Video: Why is the US hollowing out Taiwan’s Chip Manufacturing and technology companies forced them to move to Arizona? Part of US exit Taiwan strategy. 美國為何將台灣的芯片製造和科技公司挖空強迫他們搬到亞利桑那州？ 是美國退出台灣戰略的一部分.
The US is moving chip manufacturing out of Taiwan with extreme expediency. This is more than mere decoupling and competition, this is tying off a limb that is about to be amputated – and bodes ill for not only mainland China, but Taiwan as well.
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Video: Very good substantive discussion by Jeffrey Sachs against US exceptionalism and the Case for Cooperation with China – Well worth the time.
Jeffrey Sachs on the US’s zero sum view of the world and why cooperation is necessary: Whether China & US should compete or cooperate Prisoner’s dilemma & need for communication; Global economic and technological trends Multipolarity necessary; US attachment to unipolarity: Is it possible to cooperate with China? Is it possible for China to cooperate with the US? US examples of non-cooperation: legislative obstruction of international treaties (17 unsigned; 38:00) US invasions and attacks vs. China’s peaceful rise: 39:00 US military presence around the world (41:20) US sanctions (42:00) The global scene: Hegemonic transition theory (Kindleberger); Balance of Power (Kissinger); Conflict theory (Allison); Global Cooperation theory (Sachs) Need for cooperation: risk of thermonuclear war; accidents, thucydides trap, environment; Doctrine of subsidiarity (solve problems at the lowest level possible; solve global issues at global level). Global development: poverty, environmental, inequality, demographic change, peace; SDG’s Q &A: Why US attempts to divide China are dangerous Q & A: How to stop demonization of China? The situation is dangerous, and self-fulfilling. This creates lose-lose policy (media; china is an enemy; diplomacy: china is revisionst) Frame China as an opportunity; academia & people-to-people connection creates “sinews of cooperation”, raise voices, be critical, not complacent, understand China’s historic perspective
From running secret prison for US to torturing refugees, Lithuania has untold dark history by GT staff reporters Nov 25 2021
The plight of refugees in Lithuania has recently drawn wide attention from the international community. At the Lithuanian border, military police used tear gas and military dogs to indiscriminately attack refugee children; the refugee detention centers in the country are crowded, dirty, bug-infested and unable to provide even basic necessities.
However, in order to hide the inhumane treatment of refugees from the international community, Lithuanian authorities forced the refugees to stage a fake video along the border, according to media reports.
From abusing women and children to helping the US run secret prisons, restricting minorities with discriminatory initiatives, and slaughtering Jews throughout its history, the Global Times found that Lithuania has a well-documented and disgraceful record in the field of human rights.
In order to please the US, Lithuania is willing to be a pawn in the attack against China, but its own hypocritical double standards and the resulting bad deeds in the field of human rights protection cannot be covered up and ignored, experts noted.
Shocking evil
On November 17, the Belarusian state television, Belteleradio, released a video showing Lithuanian soldiers violently evicting migrants from the border, kicking and beating refugees sleeping on the ground, releasing dogs to attack them. At that time, Lithuanian border guards deported 13 men who claimed to have been from Iraq and wanted to seek passage into Western Europe.
In order to reach Western European countries, thousands of refugees from the Middle East recently took a route through Belarus and tried to enter Lithuania, Poland, and other EU countries.
However, faced with record numbers of refugees and migrants, Lithuania has resorted to extreme repression tactics against them.
For example, according to Russian media outlet Sputnik News, the State Border Committee of Belarus on July 19 reported that they found 26 Iraqi citizens who had escaped from Lithuania. Among them were two children and a pregnant woman who needed an ambulance.
The committee then confirmed that refugees in Lithuania were subjected to interrogations, during which they were not given any water. Moreover, the migrants accused the officers of the State Border Guard Service at the Ministry of the Interior of Lithuania of physical assault and battery. They even showed “abrasions and bruises on various parts of their body” due to the violence experienced at the hands of authorities.
