China Watch with Peter Lee

This week on China Watch, from managed trade and market access to media and propaganda to oligarch-inflected national policy, America’s beginning to look a lot like China.  We look at that weird and revealing Jeff Bezos/Jack Ma doppelganger phenomenon.  Two rich guys.  Two e-commerce giants.  They both own newspapers.  They both do a lot of work for their governments.  And it looks like they’re both working hard to mess with each other.
Also, citizens of Hawaii learn that nuclear deterrence against North Korea and hosting US Pacific Command headquarters are not boring.

This week on China Watch:  South Korea isn’t behaving like a docile American ally.  There’s a reason for that and you’ll only learn the backstory here.  And weird doings in Taiwan! Taiwan security services accuse a pro-mainlander public figure of getting half a million dollars from the PRC for a media influence operation.  We apply the smell test to this allegation.

Happy New Year!  ‘Tis the season for flapdoodle!  Team Trump keeps the North Korea pot boiling over the holidays with a PRC oil sale accusation!  Taiwan tiptoes into the Quad!  Maybe we’ll be calling it the Quint or the Quad and a Half soon!  Japan’s Okinotoroshima Island, the secret shame of lawfare, creeps back into the Asia equation.  And alert Fox News!  the Chinese Communist Party’s war on Christmas is real!
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Happy holidays!  It’s time to say Goodbye! To 2017 and Hello! To a decade of cold war with China.
They say war is too important to be left to the generals.  Well, I’m getting the feeling cold war is too complicated to be left to the think tanks.
After months of diligent spadework in the US and around the world, the China hawks achieved their dream: a presidential national security statement characterizing the People’s Republic of China as a zero-sum rival.

Donald Trump is ready to introduce Cold War 2.0 to the world, with a bigger, better adversary:  China!  It’s going to start with an expansion of the Australian war against Chinese influence to the US of A.  Before we put on that welcoming parade, let’s look at the truly ugly Deep State gains the Australian campaign brings in its wake with new foreign interference law.  And a special look at foreign influence here, in the United States.  Guess what.  If we’re going to have an honest discussion about foreign interference in US politics that reaches all the way into the White House, its not Ch

Donald Trump’s China Hawk clown college is officially in session!  The China hawks are getting their way on Korea, Australia, and Taiwan.  But look for US China policy to overpromise, underdeliver, and screw up in what we now love to call the Indo-Pacific Region.

This week on China Watch: Rocket Man! Big Rocket Man!  A big launch by North Korea elicits big posturing but no solutions from US pundits concerning North Korea’s nuclear weapons capabilities.  Nobody asks what Kim Jong Un wants…except China Watch.  I’ll tell you in this week’s episode.  Spoiler: The answer is a peace treaty plus a number with zeros…lots and lots of zeros.

Great news for March of Folly fans!  Donald J. Trump has made his peace with the Beltway Asianist establishment so the China Containment Reign of Error can resume!  Bad news for the rest of us, though.
Expect plenty of chaos as the US struggles to come to terms with China’s rise and America’s relative decline…and look to China Watch for tips on how to try to avoid the collateral damage.  You need China Watch…Now More Than Ever.

The Trump China brainspace is in play.  Who’s going to claim it? Xi Jinping? Or the China hawks?
In official Washington China containment is the flavor of the month, which means that the world’s China analysts, anti-Chicom advocates, milsec entrepreneurs, arms sales hustlers, and hustlers are flooding the Western media to get in their two cents, compete for the attention of the Trump White House, and make a buck.
This week on China Watch, we look at dams in South Asia, regime change in the Philippines, and of course, the Donald J. Trump circus.  And head transplants.

The Trump trip to Asia is a major inflection point for China hawks eager to put transactional diplomacy in the rearview mirror, pivot to an overtly adversarial China policy, and ignore and deny the fundamental changes in Asia that go hand in hand with both China’s rise and America’s relative decline.
Trump and China bashing got an extensive workout in the Western press, and TPP 11 and the Quad made their debut on the world stage.  A revolution in China containment?  Or more of the same?