[Luvianka]

This is it, guys. It seems that China and Trump have reached a clear understanding. Military company Blackwater's founder plans to build new bases in China, a move to support the One Belt and One Road initiative. Frontier Services Group (FSG), a company that helps businesses operating in frontier markets overcome complex security, logistics and operational challenges, is planning to build two operation bases in Northwest China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region and Southwest China's Yunnan Province, Erik Prince, executive chairman of the firm, told the Global Times in mid-March.
Putting FSG to guard the New Silk Road in the extremely strategic province of Xinjiang is like letting the fox guarding the henhouse. If I were a Chinese official, under no circunstance I would allow those American mercenaries to guard this place which has an Uighur Islamic majority, it's the gate to Central Asia and has vast oil resources... Unless Mr Trump and I have decided to be partners. By the way, Mr Prince is Mrs De Voss' brother. Yeap, that De Voss, Trump's, Secretary of Education.

[Liberty Sea]

To continue a discussion from this thread:
thread-50253-page-606.html

(06-30-2017 11:13 PM)911 Wrote:  

The globalists aren't worried about the Chinese, and don't bother with diluting their race. They're worried about their numbers though

1. And Mao Zedong was the one who expanded the Chinese population to the stratosphere.

2. Who are the globalists worried about? A China that’s going to become stronger than America, run by Han supremacists with billion of racists, or an America that’s going down? And how did the (((globalists))) come to believe that the Chinese are more *trustworthy* than the Americans, lol? Don't they read my Suits quote sig?

3. Is Mark Zuckerberg not diluting his blood by marrying a Chinese (and still can’t get into China)?

4. In Israel television plan about intermarrying with Chinese political elites were broadcasted:
https://www.quora.com/How-do-Chinese-vie...Wen-Ling-3


What do you say of that?

Quote:

Look up CITIC, its assets under management are the size of Germany's entire GDP. Guess who founded that group back in the 1980s...

5. It was founded by a pure-blooded (probably patriotic) Chinese, Rong Yiren. Rong was attacked by the Red Guards for exposing reform and opening ideas, and was sent to do janitor jobs. Is this planned by the globalists?

6. Rong did make dealings with Rockefeller. That doesn’t automatically entails that he (or Deng) must be a Rockefeller puppet. More evidence please.

And just because he made dealing with Rockefeller doesn’t mean CITIC is owned by Rockefeller.

Here is a list of CITIC’s shareholders/managers

Check the board of managers (in About CITIC). All pure-blooded Chinese:
http://www.group.citic/wps/portal/!ut/p/...=2&flag=21

CITIC Limited, a subsidiary of CITIC group in Hong Kong:
http://www.citic.com/AboutUs/BoardOfDirectors#ed
http://www.4-traders.com/CITIC-LTD-1412629/company/
(Neoh is Cantonese surname in case you're wondering)
78% stocks owned by the Chinese government. The rest mostly by Chinese corporations.


*Last of all, CITIC’s asset is 4.3 trillion Chinese Yuan, not 4.3 trillion USD, lol. It’s nowhere near the GDP of Germany.


----

7. During the Cultural Revolution, universities were shut down. Many scientists were killed, imprisoned, tortured. The universities would not be reopen until 1979, many scientists and most urban kids were “sent down” the country side to work as farmers in the early 70s, and China would not start making progress again until Deng’s reforms of the mid 80s. China basically lost the potential to a large portion of its baby boom generation, as they are much less educated than their predecessors and successors. How exact does this fit into a globalist plan to build an industrial China?

Zelscorpion Wrote:

If you don't want to do that, then it is fine, but then don't go out on a limb claiming that the Huffpo view of history is undoubtedly true.

Bro, I did not claim that the Huffpo view of history is undoubtedly true. You were the one who claimed that China is certainly controlled by (((globalists))).

A few questions:

-Aside from a few Jews that Mao allowed citizenship, China since Deng did not grant Chinese citizenship to any Jew (or non-ethnic Chinese) as far as I know. Wouldn't allowing citizenship to (((globalists))) make it easier to execute their plan? Why doesn't a (((globalist)))-owned China do this?

And:

Quote:

Now, would anyone kindly explain to me why globalist stooge Xi Jinping would refuse to let Jewish-globalist oligarch Mark Zuckerberg's facebook get into China despite Mark trying so hard by marrying a Chinese and learning mandarin and asking Xi to name his daughter and shit?

[Arado]

Great points from Liberty Sea refuting the notion that China is controlled by the globalists.

I agree with Zelscorpion's views on Islam but as I keep saying, Asian politics simply does not fit into the globalist-nationalist narrative that Western and Middle East politics do. Looking at everything that has happened in and to China as part of a globalist plan doesn't do justice to the complexity of the situation.

That said, China's rise is the most important geopolitical phenomenon of the 21st century, and is at least partly attributable to the US outreach to China in the 70s and allowing China into the WTO. Therefore, the same forces that seem hell bent on destroying Europe, creating dysfunction in the US, and collapsing Putin's regime have also played a role in facilitating China's rise.

