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China and the Solomon Islands Deepen their Police and Military Ties

Guancha, a Shanghai based news and commentary aggregation service in China, reported that, recently, the Solomon Islands signed a police assistance treaty with China. and “some people got really worried.”

China’s Embassy in the Solomon Islands reported that, on March 14, China’s police advisory team and the Solomon Islands police held an opening ceremony for a Sino-Solomon Islands Police Training Class. Hon. Anthony Veke, Minister of the Police of the Solomon Islands spoke at the ceremony. He expressed sincere gratitude to China for providing COVID prevention materials, police equipment, and police training. He hoped all trainees will proactively study China’s police knowledge, skills, and tactics, efficiently use China provided equipment, and quickly improve their skills in handling riots and sudden events.

On March 22, the Solomon Islands Ministry of Police website showed that its police in the training had started using the simulated guns that China had provided.

The Guancha article then stated, “Some people got really worried” about the cooperation plan. Both the Australian and New Zealand governments expressed their “concerns” about the impact of the Sino-Solomon Islands military cooperation on the (South Pacific’s) regional security.

Reuters reported that the Solomon Islands government confirmed that it was “diversifying the country’s security partnership including that with China,” and that it would sign off on a number of agreements with Beijing “to further create a secure and safe environment for local and foreign investments.” Reuters later reported on a leaked draft security treaty that would allow China’s armed police and its military to protect Chinese projects that are in the Solomon Islands.

Source:
1. Guancha, March 25, 2022
https://www.guancha.cn/internation/2022_03_25_631859.shtml
2. Reuter, March 25, 2022
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/03/25/australia-nz-concerned-as-solomon-islands-confirm-china-security-deal.html
3. Reuter, March 28, 2022
https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/solomons-prime-minister-says-will-not-pick-sides-confirms-security-negotiations-2022-03-28/

Briefings | | |   Defense/Military Geo-Strategic Trend

Hu Xijin: Why Russia Is Strategically Very Important to China

Hu Xijin, the former chief editor of the CCP’s mouthpiece Global Times, published an article explaining China’s position in the Russia-Ukraine war. Below is a translation of the article:

“Some people in China have always advocated that we should follow the West in condemning and sanctioning Russia as a nice gesture to improve relations with the United States. This claim is very naive. Let me explain here plainly and clearly why Russia is crucially and strategically important to China.

“The most obvious reason is that China and Russia are mutually supportive diplomatically. This, however, is only the most superficial reason. I don’t need to say more about Russia’s support for China on Taiwan, Hong Kong, Xinjiang, Tibet and other issues. The most important thing is the ‘back-to-back’ mutual strategic relationship between China and Russia.

“Let me ask you, who is the number one strategic adversary of the United States today? It is China, not Russia! Now that Russia is in the whirlwind, the United States is putting most of its pressure on Moscow. In the Trump era, Washington wanted to improve its relations with Russia.” Pence once said, “Forget Russia. Please believe that, over time, the primary edge of American pressure will definitely turn back to China. At that time we will feel how valuable it is to have the support of Russia, even just a neutral Russia.”

“Even now, Russia has suddenly taken away a large part of the pressure from the United States. Russia and the United States will be dead (worst) enemies to each other for a long time into the future. Since the trade war began, China has been at the forefront of fighting against U.S. hegemony. Now it is happening that Russia is standing at the forefront. Isn’t it equally significant for China to accumulate power? It is a completely different geopolitical situation for the two countries, China and Russia, to resist U.S. hegemony than for one country to face the U.S. alone.

“The China-Russia comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination in the 21st century is very special and its ‘no upper limit’ connotation is a deterrent to the United States. For example, if the United States carries out extreme strategic coercion against China, with Russia as a partner, China will not be afraid of the United States’ energy blockade and our food supply will be more secure, as will many other raw materials. It will be even harder for the United States to make up its mind to have a comprehensive strategic showdown with China.

“In the event of a war between China and the United States in the Taiwan Strait or the South China Sea, China’s conventional forces will increasingly have the power to overwhelm the U.S. military. With Russia as a super-nuclear force hostile to the United States (regardless of whether Moscow supports China at that time or is neutral), it will be more difficult for the United States to deal with China using nuclear blackmail. Because China itself is a feared nuclear power, the United States must also be wary of Russia’s leap from nuclear parity with the United States to nuclear superiority.

