China is to block all websites related to cryptocurrency trading and initial coin offerings (ICOs) – including foreign platforms – in a bid to finally quash the market completely.

“To prevent financial risks, China will step up measures to remove any onshore or offshore platforms related to virtual currency trading or ICOs,” said an article published on Sunday night by Financial News, a publication affiliated to the People’s Bank of China (PBOC).

The article acknowledged that recent attempts to stamp out digital currencies by shutting down domestic exchanges had failed to completely eradicate trading.

“ICOs and virtual currency trading did not completely withdraw from China following the official ban … after the closure of the domestic virtual currency exchanges, many people turned to overseas platforms to continue participating in virtual currency transactions.

Afghan officials told reporters this week that Beijing is reportedly holding discussions with Kabul over establishing a military base near China’s border with Afghanistan.
Chinese officials reportedly cited concerns about the threat posed by Uighur jihadists in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region, considered by the Pentagon to be home to the “highest concentration” of terrorists in the world.

Afghanistan shares a border with the autonomous Xinjiang region—China’s largest province. Xinjiang is home to China’s oppressed Muslim Uighur (or Uyghur) minority, whose separatist groups reportedly train and operate in the Af-Pak region.

Kabul and Beijing have been in talks over China’s military establishment since December, but details remain elusive, indicated Mohammad Radmanesh, a spokesman for the Kabul-based defense ministry.

Pictures circulating on social media indicate that China’s navy may have mounted an electromagnetic rail gun on a warship, a feat that has yet to be tested at sea.

A photo of a huge gun barrel situated at the bow of a People's Liberation Army-Navy (PLA-N) Type 072-II amphibious warfare ship popped up on military technology Twitter feeds on Wednesday.

More and more, scholars in China see India replacing Japan as the second biggest threat to Beijing, following the U.S.

The protesters seek to overthrow Thailand’s independent institutions including its military and constitutional monarchy, and return US proxies to power, particularly billionaire and former prime minister, Thaksin Shinawatra and his Pheu Thai Party (PTP). Thaksin Shinawatra is a convicted criminal who fled Thailand to evade a two year jail sentence and a myriad of court cases still pending trial.

A North Korean delegation is heading to Moscow for talks on mutual cooperation, the Russian Embassy in North Korea has said.

"The delegation flew to Moscow for consultations in the Russian Foreign Ministry on the vital issues of bilateral cooperation," the embassy wrote on its Facebook page.

The sides plan to discuss joint events to be held dedicated to the 70th anniversary of diplomatic relations between the two countries, according to Russian news agency Tass.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Thursday warned countries in the Western Hemisphere to beware of Chinese investment, saying it is reminiscent of European colonialism. He also derided Russia for selling weaponry to unfriendly, authoritarian governments in the region.

Before embarking Thursday on a five-nation trip to Latin America, Tillerson said China seeks only to enrich itself with investment and development projects. He said regional governments should protect themselves against "predatory actors that are now showing up in our hemisphere," specifically mentioning China. He said Chinese investment may look good but comes with a heavy price.

"China, as it does in emerging markets throughout the world, offers the appearance of an attractive path to development, but in reality this often involves trading short-term gains for long-term dependency," Tillerson said in a speech at the University of Texas.

Pentagon officials are set to release the Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) on Friday, a document which will set forth the Trump Administration's nuclear strategy and rationale for modernizing US sea, air and land-based strategic nuclear forces, also known as the Nuclear TRIAD.

On Thursday, during a briefing to reporters, chief Pentagon spokeswoman Dana White said the Trump Administration's nuclear strategy "requires an investment in a credible nuclear deterrent with diverse capabilities [and] it will confirm the importance of the nuclear triad."

Earlier, US President Donald Trump has pledged to modernize the US nuclear arsenal to take a stronger stance against rivals like China and Russia.

"As part of our defense, we must modernize and rebuild our nuclear arsenal, hopefully never having to use it, but making it so strong and powerful that it will deter any acts of aggression by any other nation or anyone else," Trump said in his first State of the Union address on Tuesday.

US President Donald Trump named China as a major US competitor on both economic and military fronts in his first state-of-the-union address, another sign that Washington is putting great power rivalry at the heart of its national strategy.