Problem is that I am baffled as to what their motivation is - as Liberty Sea made clear, there is ZERO evidence that China will play along in whatever the end game of the ((globalists)) is.

[Liberty Sea]

Regarding the Jews I lean towards Kevin MacDonald's Jewish Instinct/Culture of Critique Hypothesis more than anything. I believe there are organized attempts to influence politics, economy, culture and all, but I don't think they control as much as many conspiracy theorists tend to believe.

What many conspiracy theorists have in common with communist ideologues is that they both believe that: 1. The rich are mostly evil and always secretly plotting against the mass. 2. Central planning works - some small clique of planners can mold not only economies but whole societies (with all of their complex conditions, characters and possibilities) into specific designated consequences.

I'm disinclined to believe in nigh-omnipotent conspirators for the same reason I don't believe in communism. Reality is enormously complex, and often too messy for central planning. I don't believe in full libertarianism either, but it's nonetheless true that a large part of the CPC's economic success is that it got out out of the way and allowed the private sectors to develop. Some even say that has been its largest contribution, as Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore show that East Asian people will do well largely irrespective of their political system when relatively free enterprises are allowed to them. For my part I think the CPC did make some smart policies that accelerated China's growth, but I wouldn't say their policies/planning/interventions are the biggest factors. As I said before, China's core strength is the Chinese people.

BTW, the Jewish plan to intermarry with Chinese political elites probably won't succeed. Because CPC members can't marry foreigners. Their kids can't either, if they still want to climb the ladders.

https://www.quora.com/What-are-some-nota...ce-Chen-15

Quote:

Not only themselves, one of their qualifications is their kids also cannot marry to foreigners.

I remember read something about a prominent provincial party boss failed to be promoted because her daughter married a Frenchman.

The party is dead serious about surviving.

The condition for joining the party is very strict in practice. Xi Jinping himself applied to join the party 9 times, and only got admitted in the 9th attempt after failing and failing again. You will be vetted carefully to detect any foreign connection.

---

The Chinese language itself is, I think, one of the most anti-globalist languages in the world. It's a language that imposes thousands of years of tradition into the minds of children. If your mother tongue is Chinese, or, if the only language you frequently use is Chinese, your mind is likely too Chinese for globalism. I may be exaggerating, but it's true that the Chinese language is a great barrier against globalization. Highly idiomatic tonal ideograms like Chinese make it difficult. English on the other hand is an easily accessible language that everybody can learn, and can get very cosmopolitan easily. Roman languages in general are, to a lesser extent.

[Liberty Sea]

(07-02-2017 06:43 AM)Arado Wrote:  

That said, China's rise is the most important geopolitical phenomenon of the 21st century, and is at least partly attributable to the US outreach to China in the 70s and allowing China into the WTO. Therefore, the same forces that seem hell bent on destroying Europe, creating dysfunction in the US, and collapsing Putin's regime have also played a role in facilitating China's rise.

Problem is that I am baffled as to what their motivation is - as Liberty Sea made clear, there is ZERO evidence that China will play along in whatever the end game of the ((globalists)) is.

Maybe they just miscalculated.

Maybe they thought that the Chinese are easily controllable, only to be one-upped by the Chinese. Deng Xiaoping I believe was one of the greatest political chessmasters of his time.

Who say they can't miscalculate and get one-upped? Trump's rise is, I think, evident enough. He was friend with the Clintons, invited them to his wedding, was a liberal. They probably thought he is on their side or at least not dangerous.

Stalin supposedly 'went off the script'. They needed more ally to counter Stalin. As China was at odd with the USSR at the moment, Nixon and Kissinger normalized relation with China.

David Rockefeller's ideals probably have many overlaps with Maoism, so he thought he could put China to his use. But many of China's actions probably went against the directions he wished. The current China is totally anti-Maoist. They probably didn't anticipate that China would go the nationalist route, just as they didn't anticipate Trump would go the nationalist route, and won the election.

One can see this on the evidently anti-China tone in Western MSM. I'll demonstrate this to show that the globalists behind MSM are anti-China. The problem is China is both an enemy to the globalists and to genuine American interest, so it will be hated by both globalists and American nationalists.

1. Obama is typically thought of as a globalist puppet. He lamented that China didn't contribute more "global security":

"They are free riders. And they have been free riders for the last 30 years and it’s worked really well for them"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hg8ntdSbmCk

2. Obama administration banned Intel from selling Xeon chips to China, aiming to slow China's technological progress.

3. US government passed a law to ban China from US's international space program. "Due to alleged security concerns, all researchers from the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) are prohibited from working bilaterally with Chinese citizens affiliated with a Chinese state enterprise or entity"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_ex...cy_of_NASA

4. The TPP was meant to contain China's rise. Trump thought TPP included China but he was mistaken.

5.

a. The 2013 Tiananmen Square attack is a clear terrorist attack. And this is CNN response:



b. In the 2014 Kunming attack - an attack carried out by Uighur Muslim terrorists, killing 31 civilians, wounding 140 - and the Western media's report of the event was:





Notice the quotation and avoidance of calling it terrorism (terrorists later claimed responsibility for the attack). This has angered many Chinese.

