We Don't Have to Trade With China

Any time anyone does, it doesn't end up well.

Case in point:

Sri Lanka has asked China to help with trade, investment and tourism to help it grow sustainably, Colombo's envoy to Beijing said on Monday as it negotiates for an emergency $4 billion package to help it emerge from an economic meltdown.

The island nation of 22 million people is suffering its worst economic crisis since independence in 1948 after running out of foreign reserves. Protesters angry about the shortages of fuel, food and medicine toppled the Rajapaksa ruling family.

 

(Sidebar: I'll leave this here.) 

Oh, boy ...

 

This:

The Colombo Port City Economic Commission Bill came into force in Sri Lanka on May 27, 2021. The bill lays out the country’s legal framework regarding a flagship project scheduled to transform the seafront of its bustling capital city into a new port. Many have speculated that this plan will pave the way for the island nation—strategically located at the crossroads of major shipping routes to South Asia, the Far East, Europe and America—to blossom into the next Singapore or Dubai.

The bill will establish a Colombo Port City Special Economic Zone under a $1.4 billion deal. That will mean handing over those 660 acres from Sri Lankan to Chinese state entities. Thus, it was no surprise that the bill faced a great deal of opposition before it passed. The Sri Lankan Supreme Court even urged the Rajapaksa administration to amend it, after it heard eighteen petitions filed against the bill by opposition parties and civil society groups who had even proposed an unprecedented national referendum on the topic.

The website of the China Harbour Engineering Company (CHEC), which is responsible for much of the development, already boasts of how the area will be “South Asia’s premier residential, retail and business destination, offering unmatched plan city living along the warm waters of Indian Ocean, with a “Financial District, Central Park Living, The Marina, and the International Island,” not to mention the plans for a water sports arena and housing for up to eighty thousand residents.

Nevertheless, as with other similarly ambitious Chinese projects in the region, its success will depend on those who end up using it, the majority of whom will be from outside of Sri Lanka.

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China has not funded any new infrastructure projects in Russia for months as Beijing focuses its attention on preventing a financial crisis at home.

Financing and investment through the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) fell to $28.4bn (£23.6bn) over the first half of 2022, down from $29.4bn during the same period last year, according to a study by the Green Finance & Development Center at Shanghai’s Fudan University.

No money went to new projects in Russia, Sri Lanka or Egypt, all of which had previously been key beneficiaries of Chinese spending. The lack of engagement with Russia suggests Chinese businesses may be afraid of falling victim to secondary sanctions introduced against Moscow over the invasion of Ukraine, and comes despite the pair insisting that their friendship had "no limits" shortly before the war began.

Bill Gates is a disgusting, craven creature:

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is giving money to the Chinese regime amid the regime’s bid to tempt foreign scientists into the country.

Bill Gates’s foundation issued a $100,000 grant in June to the Foreign Talent Research Center (FTRC) of China’s Ministry of Science and Technology, according to the Gates Foundation’s website, the National Pulse first reported.

The funding is to help the Chinese regime organize a forum hosted by Zhongguancun—China’s state-sponsored silicon valley—on “pandemic preparedness and response.” The forum has featured top leaders of the regime as speakers including, in its 2021 event, regime leader Xi Jinping.

While the 2022 forum will feature discussion topics such as global health and supporting pandemic-impacted “disadvantaged populations,” the agency affiliated with the Communist regime that’s sponsoring the event, FTRC, oversees the hiring of foreign talents in science and engineering for China’s strategic goals such as military-civil integration.

 

 

Japan is a lone voice of reason here:

Japan warned of escalating national security threats stemming from Russia’s war on Ukraine and China’s tensions with Taiwan in an annual defense paper issued Friday, as Japan tries to bolster its military capability and spending.

The annual defense white paper, approved by Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s Cabinet on Friday, highlights the need for Japan’s military buildup to address security concerns and seeks to gain public support for a stronger military and increased budget, which Kishida’s governing party aims to double in coming years.

The report comes months ahead of a revision to Japan’s national security strategy that is expected to include a pre-emptive strike capability, which critics say would go beyond the limitations of Japan’s pacifist constitution.

China, Russia and North Korea top Japan’s security concerns in the 500-page report. Defense Minister Nobuo Kishi, in a statement in the report, said the Indo-Pacific region is “at the center” of international strategic competition.

The report calls Russia's war on Ukraine a “serious violation of international law” and raises "concerns that the effects of such unilateral changes to the status quo by force may extend to the Indo-Pacific region.”

Strategic competition between states has intensified amid a changing global power balance and is “further complicated by factors such as China's broad and rapid military buildup," the report said.

The paper doubled its contents on Taiwan from a previous edition last year. It raised concerns over Russia's invasion of Ukraine and its impact on Asia, possibly setting a precedent for what may happen between China and Taiwan.