However, the Lithuanian Ministry of the Interior claimed that Lithuanian border guards have the right to use force against illegal immigrants. Baltnews cites Lithuanian Interior Minister Agne Bilotaite as saying that the use of “physical and psychological force” can guarantee the “obedience” of immigrants.
Spanish online media Las Republicas had previously reported on migrants expelled from Lithuania at gunpoint, who described how they were beaten, not fed, and forced to give false testimony against Belarusian border guards.
In addition to the brutal deportations, Lithuania’s refugee camps are widely criticized for their poor conditions and lack of even the most basic of human rights.
According to Al Jazeera, migrants who have entered Lithuania are being resettled throughout the country. A spokeswoman for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees noted, however, that the humanitarian conditions in many refugee reception centers are worrying, especially in terms of drinkable water, sanitation, and medical services.
In August, BelTA, the national news agency of Belarus, quoted a Spanish media source as saying that Lithuania has “created refugee camps in the style of concentration camps.”.
The camps, according to Las Republicas, are built in the middle of forested areas where people are exposed to inhumane conditions, including lack of food, being cut off from the outside world, diseases, harsh weather conditions, and humiliation. These refugees may even get shot if they attempt to escape.
On November 19, BelTA revealed that Lithuania had not only been violently driving away defenseless refugees, but also forced them to feature in “choreographed videos” along the border to conceal their inhumane treatment from the international community.
Meanwhile, following the example of the US, Lithuania recently began building Europe’s first border wall to keep out migrants from Belarus, Reuters reported
“Most of the people in this camp only want one thing, and that is to be able to live in the European Union.” German media outlet Deutsche Welle (DW) remarked, while noting that this group had become political footballs, to be kicked around by various European countries.
However, as opposed to refugees, there is a group of people who may wish they had never lived in Lithuania.
In October, a former CIA officer turned whistleblower against torture called for the release of a suspected terrorist he had captured nearly 20 years earlier. The US Supreme Court for the first time heard a case about a secret detention site and its first detainee, stateless Palestinian Abu Zubayda, who had been suspected to be a member of the Al Qaeda, had been held at black sites run by the CIA in Lithuania and Poland and had been subjected to waterboarding approximately 83 times at a secret site in July 2002.
The Global Times found that as early as May 2018, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) had ruled on the case of Abu Zubayda versus Lithuania for assisting the CIA in setting up secret prisons and torture. The ECHR found that there was sufficient circumstantial evidence to show that between February 2005 and March 2006, the Lithuanian government allowed the US to operate a secret prison for the detention of suspects identified by the US as being involved in terrorism.
In November 2019, Mustafa al-Hawsawi, a Saudi citizen previously held at Guantanamo Bay, filed a new lawsuit to the European court against Lithuania, claiming that he had been arbitrarily detained and tortured by the CIA at a secret jail in Lithuania, AFP reported.
According to a report released by the Rendition Project, a London-based research organization focus on the undertaking and publishing of original research into the CIA’s torture program, the CIA received approval from the local political leadership before building the black site in Lithuania, after which the CIA offered over one million dollars to its partners to “show appreciation” for their support.
“It turns out that one mistake follows another,” said former Lithuanian president Rolandas Paksas. After the ECHR’s judgments in 2018 May, Paksas admitted the collusion between the government of Lithuania and the CIA.
Countless oppressed groups
Lithuania’s human rights violations against vulnerable and minority groups, including ethnic minorities and women, have also long been a source of concern in the international community.
Observer, for example, noted that anti-Semitism has long been a problem in Lithuania. Lithuania has an inglorious history with its Jewish population. Jewish people have lived in the country for centuries. However, the entire Jewish population was almost wiped out under Nazi occupation. According to the US government, about 90 percent of Lithuania’s 250,000 Jews were slaughtered at the hands of Nazi invaders and complicit Lithuanians during World War II. By mid-2019, the size of Jewish community in Lithuania has dramatically reduced to only less than 4,000.