6. The Dalai Lama is on CNN payroll
http://www.theage.com.au/news/business/b...ntentSwap1

Tibet under the Dalai Lama was a serfdom that skinned kids and cut slaves' hands.
https://www.quora.com/Why-does-China-for...endy-Ren-6

7. Democracy activist in China like Liu Xiaobo – who was arrested in China- has been funded by the US government. Liu founded Minzhu Zhongguo, Democratic China, Inc. and Independent Chinese PEN Centre, Inc., which are funded by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED):
http://www.ned.org/region/asia/china-2007/
Total sum from NED to Democratic China, Inc., $1,000,000. NED payments for «Independent Chinese PEN Centre, Inc.»: US $844,800. Liu’s total receipts from NED: US$1,844,800, about 14 million yuan.
NED funded 18 subversive organizations in China.
NED was banned in Russia as an undesirable international NGO in July 2015 for "using Russian commercial and noncommercial organisations under its control... to declare the results of election campaigns illegitimate, organise political actions intended to influence decisions made by the authorities, and discredit service in Russia’s armed forces."
http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-nationa...ia/5468215

Quote:

Notably, at the same time as Russia is banning NED under its new Undesirable NGO law, China has just signed into law its Overseas NGO Management Law to restrict foreign NGO’s there. Last October, the same National Endowment for Democracy financed the Hong Kong Umbrella Revolution protests and the NED is financing Uygur separatists in China’s Xinjiang Province, cross-roads of all major Chinese oil and gas pipelines from Russia and Kazakhstan.

Carl Gershman, president of NED, is a key neocon who has been hellbent on destabilizing Russia.
https://consortiumnews.com/2016/10/07/ke...ust-putin/

https://williamblum.org/chapters/rogue-s...-democracy

Quote:

(((Allen Weinstein))), who helped draft the legislation establishing NED, declared in 1991: “A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.” (source: Washington Post, September 22, 1991)
In effect, the CIA has been laundering money through NED.

... NED describes one of its 1997-98 programs thusly: “To identify barriers to private sector development at the local and federal levels in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and to push for legislative change … [and] to develop strategies for private sector growth.” Critics of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, a socialist, were supported by NED grants for years.

In short, NED’s programs are in sync with the basic needs and objectives of the New World Order’s economic globalization, just as the programs have for years been on the same wavelength as US foreign policy.

Western MSM simply reported that Professor Liu was an innocent man fighting for democracy. More on the Western media coordinated narrative here.

Quote:

Former CIA-agent Ralph McGehee writes: «… the current US policy of using (rightly or wrongly) the theme of human rights violations to alter or overthrow non-US-favored governments. In those countries emerging from the once Soviet Bloc that is forming new governmental systems; or where emerging or Third World governments resist US influence or control, the US uses ‘human rights violations,’ as an excuse for political action operations. ‘Human Rights’ replaces ‘Communist Conspiracy’ as the justification for overthrowing governments.»
Patrick French writes: «The NED constitutes, so to speak, the CIA’s “civilian arm”».

https://monthlyreview.org/2006/12/01/the...rn-europe/
https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/201.../view-all/

Quote:

NED and Soros work in tandem, targeting the same regimes and using the same methods. NED President Carl Gershman, in writing of the hundreds of Non-Governmental Organizations working for “regime change” throughout the world, pays particular tribute to the Ford Foundation and “the foundations established by the philanthropist George Soros.”
Source: Carl Gershman, “Building a Worldwide Movement for Democracy: The Role of Non-Governmental Organizations”, U.S. Foreign Policy Agenda, Vol. 8, No. 1, August 2003. NED: http://www.ned.org/about/board/meet-our-...ons/080103

===

In conclusion, it’s precisely because I’ve dug into a lot information that I believe China is not controlled by (((globalists))). In fact, I believe the (((globalists))) are trying to subvert the Chinese government. Say what you want about the CPC, but it’s a bastion against (((globalism))). It has been very effective in counterespionage.

A lot of things you learned about China's recent history through MSM are probably wrong. But I don't want to go into that territory right now. About events like the Tiananmen Square, I won't make any conclusion, but you can read this and do research yourself, and make your own conclusion.

Enterprises keep pouring into China mostly due to objective economic laws. It’s most profitable to open your factories there. Not even globalists can reverse that.

[Samseau]

Quote:

Enterprises keep pouring into China mostly due to objective economic laws slave communist labor. It’s most profitable to open your factories there. Not even globalists can reverse that.

Fixed.

