CHINA will conducted in a number of navy drills in a show of support for Russia following the US, UK and French airstrikes in Syria, it has been claimed as World War 3 fears grow.

There are concerns Beijing has chosen to firmly back Vladimir Putin on the issue of military intervention in Syria.

A number of drills by China’s sea force will be carried out in the Taiwan Strait in a show of military strength and support for Moscow, according to a source cited by the South China Morning Post.

If there was any confusion on whose side of the Syrian conflict China finds itself, that confusion is now gone.

A trade bust-up promises only losers: American consumers, Trump himself and China’s export-oriented economy. But Xi’s Boao Forum speech offers hope of a mutually beneficial way out

The goal of a war, be it hot or cold, about trade, territory or anything else, is destruction.

And destruction means not only the loss of lives, but the destruction of any assets tangible or intangible, as can be seen in the simmering trade war between the United States and China.

The spectre of a full-blown trade war between the world’s two largest economies threatens the worst disruption to, and destruction of, the global economy in modern times. Basic economics suggests any such conflict will incur losses all around.

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Conventional wisdom on the Kim regime has been that it is unpredictable and downright crazy. But that has never really been true

(*Yeah , let us know when he kicks off the weekend with a missile attack on another country !)

On 11th November 2006, the Commander of the US Navy’s Pacific Fleet at the time, Gary Roughead, made a historic visit to China in a hope of improving the relations between the two countries. His visit was intended to organize a joint military exercise that emphasized the search and rescue role of the Navy and was to take place on 19th of November that year.

However, the visit was overshadowed by the incident that occurred during an American naval exercise near the island of Okinawa.

In surprise move, China to mount live-fire navy drills in Taiwan Strait ‘in show of support for Russia over Syria’
Beijing springs announcement of exercises after staging the country’s biggest navy parade

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The world is dependent on a steady supply of rare-earth elements such as yttrium, europium, terbium, dysprosium. They go into computers, phones, electric cars, solar panels, batteries, and electronic equipment. China is the world's biggest supplier of rare-earth elements, and uses its monopoly position as an effective bargaining chip. But Japan just announced that it has discovered a massive lode of rare earth materials that could satisfy the world's requirements on a "semi-infinite basis" (love that term).

Last year, bilateral trade between Russia and China increased by 31.5 percent, reaching $87 billion. This year, it is expected to reach $100 billion, the Russian Economic Development Ministry told RT.

As trade grows, Russia and China are also promoting settlements in ruble and yuan, bypassing the US dollar and other Western currencies. “It makes it possible to reduce the dependence on the influence of third countries,” the Russian Central Bank told RT.

For those who believe the conflict, confrontation, and trade war with China is very recent and fresh, not true. The war of words and sabre rattling is part of a longstanding trade war between the two superpowers. The war with China has been brewing for many years, with much hidden in the background battles over legacy USTreasury Bonds and hidden Gold stores. The United States does not publicize this conflict, since the US actions are full of dishonor, deceit, fraud, and murders within the secret war.

HKMA, city’s de facto central bank, said it will not necessarily step in to support the currency as long as banks are willing to buy at 7.85 per US dollar

The Hong Kong dollar deteriorated to 7.8500 per US dollar, its weakest level in 35 years, touching the lower limit for the first time since the launch of its trading band.

Traders said rising market uncertainty amid trade tensions was to blame, and that US-Hong Kong interest rate differentials continue to widen.

The city’s currency breached the critical level in the early hours of the morning but later pulled back, standing at 7.8497 by early morning. Hong Kong’s de facto central bank, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA), said it will not necessarily step in to prop up the currency.

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When I wrote a few weeks ago that I thought the Neocons were making the full-court press for war I thought President Trump was a reluctant player in the game.

Part of me still believes that.

Part of me also believes that Trump, like everyone else, is a slave to his passions and is easily manipulated into terrible decisions. Case in point was last year’s bombing of the Al Shairat airbase in Syria after a similar false flag chemical weapons attack at Khan Sheikoun.

Will he fall victim to them again this year? According to him, we’ll know soon. Meanwhile a carrier group has been dispatched to the Eastern Mediterranean. Chinese missile frigates are there supporting Russian vessels and the destroyer U.S.S. Donald Cook is now just off the coats of the Russian base at Tartus.

