readiness.

“In sum, the Air Force today would struggle to execute another Desert Storm, much less take on a peer adversary like China. Even more distressing, the service’s leaders show no interest in pulling out of that downward spiral.”

The U.S. Air Force Is in Serious Decline The Air Force today would struggle to execute another Desert Storm, much less take on a peer adversary like China.

Whether on American Massa’s orders or their own initiative, the Amboy-heavy regime of Bongbong Marcos has been proactively provoking China in the South China Sea.

At the same time, trouble, perhaps big trouble, is brewing on the home front. Not only are Marcos’ fissures with VP Sara Duterte (daughter of Rodrigo) continuing to widen. The president’s own camp is dividing, not least because his father’s loyalists are feeling betrayed by the son’s policies.

Whether and how it all feeds into Bongbong’s mushrooming troubles with China is anybody’s guess.

An on-the-ground report from Romeo V. Poquiz, former Armed Forces of the Philippines stalwart and now director of the Philippine National Oil Company:

Cracks to Fractures in the UNITEAM (Dec. 5, 2023)

Yesterday, VP Sara strongly and publicly opposed the government’s planned peace talks with the communists. This increased the cracks in the BBM-Sara UNITEAM. Given the communists’ treachery in the past peace talks, VP Sara said the joint communique issued lately by the GRP and NDF negotiators is an agreement with the devil.

Earlier, cracks in the UNITEAM started to show when former President Gloria Arroyo, a VP Sara ally, was eased out as Senior Deputy Speaker by presidential cousin and House of Representatives Speaker Martin Romualdez, a presidential contender in the next election. This was followed by the decision of the House of Representatives to deny the Confidential Funds of VP and Education Secretary Sara, also a presidential contender. Instead of just changing the nature of the funds - from Confidential to another type of funds, said Funds were totally removed from the 2024 OVP and Dep Ed Budget.

The cracks in the UNITEAM worsened when talks of impeachment against the VP sprouted in Congress. This deepening of the cracks may continue and become fractures if the government decides to allow the ICC to enter the Philippines to investigate, prosecute, and decide on the alleged illegal killings in former President Duterte’s war on drugs. If all these happen, the fractures will become irreversible and will lead to the total break-up of the vaunted UNITEAM.

If the situation is not managed properly by the government, the damage will be irreparable. This will result in an unfortunate showdown among the 31M BBM voters or between the real BBM supporters and Marcos loyalists against the Duterte Diehard Supporters and other BBM-Sara supporters. The scenarios will definitely be ugly as oppositionists and opportunists will exploit the situation. These may force the President to confront destabilizers throughout his term, that is, if he will last that long.

Some issues may make it difficult for the president to effectively govern in case of the break-up of the UNITEAM. First of all, he needs to contend with the spite and hatred of the leaders and members of the President’s political party, the Partido Federal ng Pilipinas, who were left out in the cold in the appointments in government positions.

The president also has to contend with the BBM campaign volunteers who kept mum the past year and a half. These are leaders, individuals, and groups who organized and spent their own money and sacrificed during the campaign. Most of them felt unappreciated with not even a pat on the back for their tremendous contributions to the campaign. Those appreciated were not the real leaders but media mileage experts with no actual followers.

The President also needs to contend with the disgust of the original and diehard Marcos loyalists in the ’70s and ’80s. These loyalists and their families expected President Junior to be like his father. They also expected the Junior to recover and use the Marcos wealth for the country’s development, but he failed them.

Finally, the President further needs to contend with the DDS who likewise expected so much and felt “na-budol”, having been forced to support the UNITEAM because they supported the then VP candidate Sara.

What fuels the disgust and loathing of all these individuals and groups is that they feel unappreciated and betrayed. Worse, while very few or none of them were appointed to government positions, most of those appointed were former “enemies” during the campaign, double-dealing politicians, opportunist individuals, and last-minute supporters whose only contribution was their money or closeness to the appointing authorities.

