Thread: Eurasia Topics

Originally Posted by Latindancer

Four years...

Words really do fail me. How do they rationalize this ?

Simple. By renaming reporting to “picking quarrels and provoking trouble”

Originally Posted by OhOh

Xi said he hoped the EU would promote free trade and multilateralism, and provide an open, fair and nondiscriminatory business environment for Chinese investors.

Sorry Xi, no Huawei

Originally Posted by OhOh

Jochum Haakma, chairman of Brussels-based EU-China Business Association, said .... <snip> ... "It will be of great importance and a big step for the bilateral relationship and shows the political willingness of both parties to continue to sit down together and to try to solve problems and misunderstandings on the basis of reciprocity and a level playing field"

I think it's more likely he's on the chinky payroll than a gullible fucking idiot, although both are possible.

True...he's probably a gaslighter, sowing doubt on our minds.

China-EU deal is a reality check for India

December 31, 2020 by M. K. BHADRAKUMAR





"After seven long years of negotiations, China and the European Union announced on December 30 that they have reached a Comprehensive Agreement on Investment (CAI). It is a hugely consequential event for the world economy and international politics. The agreement is destined to rebalance the trade and investment relationship between two of the top three economic powers in the world, binding them to values-based investment principles rooted in sustainable development principles.

The agreement envisages that China will open up to provide an unprecedented market access for EU investors, giving them certainty and predictability for their operations and a level playing field with transparency and accountability, apart from committing on environment and climate and on labour standards. The agreement also provides for a robust enforcement and monitoring mechanism.

The European Commission’s press release outlining the key elements of the agreement is here. The Chinese commentaries describe the agreement as “an extraordinary boost for pragmatic cooperation” between the EU and its largest trading partner China based on win-win approach, to mutual benefit, being the basic logic in the era of globalisation. (here and here)

President Xi Jinping stressed at the video conference that the “balanced, high-level, and mutually beneficial” pact demonstrates China’s determination and confidence to open up on a high-level, and Beijing will provide broader market access, a better business environment, stronger institutional guarantees and brighter prospects for bilateral cooperation.

Xi vowed that China and the EU, “two of the world’s major powers, civilisations and markets,” are set to enhance mutual trust and join hands together to kick off a new start in 2021 and signal to the world community that notwithstanding differences on some issues, “both sides have the political willingness to enhance dialogue, deepen cooperation and share the benefits based on mutual respect.”

According to Eurostat data, in 2019 the EU had exported goods worth approximately US$242 billion to China and imported goods worth US$442 billion from China, with a bilateral trade worth some US$650 billion last year. China is the second largest FDI recipient after the US counting – according to Rhodium Group. The CAI’s main objective would be an enhanced protection of EU investments in China and vice versa, improved legal certainty regarding the treatment of EU investors in China, reduction of barriers to investing in China, and as a result, increasing bilateral investment flows and improved access to the Chinese market. Indeed, the CAI signifies a turning point in China-EU relations.

Some analysts estimate that the EU has snubbed the US by concluding the CAI unilaterally. But the high probability is that the EU expects the Biden administration to find an alignment with the CAI and follow its footfalls to use trade and investment relationship with China as a key stimulus for post-pandemic economic recovery.

If that happens, the CAI may represent not only a strong foundation towards a sustainable cooperation between China and the EU but can also provide a reference point for China-US bilateral negotiations about issues such as the Phase Two trade deal. Of course, this would mean that the relations among China, EU and the US will be based on similar principles and will tend to achieve similar goals, thus curtailing both current and potential conflicts in the future.

In a statement in Paris on Wednesday, President Emmanuel Macron said, “The dialog between Europe and China has strengthened and become more balanced these past few years. It continues.” Macron offered to visit China in the coming months along with German Chancellor Angela Merkel to discuss other areas of cooperation. To be sure, the CAI bears the imprimatur of German Chancellor Angela Merkel who was determined to finalise the CAI during Berlin’s presidency of the EU.

Suffice to say, the Franco-German axis is at work and the momentum will continue during the French presidency of the EU next year. Significantly, Germany is proceeding with Huawei’s access in its 5G sector, while the Chinese company has chosen Brumath Business Park in the Grand-Est region of France, close to the French-German border, to build its new European production facility to manufacture technological solutions for mobile networks for Huawei customers in Europe, with an annual production value in the order of 1 billion euros. Huawei already has 23 R&D centres in Europe and partnerships with over 100 universities, and a highly performant supply chain including 3100 companies.