A report this year by the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs shows that there has been an increase in manifestations of anti-Semitism in Lithuania. For instance, the Chairperson of the Jewish community in the country, Faina Kukliansky, has received threatening calls, letters, and swastikas among other offensive symbols which were brazenly displayed or depicted in front of Jewish buildings and synagogues.
At the same time, in a 2019 article published in the journal Baltic Region, the authors noted Lithuanian, Polish, and Russian minorities’ complaints about discrimination from the Lithuanian government with regard to a number of issues, including “the insufficient financing of minority educational and cultural institutions and Lithuanisation of Polish names.”
At a UN Human Rights Committee in July 2018, experts highlighted the Lithuanian civil society’s complaints about the discrimination of Polish and Russian minorities. “The legal requirement of the exclusive use of the Lithuanian language in all public communications and settings could have negative consequences for the preservation of minority languages,” they said.
At the meeting, held to review Lithuania’s implementation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, experts also inquired about the status of a Lithuania’s bill that would restrict access to abortion for women.
Lithuanian women’s abortion rights were reportedly largely hurt during the pandemic. During its nationwide COVID-19 lockdown between March and June, many local healthcare institutions didn’t provide abortion services.
Hypocritical human rights offenders
“This series of human rights crimes embodies Lithuanian white supremacy and racial puritanism,” said Liu Zuokui, a senior research fellow on European Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
In many cases, Lithuania displays a double standard of the understanding and implementation of so-called human rights. It claims to be a human rights defender, but the “human rights” they respect are in fact very limited in scope. Lithuania stands accused of exhibiting exclusionary behavior toward those who are foreign, from different ethnicities or races, or hold different sets of beliefs, Liu told the Global Times.
Liu noted that as a small country with a population of only 3 million, Lithuania historically had great ambitions for power. “When it broke away from the Soviet Union in 1990, it trumpeted its pursuit of democracy, human rights, and freedom, which was just a slogan to fight against the Soviet Union while seeking national independence.”
After Lithuania joined the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), it sought to better integrate with the West, which was reflected in its apparent alignment with the values of “human rights” and “democracy” espoused by the West, Liu said. “However, such Western values are hypocritical. They set different matrices of democracy to different objects according to their national interests,” he noted.
Lithuanian domestic public opinion in recent years has reflected a more pronounced anti-Russian and anti-communist attitude, and has moved closer to the US ideologically, Gong Jiong, vice president of the University of International Business and Economics Israel Campus commented to the Global Times.
From a geopolitical point of view, Lithuania, which is in close proximity to the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad, also has a stronger sense of insecurity and seeks to tie itself to the US, NATO, and the EU, Gong noted.
Meanwhile, the abuse of detainees and issues with refugees that persist in Lithuania are ultimately caused by the US-led Western world, observers pointed out. It was the US and its NATO forces that disastrously interfered with the Middle East in the name of “anti-terrorism” and ultimately led to the current chaos, they said.
“As President Putin said, the West is responsible for the refugee crisis at the Belarusian-Polish border,” said Song Quancheng, head of the Institute of Migration Studies at Shandong University. As the US-led NATO forces created the current humanitarian disaster which resulted in millions of homeless refugees, it should have taken responsibility and taken in the refugees, Song said.
“When overthrowing the legitimate regimes, they usually hold high the banner of humanitarianism; when the refugees really need their humanitarian aid, they just close the door on them,” Song told the Global Times.
In an August DW story, Lithuania was described as the EU’s border guard, while refugees have become footballs, bounced around from one corner to the next by European countries.
Gong pointed out that in order to please and cooperate with the US, Lithuania constantly criticizes China with the so-called human rights issues in an attempt to increase the power of the US bargaining chip, but the US and Lithuania ignore their own dark history of violating human rights. In the recent refugee crisis at the border, Lithuania’s treatment of refugees has been similar to, and in some cases worse than, the US’ violent expulsion of Mexican and Haitian migrants in Del Rio, Texas, in September.
