China sent a guided-missile frigate, two fighter jets and a helicopter to warn off the USS ‘Chafee’ near disputed islands in the South China Sea, accusing the US of damaging the country’s sovereignty and security interests in the region.

Beijing condemned the mission of the guided-missile destroyer USS ‘Chafee,’ which on Tuesday sailed within 16 nautical miles of the disputed Paracel Islands in the South China Sea, within the framework of a so-called “freedom of navigation” operation.

“In the face of repeated provocation by the US forces, the Chinese military will further strengthen preparation for combat at sea and in the air and improve the defenses to resolutely defend national sovereignty and security interests,” China’s Defense Ministry said in a statement, quoted by the South China Morning Post newspaper.

Another notoriously short autumn has drawn to a close as Beijing welcomed its very first snowfall early this morning.

Snow was reported in the Haituo Mountain area in Beijing's northern Yanqing District as well as on Mentougou Mountain, located just 100 kilometers west of the city's center. Additionally, snowfall was reported on Foye Peak southeast of the city in Hebei Province.

The USS Chafee navy destroyer has sailed near the disputed Paracel Islands in the South China Sea in a so-called “freedom of navigation” operation, which, according to military officials cited by Reuters, was conducted to challenge China’s “excessive claims.”

The USS Chafee sailed past the Paracel Islands Tuesday, US military officials told Reuters on condition of anonymity. The destroyer reportedly sailed outside of, but “very close,” to the 12-nautical-mile territorial limits of the islands which are claimed by China and its neighbors.

With tensions escalating rapidly again on the Korean peninsula, the attention of the world invariably has returned to the question of whether or not the solution to the crisis lies in Beijing. After months of continuing missile tests by North Korea despite sanctions and global condemnation, Kim Jong-un’s regime claims to have tested a hydrogen bomb and once again launched an intercontinental ballistic missile over Japan. North Korea’s march toward wielding a nuclear arsenal against its neighbors and far off enemies, like the United States, is nearing completion. For Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), North Korea’s obstinate drive toward becoming a nuclear force has dealt Beijing a critical challenge at a moment when the party would prefer to focus on other matters seen as as essential to its rise as a regional and world power.

A Chinese billionaire living in virtual exile in New York, Guo Wengui has riled China’s leaders with his sometimes outlandish tales of deep corruption among family members of top Communist Party officials.

On Saturday, his tales proved too much for one of his favorite platforms for broadcasting those accusations: Facebook.

The social media network said it had blocked a profile under Mr. Guo’s name and taken down another page associated with him. Facebook said the content on both pages had included someone else’s personal identifiable information, which violates its terms of service.

Facebook investigated the accounts after receiving a complaint, according to a spokeswoman.

Over more than 20 years, I have spent many hours in discussions with top North Korean officials and private citizens during visits to Pyongyang and to the countryside. I found Kim Il Sung (their “Great Leader”), Kim Yong Nam, president of the Presidium of the Supreme People’s Assembly, and other leaders to be both completely rational and dedicated to the preservation of their regime.

What the officials have always demanded is direct talks with the United States, leading to a permanent peace treaty to replace the still-prevailing 1953 cease-fire that has failed to end the Korean conflict. They want an end to sanctions, a guarantee that there will be no military attack on a peaceful North Korea, and eventual normal relations between their country and the international community.

MISSILES being developed by Russia and China which will be 25 times faster than an aeroplane could cause serious instability in regions such as North Korea - prompting huge World War Three fears.

China’s inauguration of its first military base abroad in Djibouti has raised concerns among US intelligence officials that Beijing’s growing military presence around the world could spark a conflict of interests among the two sides, a report says.

Is this the stormy weather that Donald Trump was referring to yesterday?

Russian news agency Sputnik reports, that according to a Russian lawmaker, who has just returned from North Korea, Pyongyang is ready to test a missile capable of reaching the US western coast.