As for the globalists controlling China, I am very skeptical. Zel said the globalists would never let Trump win. Zel overestimates what they are capable of. I think the globalists were trying to use China but ultimately it's a plan that backfired because of the reasons Liberty Sea has pointed out. The Chinese are just as ethically racist as most Jews. There's no way they'll fall victim to subversion.

[Arado]

Perhaps the globalists did just underestimate the Chinese and miscalculate that they could control them. However, even Napoleon and the British saw the talent and drive of the Chinese people and knew that once they industrialized, had access to Western technology, and gained a better government they would be a major competitor with the West - ideologically, militarily, and economically. I really have trouble believing that Kissinger didn't understand the can of worms he was opening when he was negotiating with Zhou Enlai. Especially post-Tiananmen (1989) they must have known that letting China into the WTO (2001) would not create an easily controllable globalist lapdog. So why did they do it?

That said, even if the Chinese are a bulwark against the globalists, it's pretty disturbing the way they pretty much said FU to the British and that they can do whatever they want in HK. Their South China Sea land grab is also pretty provocative, as well as their plan to steal IPR in order to dominate the industries of the future.

Perhaps all these things are in their national interest, but you could at least admit that even if we had nationalist non SJW governments in the West they would also look at China's moves as threatening? After all, it seems like the left and Neocons in the US are far more anti-Russia than anti China. The media in the West is actually pretty quiet about all the crap that China is doing. It will grab a headline or two but it's nothing compared to the constant anti Russia drumbeat. Most Americans still have no clue how far China has come along in its development.

Should we simply go along with China's challenges to the West just because China is tough on Islam and isn't infected by SJW ideology?

[Suits]

(07-03-2017 12:55 PM)Samseau Wrote:  

Quote:

Enterprises keep pouring into China mostly due to objective economic laws slave communist labor. It’s most profitable to open your factories there. Not even globalists can reverse that.

Fixed.

Sorry, that's just simply not the case in China currently.

China offers affordable employment terms not because people are forced to work under a communist regime, but rather because people are willing and eager to work.

As it currently stands, China is not a place where people are forced to work. They are more than welcome to refuse to work and starve to death in the process.

Also, the cost of hiring employees and doing business in China has been steadily rising over the past decade. Countries are still eager to manufacture products in China because it offers a fairly stable political environment, the government does not generally "nationalize" foreign owned business and the manufacturing industry has high tech capabilities (and skilled workers) that other countries with even lower employment costs simply don't offer.

I can't speak for every corner of China (it's a big country where exceptions do exist), but if slave labour exists here, it's not legally authorized and exists in opposition to the norm and the mandates of the federal government. At best, it occurs in very poor regions that wouldn't have the technological capabilities and the local talent to manufacture that type of products foreign companies come to China to have produced.

[Liberty Sea]

Completely agree, Suits, though by slave labor Samseau means something other than forced labor (he means low-wage labor with workers unable to save and get out of poverty due to currency devaluation). Check his Why Free Trade Can't Coexist with Currency Manipulation thread. Anyway, I countered his arguments here: thread-54249...pid1604834

[Liberty Sea]

(07-03-2017 08:59 PM)Arado Wrote:  

Perhaps the globalists did just underestimate the Chinese and miscalculate that they could control them. However, even Napoleon and the British saw the talent and drive of the Chinese people and knew that once they industrialized, had access to Western technology, and gained a better government they would be a major competitor with the West - ideologically, militarily, and economically. I really have trouble believing that Kissinger didn't understand the can of worms he was opening when he was negotiating with Zhou Enlai. Especially post-Tiananmen (1989) they must have known that letting China into the WTO (2001) would not create an easily controllable globalist lapdog. So why did they do it?

I entertain conspiracy theories at times, but honestly I'm disinclined to believe there is a unified globalist elites hellbent on pushing globalism as an end-in-itself. I believe truly globalist ideologues among them, like George Soros, are few. Most capitalist elites are just profiteers and they support globalization for profit, not for ideals. And American capitalist elites have benefited hugely from letting China join the WTO. Where else do you find a huge army of cheap, high quality workaholics? American workers were worse off, but American capitalist elites profited hugely. There are too many short term practical interests around for some ideals or long-term conspiracy to be played out.

To quote a famous Quoran:

Quote:

Are foreign firms at a disadvantage doing business in China?

Listen, for everyone who’s complaining about so-called “disadvantage”, the first thing you should do, is to go back and read the WTO Accesssion Agreement with China.

http://unpan1.un.org/intradoc/groups/pub...002123.pdf

http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTRA...ertler.pdf

It’s public. Has been public for 15 years. Let me give you a basic summary of this Agreement that your elected government has signed up to.

Prior to WTO, China did bi-lateral trades with a number of countries. It’s economy is almost entirely closed to the West. It had a 90% import tax on foreign cars, banned most of the foreign food items and luxury items, even had quota on textile. It’s a self-sustained economy.

So you went to the negotiation table with GM, Disney, JP Morgan, and Verizon.

