China's Final Solution

Uighur Americans Speak Against China’s Concentration Camps. Their Relatives Disappear.

By Edward Wong

Rushan Abbas, a Uighur American whose family members have been detained in China.
ROSSLYN, Va. — Speaking last month at a Washington think tank, Rushan Abbas relayed tales of suffering she had heard about China’s repression of ethnic Uighur Muslims — including the detention of members of her husband’s family in a widespread system of mass internment camps.
Within six days, Ms. Abbas’s ailing sister and 64-year-old aunt disappeared from their homes in northwest China. 

No family members or neighbors have heard from them in more than a month.
Ms. Abbas is an American citizen and Virginia resident; her sister has two daughters, and both live in the United States. 

They all assume the women are being detained in the camps, which Western analysts estimate hold up to one million people.
Ms. Abbas said they had fallen victim to the persecution against which she had been campaigning — and because of her.
“I’m exercising my rights under the U.S. Constitution as an American citizen,” Ms. Abbas, a business consultant, said from her 12th-floor office in Rosslyn, Va., overlooking the Key Bridge and Potomac River. 

“They shouldn’t punish my family members for this.”
“I hope the Chinese ambassador here reads this,” she added, wiping away tears. 

“I will not stop. I will be everywhere and speak on this at every event from now on.”
Ms. Abbas, 50, is among a growing number of Uighur Americans who have had family members detained by the Chinese police and placed in the anti-Islam camp system that is spread across the northwest colony of East Turkestan. 

Chinese officials describe the internment as “transformation through education” and “vocational education.”
The Washington area has the largest population of Uighurs in the United States, so stories like that of Ms. Abbas are now common here. 

Chinese officers aim to silence Uighurs abroad by detaining their family members.

A growing number of Uighur Americans have had family members detained by Chinese police and placed in the anti-Islam camp system spread across the northwest colony of East Turkestan.
But that tactic is backfiring. 

Although some Uighurs abroad are afraid to speak out for fear that relatives in East Turkestan will be detained, Ms. Abbas said, there are ones like her who are more willing to voice their outrage.
Those in Washington could sway United States policy toward China, at a time when officials are debating a much tougher stand on defending Uighurs. 

Some like Ms. Abbas have acquaintances at think tanks, including at the conservative Hudson Institute, where she spoke on Sept. 5, and in Congress and the White House. 

Ms. Abbas has also spoken to staff members at the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, which is led by Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, and Representative Christopher H. Smith, Republican of New Jersey.
“Harassing the relatives of U.S. citizens is what Mao Zedong used to call dropping a rock on your own feet,” said Michael Pillsbury, director for Chinese strategy at the Hudson Institute, noting that repression of Uighurs would also erode relations between China and Muslim nations.
This month, a daughter of Ms. Abbas’s detained sister wrote to Mr. Rubio about her mother’s plight. The daughter, an American citizen, lives in Florida, Mr. Rubio’s home state. 

The other daughter, a legal permanent resident, lives in Maryland. 

Their mother, Gulshan Abbas, 56, has severe health problems.
Asked for comment about issues facing Uighur Americans, Mr. Rubio said, “The long arm of the Chinese government’s domestic repression directly impacts the broader Uighur diaspora community, including in the United States.”
“This is unacceptable, and it takes tremendous courage for these individuals to even come forward given the growing number of reports of Chinese government harassment, intimidation and threats aimed at the Chinese, Uighur and Tibetan diaspora communities living in the United States,” Mr. Rubio added.
Mr. Rubio is pushing legislation to compel the United States to take action on behalf of Uighurs. 

It says the F.B.I. and other government agencies “should track and take steps to hold accountable” Chinese officials who harass or threaten people from China who are American citizens or living or studying here, including Uighurs.
Separately, officials at the White House and the State and Treasury Departments are discussing imposing economic sanctions on Chinese officials, under the Global Magnitsky Act, who are involved in repression of Uighurs.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has spoken about the plight of the Uighurs and the harassment of Uighur Americans. 

In April, the State Department’s chief spokeswoman met with Gulchehra Hoja, a Uighur American journalist for Radio Free Asia who said two dozen of her family members had been detained in East Turkestan. 

Ms. Hoja testified in July at the congressional commission.