"They are preparing for a new test of a longer-range missile. They even gave us mathematical calculations that they believe prove that their missile can hit the western coast of the United States," Morozov said.
"In the near future, they are going to carry out, as far as we understand, yet another launch of a missile, but this time with a longer range," the lawmaker said, adding that the general mood in Pyongyang is "rather belligerent."

An influential state-run newspaper has applauded China’s anti-espionage efforts after the New York Times said China had killed or imprisoned up to 20 CIA sources, hobbling US spying operations in a massive intelligence breach.

President Xi Jinping has ordered Chinese defence firms to speed up weapons development and aim to do better than the world’s most powerful militaries, a documentary aired on state media revealed.

His list of areas to work on included supercomputing, ballistic missile defence and satellite navigation systems, according to one of eight episodes in the Powerful Military series shown on state broadcaster CCTV on Monday.
China has also been cultivating young scientific talent specialised in advanced military hardware as it tries to modernise the People’s Liberation Army, according to the documentary.

Dozens of advanced warships went into service last year as China stepped up its weaponry hardware to meet its goal of having a blue-water navy capable of operating globally.

Three weeks after the US imposed financial sanctions on Venezuela in an effort to cripple its economy and choke the Maduro regime, which in turn prompted Caracas to announce it would no longer receive or send payments in dollars, and that those who wished to trade Venezuelan crude would have to do so in Chinese Yuan, today during an energy summit held in Moscow, Venezuela's president Nicolas Maduro proposed to expand his own personal blockade of the US, by proposing that all oil producing countries discuss creating a currency basket for trading crude and refined products. One which is no longer reliant on the (petro)dollar.

“Developing a new mechanism of controlling the oil market is necessary,” Maduro said on Wednesday at the Russian Energy Forum, being held in Moscow this week.

One can take passages from “The Pentagon Papers” and simply replace the name “North Vietnam” with “North Korea,” and we have an exact description of United States aggression toward North Korea today; this juxtaposition, on page 580 of the Bantam Edition of “The Pentagon Papers,” would read as follows:

“There may be a limit beyond which many Americans and much of the world will not permit the United States to go. The picture of the world’s greatest superpower trying to pound a tiny backward nation into submission on an issue whose merits are hotly disputed, is not a pretty one. It could conceivably produce a costly distortion in the American national consciousness and in the world image of the United States—especially if the damage to North Korea is complete enough to be ‘successful.’ The most important risk, however, is the likely Russian, Chinese and North Korean reaction to intensified US air attacks, harbor-mining, and ground actions against North Korea.”

In other words, the United States no longer has a media. It has a propaganda ministry for the military/security complex, the neoconservatives, and the Israel Lobby. And the idiot Americans sit in front of the TV and absorb the propaganda, and they read the New York Times and think that they are sophisticated and in the know.

If you were the Russian government, would you conclude that your country was the next to be attacked militarily by Washington? If you were the Russian government, you would know that Washington/NATO cannot possibly attack Russia except by surprise nuclear strike. Knowing this, if you were the Russian government, would you sit there and wait on the strike? Imagine yourself the Russian government listening day in, day out, to endless wild improbable charges against Russia. What can Russia possibly conclude other than this is preparation of Western peoples for a nuclear attack on Russia?

There are three versions of the aircraft: CR929-500, CR929-600 and CR929-700. The CR929-600 has 280 seats and a range of 12,000 kilometers, which will be the baseline version, with the 230-seat CR929-500 being a shorter version and the 320-seat CR929-700 as a stretch.
With advanced aerodynamic design, composite materials and a new generation high bypass ratio turbofan engine, all the performance indicators of the wide-body aircraft will be largely improved, contributing to a lower direct operating cost than similar models.

Separately, on Saturday Secretary of State Rex Tillerson acknowledged for the first time that the US is in direct communication with the government of North Korea over its missile and nuclear tests – a stunning revelation considering that administration officials have until this point insisted that there has been only limited, indirect contact between the White House and the Kim regime. According to the New York Times, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson revealed as much during a speech at the residence of the US ambassador to Beijing after a meeting with Chinese leaders. Tillerson is in China on Saturday for what the NYT described as a “brief visit.”