Clearly, Indian policymakers ought to take note that there is a powerful sign in all of this to the US that real, tangible power in the world order has shifted. The next two decades are going to be critical “because China will use them to become the first global power,” as EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell wrote recently. Borrell, interestingly, has also implied the inevitability of China’s rise as the number one world power.

In geopolitical terms, the CAI flags that Europe intends to be strategically independent. It shatters India’s foreign policy assumptions that Europe is preparing to the US-led “Indo-Pacific” strategy to contain China. The heart of the matter is that Europe is backing out of the US project for a binary world.

Biden has to take note that his predecessor’s raucous “Indo-Pacific strategy” is a road to nowhere without the European allies. Europe is in quest of permanent institutionalised peace in the continent. In a forceful essay last week, former German foreign minister and a highly respected European thinker Joschka Fischer wrote,

“Europeans must make clear to the Biden administration from the start what Europe can and cannot do. America is a global power… Europe, by contrast, consists of many small- and medium-size countries, each of which has only limited ability to project power and influence… Past experience with military missions outside of Europe has shown that the perspective of a global power differs fundamentally from that of a small- or medium-sized power. European voters recognise this, and it will have a strong bearing on whether they accept such missions in the future.

“In the context of the transatlantic relationship, Europe’s role is to defend NATO territory and its precarious periphery. In Eastern Europe, this concerns primarily the Baltic states.., the war in eastern Ukraine, and other “frozen conflicts” in Europe’s neighbourhood. Resolving these – or at least achieving some sort of stabilisation – will require a much more forceful European diplomatic response… As for world politics, Europe must leave this domain to the global superpowers – a title it cannot claim for itself. This is particularly true when it comes to China… NATO should not be made into a security organisation for East Asia, as that would simply overstretch it.”
The bottom line is that on the one hand, in contrast to the Trump presidency, Biden’s administration is expected to work alongside allies such as the EU to manage relations with China, while on the other hand, the EU and China have rushed to get a deal done. Of course, this is not a deal against America, but the fact remains that a China-EU alignment makes nonsense of the single most potent weapon in the US armoury, namely, the ever-looming threat of sanctions against an adversary.

It can only mean the end of US hegemony in the Asia-Pacific and in the western hemisphere. Where does that leave Quad? Alas, India punched far above its weight and the outcome is predictable. Fortunately, India is not in the dire straits as Australia finds itself. Beijing remains keen on rebooting cooperation with India. But India needs to jettison its delusional thinking and assess realistically the emergent directions of the reshaping of the world order.

China is entering 2021 with wind at its back. China’s economic strength will only increase as global trade keeps recovering. In the OECD’s estimation, China will account for around one-third of the world’s economic recovery in the new year."

https://indianpunchline.com/china-eu...eck-for-india/

Surprisingly, after all these trade wars with China, the supplying business is well running. Currently, all ships heading to US ports are fully loaded...

As usually, the big mouth politics does not prevail over the business...

Originally Posted by harrybarracuda

he's on the chinky payroll

Every little helps.

Attachment 62584

Originally Posted by OhOh

Every little helps.

. . . to make the billionaire Xi even wealthier through his corruption

China Firmly Opposes US Destroyers Sailing Through Taiwan Strait

Wipe away the tears, Mr. Shithole, wipe away the tears.

Drugmakers Agree to Halve Prices to Secure Access to China

Bloomberg News December 28, 2020, 12:16 PM GMT+7 Updated on December 28, 2020, 8:12 PM GMT+7

"Drugmakers from AstraZeneca Plc and GlaxoSmithKline Plc to BeiGene Ltd. agreed to cut prices on some of their newest drugs in China by an average of 51% in order to be covered by the country’s national insurance fund.A total of 119 new therapies -- treating ailments from pulmonary diseases and diabetes to cancers and lupus -- were added for coverage by the state-run medical safety net after drawn-out negotiations, the National Healthcare Security Administration said in a notice posted on its website Monday.

The average price cut is 10 percentage points less than last year, a relief to both domestic and foreign drugmakers that have seen their profits eroded by Beijing’s push to drive down health-care costs. Companies are eager to get their treatments on the list even at steep discounts to gain access to the world’s second-biggest market for pharmaceuticals.