“The strengths of China and Russia have strong strategic complementarity. The geopolitical potential formed by the two countries is boundless. For example, the Sino-Russian strategic relationship has a certain potential effect containing Japan. It also has a certain influence on India. Also, importantly, China and Russia together are powerful enough to strategically stabilize Central Asia.

If China and Russia are successfully divided by the United States, today’s Russia will immediately face a strategic dead chess fate. In the future Sino-U.S. conflicts, China will also face a dead chess fate. Today we are facing many challenges and uncertainties in the east and south. If Russia is pulled away by the United States, and China and Russia return to the hostility of the 1970s, China will be back to the 1960s’situation of ‘anti-American imperialist’ and ‘anti-Soviet (revisionist)’ at the same time. Fighting on both fronts, is that conceivable?

Some people suggest to abandon Russia in exchange for reconciliation with the United States. How naive it is to make such a claim. The ultimate goal of the United States on Russia is only to make it no longer a ‘nuclear threat,’ whereas its goal on China is to make China completely lose its development ability and its competitiveness. It is best to divide China into several pieces. Each piece becomes a parallel piece next to Japan, South Korea, and the ASEAN countries so that every individual one is controlled by the U.S. They will buy its weapons, and produce cheap goods for the U.S.

“Those naive Chinese people should stop dreaming. China should not take the initiative to challenge the United States and should try to avoid Sino-U.S. confrontation, but we must use our own strength to make the United States accept peaceful coexistence with China. Russia is China’s most important partner to achieve this goal. Therefore, China can’t do anything against Russia, i.e., against China-Russia relations today. The Chinese government’s balanced stance on the Russian-Ukrainian conflict is most in line with China’s actual and long-term national interests.”

Source: ifeng.com, March 20, 2022
https://news.ifeng.com/c/8EXkKXoIC8D

Briefings | | |   Geo-Strategic Trend US-China Relations

HKET: Report on Surge in Cyberattacks against NATO: Originating from Chinese IP Addresses

Hong Kong Economic Times (HKET), the leading financial daily in Hong Kong, recently reported that, with the war between Russia and Ukraine, the conflict has spread to the Internet. Many hacker organizations have participated. Check Point Research (CPR), the threat intelligence division of the software technology company Check Point, just released a research report showing that cyber-attacks by hackers against government organizations outside Ukraine increased by 21 percent. The attacks launched from Chinese IP addresses against NATO countries increased by 116 percent. Overall cyber-attacks against all industries in Ukraine increased by 20 percent, with an average of 1,466 attacks per Ukraine organization per week. However, the number of active networks in Ukraine has dropped by 27 percent due to the impact of the war. Overall cyber-attacks against Russia have grown by only one percent. Cyber-attacks against governments or military sectors in all regions of the world have increased significantly, up 21 percent from pre-conflict levels. It is worth noting that the attacks from Chinese IPs are 72 percent higher than before the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. The attacks from Chinese IPs on NATO corporate networks are 116 percent higher. Check Point indicated that hackers aren’t just targeting government or military targets. They are also taking advantage of the public’s eagerness to launch phishing attacks. The attacks cannot be attributed directly to China, as both domestic and foreign hackers can use Chinese IP as the source of the attack.

Source: HKET, March 23, 2022
https://bit.ly/3JKnEvf

Briefings | | |   Geo-Strategic Trend Information/Technology

India Plans to Double Russian Coking Coal Imports

Well-known Chinese news site Sina (NASDAQ: SINA) recently reported that India’s Steel Minister Ram Chandra Prasad Singh said India plans to double its coking coal imports from Russia. Singh said in a conference in New Delhi that, coking coal is a key raw material for steelmaking, and the current conflict between Russia and Ukraine has affected the stable supply. Data from consultancy Kpler showed that, at least 1.06 million tons of coking and thermal coal have been shipped to Indian ports since March, the most since January 2020. U.S. President Joe Biden said on March 21 that India’s response to confronting Russia was “erratic,” an exception among Washington’s allies. Unlike other members of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (QUAD) – the United States, Japan and Australia – India continues to purchase Russian oil, refuses to publicly condemn Russia, and abstained from voting three times on the relevant United Nations resolutions related to Ukraine. An Indian government official said that India, the world’s third-largest consumer of crude oil, relies on imports for nearly 85 percent of its demand, while supplies from Russia are “negligible” at less than one percent. Another Indian government official said, “Russia offers oil and other commodities at lower discounts, and we are happy to accept that.”