Ms. Abbas showed a photo of her family members, including her sister, second from right, who recently went missing.

In a China policy speech this month, Vice President Mike Pence denounced China’s attempts to shape public opinion in the United States through coercion and other means.
Sophie Richardson, China director at Human Rights Watch, said, “Beijing’s harassment now factors into whether citizens of countries like Australia and the United States feel safe enough to attend public discussions about East Turkestan at events ranging from congressional hearings in Washington or think tank talks in Sydney.”
“Ending abuses in East Turkestan now depends in part on ensuring that these communities are safe to exercise their rights around the world, and on governments following Germany’s and Sweden’s lead and committing to not sending Uighur asylum seekers back to China,” she said.
Ferkat Jawdat, a Uighur and American citizen who lives in Chantilly, Va., last spoke to his mother in February. 

She was forced to stay in East Turkestan when he and his siblings came to the United States in 2011 because the Chinese authorities would not give her a passport. 

She told him in February that she feared she was going to be put in a camp; Mr. Jawdat has not been able to reach her since.
Representative Barbara Comstock, Republican of Virginia, pressed Mr. Jawdat’s case in an Oct. 3 letter to China’s ambassador to the United States, Cui Tiankai. 

It asked why Mr. Jawdat’s missing mother, Minaiwaier Tuersun, “has been imprisoned, why the Chinese government refused to issue her a passport in 2011, and when she will be released.”
There has been no response from the Chinese embassy, Mr. Jawdat said.
The youngest of four children of a prominent biologist and a doctor, Ms. Abbas grew up in Urumqi, the capital of East Turkestan, and attended a university there. 

She has lived in the United States since May 1989, when she came as a visiting scholar to Washington State University. 

She got a master’s degree in plant pathology there and became an American citizen in 1995.
Ms. Abbas has been active in Uighur issues for decades. 

She joined Radio Free Asia in Washington in 1998 as its first Uighur reporter before moving to California. 

She worked as an interpreter for the Defense Department when it detained 22 Uighurs in Guantánamo Bay, then helped with their relocations to other countries. 

She moved back to Washington in 2009 to be an advocate for Uighurs.
She said she waited one month before speaking to a journalist about the simultaneous disappearances of her sister and her aunt, Mayinur Abliz, in the hopes that officials would release them. 

Now she sees a dark future for them unless she speaks out.
She plans to mention them at a talk she is scheduled to give on Friday at Indiana University.
“China needs to respect international laws,” Ms. Abbas said. 

“This is so childish, what they’re doing — taking hostage the family members of someone who left when she was 21.”

Sanctions against a big Chinese bank is best way to rein in North Korea

• It's time to pair military power and presence with more serious economic sanctions on rogue China.
• Until China starts feeling real financial pressure, the North Korea threat will continue.

By Jake Novak 

Pyonyang's return to missile-firing activities this week proves more needs to be done to rein in the rogue nation.
President Trump acknowledged that on Tuesday, saying that "all options are on the table" after North Korea fired a ballistic missile that passed over Japan.
He signaled his impatience for continued negotiations with this tweet on Wednesday morning:

Here's what President Trump needs to do now: 

1) Increase the U.S. military presence in the region and 

2) Issue more serious economic sanctions against China.

Remember it was Ronald Reagan's policy of increasing military presence in Europe in the 1980s without firing a shot that worked in getting the U.S.S.R. to first take the U.S. political will more seriously, and then eventually made Moscow realize it could never match American military spending. 

China needs to see more of that same American military resolve.
But the non-military options are harder to find when confronting North Korea directly, because North Korea's economy is so small as it is. 

For economic sanctions to have a better chance of working, the U.S. and its allies must threaten to level serious sanctions on China.
The Trump team has indeed levied sanctions already, but they've been on bit part players and they don't hit hard enough. 

And that means it is time to hit a major Chinese bank and block its access to U.S. business and dollars.
And the Bank of China would be a good first target as it was cited in a U.N. report in 2016 for being used by North Korea to evade sanctions. 

That means that sanctioning that bank could serve the triple purpose of proving to the world that the U.S. is serious about protecting its western coast and its allies, aims to punish all who aid North Korea's missile adventurism, and help enforce the economic sanctions already in place against North Korea itself.
There is support for this tactic from a bipartisan set of figures. 