The scenarios may even be grimmer if we consider the military. There are grumblings in the ranks, both the active and retired. These are caused by the opening of the peace talks with the communists, the uncertainty on the pension system, and the unabated and widespread corruption and ineptitude in every government agency which they encounter daily. While coup d’etat is a thing of the past, there are various other forms of regime change.

The new year 2024 will be worth watching. The President will be done with his honeymoon period and there will be free-for-all. Also, the break-up of the UNITEAM will mean the easing out of VP Sara from the cabinet and her turning opposition. The opposition, allies-turned opponents, and supporters-turned critics, especially former supporters who felt unappreciated, spurned, or betrayed will be out for vengeance.

Further, maneuverings for the midterm elections in 2025 will go full blast. A formidable opposition will be organized and prepare for the 2028 presidential election. In the meantime, the people suffer. If the government sleeps on its post, chaos may occur.

My unsolicited advice: The president’s political advisers must come down from their ivory towers and keep their ears and feet planted solidly on the ground. Give the President some wise advice. Prevent the showdown and the chaos that may ensue.

(Below, happier times)

And now, the end is near 🎶 ... The Fat Lady is getting ready to sing.

Her heaven-piercing notes will definitively shatter the hoary myth of US Empire military supremacy.

The looming Ukraine debacle will finish what Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan started. And this time, all of NATO was an active participant in the barely “proxy” war. Neither China, Iran nor North Korea needed to get much involved. The Russians did it virtually all alone. It marks the end of an era.

If the Empire’s truth-blind misleaders dare start a new conflagration in East Asia, the shattered myth would turn into their own unpalatable reality.

The lesson driven home forcefully by the imminent Ukraine endgame is this: In the 21st century, US proxies die a painful death. That includes the EU vassals.

So beware Philippines, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, Australia － and anyone else contemplating enlistment in the American Empire.

Endgame: How will Ukraine look after its defeat? It's all over bar the shouting for Zelensky and his followers, so what will be the reaction in Kiev and beyond?

Australian Id!ot and ace China-trasher of the Antipodean world.

Funding the "weaken-Russia," ne***zi misadventure in Ukraine.

The goodies will stop in another month or so.

(Via Visual Capitalist)

The Rules-Based Reich.

Overheard, from a visitor from Mars:

“Hmmm… This is interesting. The British people are made to pay for government propaganda. But in other places, governments pay or otherwise incentivize their populations to consume their propaganda.

“Seems the Brits, who pride themselves on their ‘free press,’ are getting a bum deal.”

BBC set to receive below-inflation rise in licence fee Imminent announcement likely to signal further cuts to broadcaster’s staffing and programmes

There can be no peace in the South China Sea as long as -

1) the US continues to stir the s**t there as part of its besiegement of China;

2) there are foolish locals, like the Amboy-Marcos regime, who get their rocks off on their inherent Sinophobia and are ready & willing to abet the imperial interloper.

"Peace in the South China Sea? Buckle up for a stormy ride"
https://www.scmp.com/economy/global-economy/article/3243712/global-impact-uncertainties-swirl-over-south-china-sea-joint-exercises-and-heightened-tensions

Don’t cry for Agnes Chow, the cherub-faced pinup girl for Hong Kong’s Black Terror color revolution of 2019.

She’s decided to jump bail in Canada, several months into her university studies there. Chow told her followers on social media that she was “suffering from mental health issues, including anxiety disorder and depression.”

In Hong Kong, Chow had been the sidekick of Anglo-US tools Joshua Wong and Nathan Law. Like other local Beijing-haters, they operated under the oversight of Jimmy “Fatman” Lai, supreme commander of “pro-democracy” (translation: pro-US, subversive, riotous) forces in Hong Kong. Lai and Wong have been in HK police custody since 2020, awaiting trial under the National Security Law. Nathan Law is a fugitive, currently in the UK.

Chow too has opted for exile. She had served 10 months’ jail after her conviction three years ago for rioting. Helping traumatize her, she says, were horrors like a required getting-to-know-you visit to the mainland -- in her case to Shenzhen, where she was shown the hyper-modern headquarters of Tencent, among other things.