“Some countries walk on a tight leash, while others don’t. Lithuania is among the first kind. It continues to turn a blind eye to the convention of human rights. You can look for arguments and excuses, but the fact remains. It shouldn’t be like that in an independent state,” said Paksas.
US cuts China’s skin, and its own nerves: Global Times editorial by Global Times Nov 25 2021
The US Department of Commerce on Wednesday blacklisted 27 entities from countries including China and Pakistan, citing national security and diplomatic concerns. Some of the entities were accused of assisting the Chinese military’s quantum computing efforts and acquiring or attempting “to acquire US-origin items in support of military applications.” Twelve of the 27 entities are based in China, including Hangzhou Zhongke Microelectronics, Hunan Goke Microelectronics, and Xi’an Aerospace Huaxun Technology.
This was the second time that the Biden administration took action against Chinese companies. In June, Biden signed an order banning US investment in 59 Chinese companies. Although the Biden administration has embraced detente with China, the technological “decoupling” started in the Trump era has been even further emphasized under Biden.
The allegation that those Chinese companies assist the Chinese military’s quantum computing was fabricated by Washington, whose real intent is to strike a blow to China’s technological progress and slow China’s pace in this sphere. They think cutting off the supply of chips and equipment to Chinese high-tech companies would work.
When supply chains are cut off, any company would encounter some difficulties. But all Chinese companies are backed by an industrial system of China that is much more sophisticated than the US’. The US brutally treating Chinese entities will stimulate this system of China to adjust and accelerate breaking through the stranglehold. Consequently, China will make even more technological progress, while US companies will gradually lose more markets.
The areas in which the US leads are shrinking. This is because technological and economic factors are moving around the world. Meanwhile, the US’ manufacturing industry has become much smaller compared with China. Thus, it is impossible for the US to maintain its systemic advantages. As the basic conditions that support innovation in China become more systematic and our ability to achieve key breakthroughs become stronger, it is an irreversible trend that the US will spur progress in China in the fields it attempts to choke China.
China’s need has greatly boosted the market return on US high-tech research and development (R&D), while strengthening the business approach to those R&Ds. It is a mutually beneficial relationship between China and the US. Washington is destroying such relations by expanding the number of high-tech companies as its targets. The Biden administration has pushed large federal spending programs, including the infusion of taxpayers’ money into cutting-edge technologies, which is strategically aligned with their “decoupling” with China. The US is moving toward a “planned economy” in which much of market-driven R&D will be driven by the government in the future.
It will eventually be seen that a technological “decoupling” between China and the US will shake and affect the US more than China. China is good at solving problems. Now it has a new problem to deal with, but it is generally familiar with what it needs to do. However, the US used to be the leader in technological innovation, but has decayed into a conservative guard of past achievements. It created opportunities in accordance with market rules, but has become dependent on state-backed investment and subsidies for international competition. The US has been pushing itself away from the country’s “founding doctrine.”
China has no worries strategically. The US has hurt its own nerves by cutting the skin of China. Big countries like China and the US can strive to achieve any goal, but what is hard is to ensure their path and remain synergistic with the development of their society while releasing endogenous power. As the US tries to decouple from China, nothing has changed with China but just some new urgent tasks. But the US has lost itself in anxiety. What happened this year has shown that the US supply chain mess is much worse than China’s, and the longer it takes, the more it will prove who has lost more.
US coerces Honduras, makes it cannon fodder over Taiwan question – obey US or else! by Global Times Nov 25 2021
Open your eyes, some Western people fond of accusing China of being “coercive.” Take a look at what coercive diplomacy truly looks like: A visiting US delegation made clear to Honduran presidential candidates that the US wants Honduras to maintain its long-standing “diplomatic” relations with the island of Taiwan.
The subtext of this is: Honduras better plays its role as the US’ cannon fodder well, no matter who wins the election, by carrying on its ties with Taiwan, an island the US has no “diplomatic” ties with and which is an inalienable part of China’s territory, to stir up trouble for China, a country the US does have diplomatic relations with.