China Is Striving for the World’s Best, Cheapest Healthcare

Patients in China will only need to pay for a small fraction of the cost of these drugs out of their own pocket as the lion’s share of the bill will be footed by China’s 2.44 trillion yuan ($373 billion) national medical insurance fund, which covers more than 95% of the country’s 1.4 billion people. The list of medicines covered by the fund has been updated annually with new entries since 2017, when Beijing accelerated its campaign to bring new drugs to its growing middle class as quickly and cheaply as possible.

In total, Chinese patients can now draw on state insurance to pay for 2,800 medicines. Beijing also managed to slash prices more than 40% on average for 14 drugs whose annual sales exceed 1 billion yuan each. The new version of the drug-reimbursement list will be effective from March 1.

The drugs that made it on the latest list include AstraZeneca’s cancer therapy Zoladex. Brukinsa, the first cancer drug from China to ever receive U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval, developed by Beijing-based BeiGene, was also added.

Glaxo drugs Benlysta and Volibris, which treat lupus and high-blood pressure in the lungs, respectively, made the list. Other top-of-the-line therapies from multinationals were a diabetes drug from Novo Nordisk S/A, a medicine for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease developed by Astra, and an ulcerative colitis therapy by Takeda Pharmaceutical Co.

The latest inclusions feature popular immune cancer therapies known as PD-1 inhibitors, cancer treatments that use the body’s immune system to fight tumors -- a priority for Beijing given that China has around 4 million new cancer patients annually. Included are treatments developed by local companies BeiGene, Jiangsu Hengrui Medicine Co. and Shanghai Junshi Biosciences Co.

The list also highlights treatments for Covid-19 such as the antivirals ribavirin and arbidol, although China has largely contained coronavirus flareups after the outbreak a year ago in Wuhan that sparked the pandemic.

How China’s Drug-Buying Program Is Causing Pain: QuickTake

It is unclear how deep a cut each company consented for individual therapies. The National Healthcare Security Administration in the past has reached agreements with some drugmakers to withhold the details of the price cuts. Those missing from the new list include Merck & Co. and Bristol-Myers Squibb Co.’s best-selling cancer therapies Keytruda and Opdivo.

For foreign drugmakers, the competition in China has brought significant sacrifices. New drugs are often brought to the market at prices lower than they are sold in the West, but still face competition from a growing legion of Chinese biotech firms developing similar medicines that can be sold more cheaply.

The process can be painful for local companies as well. Chinese drugmaker Simcere Pharmaceutical Group said it had agreed to slash the price of its newly approved stroke therapy by almost 70% to get it on the reimbursement list, figuring expanded access would fuel sales. Green Valley Pharmaceuticals, based in Shanghai, said it had participated in the price negotiations for its Alzheimer’s disease drug but didn’t obtain reimbursement status.

Global pharmaceutical companies’ older drugs that have gone off-patent are also facing price cuts. In a separate national campaign in which China’s public hospitals bulk-buy generic medications, prices have been driven down by as much as 90%.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...o-china-market

That's great news for the chinkies, they can actually get some safe drugs.

Until the chinkies do the usual and start knocking them off of course.

Preview signals Biden’s foreign policy shifts


January 4, 2021 by M. K. BHADRAKUMAR

"In his first media interview, the incoming US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan has given a preview of Joe Biden administration’s foreign policy directions in regard of Russia, Iran and China. Major shifts can be expected in the policies toward both China and Iran while selective engagement of Russia is on cards.

RUSSIA

Sullivan noted that it was “most likely” that Russia is responsible for the massive cyber attacks on the US government system, critical infrastructure and private sector entities that have come to light recently. He didn’t want to “telegraph our punches” but forewarned that Biden will impose “substantial costs” on Russia.

Biden will “choose his time and place” pending a thorough assessment regarding the intent of the attack, how far and wide it had spread and precisely what might result from it. Prima facie, this appears to go beyond“random opportunities for espionage” and downstream destructive action cannot be ruled out. Biden has told aides that from day 1, cyber security will be “a top national security priority of his administration.”