Source: Sina, March 27, 2022
https://news.sina.com.cn/w/2022-03-27/doc-imcwiwss8447433.shtml

Briefings | | |   Geo-Strategic Trend

Zheng Yongnian: Revelation for China from Russia-Ukraine Conflict – Open up More

In an exclusive interview with the Global Times on March 18, 2022, Zheng Yongnian, a professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (Shenzhen) and the Director of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Global and Contemporary China, said that the revelation for China from the Russia-Ukraine conflict is that China should open up more. The economic ties with the West will make it difficult for the parties involved in the sanction to sustain it. Here are some main points from Professor Zheng’s statement: 

The Russia-Ukraine conflict may have an important effect on the international order

Since the end of the Cold War, the U.S. has become more and more contemptuous of Russia, considering it a “troublemaker,” It considers China to be a major competitor or even an enemy. Therefore, over the past years, the U.S. has been building an “Asian mini-NATO” against China. The U.S. strategic focus is increasingly shifting from Europe and the Middle East to the Asia-Pacific region. 

In general, the post-World War II international order is in the process of rapid disintegration. Many countries are seeking their own geopolitical sphere of influence. They are hoping to establish an international order that is beneficial to themselves.

What the United States is doing in Asia now is no different from what NATO did back when it was formed. The actual “Asian version of a NATO” prototype already exists. The reason why the conflict between the “Asian version of NATO” that the United States is trying to form and China has not escalated sharply is entirely because China does not want to follow the example of the former Soviet Union to form its own group. After the Russia-Ukraine conflict, the trend of Asia becoming the center of the world economy will become more obvious and U.S. involvement in Asia will further expand. 

Three Important Revelations for China from the Russia-Ukraine Conflict

The revelations for China from the Russia-Ukraine conflict have been huge. The biggest difference between China and Russia is that Russia is only a military power without  being a strong economic power, while China has both sufficient military power for self-preservation and it also has strong economic power. In addition, it has close economic ties with the West. Therefore, in the eyes of the American elite, China poses a far greater challenge to the United States than Russia does to the United States. (The following are the three revelations:) 

  1. China should open up more and Chinese companies must overcome all difficulties and continue to work hard to go global. Economic interdependence cannot absolutely prevent the outbreak of war, but it can moderate the intensity of the war. If the economic sanctions that the United States and Europe imposed on Russia are “to kill a thousand enemies, while only having a loss of five hundred oneself,” then supposedly to sanction China, which has an open and strong economy, that will become “to kill a thousand enemies, meanwhile having a loss of a thousand” oneself. So, it is difficult to sustain such sanctions. A mutually bound economy between China and the West has already caused the West real pain. 
  2. China cannot accept that the West completely binds China and Russia together, nor can it allow the United States to “kidnap” Europe. China and Europe have huge common interests but without geopolitical disputes. The ideological differences are entirely possible to bridge. Although the current security concerns of Europe override its economic considerations to a certain extent after the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, Europe is still an object for China to pursue.
  3.  How should China handle the relationship between “opening up” and “security”? Security is always a relative concept, and non-opening provides the biggest insecurity. What we should do is to explore our own security mechanism in an open state, rather than stop opening up to the outside world for the sake of so-called absolute security. 

Source: Global Times, March 18, 2022
https://world.huanqiu.com/article/47Ecx6AuEL5 

Reports | | |   Geo-Strategic Trend

Chinese Ambassador told Companies to Take the Opportunity to Seize the Russian Market

After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a number of global multinational companies have pulled out of Russia. The Chinese Ambassador to Russia, Zhang Hanhui, recently told local Chinese companies that they should “lose no time” in seizing the “great opportunities in the crisis” and they should adjust their business operations to fill the gap in the Russian market.

