Chinese Paranoia

China’s immaturity revealed in reaction to THAAD
By Kim Myong-sik

However luminous the brains of the leaders at Beijing’s Zhongnanhai may be, the current Chinese “countermeasures” on Korea’s decision to introduce the US-built Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system are unjustified and inappropriate. 

Above all, they will be counterproductive. 

While we were in the impeachment turmoil over the past few months, China took a variety of restrictive measures on Korean businesses and pop entertainers operating in the country. 

It appeared that anti-South Korea hysteria was brewing across China, instigated by the media under control of the authorities.
The first shipment of the THAAD anti-missile system arrived here last week in full view of the Korean media. 

When more components are delivered here to be installed on a hill in Seongju, North Gyeongsang Province, China will increase pressures on Korea to have the THAAD program canceled, possibly by the next administration.
Xi Jinping has chosen the Lotte Group as the first direct target of Chinese retaliatory measures. 

The Korean corporation’s nearly 100 commercial outlets came under the Chinese authorities’ fire and sanitary checks which resulted in more than half of them being forced to close down. 

More will face permanent or temporary closures as long as Chinese officials believe that such measures will have any effect in altering the Korean and US plans on the THAAD.
It’s sorry that Lotte has to suffer for no other reason than trading its golf course for a piece of property owned by the Korean military. 

As soon as the Defense Ministry mentioned the land deal with Korea’s fifth-largest conglomerate for the THAAD deployment, China began taking punitive steps against Lotte stores. 

What had initially been posed as routine inspections quickly produced arbitrary closure orders.
Korea bashing is spreading to other business areas. 

These Korean enterprises had invested in the Communist-ruled country with the capitalist economic system that needed foreign money, technology, materials and services to sustain growth. 

As if regarding them as parasites of its economy rather than benefactors, China is kicking them out in reprisal for their government’s security policy. 

Chinese official media are leading a wide-ranging boycott campaign, hardly imaginable in a normal state.
Their anti-South Korean narratives generally appeal to public emotion, using deception and demagogy. 

Of the many diatribes appearing in printed and internet media, one contributed by a retired rear admiral of the People’s Liberation Army naval department stood out for its radical and fanatic ideas. 

Luo Yuan, introduced as a social commentator at the PLA Academy of Military Science, surprisingly suggested “surgical operations” on Seongju to eliminate the facility.
“It is important for China to let the ROK (South Korean) people know that the THAAD did not bring security to the ROK but danger,” the military theorist said in his article contributed to the China Military magazine. 

His 10-point countermeasures included the strengthening of China’s missile penetration capability against the US and ROK because “attack is the best defense.” 

He also called for bolstering anti-missile military cooperation with Russia to achieve regional strategic balance.
The 67-year-old man said that “since the US, Japan and the ROK do not respect China’s major security concerns China does not have to be gentleman all the time.” 

I wonder how many in the Chinese military, civilian government or intellectual circles would share his views, which seemed to reveal a still unhealed Cold War mentality. 

It is natural that he proposed “punitive retaliatory measures against Korean industrial and commercial chains” related to the THAAD deployment.
Strategic differences may be settled through strategic negotiations, not by retaliation on private businesses, which is only detrimental to the peaceful order of global commerce and trade. 

China would not listen to the US assertion that THAAD is neither designed for nor capable of harming China’s security interests or its assurance that its X-band radar system would be so fixed as not to scan Chinese territory.
If it is to oppose the THAAD deployment, China should do something to free the region from the North’s missile and nuclear threats. 

Its arrangement of six-party talks in Beijing in the 2000s provided a stage for North Korea to cheat the international community while accelerating its programs for weapons of mass destruction.
Beijing has recently banned importing coal from North Korea as a part of UN sanctions. 

But the world community has been hugely disappointed at China’s meager record of fulfilling its global obligations as a permanent member of the Security Council and one party of the “G-2,” with regard to implementing UN resolutions against the North.
People-to-people relations between Korea and China and bilateral economic ties have grown briskly since diplomatic normalization in 1992. 