Many conservatives want to try a shutdown immediately, and former Obama administration Treasury official Anthony Ruggiero, and now a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies said in an email that, "sanctions against the Bank of China are overdue." 

He added that fines should be tried first before assets are frozen or access to the U.S. financial system is totally denied.
Another former Obama administration official at the CIA, David S. Cohen, is also calling for much more stringent sanctions on Chinese banks and downplaying the ramifications of China's response to them. 

In the Washington Post earlier this year, Cohen noted the positive results that came from the Obama administration's actions against Chinese banks that were still doing business with sanctioned banks in Tehran.
Cohen believes China would be similarly willing to cut off financial dealings with North Korea to avoid a war. 

"China is worried about ... military action to destroy North Korea's nuclear and missile programs. Whatever sanctions pain China was willing to endure to avert a military strike by the United States (or Israel) against Iran, its deep-seated fear of a military confrontation on the Korean Peninsula means its pain tolerance for secondary sanctions against North Korea would be even higher."
Still, it's vital for every American to understand the potential downside of that kind of sanction. 

First off, Beijing could still decide to at least temporarily respond angrily and move to block U.S. banking activities in China, such as they are.
Second, U.S. businesses and jobs that rely on Chinese investment would be effected and maybe even lost. 

Many economists have made the honest assessment that the worst case negative effects from shutting down a major Chinese bank would be severe and difficult to fully anticipate. 

That includes a nasty scenario where Russia could use its banks to swoop in to ease the effects of a major sanction like this.
But that's where the Trump administration has to weigh the costs of different general options for proving American resolve. 

A buildup of U.S. naval, infantry, and air power in the region is serious enough for a while, but a war weary American public is going to demand solid evidence that this president has explored as many non-military options as possible before supporting an actual attack. 

And even if the public does become more supportive of an actual strike, President Trump really owes that to the U.S. troops and the millions of civilians on both sides who would be put in harm's way.
The good news is that this kind of sanction could work even before it goes into effect, as long as the Trump team makes an effective and credible threat to shut down a major Chinese bank. 

That means more than just a Trump tweet, but a detailed description of what the U.S. plans to do from someone like Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. 

Another bit of good news is that unlike the destruction and deaths from air strikes and other attacks, a bank shutdown can be temporary and its effects easier to reverse. 

And the final bit of good news is that Russia's latest banking woes look like they'll at least significantly curtail much of Moscow's ability to interfere with this kind of move.
That's about where the good news ends. 

What everyone has to accept is that responding properly to a serious menace like Kim Jong Un is not going to be easy. 

There will be economic hardships to endure right here in the U.S. and for some people and businesses, they could be severe.
President Trump and the U.S. owes it to our troops, our endangered allies, and all the civilians in the region to pursue the most serious non-lethal options before ordering any kind of attack. 

Sanctioning a major Chinese bank is one of those options, and it would be appropriate in this situation. 

This administration must prepare to do so right away.

In the South China Sea, the U.S. is Struggling to Halt Beijing’s Advance

Despite a belated U.S. naval patrol, Beijing’s bid to extend its military power over the South China Sea is moving ahead unchecked.
BY DAN DE LUCE, KEITH JOHNSON