However, Sullivan drew the analogy of the Cold War to point out that even when the US and the former Soviet Union arrayed thousands of nuclear warheads against each other on “a hair trigger”, and spoke in existential terms about their competition with each other, there were areas of cooperation — “more specifically, on arms control and nuclear non-proliferation.”

Therefore, the US and Russia “can act in their national interests” to advance an arms control and strategic stability agenda amidst today’s tense relations. Sullivan disclosed that Biden has “tasked us to pursue from right outside the gate” (after the inaugural ceremony on Jan. 20) the renewal of the new START agreement. He admitted that US will have to look at “extending that treaty in the interests of the United States.”

Sullivan didn’t expand on this selective engagement with Russia to include other issues (eg., Syria, Ukraine, etc.) or on the need of cooperation to meet common challenges. But Sullivan did not use any harsh language against “Russian aggression,” leave alone call Russia a “revisionist power”, etc. Nor did he make any critical references to Russian policies.

Sullivan’s remarks in a measured tone followed come only days after an unusual gesture by Russian President Vladimir Putin last week to convey his Christmas and New Year greetings to Biden where he touched on the “the importance of broad international cooperation” in the backdrop of the coronavirus pandemic and “other challenges which the world faced”.

Putin went on to express the hope that “by building a relationship in the spirit of equality and consideration for each other’s interests, Russia and the United States could contribute much to enhancing stability and security at the regional and global levels.”

CHINA

As regards China, Sullivan’s extended remarks signalled that Biden’s approach will be radically different from that of the Trump administration. He criticised that Trump took on China on its own, while also “picking fights” with its allies and partners. Whereas, Biden intends to “consult with our allies and partners” on how together the US can bring leverage to come to bear on China’s most problematic trade abuses, including dumping, illegal subsidies for state-owned enterprises, forced labour and environmental practices that hurt American workers and farmers and businesses.

Sullivan exuded confidence that said Biden’s extensive contacts with lawmakers in the Congress will help push through his China policies. “He (Biden) knows his mind on China and he is going to carry forward a strategy that is not based on politics, not based on being pushed around by domestic constituencies, but based on the American national interests.”

Sullivan described it as a “clear-eyed strategy, a strategy that recognises that China is a serious strategic competitor to the US that acts in ways that are at odds with our interests in many ways including trade.” At the same time, “it is also a strategy that recognises that we will work with China when it is in our interests to do so”, such as on climate change.

To quote Sullivan, Biden’s strategy will be to work on “our sources of strength here at home so that we can more effectively compete with China on technology, economy and innovation, more effectively invest in our alliances, so as to build up to develop leverages.”

Alongside, the US will be active in international institutions so that it is the US and its partners and not China “who is calling the shots at the key tables on issues ranging from nuclear non-proliferation to international economics.” Sullivan said that Biden’s strategy will be rooted in a clear assessment of the challenges the US faces, of America’s national interests and what are “the points of strength we can bring to bear in this competition.”

What Sullivan didn’t say merits careful attention too. Never once did he mention Trump’s Indo-Pacific strategy or the Quad. He completely avoided any critical remarks about China or references to contentious issues such as Taiwan, Hong Kong, Xinjiang or Tibet.

Sullivan’s characterisation of China as a “serious strategic competitor” differs sharply from the Trump administration’s projection of China as a rival and irreconcilable enemy and aggressor. Indeed, he spoke about the imperatives of engagement with China despite differences.

IRAN

When it comes to Iran, Sullivan did not mince words to underscore that Trump’s maximum pressure policy has been a spectacular failure insofar as Iran is closer to a nuclear weapon today than before and its policies are posing “continuing, ongoing concerns”. Clearly, the promises made by the Trump administration — that US would extract a better nuclear deal, stop Iran’s malign behaviour and so on — did not bear out. The assassination of Qassem Soleimani showed that a strategy that is “so focused on one element of American power and completely sets aside diplomacy” cannot ultimately help attain the US’ strategic objectives.

Sullivan reaffirmed Biden’s stance that if Iran comes back into compliance with the 2015 nuclear deal — that is, reduces its stockpiles, takes down some of its centrifuges — so that it is “back in the box”, then the US will also return to the JCPOA. Significantly, he added, “And that will become the basis of follow-on negotiation.” Sullivan flagged the following:

• Iran’s ballistic missile “has to be on the table” as part of follow-on negotiation.
  