Exchange visits between top government leaders have produced protocols declaring a “strategic cooperative partnership” to contribute to peace and prosperity in Northeast Asia. 

Former President Park Geun-hye attended China’s WWII victory celebrations in 2015 and the two countries concluded a free trade agreement in the same year.
This framework of good neighborly ties is being shattered by the giant country’s egotistic, myopic, short-sighted actions to foil the deployment of THAAD batteries essential for our defense against lethal North Korean attacks. 

And in a scheme to achieve its ill-oriented goal, this big country is taking all-round retaliatory measures on a private business for cooperating with its government.
The Lotte Group, ironically, is seeing a considerable rise in consumer trust here, which has had a positive impact on overall local sales sufficiently offsetting losses in the Chinese market. 

A Christian group I belong to canceled its tour to the Chinese ancient city of Xi'an scheduled for April, “displeased by the recent Chinese moves.” 

If mutual boycotts expand in the tourism area, both sides will be inconvenienced while THAAD will be installed here anyway.
China will someday become a mature and truly leading member of global society, when editorial cartoonists here will no longer have to make anatomical renditions of the Chinese leader with a walnut-sized brain inside a big head and a small heart resembling a coffee bean. 

It will be long after the Chinese realized that Koreans cannot be bullied into concession by any kind of retaliation over a matter that involves its survival.

China Trying To Crush South Korea's Economy

Beijing has armed North Korea and is now trying to prevent nations from defending themselves from the resulting threat.
By Gordon G. Chang 

Executives of South Korea’s Lotte Group, after a meeting Sunday, asked Seoul for “active help.”
The retail giant’s business has been under pressure in China this year as it first considered and then approved a swap of parcels with the South Korean Ministry of Defense. 

The Ministry plans to use the acquired land, a golf course south of Seoul, for the first battery of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system, which is designed to knock down missiles.
Beijing, enraged at the defiance of “a small country,” has gone to great lengths to prevent the installation of the system.
And the Trump administration should go to great lengths to protect the American homeland. 

The security of the U.S. is at stake, so Washington should support its South Korean ally by imposing stiff sanctions on China.
The Pentagon wants to put THAAD, as the Lockheed Martin-built system is called, in South Korea to intercept North Korean missiles.
China has supplied crucial equipment and technologies to Pyongyang’s ballistic missile program. 

For instance, an enterprise associated with the People’s Liberation Army transferred transporter-erector-launchers for the North’s KN-08, making that intercontinental missile particularly dangerous to the U.S. 

Moreover, there are indications that the missiles Pyongyang tested August 24 and February 12 are variants of China’s submarine-launched JL-1 ballistic missile.
In addition to military technology and equipment, China has, over the course of decades, provided the North Korean regime with lifelines of diplomatic and economic support. 

Therefore, Beijing has armed North Korea and is now trying to prevent nations from defending themselves from the resulting threat.
To prevent deployment of THAAD in South Korea, Beijing has threatening to cut diplomatic relations with Seoul. 

Furthermore, it is trying to crush the South’s economy, barring its K-pop groups from performing in China, ending charter flights to the South, and banning the import of South Korean cosmetics. 

Daily Chinese state media tirades target Seoul.
And China’s officials have gone after Lotte, the South’s fifth largest chaebol.
Lotte has been targeted two ways. 

Of particular concern to the retail company is Beijing’s shutting down tour groups to South Korea. Friday, the Korea Tourism Organization charged that the China National Tourism Administration issued oral instructions to tour operators to stop the sale of packages to South Korea starting March 15.
Moreover, Lotte’s operations in China have been the subject of unrelenting attacks. 

The official Xinhua News Agency said the group was “acting as the paws of a tiger.” 

 “Showing Lotte the door will be an effective warning to all the other foreign forces that jeopardize China’s national interests,” the Global Times stated in an editorial.
Lotte, in recent months, has had more than its share of troubles in China, where it operates 80 supermarkets and more than 70 other outlets and employs about 20,000.
The Chinese government started softly with minor harassment, like audits.
Now China has turned up the heat. 

