The Lifeboat News
[ Message Archive | The Lifeboat News ]

    An excellent article on China: China Newsbrief ... Archived Message

    Posted by Tomski on September 9, 2020, 5:15 pm

    https://thesaker.is/china-newsbrief-and-sitrep-3/

    By Godfree Roberts selected from his extensive weekly newsletter : Here Comes China

    For this week, we chose issues around the Western War on China, which encompasses all areas of trade and business, the ownership of data which is behind the war on large Chinese technical companies, and the military strength that China is building rapidly, for example the news that China now has the biggest navy in our world. We also saw the release of an annual Pentagon report in the US. Andrei Martyanov …. comments in his last paragraph here: “…something tells me that D.C. long ago lost any touch with the reality …”.

    The open attempt from Pompeo and specifically Steve Bannon to overthrow the CCP will wait for another time. Bannon specifically broadcasts to China and bragged in one of his recent broadcasts that he has 2 Million Chinese listeners, of course ready to overthrow the CCP. This is the clear objective from the US state with Bannon being the purported non-state operational leader.



    What was China’s role in the rising US deficit that has tripled to the highest percentage of GDP since WWII? At the end of 2015, Japan and China’s combined holdings of US Treasuries were 12.8% of the total US debt. They now hold 8.8%, the lowest share in many years. Japan maintained its holdings in June for the third month in a row at $1.26 trillion, but over the 12-month period increased its holdings by $138 billion. China cut its holdings in June by $9 billion, to $1.07 trillion, and over the 12-month period by $38 billion, which follows the trend since 2015, with exception of the V-shaped plunge during peak-capital flight, and the recovery afterwards. The next 10 largest foreign holders include many tax havens and financial center as of June 2019: [MORE]

    Defense

    P.L.A.N. AWACS IN ACTION AGAINST USN CARRIER GROUP

    China launched its 8th. Type 055 and 25th. Type 052D destroyers on Sunday, and experts say that the PLA Navy’s development has entered a new stage, with third generation warships becoming the main battle equipment and fourth generation ones beginning to enter service. The new Chinese warships are superior to world’s top destroyers, including the US’ Arleigh Burke-class and Zumwalt-class, analysts said. China’s main battle destroyers now consist of third-generation vessels, including the Type 052Cs and the Type 052Ds, alongside the fourth-generation Type 055. The Chinese ships’ displacement, technology and combat capability are on the rise as they have gained comprehensive combat capability in air defense, anti-ship and anti-submarine operations.[MORE]

    Pentagon Report: China Now Has World’s Largest Navy as Beijing Expands Military Influence. A key component has been China’s continuing maritime build-up from its surface forces to ballistic missile submarines. Its fleet of 350 warships outnumbers the United States’ 293. “I would also draw your attention to weapons systems and it’s important to highlight the Chinese shipbuilding advantages in terms of its size of the fleet, is both in context of the broader modernization ambitions, virtual class military. This is a long-term challenge and it’s not only demarcated by a single variable, which would be total number of vessels, tonnage capacity, capabilities, location, posture, activities, and then other aspects,” Michael Sbragia told a small group of reporters in a Pentagon briefing. Sbragia said the Pentagon expects the Chinese fleet will number 360 warships by the end of this decade.[MORE]

    Key Takeaways:

    The PRC has numerically the largest navy in the world with an overall battle force of approximately 350 ships and submarines, including more than 130 major surface combatants.
    As of 2019, the PLAN is largely composed of modern multi-role platforms featuring advanced anti-ship, anti-air, and anti-submarine weapons and sensors.
    The PRC commissioned its first domestically built aircraft carrier in late 2019. China expects its second domestically built aircraft carrier to enter service by 2023.
    In 2019, the PRC launched its first Yushen class amphibious assault ship (Type 075 LHA), its first class of large deck amphibious warship.
    In the near-term, the PLAN will have the capability to conduct long-range precision strikes against land targets from its submarine and surface combatants using land-attack cruise missiles, notably enhancing the PRC’s global power projection capabilities.
    The People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) is the largest navy in the world with a battle force of approximately 350 platforms, including major surface combatants, submarines, ocean-going amphibious ships, mine warfare ships, aircraft carriers, and fleet auxiliaries. The PRC’s 2019 defense white paper described the PLAN as speeding up the transition of its tasks from “defense on the near seas” to “protection missions on the far seas.” The PLAN is an increasingly modern and flexible force that has focused on replacing its previous generations of platforms with limited capabilities in favor of larger, modern multi-role combatants. As of 2019, the PLAN is largely composed of modern multi-role platforms featuring advanced anti-ship, anti-air, and anti-submarine weapons and sensors. This modernization aligns with the PRC’s growing emphasis on the maritime domain and increasing demands for the PLAN to operate at greater distances from mainland China. [MORE]

    One must look at the Chinese revival from the perspective of military industry, and at the dark side of white people’s hearts, & what whites think of the rise of the yellow race. From ancient times to the present, from animals to humans, whenever a new boss wants to replace an old boss, a conflict will surely erupt. This is a natural law and no one can defy it.