For the first time since Donald Trump took office, a U.S. warship has sailed near a Chinese-controlled island in the disputed South China Sea, signaling an attempt to project a more assertive American stance against Beijing just before a major regional defense summit.
The mission, a passage by the guided missile destroyer USS Dewey­ on Wednesday within twelve nautical miles of Mischief Reef, in the Spratly island chain, was long anticipated and delayed.
The last such operation took place in October, and U.S. commanders who had already chafed under Barack Obama’s tight leash had hoped to get a freer hand and to carry out more patrols under Trump.
Instead, the new administration has declined several requests from the military to carry out naval patrols in the disputed waterway.
Eager to secure China’s help in pressuring North Korea over its nuclear weapons program, the White House has moved cautiously and chosen not to confront Beijing over the South China Sea, officials and congressional aides told Foreign Policy.
But with defense ministers and senior military officers from across Asia due to meet in Singapore next month, including U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis, the administration needed to show it was willing to back up its words with some action and demonstrate that it would uphold the principle of freedom of navigation, experts said.
“This was a good, albeit overdue, move by the Trump Administration,” said Ely Ratner, formerly deputy national security adviser to Joe Biden and now at the Council on Foreign Relations.
It was the first time a U.S. warship had sailed within the twelve-mile limit of any Chinese-held feature — a way to show that Washington doesn’t buy Beijing’s claims that rocks generate a territorial sea, and so push back against China’s expansionist claims. 
“This was the big one folks were waiting for,” he said.
And while those so-called freedom of navigation operations, or FONOPS, by themselves don’t amount to a U.S. strategy to deal with the South China Sea, he said, the first step is to make sure that China can’t unilaterally fence off bits of international waters. 
“FONOPs are an essential part of that,” Ratner said.
During the campaign and early days of the administration, Trump and his deputies staked out a tough line on China.
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson suggested in his confirmation hearings that U.S. forces would actually try to expel China from disputed waters and islets it now claims.
But North Korea and its rapidly-expanding missile and nuclear weapons program have grabbed the attention of the Trump administration, pushing the disputes over the Chinese land grab in the South China Sea — and Beijing’s open militarization of many islets and atolls — to the back burner.
Trump has toned down his rhetoric on trade disputes and other spats with China specifically to secure Beijing’s cooperation in defusing the North Korea crisis.
“The president and his advisers have calculated that if we are to get China’s help on North Korea, better to take the foot off the gas on more contentious issues,” said Mira Rapp-Hooper, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security.
Even though as a candidate Trump portrayed former president Barack Obama as a weak president in his dealings with China and other adversaries, his administration’s cautious diplomacy bears some resemblance to Obama’s policies, as the previous White House concluded that more could be gained from Beijing by avoiding a full-blown confrontation over the South China Sea or other disputes.
Much to the consternation of U.S. allies in Asia, the Trump White House has yet to fill senior positions at the State Department and the Pentagon handling Asia policy, and has said little about the South China Sea issue publicly.
The uncertainty over the administration’s policy on China has alarmed America’s partners and weakened the resolve of some governments in Southeast Asia, who fear Washington will no longer back them up if they try to take on Beijing in the South China Sea.
At a meeting last month in Manila of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, government ministers from the region backed off of references to “land reclamation and militarization” after lobbying from China.
The Pentagon sought to downplay the significance of the operation, which it described as routine. Adm. John Richardson, the chief of naval operations, described the passage at an event in Washington Thursday as “not confrontational,” and said that the so-called freedom of navigation operations by U.S. ships receive exaggerated scrutiny for the supposed diplomatic messages they convey.
“They sure get a lot of attention when they happen,” he said, but the operations are routinely conducted all over the world without the fanfare associated with the South China Sea missions.
The operations sure get a lot of attention in China.
And such operations are also closely watched in Washington as a barometer of the administration’s willingness to push back against China. 
Amid growing concern in Congress that the Trump administration is making strategic concessions to China in hopes of persuading Beijing to shift its stance on North Korea, several senators from both sides of the aisle wrote a letter earlier this month urging the administration to show resolve in the South China Sea and conduct more frequent naval patrols in the waterway.
The first real test of the effect of Wednesday’s naval mission will come in early June at the Shangri-La dialogue, a large annual gathering in Singapore that serves as a venue for high-level talks on crucial matters of Asian security.
Many maritime experts view the focus on freedom of navigation operations, and how they are publicly presented, as misplaced.
“In my view, the publicity around the FONOPs is problematic. Many observers now view it as an indicator of U.S. resolve, which it is not,” said M. Taylor Fravel, an expert on Chinese maritime issues at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Such missions are merely meant to uphold traditional rights to navigation in international waters for all countries, he said.
What’s more, they can give Beijing an excuse to ramp up its own provocative behavior, feeling as if its claims of sovereignty are being challenged.
“They were never intended to do more, such as deterring China’s broader ambitions in places like the South China Sea.”
Ultimately, and despite the belated U.S. mission near Mischief Reef, Washington has few tools at its disposal to convince China to retreat from its years-long acquisition and garrisoning of a spate of tiny reefs and atolls in the South China Sea, one of the world’s busiest waterways.
Some experts and lawmakers have urged imposing economic sanctions on Chinese companies taking part in the vast island-building project, but the Trump administration has shown no sign it is ready to consider such a move.
Since it began dredging sand from the seafloor to vastly expand the size of those pinpricks of coral in 2014, China has built airfields, deep harbors and air defense systems on many features and deployed advanced fighter jets, despite promises to stop militarizing the area.
The bid to extend its reach in the waterway is part of China’s much broader effort — backed up with an arsenal of missiles — to push out its defensive perimeter from the Chinese coast and keep potential rivals at arm’s length in the event of a conflict.
“The United States does not have great options in the South China Sea,” Fravel said.
“China will not vacate the features it occupies and the United States will not forcibly remove them. “
China’s project has moved at a brisk pace, with reports of new military installations appearing every few weeks.
Earlier this month, a state-run Chinese paper said that Beijing had installed 155 mm rocket launchers on Fiery Cross reef in the Spratlys, purportedly to deter combat divers from Vietnam, which has been at loggerheads with China over territorial claims in the South China Sea.
“They basically succeeded in their construction projects, and are now well on their way to having floating bases out in the Spratly Islands, and there’s been really very little pushback and they’ve had to pay very little cost for doing so,” said Rapp-Hooper.