Lotte, for instance, has been hit with fines across the country, including Beijing.
Moreover, Chinese authorities have closed four Lotte Mart locations in the city of Dandong for a month for fire safety violations. 

After another fire inspection, authorities stopped construction on a Lotte project in Shenyang.
Lotte was recently removed from a JD.com platform, and Lotte’s Chinese site hit was hit by hackers last week. 

Chinese companies in the last few days said they would boycott the chaebol.
And there have been, with the blessing of authorities, protests against Lotte in several cities. 

“This is good old anti-foreign violence nineteenth-century style,” Arthur Waldron, the noted University of Pennsylvania historian, wrote to me and others on Saturday.
Beijing has, over the course of months, upped the pressure against Lotte and other South Korean businesses, but it is not clear how much further it is willing to go. 

As a practical matter, officials are unlikely to block components Chinese manufacturers need. “Economists say the THAAD-related backlash is not expected to significantly harm exports to China in the short term as a bulk of the shipments are intermediate goods, which China uses to manufacture finished products and ships to other countries,” writes the South China Morning Post in connection with the Lotte dispute.
In fact, South Korea’s exports to China, driven by sales of semiconductors and display panels, hit a six-year high last month.
Nonetheless, China’s attempts to derail the deployment of THAAD undermine American security in a critical way. 

The struggle with Beijing over the missile-defense system has an historical parallel: Ronald Reagan’s contest with the Soviets over the deployment in Germany of the Pershing II cruise missile.
And this means the United States has a vital interest in supporting its South Korean ally. 

The one tactic Washington can employ is the one China used against Japan in 2012 and is using against South Korea now: economic coercion. 

The way to defend America is to support South Korea. 

The way to support South Korea is to sanction China.
Beijing thinks it can bully little economies. 

Chinese officials should remember that their economy is far smaller than America’s. 

Last year, China’s gross domestic product, as reported by the official National Bureau of Statistics, was $10.83 trillion. 

America’s, according to the first estimate of the Bureau of Economic Analysis, was $18.86 trillion. 

In reality, the disparity is almost certainly larger due to Beijing’s obvious overreporting.
If China can punish “a small country,” so can the United States.

South Korea to retaliate against Chinese bullying

China is taking unfair petty measures against South Korean firms in protest over Seoul’s decision to deploy an anti-missile shield
Reuters

South Korea’s trade minister said on Sunday the government’s responses against discriminating action by China towards South Korean companies will be strengthened and he feels “deep concern” over recent measures taken by Beijing.
Trade Minister Joo Hyung-hwan made the statement while visiting the United States, the ministry said in a statement.
South Korean media said last week Chinese government officials had given verbal guidance to tour operators in China, to stop selling trips to South Korea days after the Seoul government secured land for a U.S. missile-defence system from Lotte Group.
China objects to the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system deployment, saying its territory is the target of the THAAD’s far-reaching radar. 

South Korea and the United States have said the missile system is only aimed at curbing North Korean provocations.
“We will act accordingly to international law against any actions that violate policies of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) or the free trade agreement between South Korea and China,” Joo said.
The trade ministry said it would start examining exports to China on a daily basis and any changes to South Korean exporters who do business with China in order to respond as quickly as possible against unfair action.
On Friday, it requested to the Chinese embassy in Seoul that South Korean companies investing in China be protected and be shown care.
Data last week showed South Korean February exports to China, its biggest trade partner, posted the best growth since late 2010, driven by sales of intermediate goods such as semiconductors and display panels used for electronics manufacturing.
Economists say the THAAD-related backlash is not expected to significantly harm exports to China in the short term as a bulk of the shipments are intermediate goods, which China uses to manufacture finished products and ships to other countries.
However, government officials are warily watching if diplomatic tensions grow further between South Korea and China at a time when global protectionism is rising.