    Military superiority is the basis of American hegemony that relies on its aircraft carrier combat groups. The United States is far from Eurasia, so the US Army has little effect, relying on the Navy to deter other countries, and the Navy mainly refers to aircraft carriers, which is purely an offensive weapon. The earliest navy relied on battleships. This is the big ship cannonism. The pinnacle of this thinking was the Japanese Yamato battleship, but the emergence of the aircraft carrier quickly eliminated the battleship. The Yamato built by Japan ’s national effort, was almost inactive. The aircraft carrier eliminated the battleship because the battleship ’s guns could not hit the aircraft carrier, and the aircraft carrier ’s carrier-based aircraft could hit the battleship.

    Since then, it has been the world of aircraft carriers.

    The United States has 11 aircraft carrier battle groups sailing the oceans, bullying poor and weak countries everywhere, and it seems invincible. But the Chinese very cleverly invented ballistic missiles like Dongfeng-21D to attack large sea ships like aircraft carriers. This is a strength of the Chinese, because the United States does not believe it needs to study this technology. The price of a Dongfeng-21D is 10 million US dollars, while the price of an aircraft carrier is 4.5 billion US dollars, plus all the carrier-based aircraft, a total of 10 billion US dollars.

    Suppose a round of Dongfeng-21D saturation attack uses 10 missiles, which is 100 million US dollars. I don’t have to lose a soldier, and you have to pay 5000 sailors on the aircraft carrier. How can this battle continue? Dongfeng -21D against an aircraft carrier is even cooler than the aircraft carrier against a battleship. Once China is able to sink an aircraft carrier, other US aircraft carriers will be quickly eliminated, just as the battleship was eliminated. To enable ballistic missiles hitting aircraft carriers, it is not enough to rely on Dongfeng-21D. There must be a complete set of system engineering. The most difficult part is the search, discovery and tracking of aircraft carriers. As long as you can search, track, and lock, you have completed 90% of the tasks.

    This requires the use of China’s sky-wave over-the-horizon radar. At present, China already has two sets of sky-wave radars. As for someone saying that the United States has anti-ballistic weapons, that is nothing more than advertising. The reason is simple. North Korea has launched so many. As long as you can successfully intercept it once, North Korea will be over. He has no way to threaten you again.

    So why doesn’t the United States intercept? It is because it knows that it cannot be stopped. The so-called anti-missile is only a propaganda slogan and has no actual effect. Assuming that the anti-missile is true and can indeed intercept the missile, then there is a simple way. Your price for an anti-missile missile is $ 1.5 million (Patriot 3). Then I launch a common ballistic missile of $ 500,000. Let you intercept. You have to launch at least three to guarantee the interception. Then I will exchange the $ 500,000 missiles for your three $ 1.5 million missiles (total price $ 4.5 million). This is a good deal for me.

    If this battle goes on, you must go bankrupt first. There is a more clever way. I can release a fake warhead. The fake warhead looks exactly like the real one on the radar. For every 1 real warhead I launch, and then 3-4 fake warheads, the radar shows nearly 100 warheads, but only 30% of them are actual warheads. How do you intercept them all?

    Use a $ 1.5 million real missile to intercept a fake warhead that costs only tens of thousands of dollars? What if my first round of volleys were all fake warheads? In the first round, all your interceptor missiles will be used up, then you will have no ammunition. When the United States fights against sanctioned Iraq, the logistics will be tight, not to mention a slightly larger country, which is why the United States has not attacked Iran. Another example is that the two countries will give priority to extinguish each other ’s radar stations. China has built many very cheap cottage radar stations. It will also emit signals in a fight. It looks like the real one. Your missile operates along the radio waves to blow up my cottage radar station, but my cottage radar station only cost tens of thousands of yuan, and your missile cost millions of dollars.

    By the end of 2020, China’s Beidou satellite system will achieve global coverage, and its self-produced aircraft carriers will also be launched. Industrial production capacity far exceeds that of the United States. By that time, the United States will have no advantage. Therefore, the United States must advance the time when the conflict breaks out, and must take advantage of it early while it still has an advantage. However, China strives to postpone the time of conflict and wants to drag it to a time when its own advantages are greater. So you will find that the United States takes the initiative every day to find fault, and China takes the initiative to deal with it every day. By Shao Weihua.

    Shao Weihua is a Taiwanese American who is presently engaged in radar-related work. He graduated from National Taiwan Normal University and has a Ph.D. in Mathematics from Michigan State University. He was an assistant professor of mathematics at George Mason University .