Chinese President Xi Jinping promised a more transparent China on Tuesday, during a keynote speech at an economic forum in Boao, on the southern island of Hainan. Immediately after the conference, China’s PLA Navy began a 3-day combat war drill in waters to the south of Sanya, the southern tip of China’s Hainan Island, which is about 112-miles south from the economic forum.

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Over a year ago at Davos, President Xi Jinping stressed the need for global cooperation to sustain the global recovery. In a trade war, he said, “no one will emerge as a winner.”

In the White House, that wisdom got lost in translation. Now the only question is how costly that policy mistake will prove.
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As US sovereign debt now exceeds $20.7 trillion, 107 percent of GDP, and Trump’s infrastructure initiative is fueled by record-high leverage, the trade dispute is undermining critical sources of US revenue.

Trump’s trade gambit is escalating at a time when even rising interest rates can no longer ensure a strong dollar. Moreover, with $1.2 trillion of US debt, China remains the largest foreign holder of US Treasuries.

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Washington won't be happy with their minions in Australia over this. Vanuatu is supposed to be Australia's vassal state. Too much stick and not enough carrot.

How a group of tiny islands near Australia figure in Beijing's redrawing of the map

Papua New Guinea could do well out of China helping out.
Papua New Guinea's FM talks Australia's efforts to help with quake recovery, China in the Pacific

The Chinese state is setting up a vast ranking system system that will monitor the behaviour of its enormous population, and rank them all based on their "social credit."

The "social credit system," first announced in 2014, aims to reinforce the idea that "keeping trust is glorious and breaking trust is disgraceful," according to a government document.

The program is due to be fully operational by 2020, but is being piloted for millions of people already. The scheme is mandatory.

China, the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases, is determined to rebalance its energy mix, and incorporate more clean energy. That determination is reflected in the money it put into renewable energy last year, dwarfing spending by the next biggest investor, the US.

Since 2013 China has been creating 55 billion tons of artificial rain a year. The country is now embarking on its biggest rainmaking project ever.

In terms of the plan, announced this month, Chinese authorities intend to force rainfall and snow over 1.6 million sq km (620,000 sq miles), an area roughly three times the size of Spain.

According to media reports, the government will use new military weather-altering technology developed by the state-owned China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation. The country plans to build tens of thousands of combustion chambers on Tibetan mountainsides. The chambers will burn a solid fuel, which will result in a spray of silver iodide billowing towards the sky.

Note it say new fleet not new ship.

The 29th fleet from Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) Navy has left east China's port city Zhoushan for the Gulf of Aden and waters off Somali to escort civilian ships.

Chinese navy to become leading sea power: experts

Wei Fenghe makes bold statement on visit to Moscow accompanied by fellow State Councillor Wang Yi, as Communist neighbours reaffirm ties

China will not be easily cowed in a trade dispute. Chinese President Xi Jinping is now exchanging threats of tit-for-tat tariffs with President Trump, who announced Thursday he’s considering raising the stakes another $100 billion. China vowed to defend itself “at any cost.”

Yuan-backed oil futures can shatter the US dollar dominance on the crude market, according to experts polled by RT. However, the greenback will not give up the top spot easily.

“The question number one is whether China will be able to make the oil market its demand market, and not the oil supply market traded in dollars, which it is now,” Vladimir Rozhankovsky, Global FX Investment analyst, told RT. China has recently overtaken the US as the world's number one oil buyer.

The question number two is trade wars ... ">>>
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“The trade war between the US and China has already begun. China has plans to promote the renminbi as a reserve currency and there is no better move than to purchase raw materials in its national currency. It can save money on the currency conversion and become less dependent on the US dollar,” Stanislav Werner, head of the analytical department of Dominion, told RT
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(*Which reminds me; Has Dick Cheney weighed in on the China tariffs yet ?)

Cooler heads could still prevail, but it seems unlikely as Beijing and Washington up the stakes in a tit-for-tat spat that could play havoc with the world

Back in 2003, at the start of America’s disastrous invasion of Iraq, then Major General David Petraeus, commanding the US 101st Airborne Division driving toward Baghdad, famously asked my Washington Post colleague Rick Atkinson: “Tell me how this ends.”

That phrase – both a question and a plaintive plea – came to capsulate the entire unplanned and ill-fated Iraq misadventure, from which the US is still struggling to extricate itself. But the question is equally applicable today, as America once again seems bent on blindly stumbling into a new conflict with inadequate preparation, unclear goals and with no clear exit strategy – a possible trade war with China.