Chinese Bully

South Korea's Lotte Duty Free website crashed after attack from Chinese hackers
By Joyce Lee and Heekyong Yang | SEOUL

Lotte Duty Free on Thursday said a cyber attack using Chinese internet protocol (IP) addresses has crashed its website, the latest report of irregularity from a South Korean firm in China since Seoul decided to deploy a U.S. missile defense system.
A distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack, which overloads servers with requests, began slowing all four language versions of the website at 11:00 a.m. (0200 GMT) and crashed them all around 12:00 p.m., Lotte Duty Free said in a statement.
The attack comes after affiliate Lotte International Co Ltd on Monday approved a land swap to allow the U.S. Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) system on what was once its property, in response to the North Korean missile threat.
Neighboring China objected to the deployment of the system, which has a radar capable of penetrating Chinese territory, saying it will destabilize regional security while doing little to contain heightened security risk on the Korean peninsula.
Russia also opposed the deployment, scheduled for completion this year.
Lotte Duty Free on Thursday said the first wave of the attack on its website was detected on its Chinese language version on March 1. 

The eventual crash did not occur during a peak traffic time, so lost business would be at most a couple of hundred thousand U.S. dollars, it said.
The Chinese website for the entire Lotte Group, www.lotte.cn, is also down. 

It has been offline since Wednesday due to a virus, spokesman Kim Min-suk told Reuters on Thursday.
"The (two) websites have been down and we are working to get them back online," Kim said, declining to comment on the nature or origin of the virus or the origin of the DDoS.
The ultimate origin of DDoS attacks is not necessarily the same as the IP addresses used.
Lotte Duty Free said it expects its website to be fully back online after 6 p.m. (0900 GMT) after strengthening security.

DIFFICULTIES
South Korean companies have reported increasing difficulties in China since deployment was confirmed in November, with Chinese state media calling for a boycott of South Korean goods. 

South Korean artists have also said performances had been canceled without clear explanation.
A spokesman at Lotte Mart told Reuters that the retailer's website was accessible on e-commerce platform JD.com (lottemart.jd.com), but that the site did not appear in search results. 

Lotte Mart has asked JD.com to address the issue, the spokesman said.
JD.com declined to comment.
Also this month, Lotte Group said Chinese authorities halted construction at a multi-billion dollar real estate project after a fire inspection.
Shares in Lotte Group's flagship retailer, Lotte Shopping Co Ltd, which has about 120 stores in China, fell as much as 7.8 percent on Thursday. 

Lotte Confectionery Co Ltd shares fell 2.8 percent, while the benchmark share price index rose 0.5 percent.
The South Korean government expressed concern on Thursday about the plight of South Korean firms in China since the deployment was announced. 

It said it would continue to engage Beijing in dialogue to ensure activities of South Korean companies in China are not hindered.
"To be sure, the challenges we face are serious," Foreign Ministry Spokesman Cho June-hyuck told a news briefing on Thursday.
Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said at a regular news briefing the same day that China opposes all forms of hacking and is willing to work with other nations to oppose it.
"As for the 'guesswork' of Lotte, I won't make a comment. But I think there is no clear answer as to the reason (for the attack). This is just their guess," Geng said.

Chinese Bully

China reacts with rage, threats after South Korean missile defense decision

Reuters

A Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) interceptor is launched during a successful intercept test, in this undated handout photo provided by the U.S. Department of Defense, Missile Defense Agency.

Chinese state media have reacted with rage and boycott threats after the board of an affiliate of South Korea's Lotte Group approved a land swap with the government that allows authorities to deploy a U.S. missile defense system.
The government decided last year to deploy the U.S. Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system, in response to the North Korean missile threat, on land that is part of a golf course owned by Lotte in the Seongju region, southeast of Seoul.
The board of unlisted Lotte International Co Ltd approved the deal with the government on Monday.
China objects to the deployment in South Korea of the THAAD, which has a powerful radar capable of penetrating Chinese territory, with Beijing saying it is a threat to its security and will do nothing to ease tension with North Korea.
Lotte should be shown the door in China, the influential state-run Chinese tabloid the Global Times said in an editorial on Tuesday.
"We also propose that Chinese society should coordinate voluntarily in expanding restrictions on South Korean cultural goods and entertainment exports to China, and block them when necessary," it said in its English-language edition.
The paper's Chinese version said South Korean cars and cellphones should be targeted as well.
"There are loads of substitutes for South Korean cars and cellphones," it said.
China has already twice issued "solemn representations" to South Korea about the most recent THAAD-related developments, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told a daily briefing in Beijing.
But it welcomes foreign companies to operate in China, he said. 