• There could be conversations that go beyond the P5 + 1 and “involve the regional players” as well.
  
• In that “broader negotiation”, we can “ultimately secure limits on Iran’s ballistic missile technology” and that is what Biden administration will try to pursue through diplomacy to address both the nuclear file and a broader range of regional issues.”

Sullivan who was instrumental in preparing the ground for the negotiations leading to the JCPOA, noted that the very logic of the 2015 deal was that it’d be narrowly focused on Iran’s nuclear programme, while the US would retain all its capacities — sanctions, intelligence capability, deterrent capacity — to push back at Iran on all other issues.

He said the US had made no assumptions that by going into the nuclear deal, it would change Iran’s behaviour on other issues. But what the US estimated was that if it had the Iranian nuclear programme “in a box, it could then begin to chip away” at some of the other issues. Sullivan regretted that the US did not pursue “clear-eyed diplomacy backed by deterrence”, which was the hallmark of what produced the JCPOA.
Having said that, “it was never fundamentally a part of the nuclear deal that we had expectations.” Therefore, “As we move forward, we will look at each of these issues in its own distinctive way, without presuming that progress on one aspect will necessarily mean progress on other aspects too.”
To be sure, Israel, Saudi Arabia and the UAE will feel disappointed that the “maximum pressure” strategy is going to be unceremoniously dumped, and renewed US-Iranian engagement is on cards. Biden apparently sees no problem in associating Saudi Arabia and the UAE with the forthcoming process of engagement with Iran, but it also has flip side insofar as Iran’s missile capability is its deterrence against the massive arms build-up by these two countries as well as Israeli belligerence.

Therefore, Iran will not agree to unilaterally abandon its deterrent capability. And it is unlikely that Israel would disarm or that the Saudis and Emiratis would agree to curtail their excessive arms purchases. Arguably, the western powers themselves may not be enthusiastic about the highly lucrative West Asian arms bazaar drying up.
Iran has reacted sharply to Sullivan’s remarks saying, “As for Iran’s defence capability, there has never been, there is no and there won’t be any negotiation.” Suffice to say, the US will have to incentivise Iran. A rollback of US sanctions, as provided under the JCPOA, will be a step in that direction.
The bottom line is that Sullivan refrained from demanding any re-negotiation of the JCPOA. Sullivan has phrased it as “follow-on negotiation.” Now, there is going to be a great sense of urgency in kickstarting negotiations. Today, Iran’s enriched uranium stockpiles vastly exceed the limit set by the JCPOA.
Iran also announced today that it has begun the pre-processing stage of gas injection earlier in the underground Fordow nuclear site and the first UF6 enriched uranium will be produced “in a few hours”.

The transcript of Jake Sullivan’s interview with CNN is here."

https://indianpunchline.com/preview-...policy-shifts/

Head of Ukrainian doctors’ group accuses government of ‘lying’ over refusal to register Russian Sputnik V Covid-19 vaccine

4 Jan, 2021 17:49

"A row in Kiev over the government’s decision not to register a Russian-made coronavirus jab has worsened, with one of the country’s most senior doctors saying officials are not being straight about the reasons behind the move.

Sergey Kravchenko, the head of the National Medical Chamber of Ukraine, a public organization representing doctors, rubbished claims that Kiev could approve vaccines only once they had completed phase-three trials. Writing on Facebook on Sunday, he said it was “a lie [from health officials] that it is impossible to register the Sputnik V vaccine.”

The World Health Organization, he said, had “recommended that all countries switch to emergency vaccine registration due to the global pandemic, as the complete process for clinical research otherwise takes three to five years.” He also noted that eight vaccines were being made available across the globe, none of which have completed phase-three trials in full.

Over the weekend, after a request from a local firm that had hoped to manufacture the formula for distribution in Kharkov, Chief Sanitary Doctor Viktor Lyashko rejected suggestions the country would consider registering Sputnik V. In a message on his official Facebook page, he wrote these “rumors … do not correspond to reality” because “Ukraine will use only those vaccines against Covid-19 that successfully pass the third phase of clinical research trials.”

Politicians have since weighed in on the debate, with the leader of the largest opposition group in the Ukrainian parliament, Viktor Medvedchuk, writing on his website that the decision was a “misunderstanding of medicine” and had “nothing to do with health, nor with the interests of Ukrainian citizens.”