GM said, I want to sell cars in China and I want the import tax to drop from 90% to 20%. China said, OK, in exchange, I want to keep partial control of the telecommunication sector. GM looked at Verizon. Verizon shrugged. Something is better than nothing. OK. Deal. Within 3 years, foreign cars occupied 80% of China’s market.

Then Disney said, I want to sell movies in China. And China said, OK, in exchange, I want to keep complete control of my agriculture sector. Deal. Within 3 years, Disney movies and theme parks starting printing money in China.

Then JP Morgan said, I want to open a couple thousand branches of banks in China, and I want to be able to do so within 2 years. This was, in fact, the most aggressive demand in the history of WTO Accession, and it came from the White House. Other developing countries all got at least 5 years to prepare their financial system from this potentially crushing invasion. The European Union refused to be part of it, because they worried that the Chinese banking system might collapse under such an aggressive timeline, and yet, the White House pushed for it. So China said, then can I have those low-margin industries, like making socks? Every time I make eight billion socks for you, I’d earn enough money to buy a Boeing 737 for our domestic airlines… So the White House looked at you, you the sock-maker, and said, sure, you can have it.

So the next time you complain, remember that it’s GM, Disney, JP Morgan,and the White House who traded you to the Chinese for slice of the Chinese market. They all got plenty of money rolling in. And remember that when the deal was signed, the whole world - the US, EU, and the Chinese governments all considered the deal to be great for the US, and lousy for the Chinese. Do you really think that a country who founded the world financial system, who has the biggest banks in the world, with the best lawyers, negotiators, economists, and industry leaders, could possibly be making a bad deal? You’ve been selling throughout the entire developing world - Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Latin American, etc., and nobody could replicate your technology, and you didn’t think China could either. China was poor, with GDP per capital at ~ $1,000 in 2001. Poor people are stupid. If they aren’t stupid they wouldn’t be so poor. Duh.

It’s neither rational, nor psychologically healthy, to have the most powerful, the richest country on earth wallowing in a sense of victimhood. America wins far more than America loses. Think about the economic hegemony in South America, the minerals and the oil rights in Africa, global dumping of cereal and who knows how many small farmers were wiped out, Sovereign debt decided by the court in New York, sole military supplier to half of the globe, all the environmental disasters that the US doesn’t have to pay for, from India to Latin America…

Even when you look at the relationship with China in totality: China was asked to contribute a ton of money ($43 billion) to save the IMF in exchange for an increase of voting rights. Did they hand over the money? Yes. Did they get the voting rights? No. China had $50 billion worth of infrastructure projects signed with Libya, the next thing you know NATO started bombing the country and the $50 billion went down the drain. Now the whole country is shit. There are plenty of other instances where China was f*cked well and good. It’s just not intellectually honest to take the winning as “the way the world is supposed to be”, and take the very occasional losing as “the world is out to screw me”. There are a heck of a lot of countries in the world that have been screwed mercilessly, without receiving any compensation. A giant country like the US should not have the mind and heart of a flea. If you have a neighbor who behaves like this, you’d move away rather than deal with him.

Letting China into WTO seemed like a good deal for the USA at the time. People expected China to rise eventually, but few anticipated China would grow this fast, and get many of its native industries and banks strong enough to be competitive and autonomous so quickly (state-owned banks hold firm control of finance in China, and it's quickly getting harder for foreign firms to compete with local firms in China as time passes). Who could anticipate that there would be an AIIB that would challenge the hegemony of the World Bank? J.P. Morgan probably wanted to dominate banking in China but didn't succeed.


And also there are rules that the elites can't just violate. Trump Presidency's existence itself is a refutation of a great deal of conspiracy theories. Did they know that Trump is a serious threat after Jeb Bush was driven out? Or after Rubio quitting? Yes. And they can't still stop him. For that same reason they can't stop China despite knowing the risk.


The elites' attempt at stopping Trump was incompetent, and the NED's attempt to destabilize China was not much better. They're unable to get Kasich out of the race to focus the vote on Rubio. They don't even have enough control to make Trump go bankrupt. How many big businesses stopped doing business with the Trump Organization for being racist?

Quote:

That said, even if the Chinese are a bulwark against the globalists, it's pretty disturbing the way they pretty much said FU to the British and that they can do whatever they want in HK. Their South China Sea land grab is also pretty provocative, as well as their plan to steal IPR in order to dominate the industries of the future.

Perhaps all these things are in their national interest, but you could at least admit that even if we had nationalist non SJW governments in the West they would also look at China's moves as threatening? After all, it seems like the left and Neocons in the US are far more anti-Russia than anti China. The media in the West is actually pretty quiet about all the crap that China is doing. It will grab a headline or two but it's nothing compared to the constant anti Russia drumbeat. Most Americans still have no clue how far China has come along in its development.

Should we simply go along with China's challenges to the West just because China is tough on Islam and isn't infected by SJW ideology?

