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Excerpt:China is the original riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. A country striving for modernity but feudal in its treatment of its citizens, Beijing’s economic identity is a combination of Communist orthodoxy and crony capitalism. As you might expect, the two don’t work well together.
On the outside of the riddle, China is booming, the people are subservient and happy, and the government is looking to the future with confidence. This is the picture the Chinese Communists paint for the world to see. The reality is much different.
China is being crushed by debt, has become dependent on high levels of debt, and has created a bubble in several sectors, like housing and household goods.
One noted Chinese economist said in 2019, “Basically, China’s economy is all built on speculation and everything is over-leveraged.” He was proved right when the massive overbuilding of housing caused the market to collapse in 2021.
09 China
Pro-CCP sites like “Bastille Post Global” are producing a narrative around the recent U.S.-China tariff deal that suggests world leaders should reconsider moving too fast to concede to Trump’s demands on tariffs given China’s “success” in bringing Trump’s initial tariffs to heel with counter-tariffs of their own.
Anonymous analyst “Deep Throat” writes: “The initial breakthrough in US–China trade negotiations has set a precedent, with China’s unwavering stance in the face of Trump’s so-called ‘reciprocal tariffs’ policy serving as a model for other countries in their own tariff talks with the US. China had refused to yield throughout the process and maintained a ‘not backing down’ posture.”
Watch for China’s continued pressure to create a world coalition response to Trump’s tariff actions. It remains to be seen if China’s spin on this deal will look like anything more than bluster. China initially claimed it would not negotiate at all with Trump and would not lower any of its pre-Trump tariff levels, yet ended up doing both in this same deal its trying to spin as a defeat for Trump.
The tables can be turned on China, as other nations might look at what the U.S. has done to bring China to heel, at least in part, and choose to do the same. If Trump were wise, he would be pushing for an anti-China-tariff response from the many nations currently being hammered by Xi’s policies.
After Donald Trump announces plans to build a satellite missile defense system called “Golden Dome,” China countered that such moves would make “outer space” a “battlefield.”
China warns Trump Golden Dome could turn ‘outer space into a battlefield’– www.washingtonexaminer.com
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China said it is “gravely concerned” about President Donald Trump‘s ambitious Golden Dome project, and warned that it could upset the global strategic balance.
On Tuesday, Trump announced the Golden Dome project — a concept initially pitched during his campaign that reflects Israel’s Iron Dome but is now more analogous to former President Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative, better known as Star Wars. Trump explicitly drew connections to Reagan’s project in his Tuesday presentation, leading some analysts to describe the project as “Star Wars on steroids.”
Expectedly, China is playing the role that the Soviet Union previously played, and it has expressed concern over the project’s strategic implications.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning expressed her country’s concerns during a Wednesday press conference, saying the “unconstrained, global, multilayer and multidomain missile defense system” will “expand the U.S. arsenal of means for combat operations in outer space, including R&D and deployment of orbital interception systems.”
“That gives the project a strong offensive nature and violates the principle of peaceful use in the Outer Space Treaty. The project will heighten the risk of turning the space into a war zone and creating a space arms race, and shake the international security and arms control system,” she added, according to a transcript from the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
China to donate $500 million to WHO, stepping into gap left by U.S. – The Washington Post
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Beijing will replace the United States as the organization’s top state donor, expanding its influence as the U.S. retreats from international cooperation.
U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. called the World Health Organization “moribund” and “mired in bureaucratic bloat” during a speech Tuesday at the U.N. headquarters in Geneva. (Magali Girardin/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
China has pledged to give $500 million to the World Health Organization as the country is set to replace the United States as the group’s top state donor, expanding Beijing’s global influence in the wake of Washington’s retreat from international cooperation.
China’s new ‘drone mothership’ expected to launch for first test flight within days– www.euronews.com
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A new Chinese drone carrier that can release up to 100 smaller drones at a time could take to the skies for a test flight within days, state broadcaster CCTV has said.The unmanned “drone mothership,” known as Jiu Tian or Nine Heavens, will be deployed by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) air force and aims to lay the groundwork to expand the reach of aerial combat.
When it is fully operational, Jiu Tian will release vast swarms of drones that would work together to overwhelm an enemy’s air defence systems.
A video circulating on X shows a visualisation of Jiu Tian’s capabilities and its ability to deploy several drones at the same time from both sides of its fuselage.
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Secretary of State Marco Rubio didn’t just show up to Tuesday’s Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing; he came loaded for bear. Ostensibly there to discuss the FY26 State Department budget, Rubio instead delivered a scathing indictment of China’s global con game and exposed shocking failures in America’s foreign aid system. What unfolded wasn’t routine testimony; it was a political thunderclap and a long-overdue reckoning.
As I’m sure you recall, Democrats have been having hissy fits over USAID cuts. They claim that the Trump administration was axing vital humanitarian aid when in reality, it was targeting waste, fraud, and abuse.
Just how bad is the waste, fraud, and abuse? Rubio revealed that under the old USAID model, only 12 cents of every dollar made it to the intended recipients. “That means that in order for us to get, you know, aid to somebody, we had to spend all this other money supporting this foreign aid industrial complex,” he said. In other words, U.S. taxpayers were funding bloated overhead while struggling nations got table scraps.
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India’s Operation Sindoor is haunting both Pakistan and China, the former due to the non-explanation for sponsoring cross-border terrorism and the massive physical loss of military assets and face, and the latter due to the utter failure of its military equipment sold to Pakistan and the diplomatic fallout of supporting an “ironclad” friend.Diplomatically, after the Pahalgam terror attacks, China expressed its concern and called for restraint on India’s part, while reiterating support for Pakistan both regionally and in the United Nations’ #1267 al-Qaeda sanctions committee. China’s Foreign Minister, Wang Yi, discussed issues with his Pakistan counterpart, Ishaq Dar, and India’s National Security Advisor, Ajit Doval, without any concrete proposals in hand.
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US President Donald Trump has unveiled a scheme to build a $175 billion (€154bn) missile defence system called the “Golden Dome”, claiming it could be “fully operational” by the end of his presidential term.The announcement on Tuesday came roughly four months after Trump signed an executive order, instructing the Pentagon to draw up plans to defend the US against “catastrophic” aerial attacks.
Although the exact scope of the Golden Dome project remains unclear, Trump said the system would involve “next-generation” technologies, including space-based sensors and interceptors.
“Once fully constructed, the Golden Dome will be capable of intercepting missiles even if they are launched from other sides of the world, and even if they are launched from space,” Trump claimed.