A high-level U.S. visit to Vietnam followed by plans to send American naval vessels may herald a tougher American policy toward China in Asia's stickiest maritime sovereignty dispute.

U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis met in Vietnam last week with the host country’s president, Tran Dai Quang, as well as the general secretary of its ruling Communist Party and a Vietnamese military counterpart.

The U.S. Department of Defense website said they shared concerns about freedom of navigation and “respect for international law,” likely references to a six-way dispute over sovereignty of the South China Sea dominated by Beijing. A U.S. aircraft carrier will call in Vietnam in March. Vietnam is the most outspoken rival claimant to China.

When Senator Tammy Duckworth returned from a recent trip to South Korea and Japan, she brought back a sobering message: “Americans simply are not in touch with just how close we are to war on the Korean peninsula.” In a speech at Georgetown University, she laid out the U.S. military maneuvers over the past several months—including a nuclear-powered submarine heading to South Korea, the movement of three aircraft carriers to the Western Pacific, and the Army testing out “mobilization centers” for deploying troops and training soldiers to fight in tunnels like those beneath North Korea—that inform this worry. In an interview with me, she said the U.S. military seems to be operating with the attitude that a conflict “‘will probably happen, and we better be ready to go.’”

The US Ambassador to Russia urged the Kremlin to react "calmly" to the U.S. Treasury Department's list of "corrupt oligarchs" due Monday. The list is designed to "name and shame" elite Russians into thinking twice before engaging in business with Putin's government. It will be up to Congress to decide whether the list should be published.

"I urge to take this report, based on its real and not a contrived essence and without emotions, because relations between our countries are far from being exhausted by this one legal act, and I was reminded about it in Washington, where I was two weeks ago," - US Ambassador John Huntsman via -newsru (translated)

US defense chief visits Indonesia and Vietnam, two potential key allies in new defense policy that views China as a 'strategic competitor'

One of the pillars of President Trump’s election campaign was fixing America’s yawning trade deficit with China. Indeed, he went so far as to call trade with Beijing as China’s “rape” of the US economy. Trump also railed against the “theft” of coveted manufacturing jobs from the American heartland. So it seemed like a trade war was an eventuality.

However, Trump didn’t address the trade imbalance with China in his first year in office. The deficit with China came in at a hefty $344 billion last year. That was only a smidge below President Obama’s last year in office and an eye-watering 52% above the 2009 trade deficit.

With all other signs of tensions on the Korean Peninsula on the decline, the US is stepping up its deployment of nuclear-capable bombers and general firepower to the airbase at Guam,

This is further fueling speculation that the US is preparing itself for the long-speculated sneak attack on North Korea, and that such a sneak attack could involve B-61 gravity bombs as part of a tactical nuclear strike.

The Trump Administration has been seen to be favoring the idea of a “limited attack,” betting that North Korea would not retaliate. It’s hard to imagine this could possibly be both limited and involve nuclear arms, but recent developments on the B-61 suggest that’s indeed the point of the weapon.

Some analysts have suggested the Pentagon could carry out a nuclear attack with B-61s that would totally destroy North Korea’s nuclear infrastructure while killing no more than 100 people, and that might be small enough to avoid retaliation.

The Washington Post headlined on January 26th, "Trump plans to ask for $716 billion for national defense in 2019 — a major increase”, and reported that when President Trump had entered the White House in January 2017, the ‘Defense' budget was $521 billion, but that President Trump will propose in his upcoming State-of-the-Union speech, a 2019 ‘Defense' budget of $716 billion, which, if it becomes law, would mean a 37% increase, above Obama’s last Pentagon budget (for 2017).

A few days before beginning his important Asian tour, Donald Trump effusively congratulated Xi Jinping, who had just been enthroned “Supreme Leader” for a second five-year period during the 19th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Trump flattered him, calling him a “king”.

Trump’s ignorance is legendary because in China’s six thousand year history, there has never been a position such as king; there have only been mandarins and emperors. According to the Washington Post, Trump praised Xi as “probably the most powerful leader” that China has had for a century. More so than Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping? Not yet….

