We Don't Have to Trade With China

The greed involved is just stunning:

Democrats and Republicans battered TikTok’s CEO at a House of Representatives hearing on Thursday — for good reason. The Chinese app poses a national security risk, accumulating troves of data on its American users. TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew’s slithery comment that “I don’t think spying is the right way to describe it,” only heightened concerns.

Too bad another Chinese threat — bigger and more immediate — isn’t getting the same attention. China has a chokehold on our medication supply chain. Beijing controls many — in some cases, all — active ingredients for the remedies in our medicine chests, the drugs used in emergency rooms and even antibiotics administered to soldiers on the battlefield.

The med bottles in your cabinet don’t say “Made in China,” but nearly all are, including 97% of U.S. antibiotics, by some estimates.

In a tense situation, Beijing could simply cut off shipments of antibiotics, cancer drugs and other meds, forcing the U.S. to cede to its demands. Our survival hinges on their goodwill. Terrifying.

China cornered the market for drug ingredients fast. Until the mid-1990s, the West and Japan produced 90% of the world’s active pharmaceutical ingredients. By 2017, China was producing 40%. Now almost all drug pipelines start in China. Even India, the other drug producing giant, relies on China for 70% of its active pharmaceutical ingredients.

Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chair Gary Peters warns that foreign dependence is “an unacceptable national security risk.” But talk is cheap.

As China’s grip tightens, the federal government is doing next to nothing, according to the Committee’s report released last week.

In 2019, Congress requested the Food and Drug Administration list the lifesaving drugs Americans rely on and which countries supply them. The FDA still hasn’t done it. FDA bureaucrats pathetically plead, in so many words, that it’s too much work to pore over the applicants filed by drug producers for the information.

It gets worse. In 2021, the Department of Defense inspector general issued a scathing report that DOD lacked strategies to circumvent reliance on foreign drug suppliers. Yet as of last week, DOD still hadn’t assembled data on where its drugs originate or what can be done to overcome chokeholds.

How rich:

The Chinese government is accusing Canada of foreign interference, after a high-profile parliamentary committee released a report that says the Taiwanese people, rather than Beijing, should decide the fate of the self-ruled island.

The report on Taiwan by the House of Commons special committee on the Canada-People’s Republic of China relationship also urges the Canadian government to make efforts to join AUKUS, a United States-Britiain-Australia defence pact that has been condemned by Beijing as an “Asia-Pacific version of NATO.”

The report, tabled in the House last week, calls on the Canadian government to “declare its clear and unwavering commitment that the future of Taiwan must only be the decision of the people of Taiwan.” Liberal MP Ken Hardie, who chairs the Canada-China committee, said it was unanimously supported by all parties.

Later this month, 10 Canadian MPs will visit Taiwan, including Liberals, Conservatives, New Democrats and members of the Bloc Québécois. The trip is intended as a gesture of solidarity with a territory under threat from Beijing.

Keep in mind the above are allowing the Chinese to operate freely in the workings of this country, including elections, and the others are worthless hangers-on.

Japan isn't only reaching out to South Korea but other countries, as well:

Japan on Wednesday unveiled guidelines for a new program to strengthen the militaries of like-minded countries by providing “official security assistance” — a move that breaks with its previous policy of avoiding the use of development aid for military purposes other than disaster relief.

First announced in last December’s revised National Security Strategy (NSS), the new OSA framework will initially provide equipment, supplies and infrastructure development assistance to partner countries in the form of grants, rather than loans, in a bid to reinforce what Tokyo describes as the region’s “comprehensive defense architecture.”

Foreign Ministry officials say the Philippines will be one of the first beneficiaries of OSA, with Malaysia, Bangladesh and Fiji also among those being considered.