    Technology War

    Huawei, Tik-Tok and WeChat:

    First, let’s dispel the combined notion that China spies on everyone and the US spies on no one. There is so much public evidence to destroy both these assertions that I won’t bother repeating them here. I will however remind readers that a few years ago China more or less banned Windows 8 from the country because it was discovered that the O/S had a built-in NSA back door.[1] It seems that Germany reported on this first, but the devastating proof was at an IT conference where a Microsoft executive was interrupted during a speech with precisely this accusation.[2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9] He did not deny it because the person making the accusation was the person who discovered it and had with him the proof, but refused to discuss it and changed the subject. But this is hardly news. Forty years ago it was proven that all Xerox copy machines delivered to foreign embassies and consulates in the US were “espionage-ready”.[10][11] Also, for at least 20 years, and perhaps much more, it was common knowledge that when any foreign embassies, consulates, banks and other corporations ordered computers and similar hardware from US suppliers, those shipments were intercepted by UPS, delivered to the CIA and/or NSA for installation of “extra” hardware and software before delivery to their destinations. This was one of the confirmations by Edward Snowden.[12][13][14][15] Any search on this will give you millions of hits unless Google chooses that moment to lose its memory.

    Huawei: Trump’s problems with Huawei are twofold. The most obvious is that China is eating America’s lunch when it comes to innovation and invention and Trump would like to slow this down by destroying Huawei and is clearly making every possible effort in this regard, including bullying and threatening half the known world against using Huawei’s products. But this is the small part of the problem; the real issue is espionage. There is no practical value in disputing the assertion that Cisco and other American hardware and software firms install back doors to all their equipment for the convenience of CIA and NSA access. But suddenly Huawei is replacing Cisco and those other American firms with its better and less expensive equipment. That part is okay, but how can the CIA and NSA approach Huawei and ask the company to build back doors into its equipment so the US can spy on China – among all other countries? There is no solution to this problem other than to trash Huawei’s reputation by accusing it of being an espionage threat and having the company’s equipment banned. And this applies not only to the US, but to the entire Five Eyes Espionage Network, involving the US, Canada, the UK, Australia and New Zealand.[16] Briefly, this was set up to break laws while pretending no laws were being broken. It is generally against the law for a government to spy on its own citizens, but that law doesn’t apply to a foreign government. So Canada spies on Australian citizens and sends the information to the Australian spooks who can claim they did nothing wrong. Rinse and repeat. The sad part is that the “intelligence” received is usually of little interest to the four minor participants but all of it is shared with the US who are frothing to spy on the entire world and to take possession of “every communication” of every kind in the entire world. Thus, it isn’t sufficient to ban Huawei only from the US because this company’s equipment would castrate the NSA’s effort in the other four nations. Thus, US bullying to ensure each of its five eyes is Huawei-free. And that’s the entire story, like it or not.

    Tik-Tok: Tik-Tok is nothing of consequence, except that it is in direct competition with similar American platforms and has proven too popular and too competitive to be permitted to survive. This is just a cheap, below-the-belt and illegal-as-hell shot at China. No threat, no nothing. However, as with all similar IT products and platforms it contains much personal information especially useful for marketing, which has so far been the private property of people like Google, Facebook and Twitter. Thus, Trump kills two birds with one stone: either simply kill Tik-Tok on some trumped-up accusation (if you’ll excuse the expression) of espionage, or force a sale to an American company. Either way, China loses massively while the political oppression and marketing value of that personal information remains safely in trusted American hands.

