Thread: The View, from China

Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Zhao Lijian’s Regular Press Conference on June 10, 2022

CCTV:

President Alberto Fernández of Argentina, Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit of Dominica, Prime Minister Johnny Briceño of Belize, among other leaders of Latin American and Caribbean countries, expressed criticisms in their remarks at the Nine Summit of the Americas. They said that the US exclusion of Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua from the summit is unforgivable and incomprehensible, and that being the host country does not give it the right to decide the list of participation. They also urged the US to end its blockade and sanctions on the countries concerned. Do you have any comment?

Zhao Lijian:

I have noted the relevant remarks of the summit’s participants from Latin American and Caribbean countries. I also noted that among those not attending the summit, Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel described this Summit of the Americas as a neocolonial spectacle that serves the US domestic politics. Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said that countries should not remain silent about the hegemonic policies, and that the Americas should commence a new stage that rejects exclusionary policies. Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro said that the era is over in which the US sees Latin America as its backyard and believes it can dictate the actions of countries in this re gion.

What they said represents the legitimate concerns and just calls from the majority of regional countries. The US should not turn a deaf ear to them and needs to stop doing whatever it likes. The US needs to abandon its attachment to the outdated Monroe Doctrine and highhanded approach, stop bullying, coercion, blockade and sanctions, and develop its relations with other regional countries on the basis of mutual respect, equality and non-interference in others’ internal affairs

People’s Daily:

Today marks the 23rd anniversary of the end of NATO’s bombing of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. After an international legal team filed lawsuits against NATO on behalf of 3,000 victims over the horrific consequences of up to 15 tons of depleted uranium bombs NATO dropped in 1999, NATO responded by saying it has immunity from prosecution. Do you have any comment?

Zhao Lijian:

Twenty-three years ago, US-led NATO blatantly bombarded the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia for 78 days without the approval of the UN Security Council. In total, NATO dropped nearly 420,000 bombs weighing 22,000 tons, including 15 tons of depleted uranium bombs. Over 2,500 people including 79 children were killed and more than one million people became refugees as a direct result of the bombings. 

What is more heart-wrenching is that death and agony brought by the war lingered for generations till this day. As noted by experts, exposure to radiation emitted by depleted uranium bombs can show no symptom for years and depleted uranium bombs have long-term impact on the environment and human food-chain. In the 10 years after the bombing, about 30,000 people in Serbia developed cancer, among whom 10,000 died. According to the Institute of Public Health of Belgrade, by the end of 2019, the number of registered cancer patients in Serbia was as high as 97,000. A study of the Serbian emergency center shows that among children born in Serbia after 1999, many aged between one and five suffered from ectodermal tumors, many aged between five and nine contracted hematological malignancies, and there is a clear uptick in the morbidity rate of brain cancer among those aged between nine and 18. Besides, by May 2019, 366 Italian military personnel who participated in the NATO military operations have died of cancer, and 7,500 have fallen sick. 

However, till this day, the US -- the country that sent military aircraft to drop depleted uranium bombs over Serbia and the inventor of this type of bombs as well as the only country that has ever used them -- continues to deny that depleted uranium bombs can directly cause Gulf War syndrome and Kosovo syndrome. During the Gulf War, the US dropped far more depleted uranium bombs over Iraq. NATO is also trying to get away with it by claiming immunity from prosecution. Such moves by the US-led NATO are shocking. Neither the Serbian people, nor people elsewhere in the world seeking justice, will ever agree to this. The US-led NATO should earnestly reflect on its war crimes, and provide a reasonable explanation and compensations to the victims of depleted uranium bombs as soon as possible. NATO must also seriously learn the lesson and stop creating new turmoil and division across the world. 

Shenzhen TV:

According to sources cited by media reports, recently, the US forces illegally stationed in Syria have looted oil from the oil fields they occupy, smuggled and sold it abroad to make profits. Bassam Tomeh, Syrian Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources, condemned the US for acting “just like pirates”. Do you have any comment?