"Whether or not a foreign company can operate successfully in China, in the end is a decision for the Chinese market and consumer," he added.
Late on Monday, the ruling Communist Party's official People's Daily said cutting diplomatic ties should be considered.
"If THAAD is really deployed in South Korea, then China-South Korea relations will face the possibility of getting ready to cut off diplomatic relations," it said on the WeChat account of its overseas edition.
The official Xinhua news agency also said in a commentary late on Monday that China "did not welcome this kind of Lotte".
"Chinese consumers can absolutely say no to this kind of company and their goods based on considerations of 'national security'," it said.
South Korea's defence ministry said on Tuesday it had signed a land swap deal, with Lotte exchanging the golf course for military property. 

A South Korean military official told Reuters the military would begin area patrols and install fences.
The Lotte Group said on Feb. 8 Chinese authorities had stopped construction at a multi-billion dollar real estate project in China after a fire inspection, fuelling concern in South Korea about damage to commercial ties with the world's second-largest economy.
Asked if South Korea had demanded the Chinese government suspend any economic retaliation, South Korean Defence Ministry spokesman Moon Sang-kyun said: "We have continuously persuaded China so far and will keep continuing efforts to do so."
South Korean government officials have said THAAD is a defensive measure against North Korean threats and does not target any other country.
South Korea's central bank said this month the number of Chinese tourists visiting the tourist island of Jeju had fallen 6.7 percent over the Lunar New Year holiday from last year, partly because of China's "anti-South Korea measures due to the THAAD deployment decision".

THAAD Deployment In South Korea

Seoul Will Respond If Beijing Takes Retaliatory Measures, South Korea Says
By Vishakha Sonawane

South Korean Finance Minister Yoo Il-ho said Thursday that China has not taken any direct retaliatory measures against Seoul’s plans to deploy a U.S. anti-ballistic missile system in the Korean Peninsula to deter North Korea. 

The South Korean media had earlier reported that Beijing unofficially imposed several economic measures on Seoul to assert further pressure against the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system deployment.
"If China officially takes unfair action against South Korea we would openly move against it, but as long as China says its moves are not related to THAAD and rather, local measures at home, the South Korean government cannot accuse China of retaliating," Yoo said.
The minister’s comments came after South Korea's Lotte Group said Wednesday that Chinese officials stopped construction at a multibillion-dollar real estate project in the country’s northeastern Shenyang city following a fire inspection.
According to Yoo, Lotte executives told the South Korean government that the Chinese decisions were not directly related to THAAD.
Beijing has reacted strongly over Washington and Seoul’s plan to deploy the missile system, citing security concerns. 

Last month, China and Russia — the latter has also opposed the THAAD deployment — agreed to take countermeasures over the installation in a bid to safeguard interests of both the nations and to maintain strategic balance in the Korean Peninsula.
On Jan. 19, Sen. John McCain (R-Arizona) accused China of “bullying” South Korea over THAAD.
“China has cut off charter flights from South Korea, banned imports of South Korean cosmetics and other products, outlawed South Korean music, and threatened South Korean companies. China has done all of this to stop the deployment of a missile defense system, which is only necessary because China has aided and abetted North Korea for decades,” McCain said at the time.

Trump Should Sanction China for Destabilizing South Korea

As Secretary of Defense James Mattis tours Asia to pledge support to our allies, the best form of reassurance would be action against China’s provocative moves in the region.
By GORDON G. CHANG

Secretary of Defense James Mattis is now ending his “Mission Reassurance,” the first foreign trip by a Trump administration official. 

He spent two days in Seoul and is finishing up in Tokyo.
The SecDef has been issuing strong words confirming America’s commitment to defend South Korea and Japan. 

That’s important. 