Medvedchuk also took issue with the idea that phase-three trials would have to be completed before an inoculation could be made available, insisting that “none of the vaccines have passed the third phase of clinical trials – not for Pfizer, Moderna, or AstraZeneca.” He added that he would “like to see a specialist explain this to Mr. Lyashko and he, in turn, can convey these facts to President [Volodymyr] Zelensky.”

According to the US National Library of Medicine, which maintains a database of all trials in the country, Moderna’s formula is due to complete its study in 2022, with Pfizer and AstraZeneca finishing Phase III tests in 2023.
Kiev announced in December that it would soon receive a shipment of 8 million doses of a vaccine through the COVAX international access initiative. It is currently unclear which formula might be supplied, but, as those responding to Lyashko have pointed out, not one company’s products have yet reached the standards Kiev is insisting upon."

Head of Ukrainian doctors’ group accuses government of ‘lying’ over refusal to register Russian Sputnik V Covid-19 vaccine — RT Russia & Former Soviet Union

The Geo-politics of EU-China Investment Deal

04.01.2021 Author: Salman Rafi Sheikh

"The recently announced EU-China principally agreed investment deal is a watershed moment, marking a first EU-China investment deal of its kind that would open the doors for the EU to make direct investment in China. China will also have opportunities to expand its reach in the European market. While the deal would yield numerous benefits to the parties involved, it also has very visible geo-political strings attached to it, which involve not only the EU and China, but the US as well. The EU-China deal is being seen in the US both by the Trump administration (which is already in a state of ‘trade war’ with China) and the Biden administration as a set-back to their stated policy of following a ‘tough’ approach to China. China’s expansion in the EU will allow the former to largely escape the impact of the on-going ‘trade war’ and give its economy a major leeway. For the US, therefore, this deal needs to be reviewed in light of its own policy of calculated confrontation with China. The US aims to exert its influence to make the EU fall in line with the US policy.

Jake Sullivan, President-elect Joe Biden’s choice for national security adviser, urged “early consultations with our European partners on our common concerns about China’s economic practices.” The tweet reflects a growing concern among the Biden administration’s officials that formalization of the EU-China CAI without the US could seriously jeopardize the latter’s ability to not only shape the broader dynamics of EU-China bi-lateral ties, but also dent its ability to enlist EU support to form a common front against China. The Biden administration is, therefore, looking to maintain a similar policy stance vis-à-vis China that the Trump administration has largely followed over the last four years. US-China relations under the Biden administration are, therefore, unlikely to return to normal. They are, as it stands, expected to exacerbate due to the increasing military competition.

For the US, the primary concern is not the deal in itself; it is the way this deal would make the EU an independent actor in its dealings with China. After the deal, the EU will be able to shape and determine its policies vis-à-vis China as an equal and an independent player, giving the European bloc the political clout it has been trying to establish to balance its relations with the US. There are tensions in the NATO, and the US, under the Trump administration, has unleashed forces that have pushed the EU increasingly towards an independent foreign policy, and even contemplate an internal European security system, independent on NATO.

The fact that China has recently offered massive concessions to the EU also indicates how China is trying to fully capitalize on the existing US-EU rifts, giving the later incentives that it may find too attractive to reject. Chinese concessions have already yielded the agreement in principal, compelling both France and Germany to imperceptibly shift from their so-called “Indo-Pacific” policy of “managing” the rise of China to co-existing with the latter in a way that would give the EU a much sought-after access to the Chinese market.

With China easing access to its manufacturing industry, it has addressed one of EU’s key concerns. While almost all EU countries have their bi-lateral agreements, the CAI is the first “stand-alone investment agreement covering both market access and investment protection. The CAI would replace the existing 25 BITs with a uniform legal framework with modern protection standards and dispute settlement arrangements.”Accordingly, while the EU and China are increasingly bridging their mutual differences [the EU changing its security postures and the Chinese relaxing their rules], the EU-US divide is increasing.

The recently introduced European Digital Services Act (DSA) and Digital Markets Act (DMA) are likely to further deepen transatlantic divide over digital commerce. Differences over digital services market will add to the already existing tensions with regards to the NATO, climate change and EU-US economic relations.