Honduras, one of the only 15 remaining countries with “diplomatic relations” with the island of Taiwan, will hold its presidential election on Sunday. Xiomara Castro, presidential candidate for the opposition Libre Party who leads in the latest polls, vowed in September that she would “immediately open diplomatic and commercial relations” with the People’s Republic of China if she wins in November, according to the AFP. Her remarks threw Taiwan authorities into panic and made the US uncomfortable.
But neither the US nor Taiwan authorities have offered the Latin American country enough substantial help to cope with the crisis the latter confronts. Reports show Honduras’ public debt at the end of 2020 was more than $13 billion, or 55 percent of its GDP. And “over 30 percent of the national budget is allocated to paying off debt,” Reuters reported in September.
Meanwhile, countries around Honduras, such as Costa Rica, Panama, the Dominican Republic, and El Salvador, which have successively established diplomatic relations with China in the 21st century, have enjoyed increasing economic benefits from China ties.
And when the US is overwhelmed by COVID-19 and in a muddle of taking care of itself, China has spared no effort to provide anti-virus supplies to help the four countries fight the public health crisis. “With Chinese vaccines, the Dominican Republic again sees hope and light at the end of the tunnel,” said Dominican Vice President Raquel Pena in March. Being around the countries, how could Honduras not feel a thing about such a comparison, when it is trapped in both economic and epidemic trouble?
Setting the Chinese factor aside, what is Honduras’ status in US diplomacy? The answer can be heartbreaking. In 2018, US media outlets exposed that when discussing the immigration policy, then president Donald Trump reportedly said, “Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?” He was referencing “Haiti, El Salvador, Honduras, and apparently most of Africa,” Fortune magazine noted on January 13, 2018. The US cannot hide its frown when talking about those countries, yet it is still bossing them around.
The point today is not about how the Chinese mainland can compete with the island of Taiwan over winning the hearts of those few countries that continue to have “diplomatic” ties with Taiwan authorities. The point is whether those countries are still interested in maintaining the status quo. And the truth is, they are losing interest in their relations with the island. That’s why the US sensed the need to step up and coerce them, Shen Yi, a professor at the School of International Relations and Public Affairs of Shanghai-based Fudan University, told the Global Times.
However, based on Latin American countries’ needs in economic development and people’s demands, if political figures in the region choose to yield to the US over the Taiwan question during the election campaign nowadays, it will be like pouring poison on their voter base, Shen added.
Honduras is a country with a multi-party system. It holds elections for president, Congress, and local officials. Even if its people pick a pro-China administration, shouldn’t the US respect the outcome?
What can possibly be the US’ moral excuse when Washington complains about the countries’ immigrants flooding into the US, while coercing them to keep ties with the island of Taiwan, preventing them from riding on cooperation with the Chinese mainland?
The louder the US sounds when interfering in Honduras’ elections, the more incapable and powerless it seems.
If a change in government will take place there, the US will not be able to stop it. Just like how it yelled before other Latin American countries established ties with China. The barks turned out to be useless, Shen said.
Our Chinese votes, China democracy with Chinese Characteristics, China democracy focus on Chinese People’s livelihoods, unlike Western Democracy only talk no substance 我们中国人的选票, 我们中国式的民主政治, 中國民主是人民民生為大前提, 和西方的所謂民主祇懂叫口號的不同
Have no fantasies that a Chinese politician in US will help Chinese! Using my Hawaii’s experience working with many politicians since 1980s. Most are Anti-Chinese! 不要幻想在美國的中國政客會幫助中國人！ 利用我在夏威夷自 1980 年代以來與許多政治家合作的經驗. 大部分是反華.
Don’t get someone with a Chinese last name and support them blindly. Some of the worst racists and Chinese haters are Chinese. Check them out, make sure they passed the smell and taste test. Those Chinese Chinese-Haters are smart. They took advantage of the ignorance of many Chinese taking money from them and in the end ignored them once get elected.