I say “possible” because, despite all the huffing and puffing, common sense could still prevail and the US and China could pull back from the brink. But that would require a remarkable public climbdown by US President Donald Trump>>>

As trade dispute grows, China’s state media says Beijing should hit US so hard ‘it remembers the pain’
Communist Party mouthpiece People’s Daily says White House has ‘completely lost its sense of reality’
China’s state media has rallied against the United States, warning its trade protectionism actions would end in defeat and that the only option now was to hit the US hard enough so it would “remember the pain”.

“If the US says that it will pay any price, it must be firmly attacked,” Xinhua said on Saturday.

China warned on Friday it was ready with a “fierce counter strike” of fresh trade measures if Washington followed through on President Donald Trump’s threat to impose tariffs on an additional US$100 billion worth of Chinese goods.

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US Republicans defy party line to denounce Donald Trump’s ‘nuts’ trade moves against China
‘This is the dumbest possible way to do this,’ Republican senator Ben Sasse said after the US leader threatened to levy a bigger set of tariffs on Chinese goods
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One of Trump’s critics from within the Republican camp, Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse, denounced the president’s new ploy as “nuts” and “dumb”.
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"He's threatening to light American agriculture on fire,” the senator said. “Let's absolutely take on Chinese bad behaviour, but with a plan that punishes them instead of us.
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Straying from the traditional party view for the Democrats was Elizabeth Warren.

The Massachusetts senator, who is normally a fierce Trump critic>>>

The Chinese navy has launched a navy drill in the South China Sea involving 40 ships to put on a show of strength as three U.S carrier battle groups pass by.

According to its state media, are centred on the aircraft carrier Liaoning, with warships combining from the North, East and South Sea fleets.

The exercises for the first time also involve its only aircraft carrier, the refurbished Soviet era vessel Liaoning, taking part in live-fire drills.

"We are fully able to inflict as same losses on the US as those on China. The US will have to repay whatever loss and harm it has caused on China with huge economic and political cost... [Americans] must choose whether to support Trump's unscrupulous move or to hold the president accountable."

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The highlight of this special delegation came in the Rose Garden when Jet Li put on a wushu demonstration in front of a prestigious audience, which included former President Richard Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.

After the performance, an impressed President Nixon approached him and asked, “Young man, your kung fu is very impressive. How about being my bodyguard when you grow up?” Without much hesitation, the young Li blurted, “No, I don’t want to protect any individual. When I grow up, I want to defend my one billion Chinese countrymen!”

His response stunned everyone, and it was Kissinger who broke the silence by allegedly saying, “Heavens, such a young boy and he already speaks like a diplomat!” Needless to say, the Chinese government was very pleased with his response>>>

Foreign Minister Wang Yi says Moscow and Beijing must ‘bring common sense to those who think they can do anything theylike’

China and Russia have denounced what they described as America’s unilateralism as both sides sought to flag up their increasing rapport.

They have pledged to deepen their political and military ties at a time when Moscow is facing international isolation over the poisoning of a former spy and his daughter in Britain, and China is becoming embroiled in a tit-for-tat over trade with the US.

Chinese State Councillor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi visited Moscow this week for talks with his Russian counterpart and both sides used the opportunity to criticise the US while highlighting their closer military and political cooperation.

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Commerce minister identifies three areas that may indirectly affect Hong Kong, while economist describes Trump’s actions as ‘all sizzle and no steak’

Hong Kong could be indirectly affected by a further US$100 billion tariffs on Chinese imports, the city’s commerce minister has said, after US president Donald Trump threatened to escalate the trade war on Friday morning

Secretary for Commerce and Economic Development Edward Yau Tang-wah identified three areas where Hong Kong could be hit by the new proposals: entrepot trade, investment in Chinese-made products and the financial market

Trump accused China of “unfair retaliation”>>>

(*what 'unfair retaliation' looks like when Western style boxing challenges Chinese style martial arts)

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Curiously, however, the US seems to be at a loss to explain why or how China’s technology transfer policies and practices amount to a legal violation of its international treaty obligations, notably of its related commitments to the WTO Trips (Trade-related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights). At a WTO Dispute Settlement Body (DSB) meeting in Geneva barely five days after issuing the Section 301 report, the US representative let it be quietly known that on the first, third and fourth counts, China’s practices involving technology or intellectual property transfer did not implicate any specific WTO TRIPS-related obligation. In other words, China’s policies and practices were entirely compliant with its international treaty commitments.