Under the cover of the pre-Winter Olympics thaw between North and South Korea and the momentary lull in the “fire and fury” rhetoric from the Trump White House, there are growing signs that the Pentagon and the CIA are pressing ahead with preparations for a preemptive war against North Korea, including the use of nuclear weapons.

There have been multiple reports in the American corporate media of behind-the-scenes discussions between the US military and intelligence apparatus and the Trump administration of the feasibility of a so-called “bloody nose” attack, involving US air strikes on North Korean nuclear facilities, with the expectation—however ill-founded—that they would not provoke a full-scale war.

Reports have surfaced from the embattled Xinjiang province of China claiming that Han Chinese security forces have imprisoned an estimated 120,000 members of the Uighur minority in “reeducation camps,” nominally to stamp out radicalism in the Muslim ethnic group.

Beijing has announced plans to extend the ambitious Belt and Road Initiative to the Arctic by developing shipping routes.

In a white paper released on Friday, the country said it expects to have a “major role in expanding the network of shipping routes” and noted that “as a result of global warming, the Arctic shipping routes are likely to become important transport routes for international trade.”

It added that it would encourage enterprises to build infrastructure and conduct commercial trial voyages, paving the way for Arctic shipping routes that would form a “Polar Silk Road.”

Land territories in the Arctic cover an area of around 8 million square km, with sovereignty belonging to Russia, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Canada and the United States. The Arctic Ocean is more than 12 million square km, where coastal and other countries share maritime rights and interests according to international law.

One thing can be said about the new Pentagon National Defense Strategy document just released under the name of Defense Secretary Jim Mattis. It is honest about what the target of US military policy is going forward. Washington military policy is explicitly aimed to keep China and Russia from developing any alternative counter-pole to unchallenged US military and political supremacy. The new document lays this out in no uncertain terms. The details are notable and show the disarray that is Washington today, as its once-firm grip on world power disintegrates.

On January 20th, CBS News bannered “Terrorism no longer the military's top priority, Mattis says” and opened:

“There is a major change in US military strategy. On Friday, more than 16 years after the 9/11 attacks, US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said terrorism is no longer the No. 1 priority.”

The report said, “Maintaining a military advantage over China and Russia is now Defense Secretary Mattis' top priority.”

Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen is taking the threat of a Chinese military attack very seriously and stated Tuesday that Taipei has not ruled out the possibility of such an attack happening, as Beijing’s military conducts more and more drills near the self-ruling island.

"No one can exclude this possibility," Tsai said on Taiwanese TV Monday evening in response to a question about whether China might use military force against Taiwan. "We will need to see whether their policymakers are reasonable or not," she noted.

The Central Intelligence Agency is briefing President Donald Trump on the risks and opportunities of a limited attack on North Korea, its director suggested on Tuesday.

CIA Director Mike Pompeo would not discuss the “wisdom of a preemptive strike” on Pyongyang or its nuclear weapons program, he told an audience at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. But in rare public remarks, Pompeo portrayed North Korea as an urgent priority for the agency, and disclosed aspects of its role in setting back Kim Jong Un’s nuclear program during his first year at Langley.

Kim is a rational man, Pompeo said the CIA had assessed. But it’s less clear that Kim takes seriously the prospect of a U.S. attack, something that could blunder the world into a devastating nuclear conflict.

The new year is barely three weeks old and already the US Navy’s “freedom of navigation” operations are eliciting furious threats of retaliation from the Chinese military.

Since President Donald Trump took office one year ago, the Navy and Air Force have increasingly sought to test the Chinese military response in the Pacific by sailing or flying within a certain perimeter - usually 12 miles - of one of China’s disputed territorial holdings in the South China Sea, according to RT.

In the latest clash, the USS Hopper missile destroyer sailed within 12 nautical miles of Huangyan Dao, a tiny island claimed by China, on Jan. 17.

Russia has started delivering batteries of the S-400 Triumf advanced missile defense system to China as part of a 2014 agreement, sources close to the Russian military say.

"The implementation of the contract has begun, the first shipment has been sent to China," Russian media reported Thursday, citing an unnamed official.

According to the source, a control station, a radar station, energy and support equipment, spare parts, various tools and other elements of the S-400 system were included in the first shipment.