Chow’s vicissitudes are understandable. Her anguish seems the classic case study of a confused young activist brought face to face with the consequences of having betrayed her own people, nation and hometown, seduced by hostile foreign powers. She is now a pinup girl for legions of other such youngsters worldwide. Their common tragedy: having succumbed to the cynical siren calls of the Anglo-American Empire (“freedom,” “democracy,” “human rights,” “LGBTQ,” etc.) to ruin their own nations.

Chow’s future is likely to take one of two paths. From Canada and no doubt elsewhere, she could continue to serve the interests of the Empire -- inevitably against her own Chinese compatriots. That has been the main choice of Chinese dissidents in exile, from Wei Jingsheng to Chai Ling, Wang Dan and Wu’erkaixi. None of them have come to a good, remotely honorable end.

Or Agnes could wake up, return to Hong Kong, and contribute to the development and revival of her motherland, now undergoing its brightest, most hopeful era since the Qing Dynasty went downhill two centuries ago.

https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/politics/article/3243702/hong-kong-opposition-activist-agnes-chow-living-canada-no-plans-returning-despite-requirement-report

Decades of engagement have taught me that Western “experts,” much less journalists, know virtually nothing about China. I’m referring to the real China, not the grotesque caricature conjured in their own narratives.

In fact, more often than not the truth is the precise opposite of what these fraudsters say.

With the “experts,” the problem stems mostly from a lethal combination of pride & prejudice. Plus a whole lot of supremacism as well as careerism.

As for the journos, a real knowledge of China actually hampers efficient performance of their jobs -- which these days is to demonize China in diverse, preferably creative ways.

Then again, to understand other countries and cultures has never been a priority of the US. Its MO is to impose its perspectives and agendas on them.

That, together with the aforementioned factors, explains why the Chinese mentality, along with China’s global strategies, was and remains a complete mystery to US (mis)leaders. And why, in the “existential” contest they have imposed on China, the Americans are losing their pants.

The mindset and strategies of China’s leaders are complex, supple and highly sophisticated. That’s only to be expected from the heirs to a 5,000-year-old civilization only now starting to approach proper functionality.

So if the West indeed considers the Chinese an existential enemy, the dumbest thing it could do would be to persist in its abject failure to understand them because of its reflexive projections.

Western chieftains could start helping themselves by heeding some basic explanations by a Chinese master of the diplomatic arts -- longtime former ambassador to the US Cui Tiankai.

It’s interesting -- and instructive -- that Cui should cite Sun Wukong as a metaphor for China’s approach to the world. The fabled, inimitable Monkey King happens to be my favorite character in all Chinese literature.

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3243685/what-does-chinese-diplomacy-have-common-legendary-monkey-king-many-virtues-says-ex-envoy-cui-tiankai

China’s physicists and engineers have been making an avalanche of dramatic as well as incremental breakthroughs.

While MSM largely ignored them, we have been highlighting them selectively.

Now, it’s the turn of the country’s biologists and geneticists.

“Chinese scientists have reached a significant milestone in creating the first injection that can undo the signs of autism through genetic base editing within the brain.

“The treatment, developed by researchers in Shanghai, showed positive results when tested on mice.

“The team created a genome editing system, which successfully modified the DNA of mice that had been given a mutation found in some patients with autism spectrum disorder (ASD).”

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3243482/asd-jab-chinese-scientists-reach-milestone-revolutionary-gene-therapy-could-cure-autism

The Final Solution.

“We remain fully able to project power... and to direct resources to multiple theaters.

“The United States is the most powerful country on Earth. We can walk and chew gum at the same time.”

-- Lloyd “Raytheon” Austin, chief sales agent, US MIC

Seventy-eight US soldiers wanted to putsch their own government over the past year. That’s according to the Pentagon. It could be the tip of an iceberg.

That should come as little surprise to those who believe that empires rot from within.

Already, such signs of dysfunction and decay are all too evident in more visible areas of the US body politic -- society, schools, politics, to name but a few.

Washington’s military brass are rightly worried about the “extremism” and dissent within the ranks. Their problems are likely to multiply as long as the job of GI Joe remains to expand or maintain a global empire, rather than defend his own homeland.