Trump’s New China Policy

Trump favours a tough line against China, threatening China’s leaders with economic sanctions and recognition of Taiwan. 

By Shaun Riordan

Since his election, European elites have enjoyed disparaging President Trump, and in particular his ineptitude at foreign policy. 

They gleefully recount his faux pas when talking about international affairs. 

It reminds me of the similar way in which we disparaged President Reagan during the Cold War. 

The British satirical puppet show Spitting Image even had a recurring sketch entitled “the president’s brain is missing”. 

Yet for all the contempt of European intellectuals, it was President Reagan who initiated the end of the Cold War and the liberation of Eastern Europe from Soviet tyranny (a liberation over which many Western European intellectuals remain curiously ambiguous). 

Is it possible that President Trump, despite the contempt he provokes in Europe, and perhaps not entirely intentionally, could develop a foreign policy doctrine superior to that of Obama?
The decline of US hegemony following the Iraq war and the global financial crisis may have been inevitable. 

Obama was, of course, not responsible for either. 

But the dangers of a transition to a multipolar world were exacerbated by his lack of a consistent policy. 

“Don’t do stupid shit” does not amount to a foreign policy doctrine. 

It is not that Obama has been excessively moral. He has been an enthusiastic use of assassination by drone attack. 

However, the lack of a clear view of America’s role in the world has generated dangerous uncertainties. 

Allies are no longer certain if they can depend on America to defend them. 

Rivals are no longer certain if they can depend on the US to constrain their ambitions. 

The up-shot has been an increase in tensions and conflicts throughout Spykman’s rimland, from the Baltic republics through the Ukraine to the Middle East, Central Asia and the South China Sea, as allies and rivals recalibrate their security assumptions. 

The main beneficiary has been Vladmir Putin, who has taken advantage of Obama’s hesitancy to seize the Crimea, destabilise the Ukraine and carve out a new role for Russia in the Middle East.
The doubts that Obama has created in the minds of friends and foes alike is reminiscent of the uncertainties generated by British policy at the beginning of the 20th century. 

In that case Britain’s attempts to maintain a free hand in Europe through diplomatic ambiguity played a major part in the outbreak of World War I. 

Uncertainties about British intentions in 1914 drove geopolitical miscalculations in the Chancelleries of Europe. 

Obama recalls British policy also in the abandonment of global free trade for a new version of Imperial Preference, in this case the Transpacific Partnership (TPP) and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). 

These in effect replaced the global trading rules of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) with free trade areas for America’s friends and allies (just as Britain in the 1930s sought confine the benefits of free trade within the Empire). 

China, Russia and India were pointedly excluded. Yet even this aspect of Obama’s foreign policy looks condemned to failure. 

Trump has said he will cancel TPP, and French and German government ministers have rejected key aspects of TTIP.
Immediately after Trump’s election, sitting in the departure lounge of Madrid airport, I tried to identify likely key features of his foreign policy (http://www.shaunriordan.com/?p=334). 

It was not easy. 

Although much remains obscure, other parts of his approach to international relations are becoming clearer. 

Trump does not believe in international institutions or alliances, unless allies pay their way. 

He believes he can reach an agreement with Putin that would lift sanctions on Russia. 