Zhao Lijian:

I have also noticed relevant reports. They remind me of how the US brazenly seized the seven billion US dollars of Afghan people’s life-saving money 20 years after it invaded the country.
Today, more than a decade after the Syrian crisis broke out, there is no end in sight to US military and economic interference in Syria. According to statistics, the confirmed war-related civilian deaths from 2016 to 2019 amounted to 33,584 in Syria. In 2017, the US troops launched what they called the “most precise air campaign in history” in Raqqa, killing 1,600 civilians. A US raid in Idlib in February 2022 killed at least 13 people, including six children and four women.

Unfortunately, the US government, rather than reflecting upon its war-related crimes and responsibilities, has flagrantly plundered Syria’s national resources, plunging the country into an unprecedented humanitarian disaster. According to the latest statistics, 90 percent of the Syrian population live below the poverty line, two thirds rely on humanitarian assistance, and 55 percent are food insecure. The Syrian people’s wealth is being plundered by the US in broad daylight. At the same time, US sanctions deprive the country of the opportunities for development. The Syrian people have decried the suffocating pirate-like behavior and economic blockade of the US.

China Review News:

Foreign ministry spokespersons made comments on bio-military laboratories run by the US many times. The US has released a fact sheet which mentioned its WMD threat reduction efforts with Ukraine and other countries. Do you have any further comment? Do you think this is the US’ response to the questioning of the international community?

Zhao Lijian:

I took note of the document released by the US Department of Defense. This fact sheet tells at length Ukraine’s compliance record but very little about how the US has done. It provided no answer to questions of biggest concern to the international community. For example, did the US conduct activities inconsistent with the Biological Weapons Convention through its cooperation with Ukraine? What exactly is the “sensitive” information that Ukraine is not allowed to make public according to the US-Ukraine cooperation agreement? How many biological samples did the US ship out of Ukraine according to bilateral agreement and for what purpose? Nothing is said about these questions in this fact sheet.

As I stressed time and again, the US conducts more bio-military activities than any other country in the world. Moreover, the US is the only country opposing the establishment of a verification mechanism for the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC). The international community has long had concerns over this. Recently, Russia has further revealed the US’s bio-military activities in Ukraine, and raised clearly that the US has violated the BWC. According to the stipulations of the BWC, the US is under an obligation to provide clarifications on Russia’s allegation so as to restore the international community’s confidence in the US’s compliance.

We again urge the US to make full and detailed clarifications regarding not just Ukraine’s but the US’s own compliance, which is the responsible thing to do. The US also needs to stop single-handedly opposing the establishment of a verification mechanism for the BWC.

Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Zhao Lijian’s Regular Press Conference on June 10, 2022

Nine people have been arrested in China on suspicion of violently assaulting several women at a restaurant.


Surveillance footage from a barbeque restaurant in Tangshan in northern Hebei province, time-stamped 2.40am on Friday, showed one of the men approaching a table where a party of four women were seated and placing his hand on a woman's back.



She rebuffed him several times before he slapped her, prompting her to fight back, causing a brawl.

A group of men entered the restaurant and attacked the woman and her dining partners, including shoving them to the ground, kicking them and throwing a chair at them.

Footage from outside the restaurant showed the attackers dragging the woman who had rebuffed the man's advances out before she was beaten, with passers-by and others looking on.

Pictures of her lying on a stretcher, with a swollen and bloodied face, as well as the CCTV of the attack sparked widespread outrage online.

All nine suspects were arrested on Saturday, according to a statement by authorities.


Two of the woman sustained non-life-threatening injuries and were receiving hospital treatment.

Their condition was reported as stabled and two others were slightly injured.

A Weibo user who was one of the first to post it described it as "heartbreaking", adding: "Does that mean that dining out is so unsafe now, do we have to bring men with us everywhere we go? (These men) are no different from thugs."

By Sunday, the footage had received more than 68 million views and the video of the assault outside had been taken down.