HK is Chinese territory. Let them handle their own shit.
Other than that, yes, it's in the US's interest to limit China's growth. But the tension with Russia is much higher, and American businesses would lose nothing if we sanction Russia because the US have very little trade with Russia. China is America's biggest trade partner. There are a lot of obstacles, a lot of profit/interests involved, hence the lack of outright aggressiveness toward China.

Something must be done. But that's to be discussed.

[DarkTriad]

(07-03-2017 08:59 PM)Arado Wrote:  

Perhaps the globalists did just underestimate the Chinese and miscalculate that they could control them. However, even Napoleon and the British saw the talent and drive of the Chinese people and knew that once they industrialized, had access to Western technology, and gained a better government they would be a major competitor with the West - ideologically, militarily, and economically. I really have trouble believing that Kissinger didn't understand the can of worms he was opening when he was negotiating with Zhou Enlai. Especially post-Tiananmen (1989) they must have known that letting China into the WTO (2001) would not create an easily controllable globalist lapdog. So why did they do it?

That said, even if the Chinese are a bulwark against the globalists, it's pretty disturbing the way they pretty much said FU to the British and that they can do whatever they want in HK. Their South China Sea land grab is also pretty provocative, as well as their plan to steal IPR in order to dominate the industries of the future.

Perhaps all these things are in their national interest, but you could at least admit that even if we had nationalist non SJW governments in the West they would also look at China's moves as threatening? After all, it seems like the left and Neocons in the US are far more anti-Russia than anti China. The media in the West is actually pretty quiet about all the crap that China is doing. It will grab a headline or two but it's nothing compared to the constant anti Russia drumbeat. Most Americans still have no clue how far China has come along in its development.

Should we simply go along with China's challenges to the West just because China is tough on Islam and isn't infected by SJW ideology?

When the Soviets fell, the globalist were able to easily loot the country through Yeltsin, the oligarchs and privatization. Maybe they thought it would be similar in China. The Chinese are tougher nut to crack, and just aren't vulnerable to the usual games that are used so successfully elsewhere.

[Samseau]

(07-03-2017 09:26 PM)Suits Wrote:  

(07-03-2017 12:55 PM)Samseau Wrote:  

Quote:

Enterprises keep pouring into China mostly due to objective economic laws slave communist labor. It’s most profitable to open your factories there. Not even globalists can reverse that.

Fixed.

As it currently stands, China is not a place where people are forced to work. They are more than welcome to refuse to work and starve to death in the process.

I'm sure they said the same things to serfs in the middle ages.

They are slaves, don't kid yourselves. Who gets control of capital in China? Who gets any building permit, any work permit, permission to even take a shit? All government controlled, please sell the kool-aid somewhere else.

[Cattle Rustler]

How much does the CPC pay Liberty Sea and Arado to wrote PhD dissertation-level posts? Not even our (((zionist))) members put such detail into theirs.

Who knew the RVF started to creep up on Ministry of State Security, Mossad, and SVR radars? We should have their operators have a contest to see who produces the best content.

Round 1: 50 Cent Army VS Unit 8200.

(05-07-2017 12:15 PM)Hell_Is_Like_Newark Wrote:  

This VISA is nothing new and has been used for years. There is massive amounts of hot money flowing out of China right now. That money has been landing on real estate projects. The Chinese don't care if it makes money, just as long as it doesn't cause them to lose everything (which is the fear if they keep the money in China).

The press keeps trying to tie this whole thing to Trump of course. "China" may replace "Russia" as the Bogeyman of choice.

It wasn't much about Trump but rather how they were trying to portray that you're investing with Trumps advisor....implying he will grease the wheels and have your back.

(05-21-2017 10:22 AM)Luvianka Wrote:  

This is it, guys. It seems that China and Trump have reached a clear understanding. Military company Blackwater's founder plans to build new bases in China, a move to support the One Belt and One Road initiative. Frontier Services Group (FSG), a company that helps businesses operating in frontier markets overcome complex security, logistics and operational challenges, is planning to build two operation bases in Northwest China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region and Southwest China's Yunnan Province, Erik Prince, executive chairman of the firm, told the Global Times in mid-March.
Putting FSG to guard the New Silk Road in the extremely strategic province of Xinjiang is like letting the fox guarding the henhouse. If I were a Chinese official, under no circunstance I would allow those American mercenaries to guard this place which has an Uighur Islamic majority, it's the gate to Central Asia and has vast oil resources... Unless Mr Trump and I have decided to be partners. By the way, Mr Prince is Mrs De Voss' brother. Yeap, that De Voss, Trump's, Secretary of Education.

What does mercenaries and oil in western china have to do with anything? It's not like the US is going to invade China. Most FSG mercs aren't even 'murican. The ones they had in Dubai were mostly Colombian.

Might want to check up on your facts, or as they would say in Spanish "deja de publica puras pendejadas".