He will support Israel but has little interest in Syria which he is happy to leave the Russia and Iran to sort out. 

Europe will be very much to left to fend for itself. 

At the same time Trump favours a tough line against China, threatening China’s leaders with economic sanctions and recognition of Taiwan. 

The East Coast Foreign Policy establishment has thrown up its arms in horror. 

But are these policy position so nonsensical?
Someone at some point will have to reach a deal with Putin to lift sanctions against Russia. 

It is not in the West’s interest to drive Russia into economic and political collapse. 

Putin has made Russia, together with Iran, essential players in escaping from the Syria debacle (indeed it may be that Syria’s future is decided in the trilateral talks between Russia, Iran and Turkey in Kazakhstan without either US or European participation). 

Given that no one is willing to expel the Russians by force, any deal must recognise the Russian occupation of Crimea (although with some weasel wording to avoid setting a precedent for changing borders by force). 

This will probably be traded for stabilising a rump and federalised Ukraine. 

Guarantees for the borders of the Baltic states would in turn be traded for limitations on EU and NATO expansion. 

NATO will in any case not be the major player it was with Turkey increasingly siding with Moscow and Trump disinterested. 

The tendency to deal with Moscow will be strengthened by the French presidential elections in which both the likely candidates for the second round run-off (Fillon and Le Pen) are openly pro-Russian. 

Trump’s self avowed background as a deal maker will naturally incline him towards these kinds of trade-offs.
With fracking ending energy dependence on Middle East oil, the US has little interest in remaining embroiled in the region. 

Its interventions this millennium have invariably been disastrous. 

The Obama regime has already shown willingness to sacrifice its traditional relationship with Saudi Arabia in pursuit of nuclear deal with Iran. 

Whether Trump keeps his promise to rip up that deal may ultimately shape his global geopolitical strategy. 

Putin will pressure him not to do so. 

Again it is possible to see the bones of a trade-off allowing the Iran deal to stand and the emergence of a Russia, Iran, Turkey triumvirate in the Middle East in exchange for guarantees for Israel and the US being able to disengage. 

From the point of view of US interests (although not European interests) allowing Russia to get trapped in trying to sort out the mess in the Middle East may have some strategic advantages.

China represents a greater threat to American geopolitical and economic interests than Russia.

The very softly softly approach to China of the US Democratic establishment appears to have achieved little. 

The government of Xi Jinping imposes a brutal internal purge of the Communist Party and repression of freedom of expression at home, while pursuing a proactive and far more aggressive foreign policy than its predecessors. 

Its assertion of its sovereignty in the South China Sea is an open challenge to US power and influence in the region. 

It amounts to a classical example of an emerging power probing the tolerance and will of a declining hegemon. 

As capital outflows from China continue to increase, the Chinese government may be tempted to a significant devaluation of the renminbi (given the trillion dollars of foreign reserves it has already burnt through trying to support the Rmb, it may have no choice), damaging the regional economy and fulfilling Trump’s complaints about currency manipulation.
It may not simply be a case of Trump calling Beijing’s bluff in a way that previous administrations were reluctant to do. 

If Trump can combine a deal with Putin with confrontation with Beijing he could drive a global geopolitical realignment. 

Russia has its own problems with China in Central Asia (where they compete for political and economic influence). 

China has been reluctant to support Russia over the Crimea or Syria. 

A containment strategy towards China including the US and Russia (as well as Japan, India and Vietnam) would significantly reduce Chinese influence in the world. 

Even if this proves beyond Trump’s grasp, a Kissinger-style triangulation between Washington, Moscow and Beijing could prove a more effective way of managing the transition to a multipolar world than Obama’s passive uncertainties. 

In short, despite the derision of European intellectuals, Trump may prove a more effective geostrategist than Obama, just as Reagan ultimately proved more successful than Carter. 

The ultimate irony for Europe’s intellectuals may be that it will be Europe, divided internally and over foreign-policy, that will prove increasingly irrelevant, and vulnerable in the new multipolar world – a multipolar world for which the intellectuals of the European Union have so long yearned.