European laws will have an adverse impact on the US. In 2019, the United States exported 196 billion dollars in information and communications technology (ICT) services, and potentially ICT-enabled services, to the EU. Google has already said that this set of legislation is aimed at shackling US companies. The US Chamber of Commerce said that “Europe is intent on punishing successful companies that have made deep investments in Europe’s economic growth and recovery.”

The EU-China investment deal is, therefore, as much rooted in China’s own urge to expand as in the EU’s own growing search for its own place, independent of the US, in the world that is becoming increasingly multipolar.

The EU is responding to the way the US moved to economic nationalism under the Trump administration. While Joe Biden has termed Trump’s “America First” a bad policy, the fact that this policy remained in place for 4 years means that it was able to inflict substantial changes to the way the transatlantic alliance would otherwise engage and come together face common foes. The EU, as it stands, is not simply coming together with the US to “manage” China; instead it has chartered a course of action that suits its interests and needs. As EU diplomats have said, if the EU companies are able to get a much better access to China and find a reasonably ‘level playing field’ there, there is no reason why they should not engage with China."

https://journal-neo.org/2021/01/04/t...vestment-deal/

It's good that you're finally being honest HooHoo. Why the change of heart?

Originally Posted by OhOh

China’s most problematic trade abuses, including dumping, illegal subsidies for state-owned enterprises, forced labour and environmental practices

Originally Posted by OhOh

Head of Ukrainian doctors’ group accuses government of ‘lying’ over refusal to register Russian Sputnik V Covid-19 vaccine

He doesn't need to be evasive. Just saying that "we're not buying it because it's fucking shit" will do.

Originally Posted by OhOh

As EU diplomats have said, if the EU companies are able to get a much better access to China and find a reasonably ‘level playing field’ there, there is no reason why they should not engage with China."

I wonder how much these "diplomats" and their bosses stand to benefit from chinky largesse and selling their countries out?

The whole point is that they won't gain easier access nor a level playing field as Chinese companies would fold by the thousands

America’s Defining Problem in 2021 Isn’t China: It’s America


January 4, 2021 1:01 pm

Andrew J. Bacevich "Writing in the journal Palladium, Richard Hanania has produced the first must-read essay of 2021. A research fellow at Columbia University’s Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies, Hanania is part of an emerging generation of young scholars who reject the increasingly dubious verities of the Cold War and post-Cold War eras. Their arrival comes not a moment too soon.

The title of Hanania’s piece is “China’s Real Threat is to America’s Ruling Ideology.” In this context, ideology refers not only to a belief system—liberal democratic capitalism, in our case—but also to a theory of history. Hanania’s real subject is delusion: Washington’s insistence despite abundant evidence to the contrary that the American way of life defines the ultimate destiny of humankind.

Hanania’s essay deserves to be read in its entirety. But a brief synopsis of his argument goes like this: despite the alarmism of official Washington in depicting China as the “national security issue of our time,” the PRC’s emergence as a great power “in no way harms the prosperity or security of most Americans.”

Ordinary Americans have no reason to fear the People’s Republic, Hanania writes. True, the Chinese people enjoy only limited freedom. True also, the Chinese government persecutes and even brutalizes domestic minorities. Yet what should matter to the United States is that Beijing “is not on a mission to fundamentally remake the world.” President Xi Jinping is not engaged in subverting the American Bill of Rights. He has his hands full running China.

Xi’s not-unreasonable strategic purpose is to promote Chinese prosperity while maintaining China’s territorial integrity and insulating itself from threats abroad—a purpose not unlike our own before policymakers in Washington succumbed to fantasies of a world remade in America’s self-image through the assertion of American military might.

In sum, China wants to be very wealthy and very safe—wealthier than any other nation on the planet and so safe as to be immune to outside coercion. And for members of the American policy establishment, therein lies the rub. From Washington’s perspective, “the real problem with Beijing is not that it wants to dominate the world” but that its upward trajectory “might stop the U.S. from doing so in a unipolar manner.”

Post-Cold War expectations of a unipolar international order cultivated by the U.S. policy elite have assumed that the universal embrace of democratic liberalism is an inevitability. This is what being “on the right side of history”—a hallucinatory incantation that pervades contemporary American political speech—signifies.