Do you remembered a character named Andrew Yang! He is one of those mentioned above. We are so happy he didn’t get into any public office. Many major donors expressed big disappointment after he showed his true color.
Another example was Obama, many African Americans thought he gave them hope but ends up Obama was serving the interest of the AngloSaxon. As for African Americans, sorry, you are fooled.
How about Japanese Americans in Hawaii? They are smart for 2 reasons: 1) they remembered how bad Republican is and was, sorry no Republicans, and 2) They voted as a block for Democrats, with 33% Japanese in Hawaii, they are the kingmakers controlled Hawaii politics for the last 50 Years.
What about Chinese in Hawaii? Just like those in SF and throughout US, they just kept killing each other everyday.
What does not mean? If China has democracy, China is finished.
If anyone like to argue, if you are Chinese look yourselves in the mirror and think back what has the Chinese done besides maybe individually successful and that is it, Pau (finished in Hawaiian).
Professor John V Walsh, MD, in San Francisco: Agreed, Johnson is right.
Identity Politics is the politics for decerebrates. A two year old can make a choice based on skin color.
Obama screwed people of color in so many different ways, I lost count. Not only wars on people of color around the world -Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya (which lies in AFRICA), Syria. The last two were wars that Obomber initiated. How he or Hillary could call others racist after they did that has to be filed under Pot Calling Kettle Black.
His greatest crime domestically was probably his killing Medicare For All in favor of ObamaCare which was written by a former Insurance Company Executive. That killed M4A for the forseeable future.
Yang is a Chinese American example apparently. How can you be pro-Chinese and support US policy which is designed to plunge 1.4 billion Chinese back into poverty?
Another nails on the coffins for brick and mortar retailers – no wonder new major retailers are by-passing Pittsburg.
A Bay Area retail crime spree comes at a critical moment – Story photo for A Bay Area retail crime spree comes at a critical moment
Just a week before a critical Black Friday and holiday shopping season starting in earnest, Bay Area retailers were left reeling after a series of organized retail crime robberies hit San Francisco’s Union Square, Hayward, San Jose and Walnut Creek. After signs of recovery following pandemic health orders and more tourists in the region, smashed windows and empty shelves mark another challenge that shops — from global chains to mom and pop stores — must grapple with. Business owners are fearful about employee safety even more than stolen merchandise. There’s now a sense of heightened threat of violence, on top of COVID.
Feeling safe isn’t cheap: I talked to a Hayes Valley consumer electronics shop called B8ta that closed for seven months after being robbed at gunpoint. They’re now paying around $30,000 a month for around-the-clock guards with bulletproof vests, a cost that’s higher than their retail payroll or their rent. Off-duty police officers, who are armed, can be even more expensive, costing upwards of $100 per hour. It’s a big reason why San Francisco is the most expensive California city for retailers, and one of the most expensive in the country.
What can the city and retailers do? Experts say prosecution needs to be stronger, and District Attorney Chesa Boudin filed felony charges against the nine suspects who were arrested in Union Square outside a wrecked Louis Vuitton store. There needs to be more distinction between petty shoplifting, particularly when it’s done for financial survival, and organized retail crime targeting high-end products, retail experts said. For retailers, more robust security systems like pull-down door covers and cameras to help aid police investigations can deter crime, and they’re less expensive than guards.
There’s still hope for businesses. The National Retail Federation said last month that it expects holiday sales to grow by as much as 10.5% compared to 2020, up to $859 billion, which would be the highest on record. But a caveat: That figure includes online sales, and the recent string in robberies suggests local shoppers may prefer clicking rather than traveling to stores.
Do you feel unsafe shopping in person? Let me know at roland.li@sfchronicle.com and on Twitter @rolandlisf. – answer is definitely not safe.
Roland Li headshot Roland Li Business Reporter roland.li@sfchronicle.com
Johnson Choi Biz 