Theft Empire

Treasury and Justice officials pushed for economic sanctions on China over cybertheft
By Ellen Nakashima

Obama noted at a news conference this month that the United States has seen “some evidence” that Chinese government hackers have reduced their pilfering of U.S. companies’ intellectual property and sensitive data.
But, he added, they have “not completely eliminated these activities.”
Although some researchers say the hacking activity has plummeted, officials at the Treasury and Justice departments and at the National Security Council have been pushing to impose economic sanctions on Chinese firms that have benefited from past thefts of U.S. firms’ commercial data.
Over the past year, they have advocated the use of a 2015 executive order on cyber-sanctions that would allow the government to sanction individuals and companies that were enriched by material hacked from the computer networks of American businesses.
“It’s about specific justice for specific victims,” said one U.S. official, who like others interviewed requested anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
A sanctions package that names specific Chinese companies has been ready for more than a year. 

But pro-China senior officials in the State Department and within the National Economic Council have been opposed.

The administration was close to pulling the trigger on the sanctions last year but drew back after Xi Jinping reached an agreement with Obama that his country would not conduct such activity, and would set up a high-level joint dialogue on cybercrime and cooperate in investigations.
Dmitri Alperovitch, co-founder of the cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, said China’s commercial hacking dropped over the past year after the agreement. 

Others note, however, that the indictments of five Chinese military hackers for economic espionage also played a role in changing China’s behavior.
But Beijing’s cooperation in law enforcement matters has not been optimal, officials said. 

And the Chinese government has not taken action against those who hacked U.S. companies and stole their intellectual property or pricing information.
If the Obama administration were to impose economic sanctions on Chinese companies, that would be a gift to President Donald Trump, said James A. Lewis, a cyber-policy expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. 

“It would be a chit he could trade in talks with the Chinese,” he said. 

“He could offer to lift sanctions in exchange for some economic or trade concession.”
At this point, the use of the order against China is highly unlikely, officials said.
“It’s hard to see the administration picking that fight with China with so few days left in the administration,” a second senior official said.
The Trump administration, however, could choose to use it.

Sina Delenda Est

China Is Using North Korea For Nuclear Blackmail Against The US
By Anders Corr

A Wall Street Journal article recently stated that “Some White House officials believe that if Mr. Trump follows through on campaign vows to label China a currency manipulator and slaps Chinese imports with hefty tariffs, Xi Jinping will make it a point to be uncooperative on North Korea.” 

The main issue on which the U.S. needs Chinese cooperation on North Korea is to stop its development of nuclear weapons that can reach the United States. 

If the White House officials are correct, China’s linkage of cooperation on North Korea to U.S. trade issues would be close to using the nuclear weapons of a proxy country to blackmail the United States.

A South Korean man watches a TV newscast reporting the visit to China by North Korea’s Kim Jong-un, at a railway station in Seoul on May 20, 2011. Kim Jong-Un began a visit to China, according to Seoul media reports, signified Beijing’s approval of the North’s succession process. 

China has arguably done this before, including through nuclear assistance to proliferating authoritarian countries. 

China is a major ally of Pakistan, whose China-assisted nuclear weapons threaten India. 

China is an ally of Russia, whose nuclear weapons threaten the U.S. and Europe. 

China is an ally of Iran, whose China-assisted nuclear weapons development threatens Israel and Saudi Arabia, both of which are U.S. allies. 

In other words, China assists all the major nuclear-armed countries that oppose the United States and its democratic allies. 

Why is that? 

Could it be that China is purposefully supporting nuclear proxies against the United States? 

If one of these proxies launches just a few weapons against the U.S., and destroys our economy, tax base, and therefore our defense industry, China could sit the conflict out, high and dry, and announce itself afterwards as the next global hegemon.
Giving into authoritarians with nuclear weapons, as one writer in the Atlantic recently proposed to do with North Korea, is not the answer. 

The U.S., our European allies, Japan, South Korea, and Australia, are all democracies, and have bigger, better, and more innovative economies than the autocrats. 

If democracies could unify against the threat of authoritarian regimes, we could use strong economic sanctions and a robust military defense to dissuade them from their current path of authoritarian militarization. 

We should start with China, whose economy has the most to lose from trade sanctions, and which supports lesser autocrats worldwide. 

If we wait and do nothing about nuclear proliferation among autocrats, which is essentially what we have done for the last few decades, we abandon millions of people in our cities to the whims of nuclear-armed tin pot dictators like Kim Jong-un.