Neither technology transfer nor licensed production was agreed upon in the contract, the source noted.

The newest US National Defense Strategy, the first since at 2014, appears to set out a major shift in the focus of America’s massive military and its endless wars, with officials now saying that the global wars on terror, while continuing, will no longer be the “prime focus of US national security.”

Instead, Defense Secretary James Mattis says the new strategy will put the primary focus of the US military engaging in power competition with other “great powers,” with Russia and China apparently the targets.

The “great power” conceit is a very 19th century concept, based around the idea that certain countries have uniquely great influence and authority worldwide. Historically, the great powers tend to view everyone else as pawns to be used in broader global strategies which establish the great powers’ pecking order with respect to one another.

China is in talks to sell Germany state-of-the-art machinery and technology critical in the manufacture of high-performance jet engines, a senior government scientist has revealed.The machinery produced turbine blades capable of withstanding temperatures several hundred degrees Celsius higher than the melting point of metallic alloys, the scientist said. The scientist, who is involved in the negotiations, asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the matter.

With Reuters having published the part of its exclusive Trump interview in which the president discusses North Korea and Russia, and in which he said that it is "very possible" the crisis with North Korea can't be resolved in a peaceful way, moments ago Reuters published highlights from the remainder of Trump's interview, which discloses more from Trump's trade agenda.

The new photos reveal that the People's Liberation Army (PLA) compound is about six miles east of where the Indian forces camped during the standoff. The construction includes trenches, barracks and multiple helipads. What appear to be artillery gun emplacements have also been dug, but are presently unoccupied by any heavy weaponry.

Furthermore, Chinese troops and armored vehicles have built up in the area, including a full mechanized regiment of what appear to be ZBL-09 infantry fighting vehicles — which can be equipped with howitzers and anti-aircraft suites.

While President Trump "expressed hope" that the resumed inter-Korean dialogue may prompt a change in North Korea’s destructive behavior, perhaps more notable was the fact that President Trump used the call "express disappointment that the United States’ trade deficit with China has continued to grow" and made clear that "the situation is not sustainable."

In a direct reversal with the recently disclosed official White House policy, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said the U.S. rejects a 'freeze for freeze' approach that would pause joint U.S./South Korean military drills in exchange for a pause to North Korea's nuclear program.

Speaking in Vancouver at a meeting with foreign ministers, Tillerson said that "we reject a 'freeze for freeze' approach, in which legitimate defensive military exercises are placed on the same level as the DPRK’s unlawful actions. The pressure campaign will continue until North Korea takes decisive steps to de-nuclearize."

A military solution to the Korean crisis would lead to catastrophic consequences, the Russian foreign minister said, adding that Russia and China reiterate their call to freeze the confrontation and military drills in the area.
RT's LIVE UPDATES on Lavrov's annual press Q&A

The Russian foreign minister spoke about the Russian-Chinese roadmap for a resolution to the crisis on the Korean Peninsula during his annual press Q&A on Monday. Moscow and Beijing have called on all parties to “calm down” and freeze any military activities, including North Korean missile tests and US drills in the area with South Korea and Japan.

“I have already mentioned that the United States almost openly speaks about the inevitability of a military solution, although everyone understands the disastrous consequences of this gamble,” Lavrov stated.

In its latest reminder that China is a (for now) happy holder of some $1.2 trillion in US Treasurys, Chinese credit rating agency Dagong downgraded US sovereign ratings from A- to BBB+ overnight, citing “deficiencies in US political ecology” and tax cuts that “directly reduce the federal government’s sources of debt repayment” weakening the base of the government’s debt repayment.

Oh, and just to make sure the message is heard loud and clear, the ratings, which are now level with those of Peru, Colombia and Turkmenistan on the Beijing-based agency’s scale of creditworthiness, have also been put on a negative outlook.

Just days after China's (denied) threat to slow/stop buying US Treasuries, and just days before the launch of China's petro-yuan futures contract, Germany's central bank confirmed it would include China's Renminbi in its reserves.

The FT reports that Andreas Dombret, a member of Deutsche Bundesbank’s executive board, said at the Asian Financial Forum in Hong Kong on Monday that the central bank had “decided to include the RMB in our currency reserves”.