“We are probing, so stay tuned,” Tillerson said when pressed about how he might begin a conversation with Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader, that could avert what many government officials fear is a significant chance of open conflict between the two countries.

Several North Korean missiles were recently spotted moved from a rocket facility in the capital, Pyongyang, South Korea’s Korean Broadcasting System (KBS) reported late Friday amid speculation that the North was preparing to take more provocative actions.

The report cited an unnamed intelligence source saying South Korean and U.S. intelligence officials detected missiles being transported away from North Korea’s Missile Research and Development Facility at Sanum-dong in the northern part of Pyongyang.

The report did not say when or where they had been moved.

The missiles could be either intermediate range Hwasong-12 or intercontinental Hwasong-14 missiles, according to the report, though the missile facility at Sanum-dong has been dedicated to the production of intercontinental ballistic missiles.

A source from South Korea’s Defense Ministry said he could not confirm details of the report or whether there has been any unusual activities in the area mentioned.

South Korean banks and utility companies are drawing up plans to construct shielding and potentially move operations overseas to protect against North Korea as further provocation from Pyongyang is expected on October 10.
South Korean banks and vital infrastructure facilities, including nuclear power plants and government ministries, have reportedly been hacked by Pyongyang in the past. And as tensions in the region escalate, many now fear the North Korean regime will conduct an atmospheric nuclear test to coincide with the 72nd anniversary of the founding of the Workers' Party of Korea on October 10.

The South Korean government warned Thursday that its northern neighbor was "highly likely" to continue military provocations in the build up to the October celebrations.

Missile-defense physics may require interceptors to fly into ‘the teeth of the Russian early warning net.’

If Pyongyang fires a missile at the United States, its most-likely trajectory would take it over the North Pole. A U.S. attempt to shoot down that missile would probably occur within Russian radar space — and possibly over Russia itself. “It’s something we’re aware of,” Gen. Lori Robinson, who leads both U.S. Northern Command and the North American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD, said Wednesday. “It’s something we work our way through.”

By year’s end, the U.S. will have deployed 44 ground-based interceptors, or GBIs: 40 at Fort Greeley, Alaska, and four at Vandenberg Air Force Base, California. If deterrence fails, those interceptors would be the last line of defense against a North Korean missile. Each incoming ICBM might be met with four or more GBIs.

The highest ranking military officer in the United States armed forces told Congress that he expected China to become “the greatest threat to our nation” by the year 2025, and pushed for an expansion in military spending to “maintain a competitive advantage” over Beijing.

In the new transport concept promoted by China, there is no place for Ukraine to move cargo and passengers to the European Union.

The president of the Ukrainian Analytical Center, Okhrimenko, said at a press conference in Kiev, that Ukraine is absent from the Chinese project The New Silk Road, although earlier the option of transit through Ukraine was considered.

South Korean National Security Office chief Chung Eui-yong says that the US has committed to deploying more “strategic” military assets around the Korean Peninsula. Such deployments are to start later this year.

Details are scant, but Chung suggested the deployment was meant to show that there wasn’t “any crack” between the US and the South Korean government amid mounting US tensions with North Korea.

South Korean President Moon Jae-in has insisted that he will not allow any US deployments of nuclear weapons into South Korea. This likely rules out a lot of such assets, though “strategic” assets could still include aircraft carriers and heavy bombers.

The caveat that the deployments will be “near” the Korean Peninsula could mean the US is planning buildups in Guam and Japan as well.

In a strongly worded editorial published by Huanqiu (Global Times), Chinese officials say they would consider U.S. forces stationed in Taiwan to be a move towards “Taiwan Independence.”