[Suits]

(07-05-2017 12:46 PM)Samseau Wrote:  

(07-03-2017 09:26 PM)Suits Wrote:  

(07-03-2017 12:55 PM)Samseau Wrote:  

Quote:

Enterprises keep pouring into China mostly due to objective economic laws slave communist labor. It’s most profitable to open your factories there. Not even globalists can reverse that.

Fixed.

As it currently stands, China is not a place where people are forced to work. They are more than welcome to refuse to work and starve to death in the process.

I'm sure they said the same things to serfs in the middle ages.

They are slaves, don't kid yourselves. Who gets control of capital in China? Who gets any building permit, any work permit, permission to even take a shit? All government controlled, please sell the kool-aid somewhere else.

Incorrect. Less personal freedom is not the same as no personal freedom.

Slavery is no personal freedom.

In fact, in China, people have personal freedoms that not even Americans have. You can drink alcohol anywhere. Labour laws are written to heavily favour employees (for example, an employer is legally required to give all employees a permanent contract after just two years of service.

The government does control a lot, but that simply does not equate to people being literal slaves. People are absolutely permitted to quit their jobs at any time and go into private business if they wish. And many do. While some industries are heavily restricted and only a connected person with money could compete, their are plenty of people with no connections and very little money who have started and continue to operate legal business.

[Luvianka]

Meanwhile in Oregon...

Just to remember you that Russian military analyst Igor Panarin predicted that the USA would break up because regional interests would end up being different from one part of the country to another.

[RaccoonFace]

Quote:

CIA chief: China tops Russia & Iran as biggest long-term threat to US

CIA Director Mike Pompeo sees China rather than Russia or Iran as the biggest threat to America’s dominant position in the world. Beijing merited its position on the US spymaster’s threat list due to its stronger economy and population, he said.

Speaking to the Washington Free Beacon, Pompeo marked terrorism and North Korea as the biggest short-term threats to US security interests, but selected China, Russia and Iran as mid-to-long-term concerns.

“It's hard to pick between China, Russia and Iran to be honest with you. I guess if I had to pick one with a nose above the others, I'd probably pick China,” he told Bill Gertz, the Beacon’s senior editor and national security reporter.

“They have a real economy that they have built, unlike Russia that lives and dies on how many barrels of oil they can pluck out of the ground. And Iran that is similarly very single sector derivative and not to the scale of China population-wise,” he explained.

Pompeo added that Beijing’s defense strategy is based on confronting the US and its capabilities.

“They are probably trying either to steal our stuff or make sure they can defeat it. And most often both,” he said. “I think it’s very clear when they think about their place in the world, they measure their success in placing themselves in the world where they want to be vis-à-vis the United States and not as against anyone else.”

The director declined to comment on reports that since 2012 China has pivoted its espionage offensively in the US, but said the Chinese effort was “an active campaign”.

“It began with really commercial attacks. Trying to steal our stuff. That continues. They've always tried to get at our military resources, our R&D programs and the like. So those have long histories,” he said.

“But it is also the case that the Chinese have moved to a place where they, I think, see themselves as a rival superpower and so intend to conduct their version of espionage programs in a way that reflects their superpower status,” Pompeo added.

“They have as part of their mission to reduce the relative power of the United States vis-à-vis their own country. And one of the ways they do that is through these active measures, these spying efforts.”

The US and China, while remaining major trade and investment partners, have several points of contention. Arguably the most acute involves Beijing’s territorial claims over a large part of the South China Sea, through which a major part of its maritime transport goes. The claims conflict with those of other nations, including close US ally the Philippines.

The US supports neither nation and believes that the sea should be neutral waters. To back its position, it regularly sends its warships and military aircraft through what China sees as part of its territory. Beijing protests those “freedom of navigation” missions and deploys its own military assets to counter the US projection of power.

The two nations are also at odds over how to handle the North Korean nuclear issue, with the administration of President Donald Trump trying to pressure Beijing into being more aggressive toward its neighbor. China, which opposes Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile programs, believes that overexerting pressure on North Korea may lead to a major crisis, which would hurt all nations in the region and beyond.

Washington and Beijing have also quarrelled about China’s alleged currency manipulation, production of counterfeit brand products in China, alleged theft of intellectual property and state secrets by Chinese actors, and other issues. The two powers also have competing regional integration projects, with the US seeking to counteract China’s growing influence on its neighbors.

https://www.rt.com/usa/397582-china-threat-us-pompeo/

[SamuelBRoberts]

Met with a Chinese company today for some kind of referral deal with another party I'm involved with (Which is also a Chinese company. They all seem to be these days.)

This particular company is offering rates for its hardware/service that are, quite frankly, insane. There is no way they're making profit off of these and they're probably taking a significant loss.

I heard a rumor that the Chinese government is funding them to help them take over market share, and then they'll jack the prices up. I don't know if that's true, but I don't see how it CAN'T be true.

[Suits]

(07-27-2017 05:48 PM)SamuelBRoberts Wrote:  

Met with a Chinese company today for some kind of referral deal with another party I'm involved with (Which is also a Chinese company. They all seem to be these days.)