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The satellite will monitor ocean wind and waves.

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(*but our intelligence services are still capable of turning it into something for the masses to fear , right ?
whitehorse souce)

-- A Taiwan official's recent remarks on independence are dangerous and presumptuous, said Ma Xiaoguang, a spokesperson for the Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council, on Monday.

Ma made the comment in response to remarks advocating "Taiwan independence" by the island's executive head, Lai Ching-te.

The spokesperson said Lai's words harm peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait and the fundamental interests of compatriots on both sides, especially Taiwan compatriots.

Ma reiterated that the Chinese mainland and Taiwan belong to one and the same China.>>>

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"This is what a trade war looks like, and what we have warned against from the start," said National Retail Federation President and CEO Matthew Shay.

"We are on a dangerous downward spiral and American families will be on the losing end," Shay added in a statement, urging Trump "to stop playing a game of chicken with the U.S. economy."

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(*well , it's plain to see that the Writer at Reuters is unable to comprehend this 'stroke off genius' )

"It was the rise of Athens and the fear that this instilled in Sparta that made war inevitable," said the Greek general in his History of the Peloponnesian War. Our modern textbook case was Franco-British fear over the rise of Wilhelmine Germany before the First World War (or was it Germany's fear of Tsarist Russia?).

China is no longer a trade "sinner". The US Treasury deems Germany to be a greater violator (via the euro). But that is not what this dispute is really about. The message that emanates from Bolton and Navarro is that China is an elemental threat to US strategic interests and must be checked before it is too late.

This is all too like the thinking of Sparta's Archidamus in 430BC, or the thinking of Germany's high command about Russia in 1914.

China announced additional tariffs on 106 U.S. products on Wednesday, in a move likely to heighten global concerns of a tit-for-tat trade war between the world's biggest economies.

The US believes it can corner Russia, China and Iran: Russia has a 7,000 kilometre border with China, Iran is not Iraq and Syria is not Afghanistan.
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Putin did not declare war on America but extended his hand and tried to build friendship or at least not enmity. But Washington saw in Moscow the potentiality to recover in a couple of decades and worked on slowing down the process or interrupting it if possible. This is why the US started to pull to its side many countries of the ex-Soviet Union which have declared independence and include these in NATO and in the European Union surrounding Russia.

China, which includes cheap labor and can clone any commercial or military technology, like Russia has perceived America’s fear of its rapid economic development and wealth. Thus, the Chinese-Russian rapprochement was mainly created by the aggressive US policy towards the two countries, and this mainly because the American concentrate exclusively on military muscle when dealing with the World.

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Aparently, China and Russia are strengthening their ties in order to make a clear statement to the United States. To do that, Beijing sent a delegation to Russia to show Washington the unity of Russian and Chinese military forces and “support” Russia at the 7th Moscow Conference on International Security.

Chinese Defense Minister Wei Fenghe voiced strong support for Russia during the talks with his Russian counterpart, Sergey Shoigu.>>>

We came ‘to let US know’ about close military ties with Russia – Chinese defense minister in Moscow

Beijing has sent a delegation to Russia to show Washington the unity of Russian and Chinese military forces and “support” Russia at the 7th Moscow Conference on International Security.

Chinese Defense Minister Wei Fenghe voiced strong support for Russia during the talks with his Russian counterpart, Sergey Shoigu. While stressing “the united position” on the international arena, the minister said that one of the main goals of the visit was to send a message to Western powers.

“The Chinese side came to let the Americans know about the close ties between the Russian and Chinese armed forces,” Wei said.

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Moscow and Beijing will team up to create an integrated navigation system based on Russia’s Global Navigation Satellite System (GLONASS) and the Chinese BeiDou. The system will cover most of Eurasia. The countries will reportedly negotiate the merger in May at the International Conference on Advanced Technologies in Manufacturing and Materials Engineering in the Chinese city of Harbin, Izvestia daily reports. The initiative to merge the two separate systems is the result of a proposal made by the Chinese authorities to the Russian Federal Space Agency, Roscosmos. It is intended to create a joint global navigation satellite system, covering the countries of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which include China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, India and Pakistan.