Day: August 17, 2021

The Fall Of Afghanistan And U.S. Foreign Trade

Chin@Strategy

TOPSHOT – Taliban fighters in Kandahar on August 13, 2021. (Photo by – / AFP) (Photo by -/AFP via … [+] Getty Images) AFP via Getty Images Afghanistan’s fall to the Taliban upon U.S. withdrawal raises concerns about our country’s foreign trade in general. Will our export markets continue to buy our products, and will our import sources continue to supply us with goods and services? In most cases, the Afghan experience will have little impact, but watch out for what happens in countries dependent on U.S. military protection. Direct…

The Legacy Of Failure In Afghanistan Starts In 1979, Not 2001- OpEd

Chin@Strategy

A decade ago, John Lamberton Harper, a professor of US Foreign Policy and European Studies at Johns Hopkins in Bologna, Italy published an indispensable history of the first cold war (The Cold War, Oxford University Press, 2011) in which he described the origins of what became known as “the Carter doctrine.” The Carter Doctrine pledged US military action against any state that attempted to gain control of the Persian Gulf. As Quincy Institute president Andrew Bacevich has pointed out it “implied the conversion of the Persian Gulf into an informal…

Deathly Quiet: The Navy Can’t Kill China’s Submarines If It Cant Find Them

Chin@Strategy

Here’s What You Need To Remember: The PLA Navy may be poised to overcome a technological and tactical defect that has plagued it since its founding. Word has it that China’s People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLA Navy) has staged a breakthrough in submarine propulsion. At any rate, that’s the word from marine engineer Rear Admiral Ma Weiming, a specialist in electromagnetic systems. Admiral Ma recently reported on state-run CCTV that shipwrights are installing shaftless rim-driven pumpjets in China’s “next-generation nuclear submarines,” meaning attack or ballistic-missile boats. (Click here for a layman’s description of pumpjet technology.) Ma crowed that Chinese engineers are “now way ahead…

Shorting Chinese stocks is the third most crowded trade in wake of Beijing’s crackdown, fund managers tell BofA

Chin@Strategy

Beijing has cracked down on tech companies such as Didi. VCG/Getty Images Fund managers said shorting Chinese stocks became the third most crowded trade in August, according to Bank of America. Beijing has tightened its grip on tech and education companies, causing investors to shift their positions. China policy is now considered a leading tail risk by fund managers, BofA’s August survey showed. Sign up here for our daily newsletter, 10 Things Before the Opening Bell. Fund managers said they think investors are ramping up their bets against Chinese stocks…

China threatens Taiwan with ‘immediate war’ amid reports US has troops in region

Chin@Strategy

CHINA has threatened Taiwan with “immediate war” after it was falsely reported that the US has 30,000 troops in the region. Chinese warships, anti-submarine aircrafts and fighter jets were dispatched for military drills close to the island nation following alleged “external interference and provocations”. 4 Chinese state media has threatened Taiwan with ‘immediate war’ after reports of 30,000 American troops in the regionCredit: Getty 4 Senator John Cornyn tweeted out bogus troop numbers today Now, Beijing’s state-run media has launched a scathing attack on Taiwan, which China claims as its…

China threatens Taiwan with ‘immediate war’ amid reports US has troops in region

Chin@Strategy

CHINA has threatened Taiwan with “immediate war” after it was falsely reported that the US has 30,000 troops in the region. Chinese warships, anti-submarine aircrafts and fighter jets were dispatched for military drills close to the island nation following alleged “external interference and provocations”. 4 Chinese state media has threatened Taiwan with ‘immediate war’ after reports of 30,000 American troops in the regionCredit: Getty 4 Senator John Cornyn tweeted out bogus troop numbers today Now, Beijing’s state-run media has launched a scathing attack on Taiwan, which China claims as its…

White House pushes back on China amid propaganda strike in wake of Afghanistan’s collapse

Chin@Strategy

The White House Tuesday pushed back against a Chinese propaganda campaign attacking the United States and Taiwan after the collapse of Afghanistan – with the Biden administration condemning the communist regime for taking advantage of the tragedy and doubling down on the its support for Taiwan. The U.S. statement was in response to Chinese propaganda outlets and the country’s official international propaganda mouthpiece, which seized on President Biden’s handling of the withdrawal from Afghanistan to intimidate Taiwan. The Chinese government also demanded that the U.S. cease “official contacts & military…

China Won’t Repeat America’s Mistakes in Afghanistan

Chin@Strategy

As the United States departs Afghanistan and Kabul falls, China is not showing up with an army. It is showing up bearing gifts to all parties, not least the ascendant Taliban. Beijing’s prospects, therefore, are already looking much better—and cheaper—than the U.S. state- and military-building project. Beijing’s traditional worry in Afghanistan has been regional instability and the prospect of cross-border aid to Uyghur militants in Xinjiang—or the provision of a safe refuge for Uyghurs fleeing Chinese oppression. But the Taliban will likely have learned from the experience of the past…

Will China Fall Into the Afghanistan Trap?

Chin@Strategy

Although the narrative of Afghanistan as the graveyard of empires is a bit overdone – and tends to ignore imperial success stories like that of  Darius I of Persia or Alexander the Great in antiquity – there is more than a little truth to it. In modern times, British, Soviet and now American efforts to bring the country into their respective geopolitical orbits have met with decisive, and humiliating, defeat. And in the Soviet case at least, that defeat contributed directly to the fall of the empire itself. But what…

‘In the Same Breath’ Review: Wuhan 2019, or When Normalcy Ended

Chin@Strategy

When you hear about filmmakers in conflict zones, you may flash on countries like Syria or Afghanistan. The movies produced in theaters of war often follow a similar arc: The documentarian parachutes in to take stock of a catastrophe. The focus tends to be on rubble, blood and suffering — the spectacle. In her short, stellar career, the Chinese filmmaker Nanfu Wang has repeatedly returned to a less obvious conflict zone in which the war for proverbial hearts and minds mostly takes place through state propaganda. Her latest, “In the…