    WeChat: Since few Americans are familiar with WeChat, let me give you a description. Many of these functions are available in the West through various platforms, but not always to the same extent nor with the same convenience. With WeChat we can transmit text and voice messages, photos and videos, and other files of any description even of many Mb in size.
    FOR FREE.
    We can send and receive both text and voice messages in any language because WeChat has an excellent translation function in combination with one of its partners which translates not only text and voice, but will extract and translate all text contained in photos, handy for restaurant menus if you can’t read Chinese.
    FOR FREE
    We can place not only voice calls but video calls to anyone anywhere that transmit over the internet.
    FOR FREE
    It is so convenient that WeChat is the default communication choice for a great many people for most purposes. WeChat also has a Moments platform where we can post text, photos, videos, that are visible to those on our contact lists while selecting those who can view and who cannot, reserving some posts for close friends and others more generally public. In China we have two primary online payment systems, one operated by Alibaba (called Alipay) and the other by WeChat. Its use is nearly universal in China and both are free to the user.During the past several years I cannot recall a single instance where I had cash in my pocket (even small change) when I went anywhere or was shopping for anything. Even to purchase a small bunch of green onions at a street market, the vendor has a QR code which my phone scans and the payment into their bank account is automatic. With WeChat, we can send money to each other.
    FOR FREE
    If we want to share the cost of lunch, you can pay the entire bill and I transfer my share to you through WeChat. If I ever need cash, I could go to any shop or even approach a complete stranger and ask for 1,000 RMB and instantly repay him into his WeChat account. It is frequently used to transfer money internationally this way, sending dollars to a friend in one country and receiving RMB into a WeChat account in China. Instant, secure, and free of all fees.
    FREE FREE FREE FREE FREE FREE FREE
    It all happens within a second, with a concurrent text message confirmation from the bank of both sides of the transaction. WeChat is the main reason people can travel anywhere in China with only a mobile phone and passport (and a change of clothing). Through WeChat, people can purchase plane or train tickets, pay taxi fares and hotel bills, restaurant tabs, in the same way.
    FOR FREE
    Another useful WeChat function is real-time GPS location sharing. If a group is traveling to a destination in several cars, WeChat displays an active GPS map showing all locations in real space and time. If I am meeting a friend at a shopping mall or park or other large location, with this GPS function we can see each other’s location in real time and I know which way to walk to encounter my friend. We have WeChat groups which we can create with any number of participants for any convenient purpose. During the COVID-19 lockdown in Shanghai we had a temporary WeChat group for the purchase of meat and vegetables that functioned better than any supermarket and with much less trouble. If I want to have a Christmas party I form a group of those I plan to invite, and all our discussions and planning take place within that platform. Most communities (small portions of residential districts) have a WeChat group for notification of community events and sharing important information.

    The point with Trump’s “sanction” of WeChat is first that it will terminally disrupt international communications between China and the US for students, scientists, diplomats, media reporters, for all those in the US who have frequent communications with China, effects felt more seriously by those in China, which is a plus for Trump. Second, Trump’s administration is uncomfortable with the extent to which WeChat is encroaching on the American turf of Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram and more, with already around 100 million downloads in the US, and his actions are partially to reclaim that turf by simply banning a competing medium that is threatening to take over and seriously downgrade the popularity of similar American platforms. But most important is the espionage and censorship role of Trump’s initiative.

    As the censorship noose tightens around Facebook and Twitter, Americans are naturally moving to WeChat. The real issue is not that WeChat poses any danger to the US in any sense but, as with Huawei, the CIA and NSA cannot very well approach WeChat and ask for automatic sharing of all that personal relationship data. Therefore, under the guise of China being untrustworthy, the US government simply bans WeChat and thus no one in the US can send or receive any message without the NSA having a copy. A huge plus is that any news not fitting the official narrative will then be strangled at birth, as Google, Facebook and Twitter are now doing. If Microsoft or another American firm were to buy WeChat, then of course all is well since it is US firms, not Chinese, who automatically share all personal contact data with their government. [MORE]

    Notes
    [1] https://www.cnet.com/news/china-bans-windows-8-from-government-computers/
    [2] https://www.rt.com/news/windows-8-nsa-germany-862/
    [3] https://www.technobuffalo.com/nsa-windows-8-exploit
    [4] https://wccftech.com/windows-nsa-backdoor-shadow-brokers/
    [5] https://www.pcworld.com/article/2047332/is-windows-8-a-trojan-horse-for-the-nsa-the-german-government-thinks-so.html
    [6] http://techrights.org/2013/06/15/nsa-and-microsoft/
    [7] https://www.forbes.com/sites/daveywinder/2019/11/12/windows-10-security-alert-hidden-backdoor-found-by-kaspersky-researchers/
    [8] https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/1160914-how-nsa-access-was-built-into-windows/
    [9] http://techrights.org/2013/06/15/nsa-and-microsoft/
    [10] http://electricalstrategies.com/about/in-the-news/spies-in-the-xerox-machine/
    [11] https://www.unz.com/lromanoff/state-sponsored-commercial-espionage-the-global-theft-of-ideas/
    [12] https://www.extremetech.com/computing/173721-the-nsa-regularly-intercepts-laptop-shipments-to-implant-malware-report-says
    [13] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/report-nsa-intercepts-computer-deliveries/
    [14] https://www.computerworld.com/article/2487222/the-nsa-intercepts-computer-deliveries-to-plant-spyware.html
    [15] https://www.infoworld.com/article/2608141/snowden–the-nsa-planted-backdoors-in-cisco-products.html
    [16] https://americanfreepress.net/five-eyes-network-sees-all/

    Also a good one from Martynov (one of the links):

    http://smoothiex12.blogspot.com/2020/09/worth-thousand-words.html




    Message Thread:

    • An excellent article on China: China Newsbrief ... - Tomski September 9, 2020, 5:15 pm
      • Y axis - Shyaku September 10, 2020, 11:32 am