“War is not far from us. Regional situations around China are complex and unstable, and dangers are hiding under the peace. China cannot afford a military failure, so we must be fully aware of potential crisis and be prepared for battle at all times. When the country is on the brink of becoming a great military power, it’s also stepping into a period with high risks to national security,” the official People’s Liberation Army (PLA) newspaper wrote according to China’s Global Times.

A photo of a young Chinese boy has gone viral in the country, as he arrived in school with a frozen face and hair after walking through the frigid rural cold, The South China Morning Post reports.

In recent months the US President has reversed yet another campaign pledge to pull out of Afghanistan, America’s longest war, and instead has begun to deploy an added 3,000 troops there. At the same time he has lashed out at the government of Pakistan accusing it of aiding the Afghan Taliban and pledging to cut all US military aid to that country as reprisal. A deeper view into the situation suggests that both moves are linked and have to do with not the Taliban and the Afghan terrorists. It has very much to do with ongoing developments of peaceful construction of the Chinese-led Belt, Road Initiative and desperate attempts of Washington to try to stop those developments using other pretexts.

An interesting theme concerning Syria is the involvement of the People's Republic of China in the conflict. While China’s diplomatic and economic assistance has been constant, its military contribution to Syria is less known. It is important for China and Russia to contain and defeat the terrorist phenomenon in the Middle East, as well as to defang the strategists in the US deep state who are unceasing in their efforts to employ jihadism as a weapon to destabilize Eurasia’s integration projects.

Many of these signs point to the near certainty that China will succeed in its pursuit of a new monetary system backed by gold – helping explain why I’m convinced gold is on the threshold of a massive, unprecedented rise…

America’s declining influence in the Middle East and the Pacific Rim has been in hyperdrive this week following President Trump’s tweetstorm against Pakistan.

On New Year's day, Trump unleashed a series of tweets accusing Pakistan of harboring terrorists, and went so far as to threaten cutting off the country’s financial aid. To make matters worse, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, also accused Pakistan of playing “a double game for years,” and said President Trump would withhold $225 million in aid to the country.

Trump’s tweetstorm did not impress the Pakistani government: in response, it announced that it would be evicting some 1.4 million Afghan refugees from the country later this month. The Pakistani government also announced closer ties with China, and would ditch the dollar in bilateral trade with China, a move that has threatened Washington’s diplomatic relations with Pakistan.

Over the next three years Xi Jinping’s anti-poverty crusade - which the Communist party leader has declared one of the key themes of his second five-year term - will see millions of marginalised rural dwellers resettled in new, government-subsidised homes.

Some are being moved to distant urban housing estates, others just to slightly less remote or unforgiving rural locations. Other poverty-fighting tactics – including loans, promoting tourism and “pairing” impoverished families with local officials whose careers are tied to their plight – are also being used.

By 2020, Beijing hopes to have helped 30 million people rise above its official poverty line of about 70p a day while simultaneously reinforcing the already considerable authority of Xi, now seen as China’s most powerful ruler since Mao Zedong.

Pakistani companies have been given a green light to use the Chinese yuan in trade with Beijing, which could potentially sideline the US dollar and other currencies used there. The move coincides with a US-Pakistan aid row.
The State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) said it “has taken comprehensive policy-related measures to ensure that imports, exports and financing transactions can be denominated in CNY,” according to a statement issued late on Tuesday. CNY is now effectively on par with the US dollar, euro and other international currencies in the country.

Recent news reports point to a so-called “secret plan” to destroy and destabilize Iran, the first step of which is a color revolution.

The fact of the matter is that these not so secret plans to wage war on Iran have been on the drawing board of the Pentagon since the mid-nineties as outlined in Michel Chossudovsky’s 2010 article published below (scroll down):

“The medium term strategic objective is to target Iran and neutralize Iran’s allies, through gunboat diplomacy. The longer term military objective is to directly target China and Russia.

Chinese tanks, soldiers, and military trucks have been gathering on the border in preparation for a war. The Chinese military was quickly rushed to the border they share with North Korea after being told to get “ready for war.”