Addressing a dozen executives from Chinese companies in Moscow on March 20, Zhang told them “not to wait,” but to integrate their resources and adapt to the “new situation” as soon as possible.

Amid the complicated international situation, the methods of settlement and supply chains of Chinese companies in Russia are encountering great difficulties and interruptions. This is the time when private small and medium-sized enterprises come into play, added Zhang. He said that the Chinese government is making adjustmenst and is building new platforms to solve the outstanding problems of settlement and logistics.

Source: Central News Agency (Taiwan), March 20, 2022
https://www.cna.com.tw/news/acn/202203220310.aspx

Briefings | | |   Geo-Strategic Trend

China’s True View between the U.S. and Russia

 On March 19, the day after Biden and Xi Jinping had their conference call on March 18 to discuss China’s position on the Russia-Ukraine War, Liu Xin, a famous news reporter for the Communist Party’s mouth-piece China Global Television Network (CGTN) posted a message on Twitter. The message read, “Can you help me fight your friend so that I can concentrate on fighting you later?” (The “friend” in her tweet is likely to refer to Russia).

The Arms Control Division of China’s Ministry of Diplomacy reposted Liu Xin’s tweet in both English and Chinese on its official Weibo account, “Strategic Security and Arms Control Online,” with three Chinese characters as the comments: “真相了!” (meaning “Truth!”)

Source:
1. Twitter, March 19, 2022


2. Weibo, March 19, 2022
https://weibo.com/5594165638/LkuxHEles

Briefings | | |   Geo-Strategic Trend US-China Relations

China Encounters Obstacles in Global Race for Cobalt 

At the beginning of March, a Congolese court ordered Chinese Molybdenum Co. (Luoyang Luanchuan Molybdenum) to cede control temporarily (for approximately six months) of the cobalt mine –Tenke Fungurume. The state-owned miner Gécamines SA of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) accused Chinese Molybdenum of trying to evade paying millions of dollars in royalties by under-reporting reserves. China Molybdenum acquired the mine from Freeport McMoRan Inc. in 2016 for $2.65 billion. The investigation has been extended to several other Chinese companies there. That extension threatens to affect China’s global competition in cobalt. 

The DRC’s cobalt belt is the world’s richest source of cobalt. It has become critical to the global transition to cleaner energy. Cobalt can boost charge rates and has a stabilizing effect, extending battery life and preventing cathode corrosion that can lead to battery fires. Just one electric vehicle can require between 10 and 30 pounds of cobalt to build its battery, depending on the manufacturer.  

China has been using electric vehicles as a breakthrough point to catch up with the Western auto industry. It has not only included them in the ten key areas of “Made in China 2025” but has also laid out a big plan to monopolize cobalt by investing heavily in Africa. China’s interest includes areas from   cobalt mining to the generation of lithium batteries. It also includes cobalt refining, manufacturing battery cells, integrating battery modules and assembling batteries. China is trying to control the entire ecosystem. The Wall Street Journal previously reported that, for more than a decade, Chinese companies have spent billions of dollars buying out U.S. and European mines in the DRC’s cobalt belt. 

According to the estimates by Darton Commodities, Chinese refineries supplied 85 percent of the world’s battery cobalt in 2020. Most of this cobalt came from the DRC. Last year the DRC accounted for 70 percent of the world’s total cobalt production. Chinese companies dominate nearly 70 percent of the country’s mining industry. 

The DRC is one of the world’s poorest countries. More than 60 percent of its 90 million people live on less than $1.90 a day. According to the World Bank, the DRC’s annual budget is about $7 billion. In the middle of last year, during a visit to mining areas, DRC President Félix Tshisekedi vowed that his government would continue to review mining contracts to ensure that the Congolese people benefit from their vast extractive industry and finally break the so-called resources curse by paying higher wages and royalties. 

Euractiv even reported that the Congolese workers of Sicomines who are employed by a company a Chinese consortium owns claim that they do the same work as Chinese workers do but are paid much less than Chinese and their Chinese supervisors subject them to degrading treatment. 

Source: Epoch Times, March 12, 2022

https://www.epochtimes.com/gb/22/3/12/n13641727.htm

Briefings | | |   Geo-Strategic Trend