Now, however, it’s time for President Donald Trump to back up the reassurances with stiff economic sanctions on China for destabilizing North Asia.
Mattis’s staff, sounding pitch-perfect, characterized his inaugural foreign tour as a “listening trip.”
Yet the former Marine Corps four-star general was also there to speak. 

“I want there to be no misunderstanding during the transition in Washington that we stand firmly, 100 percent shoulder-to-shoulder with you and the Japanese people,” he said on Friday to Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
“We stand with our peace-loving Republic of Korea ally to maintain stability on the peninsula and in the region,” Mattis said earlier in the day in Seoul. 

“America’s commitments to defending our allies and to upholding our extended deterrence guarantees remain ironclad: Any attack on the United States, or our allies, will be defeated, and any use of nuclear weapons would be met with a response that would be effective and overwhelming.”
What is neither effective nor overwhelming is America’s response to provocative Chinese actions directed against Seoul. 

For more than a year, Beijing has been trying to prevent South Korea from basing on its soil the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system, designed to shoot down incoming missiles. 

From a location in the South, THAAD, as the Lockheed Martin-built system is called, can protect South Korea, Japan, Guam, and the United States. 

Beijing objects to deployment as it is worried that THAAD’s powerful radars can peer over the border into China and hit its missiles as well as North Korea’s.
Beijing has pulled out the stops in its campaign against Seoul, threatening to cut diplomatic relations and issuing media tirades. 

Moreover, it has used the Chinese economy as a club. 

It has, for instance, barred South Korea’s K-pop groups from performing in China, ended charter flights to the South, limited Chinese tourists going there, and banned the import of South Korean cosmetics.
And Beijing has gone after Lotte Group. 

The South Korean chaebol, the country’s fifth largest, is thinking of swapping land, a golf course, with the country’s Ministry of Defense so that the government can get a suitable parcel for the first THAAD battery.
There is talk of a boycott of Lotte Chinese outlets and “continuous sanctions.” 

Last November, the Chinese government also ordered an audit of an affiliate of Lotte and a fire-safety inspection of a Lotte store.
So far, the pressure on the conglomerate is working. 

On Friday, the board of directors of Lotte International, the group unit that owns the land in question, again deferred a decision to approve the deal. 

Perhaps significantly, the company did not announce a future board meeting.
In response, Seoul has stopped approving visas for Beijing’s Confucius Institutes in South Korea. That’s a brave step, but the South does not have the heft to significantly affect Beijing’s calculus on the matter.
The United States, however, does. 

The American market is critical to China, and closing it—or threatening to do so—would make Beijing rethink its intimidation of Seoul.
China is itself vulnerable to U.S. pressure. 

In 2015, China ran a trade surplus in goods and services of $336.2 billion. 

The surplus looks like it was slightly smaller last year, but it was nonetheless substantial. 

China could not sustain a sudden cut off of trade with the U.S.
Of course, America would be hurt as well, but the damage would be far smaller. 

The U.S. is not dependent on trade with China and its economy is far larger than China’s, thereby better able to withstand shocks. 

Last year, China’s gross domestic product, as reported by the official National Bureau of Statistics, was $10.83 trillion. 

America’s, according to the first estimate of the Bureau of Economic Analysis, was $18.86 trillion. 

In reality, the disparity is almost certainly larger due to Beijing’s overreporting.
Trump, while campaigning for the presidency, talked about a 45 percent tariff on Chinese goods to counteract the effect of Beijing’s increasingly predatory trade practices. 

Many objected to the cost of such a levy, but no cost is too high to get the earliest warning of a North Korean—or, for that matter, Chinese—launch of a nuclear weapon.
It’s outrageous that China has armed North Korea’s Kim regime and is now threatening “a small country”—Beijing’s demeaning term for South Korea—for trying to protect itself, but it’s understandable why it’s trying to get away with that. 

It is not explicable, however, why Washington allows the Chinese to get away with such intimidation.
It’s good for Mattis to issue reassurances to jittery American allies, but it would be even better for his boss to show real American commitment by imposing costs on China.
The best form of reassurance, after all, is action.