To the extent that China demonstrates the feasibility of creating a stable, prosperous, and flourishing society while flouting liberal democratic precepts, then claims that history has a single right side become untenable. “If universal democratization is not the ultimate endpoint of history,” Hanania pointedly asks, “how can the American
role in the world be justified?”

The answer is that it can’t.

The real danger for American elites, then, “is not that the U.S. may become less able to accomplish geopolitical objectives,” although failures on that score, especially since 9/11, are legion. Instead, the danger is that the American people—the ones whose sons and daughters wage war pursuant to geopolitical flights of fancy concocted in Washington—might themselves “begin to question the logic of U.S. global hegemony.”

For elites, then, the ultimate danger is that ordinary citizens might cease to defer. Should the American people embrace an alternative conception of history’s purpose, one not keyed to the pursuit of militarized global primacy, then the authority of national security elites will crumble. With that, hitherto hidden possibilities just might present themselves.

Hanania writes:

Perhaps not every state is destined to become a liberal democracy, and nations with very different political systems can coexist peacefully…. Maybe the U.S. will not always be at the frontier of military and economic power, and the country that overtakes it may have completely different attitudes about the nature of the relationship between government and its citizens.

Under such circumstances, he speculates, Americans might opt to “give up on policing the world and instead turn inward and focus on finding out where exactly our institutions have gone wrong.” Of course, turning inward describes with precision the worst “nightmare for many national security and bureaucratic elites.”

Yet out of that nightmare comes the possibility of salvation. Ultimately, Hanania writes, “Americans themselves might begin asking themselves difficult questions about how well they have been served by their own system, including the sacrifices in blood and treasure they are regularly asked to make abroad.”

But Americans don’t have to look abroad for evidence that they are ill-served by their own system. The pervasive government incompetence on display during the ongoing coronavirus pandemic tells them all they need to know.

These days, American consumers buy plenty of products that carry “Made in China” labels. Yet the most pressing problems afflicting our nation—inequality, racism, disunity, the waning legitimacy of basic institutions—are homegrown. They bear a label that reads “Made in the USA.”

For Americans, the defining problem of our time is not China. It’s us."

America's Defining Problem in 2021 Isn't China: It's America | The American Conservative


China’s Real Threat Is to America’s Ruling Ideology

Richard Hanania December 14, 2020 Articles

https://palladiummag.com/2020/12/14/...ling-ideology/

CRRC-made subway cars go into operation in US


Updated: 2021-01-04
(ejilin.gov.cn)

"The subway cars independently researched and developed by CRRC Changchun Railway Vehicles Co Ltd (CRRC Changchun) for the Red Line rapid transit route in Boston, Massachusetts, the United States, started passenger service on Dec 30, 2020 (EDT). All of the subway cars put into service were produced in CRRC’s base in Changchun, the capital city of Northeast China’s Jilin province.

The subway cars have a stainless steel body, with a fixed passenger capacity of 252, a maximum passenger capacity of 1,686 and a maximum running speed of 100 kilometers per hour.

Utilizing a new vehicle platform, the subway cars produced by CRRC Changchun have a length of 21 meters and a width of 3 meters. Compared with the subway cars on Boston's Orange Line transit route, the Red Line cars are broader and longer, and their passenger-carrying capacity is 23 percent greater.

The subway carriages have completely independent intellectual property rights in China and follow the design concept of the Orange Line subway cars exported by CRRC to Boston. The carriages meet more than 120 American standards – such as vehicle control safety and quality management system standards – and also meet many other local requirements.

Compared with old subway trains operated in Boston, the new subway cars boast new systems and settings, which significantly improved the stability, controllability, safety and passenger comfort.

In response to the severe situation of the COVID-19 pandemic in the US, CRRC personnel from China and the US have remotely cooperated to complete 109 type tests and 32 routine tests. They have also conducted 500-mile no-load commissioning before putting the new trains into official use, ensuring the smooth operation of the first batch of subway cars for the Boston Red Line project."

CRRC-made subway cars go into operation in US
- Jilin, China

Hanania’s real subject is delusion: Washington’s insistence despite abundant evidence to the contrary that the American way of life defines the ultimate destiny of humankind.

Sounds like "Hanania" would rather live in a dictatorship under a Mr. Shithole.

What an arse.

Originally Posted by OhOh

CRRC-made subway cars go into operation in US

I doubt they'll publish the "Boston subway plagued by breakdowns" stories....