Huanqiu.com reports: On August 14, 2017, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2018. It contained an item to allow the warships of the U.S and Taiwan to dock at each other’s ports. The bill will go to the Senate for consideration. After the House and Senate reconcile any differences, the President will sign the bill into law. If China does not apply a sufficiently strong pressure (to stop it), it is highly probable that the bill will become law.

The Chinese military has for the first time staged live-fire drills at the country's first overseas base opened recently in the Horn of Africa, near the strategic Straits of Hormuz in Djibouti.

Less than two months after inaugurating and deploying troops to China's first foreign naval military base abroad, the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLA) held live-fire drills for the first time in this east African location on Friday, the South China Morning Post reported on Monday.

China’s first overseas military facility was inaugurated on August 1 after being under construction for more than a year. China’s military presence in Djibouti will continue until 2026, with a contingent of up to 10,000 soldiers. Beijing has long wanted to use its several footholds in Africa to seek closer ties with nations on the continent that could help it gain access to natural resources and provide new markets.

Commenting on the recent escalation of the war of words between the US and North Korea, Beijing urged the two countries to realize that armed hostilities are never a viable way out.

The US' foreign policy may lead to a nuclear nightmare in Asia Pacific, compared to which the Fukushima disaster is a "firecracker," an expert told Sputnik, adding that in his UN speech Donald Trump had repeatedly contradicted himself by calling upon nations to maintain their sovereignty while at the same time threatening to destroy North Korea.

US President Donald Trump's threat to "totally destroy" North Korea in case the US is "forced to defend itself or its allies" means a potential atomic Armageddon for the Korean Peninsula, Konstantin Sivkov, a Russian military analyst and president of the Academy for Geopolitical Problems, told Sputnik China.

In a room, somewhere deep inside the Pentagon generals and admirals met recently in order to prepare an assessment for the United States Senate Armed Services Committee. Present at the metering were General Mark Milley, the U.S. Army’s Chief of Staff, the Chief of Naval Operations Admiral John Richardson, the Commandant of the Marine Corps General Robert Neller, and U.S. Air Force Chief of Staff General David L. Goldfein. At such a meeting there’s no doubt that Marine Corps General Joseph Dunford attended seeing he’s the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The agenda for this meeting was serious as a heart attack – America’s most brilliant and powerful military men gathered that day to discuss Armageddon.

China announced Saturday that it will limit energy supplies to North Korea and stop buying its textiles under U.N. sanctions imposed over its nuclear and missile development, further reducing support from Pyongyang's last ally.

Exports of refined petroleum to the North will be limited to 2 million barrels per year, effective Jan. 1, the Commerce Ministry said. Sales of liquefied natural gas are banned outright.

North Korea depends on China for almost all its oil and gas but estimates of its consumption are low, leaving it unclear how Beijing's new limit will affect them. The restrictions announced Saturday do not apply to crude oil, which makes up the biggest share of energy exports to the North.

China also will ban textile imports from the North, the ministry said. Textiles are believed to be the North's biggest source of foreign revenue following rounds of U.N. sanctions under which Beijing cut off purchases of coal, iron ore, seafood and other goods.

As the U.S. exerts more pressure on Pyongyang, economic exchanges between Russia and North Korea, which the government of Vladimir Putin had sought to use as a diplomatic bargaining chip, are beginning to ebb.

In late August, Vladivostok in Russia's Far East suspended service on the Mangyongbong, a North Korean ferry and cargo ship. The ship started service to Vladivostok in May, making one round-trip per week from the port of Rajin in Rason, in northeastern North Korea. Now the ship remains moored at Rajin.

The 100,000-ton US Navy supercarrier ‘Ronald Reagan’ has conducted drills with Japanese warships south of the Korean Peninsula, Japan's military said. Pyongyang, meanwhile, has threatened a further “hydrogen bomb test” over the Pacific.
The Japan Maritime Self Defense Force said in a statement on Friday that the Nimitz-class nuclear-powered supercarrier ‘Ronald Reagan,’ based in the Japanese town of Yokosuka, Kanagawa Prefecture, and its escort ships have been holding drills with Japanese Navy vessels in waters south and west of Japan's main islands since September 11. The strike group is also set to stage a separate drill with the South Korean Navy in October, the Defense Ministry added.