“The report, released this week, also showed that 44 service members were suspected of supporting or engaging in terrorism in the past year. Overall, the 183 allegations of extremism across all branches of America’s military marked a 25% increase from the previous year’s level.

“In addition to cases in which service personnel allegedly advocated revolution or supported terrorism, the study documented cases of criminal gang activity, the promotion of widespread discrimination, and advocating or engaging in violence to achieve political objectives.”

Dozens of US soldiers want to overthrow government – Pentagon US military annual report on extremism shows 78 service members suspected of advocating revolution

Not only Transylvania.

That China and Russia can build better weapons more cheaply and quickly than the US is no news to informed onlookers.

When the gaps become too substantive to hide, the imperial establishment turns selected information into a sales pitch for ever bigger Pentagon-MIC budgets.

“The first ever National Defense Industrial Strategy, which is set to be released in the coming weeks by Pentagon acquisition chief William LaPlante, is meant to be a comprehensive look at what the Pentagon needs in order to tap into the expertise of small tech firms, while funding and supporting traditional companies to move faster to develop new tech.

“As it stands now, the U.S. defense industrial base ‘does not possess the capacity, capability, responsiveness, or resilience required to satisfy the full range of military production needs at speed and scale,’ according to a draft version of the report, obtained by POLITICO.”

https://www.politico.com/news/2023/12/02/draft-pentagon-strategy-china-00129764

Excellent. The West's relentless hostility, plus manufactured hate-China hysteria, has made this self-defensive undertaking essential.

So it's good to know the CPC is on the case. Too many Chinese remain unaware of the evil that is the Empire, whose rulers have openly declared China its No. 1 enemy.

The West and its spokesagent armies will paint Beijing’s initiative in the most sinister colors possible. But they will be ignored by those with functional brains.

Hong Kong a few years ago provided a textbook case of what can happen to a stable, wealthy and supposedly educated society targeted by Evil Inc.

China proper cannot afford to repeat the mistake.

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3243616/national-security-studies-are-going-mainstream-china-will-it-breed-new-chinese-elite

In the decades, perhaps centuries, after China has decisively defeated the US in all areas of positive human endeavor, the Americans will be slowly, incrementally discovering how the Chinese did it.

“China has unveiled one of its secret top-performing supercomputers, which was built under US sanctions… According to a Chinese computer scientist who asked not to be named, the new Sunway is not the most powerful supercomputer in China at present.”

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3243619/new-sunway-how-china-has-sidestepped-us-sanctions-its-most-powerful-supercomputers

The Rules-Based Reich has decided that Uganda has breached some of its arbitrary rules.

It’s a familiar story throughout the Global South. The East African nation is just the latest victim of that favorite Western ruse: squeeze dry & dump.

Nowadays, however, the victims have an alternative － and potential rescuer － called China. Which is one reason the West loathes China.

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3243529/uganda-chases-chinas-cash-after-western-lenders-baulk-bankrolling-projects-over-human-rights-issues

The Zelensky setup, one of the world's most primitively re****ed regimes, seems to want an accelerated demise.

As Russia prepares Kiev's endgame, the Ukrainians are starting to mess with China too. A final spam of insanity?

https://www.scmp.com/news/world/russia-central-asia/article/3243609/ukraine-blows-siberian-railway-linking-russia-china-trade-corridor

SCMP, mouthpiece of Western neocolonialism in Asia, does its bit to burnish Israel’s ruined image － as a “benefactor” of poorer Asians. “Israel Is Manna,” says the outlet’s alternative-version headline.

Of course the Zionist state has to provide extra-generous wages to import workers. How else could it procure them under current wartime conditions to do its dirty (literally) work?

In fact, Israel is not doing the replacements of sacked Palestinian laborers any big favors. It has turned the Thais, Indians, Sri Lankans, Nepalis and Filipinos into beneficiaries of ethnic cleansing & genocide, earners of blood money.

https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/people/article/3243551/despite-dangers-asias-migrant-workers-return-israel-risk-it-all-gaza-war-grinds