Social media users have condemned the attack and criticised Tangshan police for being slow in arresting the suspects, while the incident also renewed the conversation about the treatment of women in China.

Earlier this year, another viral video showed a woman being chained to a wall in a hut, drawing outcry after officials denied she was a victim of human trafficking.

She was later found to have been sold as a bride.

China: Nine men arrested after vicious attack on women in a restaurant | World News | Sky News

China-developed deep seabed trenching technology breaks world records


27 views 13 Jun 2022

"A multi-functional modular seabed trencher developed by a Chinese firm has recently completed 100 kilometers of pipelines construction in Bangladesh's first marine pipeline project, setting two world records in directional drilling and deep trenching. The seabed trencher was self-developed by state-owned China Petroleum Pipeline Engineering Co (CPP), which is a professional company specializing in constructing oil and gas storage and transportation infrastructure, under the China National Petroleum Corporation.

The installation of the marine pipeline project in Bangladesh, one of the key projects under the Belt and Road Initiative, needs to complete six directional drillings and reach a buried depth of 11 meters to avoid the commercial and naval waterways, making the unprecedented difficulty in the history of world marine engineering, CPP said.

According to reports, the normal depth of trench digging in the offshore industry is 1.5 meters to 3 meters under the seabed, and reaching 5 meters is already a difficult project for the industry. To deal with technical difficulties, CPP has carried out independent innovations and upgraded trenching machines to achieve a maximum digging depth of 11.9 meters, mastered the underwater millimeter-level docking technology of offshore single-point mooring and adopted the original technique that ensured a 100 percent success in one-time drilling.

After the project is put into operation, oil tankers above 100,000 DWT that cannot dock to unload oil at ports in Bangladesh, CPP said. As an important oil and gas storage and transportation project in Bangladesh under the Belt and Road Initiative, the project was launched as Bangladesh is not capable of handling large vessels carrying imported crude and finished oil due to low navigability of a key river channel and constrained facilities at the main seaport in Chittagong, the Xinhua News Agency reported.

In December 2016, Bangladesh reached an agreement with CPP for engineering, procurement, construction and commissioning for the installation of single point mooring with 220-kilometer-long double pipelines, including building a 146-kilometer-long offshore pipeline and 74-kilometer-long onshore pipeline to carry imported oil from sea to a refinery in Chittagong district. The project is expected to have an annual unloading capacity of 9 million tons. [Global Times] ----

Starting with only one platform reaching 100 meters under water, China has been making headways on the path to develop its offshore oil and gas exploration sector. The country now has 61 drilling platforms with an operating water depth exceeding 3,000 meters. In 2012, six deep-water engineering vessels capable of working at depths of 3,000 meters were put into service, marking China's accelerated development of deep-water oil and gas exploitation equipment.

On June 25, 2021, China's first self-run 100,000-tonne semi-submersible oil and gas production and storage platform, Shenhai-1, started operation in the waters off south China's Hainan Province. By February 13, 2022, it had produced over 1 billion cubic meters of natural gas, said its operator CNOOC."

China-developed deep trenching technology breaks world records - Global Times

Originally Posted by sabang

2021 was one for the books

Godfree Roberts - He's a dick ... I exposed him a few pages back.

Author of the Here Comes China Newsletter The Ultimate China Newsletter.

Penned this classic ... Why Australia Attacked China Playing a dirty game
Posted May 23 ... has the sum total of 4 likes

Why Australia Attacked China - by Godfree Roberts

In that article he posted this graph of Foreign Ownership of Australian land.

And he cites copyright 2022 Godfree Roberts/ATO


Well, the ATO (Australian Tax Office) has little to do with compiling the statistics of Foreign Land Ownership.

That task falls to the FIRB, the Foreign Investment Review Board who gave this distribution of Freehold and Leasehold land as at 2021 ...

https://firb.gov.au/sites/firb.gov.a...tural-land.pdf - page 21

Godfree Roberts - He is SO FULL OF SHIT.