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US President Donald Trump addresses the 72nd Annual UN General Assembly in New York on September 19, 2017 © Timothy A. Clary / AFPTrump: US may have no choice but to ‘totally destroy’ North Korea

In a considerably more aggressive, and less diplomatic, 'story' in China's government mouthpiece Xinhua, writers warn:

"It is not hard to tell that the situation has become a vicious circle where more missile tests trigger more sanctions, while more sanctions trigger more tests..." urging the double-freeze solution once again, saying that "the parties concerned need to respect each other's security concerns."

However, following last night's less than veiled threat from North Korea that the next escalation will be to test a hydrogen-bomb over the Pacific:

North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho suggested leader Kim Jong Un was considering testing “an unprecedented scale hydrogen bomb” over the Pacific in response to U.S. President Donald Trump’s threat at the United Nations to “totally destroy” the country.

A Gallup poll issued last week showed that a majority of Americans, 58%, favor war with Korea if a peaceful resolution fails. The figure climbs to 82% among Republicans. This is madness of the first order. A peaceful resolution is more than possible if the American public wakes up to realities (of the present and past) and demands such an outcome. Diplomacy actually stopped North Korea’s earlier efforts to build nukes and then in each case the U.S. violated the terms. It can happen again but the United States government will not do what is necessary owing to the longstanding commitment to the Open Door.

Earlier on Friday, North Korea’s top diplomat stated that Pyongyang might consider the possibility of a new hydrogen bomb test in response to the US aggressive policy

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Wednesday met with his South Korean counterpart, Kang Kyung-wha, and reiterated Beijing's demand for the removal of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile shield.

The situation on the Korean peninsula is getting more serious by the day and cannot be allowed to spin out of control, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told his German counterpart, the state-run China News Service said on Thursday.

A resolution to the North Korea issue cannot only rely on sanctions and not talks, Wang said, meeting German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel on the sidelines of a United Nations meeting in New York on Wednesday, the report added.

In discussing President Trump, there is always the soft prejudice of low expectations – people praise him for reading from a Teleprompter even if his words make little sense – but there is no getting around the reality that his maiden address to the United Nations General Assembly must rank as one of the most embarrassing moments in America’s relations with the global community.

Trump offered a crude patchwork of propaganda and bluster, partly delivered as a campaign speech praising his own leadership – boasting about the relatively strong U.S. economy that he mostly inherited from President Obama – and partly reflecting his continued subservience to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Wednesday called for support for the July 2015 Iran nuclear deal.

US pressure on Beijing to pressure Pyongyang without regard to Beijing’s views does not work. The Chinese might do all they can to end North Korea’s tests and move toward denuclearization, but only if Washington gets out of their way and commits to accept whatever Beijing can accomplish. Beijing will not serve as Washington’s surrogate or tolerate provocative second-guessing. And Washington has to forswear its regime-change tactics, another violation of the UN Charter.

China has rejected any form of threatening action as a solution for North Korea's nuclear crisis, after US Defense Secretary James Mattis pointed to the likelihood of military options against Pyongyang.

At the center of the North Korean nuclear crisis is a pivotal question: How much is China really willing to pressure and punish its longtime ally in Pyongyang? Recent conversations in Beijing and Washington suggest that Chinese leaders have decided to increase pressure substantially but are not—and probably never will be—willing to help President Trump strangle North Korea into submission. China doesn’t trust Kim Jong Un—but it trusts Trump even less.

China will likely begin "manufacture engines for jumbo jets" soon, said Rolls Royce Chairman Ian Davis at the Singapore Summit over the weekend.

At present, Rolls Royce remains the second largest provider of commercial and defense aero-engine products and services in the world. In Davis’ opinion, China will join in the global competition of jet engines manufacturing, playing a more and more crucial role in the development of this industry.

US Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin’s threats of a trade war against China if it does not uphold sanctions against North Korea not only will not accomplish anything, they could trigger a global economic tsunami and further heighten tension in the Korean Peninsula if he follows through with the threat.

After carrying out bombing drills over the Korean peninsula on Monday following North Korea’s firing of an intermediate-range missile over the Japanese island of Hokkaido, US and South Korean forces are planning to continue their displays of military might early next month, according to a report from Yonhap, the South Korean news agency. However, in a move that is sure to provoke a barrage of threats from North Korea, the US is reportedly sending a nuclear-armed aircraft carrier to the waters off the Korean peninsula, where it will take part in an upcoming round of military drills.

Earlier this year, the US sent three aircraft carriers to waters near North Korea in an unprecedented show of force. However, it's unclear if any of those carriers are still positioned so closely to the peninsula. Here's the latest map of US naval strike groups, which was compiled by Stratfor using publicly-available information. Deployments considered "sensitive" would not be included on this map.

We have pretty much exhausted all the things that we could do at the Security Council at this point,” said Nikki Haley on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday, referring to North Korea. “We wanted to be responsible and go through all diplomatic means to get their attention first,” the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations said. “If that doesn’t work, General Mattis [Defense Secretary James Mattis] will take care of it.”
The comments, no off-the-cuff remarks, mirrored her words at a White House press briefing Friday, and National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster, standing next to Haley at that briefing, was even more explicit. “I think we ought to make clear what’s different about this approach is, is that we’re out of time,” he noted, referring to sanctions. “As Ambassador Haley said before, we’ve been kicking the can down the road, and we’re out of road.”

Japanese newspaper Sekai Nippo claims that the "informed" source "familiar with the North Korea situation" told them that the DPRK has been clandestinely building the nuclear submarine, which would be a massive leap forward from the current DPRK Navy, which may maintain a fleet of 50 to 60 diesel-electric submarines.

The source went on to claim that Chinese and Russian engineers have been lending their expertise to the DPRK at North Korea's Nampo Naval Shipyard, in North Korea's manufacturing capital.

China has begun construction of the first Type 075 Class Landing Helicopter Dock (LHD). Construction most likely started in January or February of this year, with some satellite imagery and digital photos appearing online of at least one pre-fabricated hull cell. The Type 075 will be the largest amphibious warfare vessel in the Peoples’ Liberation Army Navy (PLAN), with similar displacement and dimensions as the U.S. Navy Wasp Class LHD. The PLA has also made it known that the force plans to expand the current PLA Marine Corps from 20,000 personnel to 100,000.

In the ongoing game of escalating verbal ping-pong, North Korea responded on Monday to the latest condemnation by the UN Security Council which responded to Pyongyang Friday missile launch with a harsly worded verbal rebuke, and warned that the more sanctions pursued by the US and its allies, "will only increase our pace towards the ultimate completion of the state nuclear force,” KCNA reported, citing ministry of foreign affairs.

The latest sanctions represent “the most vicious, unethical and inhumane act of hostility to physically exterminate the people of the DPRK, let alone its system and government,” a foreign ministry spokesman said, as cited by Reuters.

The North Korean statement also said that “it is a foolish dream to hope that the sanctions could work with the DPRK while the sanctions have failed to stop it from becoming a full-fledged nuclear weapons state and making rapid progress in the building of an economic power for more than half a century.”

US Ambassador Nikki Haley declared the UN Security Council to have “run out of options” for dealing with the “North Korea problem,” in comments made during an interview on CNN’s State of the Union show. She talked up a shift to unilateral US military options.

Haley insisted that the US has “a whole lot of military options on the table,” and that President Trump’s threat to give North Korea “fire and fury” was not an empty threat. She went on to say that if the US uses any military options “North Korea will be destroyed. And we all know that. And none of us want that.”

Despite saying she didn’t want that in this segment of her comments, the ambassador also said in the course of her comments she is “perfectly happy” to see the North Korea issued referred to the Pentagon to be solved by Defense Secretary James Mattis.

Following Treasury Secretary Mnuchin's threat that the US could impose economic sanctions on China if it does not implement the new sanctions regime against North Korea:

"If China doesn’t follow these sanctions, we will put additional sanctions on them and prevent them from accessing the US and international dollar system, and that’s quite meaningful."

Billionaire investor and commodity guru Jim Rogers has a warning for the Trump administration - this would hurt America more because it just forces China and Russia and other countries to cooperate.

At the center of the danger zone is the declining U.S. dollar. Martenson explains,

“We are talking about a steady erosion of the dollar as a reserve currency. I think that is most likely. The only thing that could make that really go fast is some kind of war. The United States and China, we got to keep our eye on this because Trump has been threatening a trade war with China. China responded and said if you do that, we may dump the dollar. . . . So, there is all this trade and financial back and forth and maybe even actual war at some point...

China has the ability to really impact the dollar in a big way on the world stage. We better hope it does not come to that because a slow erosion we can adjust to; a quick erosion is going to really roil the markets and maybe blow a few of them up.”

A joint Russian-Chinese naval force of more than a dozen military vessels, including submarines, will participate in the upcoming second stage of the Joint Sea-2017 naval drills in the Sea of Japan and Okhotsk.
The drills will kick off Monday and continue for a week, according to the spokesman for Russia’s Pacific Fleet, Vladimir Matveev.

That is, the U.S. won the space race, and the overall technology race, against Moscow. And yet now we face a new and greater threat—from Beijing. Yes, 60 years after Sputnik, we see that China, with quadruple our population, is on the move. It has plenty of orbiting satellites, of course, as well as a whole class of satellite-killers that we might not be ready for. To top it off, China’s plans to go to Mars, the next place in the space race, are well far along—possibly exceeding those of the U.S.

These strategic Chinese developments are finally getting the attention of the Washington Establishment. Just the other day, two think-tankers at the D.C.-based Center for a New American Security (CNAS), Daniel Kliman and Harry Krejsa, raised a warning in Politico, “Is China leaping past us? With little notice in Washington, Beijing has quietly become an innovation superpower. How should the U.S. respond?”

Assisting Tehran with sidestepping an ongoing Washington sanctions regime against the country, China has opened a $10 billion line of credit intended to finance energy, transportation, water and other key Iranian infrastructure projects.

Beijing has announced plans to start a crude oil futures contract priced in yuan and convertible into gold. The step might lead to the emergence of a new Asia-based crude oil benchmark to compete with Brent or West Texas Intermediate futures.

A new poll from Gallup shows that a majority of Americans, 58%, are in favor of attacking North Korea militarily if the US “cannot accomplish its goals by more peaceful means first.” Americans were split more or less evenly on whether sanctions and diplomacy could work.

This is the first time Gallup has asked about attacking North Korea since 2003. At the time, only 47% favored an attack. The shift in the last 14 years appears to have been greatly along political lines, with an overwhelming 82% of Republicans now backing war, compared to just 37% of Democrats.

The possibility of such an attack has been discussed a lot more this year than any time in decades. Repeated North Korean tests have been presented as a growing threat to the US mainland, with the Trump Administration declaring diplomacy a failure from the start.

As I’ve argued previously, decisions taken by the Trump administration since January indicate a shift in US foreign policy. No longer concerned with waging petty wars on behalf of the Israel lobby and the billionaire class, attention has been focused acutely on Asia, and in particular China. Former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon was quite forthright about this in his August 16 interview with American Prospect magazine:

“To me, the economic war with China is everything. We have to be maniacally focused on that. If we continue to lose it, we’re five years away, I think, 10 years at the most, of hitting an inflection point from which we’ll never be able to recover.”

Without a hint of irony, Bannon later added