This particular company is offering rates for its hardware/service that are, quite frankly, insane. There is no way they're making profit off of these and they're probably taking a significant loss.

I heard a rumor that the Chinese government is funding them to help them take over market share, and then they'll jack the prices up. I don't know if that's true, but I don't see how it CAN'T be true.

Trust your instincts. It doesn't matter what the reason for the low prices is.

The fact of that matter is that this company is working an angle and unless (by some miracle) they can make a profit on the prices they are offering, this is going to be a bait and switch.

[Arado]

Daddy is angry

[/url]

[url=https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/891442016294494209]

Looks like the long awaited reckoning with China's unfair trade policies is coming.

From NYT:

Quote:

WASHINGTON — The White House is preparing to open a broad investigation into China’s trade practices, according to people with knowledge of the Trump administration’s plans, amid growing worries in the United States over a Chinese government-led effort to make the country a global leader in microchips, electric cars and other crucial technologies of the future.

The move, which could come in the next several days, signals a shift by the administration away from its emphasis on greater cooperation between Washington and Beijing, in part because administration officials have become frustrated by China’s reluctance to confront North Korea over its nuclear and ballistic missile programs.

The investigation will focus on alleged Chinese violations of American intellectual property, according to three people with a detailed knowledge of the administration’s plans. The people spoke on the condition of anonymity because the deliberations were not yet public.

Any move by the Trump administration to punish China over its trade practices would raise tensions within the world’s largest trade relationship between two countries. China’s export sector still contributes heavily to its economy growth despite Beijing’s efforts to diversify its economy, and China represents a lucrative market for American automakers, technology companies like Apple, farmers and many others.

Still, China’s industrial ambitions — and growing frustration among American companies doing business there — have become harder for United States officials to ignore.

China’s policy to become a leading manufacturer by 2025 in the fields of driverless cars, medical devices, semiconductors, artificial intelligence, robotics and many other technologies has caught the attention of officials in President Trump’s administration. The policy, known as Made in China 2025, sets goals for China to be a global leader in 10 fields of industry with the help of huge infusions of state money and the protection of those industries from American competitors.

At the same time, the Chinese government has demanded that American companies cut the licensing fees that they charge for key patents and has insisted that companies set up joint ventures to do business in China.

In recent months, citing cybersecurity concerns, Chinese officials have said international technology companies like Apple, Amazon and Microsoft must set up China-based data centers if they want to do business there. Chinese officials have also demanded that Western automakers move much of their research into electric cars to China if they want to qualify for large subsidies.

Luckily we have more leverage than China:

Quote:

Under the process that the Trump administration plans to set in motion, the Office of the United States Trade Representative will start an investigation into China’s trade practices. Following the investigation, which could be completed in as little as a few months, the United States could impose steep tariffs on Chinese imports, rescind licenses for Chinese companies to do business in the United States, or take other measures. The process is known as a Section 301 investigation, after the relevant portions of the 1974 Trade Act.

Much is at stake for both sides. Exports to the United States represent more than 4 percent of China’s entire economic output. Those exports have created tens of millions of jobs in China and prompted multinationals to shift thousands of factories to China along with much of their latest technology. American exports to China are much smaller, representing about two-thirds of 1 percent of the American economy.

American companies have tended to supply the Chinese market using factories and staff in China, instead of exports from the United States. But their profits from the Chinese market are large enough that many corporate executives have been loath to cooperate with United States trade officials, for fear that Chinese government ministries may retaliate against them.

Seems like a bad idea to be clashing with Europe and Russia, and withdrawing from the Asia-Pacific trade pact at the same time that we are shifting from treating China as a partner to treating them like an economic and geopolitical competitor.

[Luvianka]

Tweet storms are not going to work with China or Russia. If President Trump really wants to engage in serious negotiations with both Russia and China, he needs to step up... If he still has any chance.

[RaccoonFace]

Quote:

It Begins: U.S. Launches China Trade Probe



The Trump administration formally launched an investigation into trade practices that China allegedly uses to steal the intellectual property of U.S. companies.
The administration said today that it was launching a “Section 301” investigation. The probe could result in the U.S. imposing trade tariffs on China within months, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The administration signaled that it was going to begin a probe into the impact of China’s trade rules on U.S. intellectual property on Monday when President Donald Trump signed an order authorizing U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer to consider beginning a Section 302 investigation.

“I notified the President today that I am beginning an investigation under Section 201 of the Trade Act of 1974,” Lighthizer said in a statement.

The speed of the move caught many off-guard. The move seemed to signal that the administration agrees with the view of Steve Bannon, who recently told a left-wing magazine that the “economic war with China is everything.”

Ordinarily, a Section 301 investigation would not result in any action for several months. But the timeline might be accelerated on this investigation, according to a person familiar with the matter. The Trump administration has already collected much of the information it needs to conclude that trade sanctions are appropriate to respond to China’s attempts to steal the intellectual property of U.S. companies.

http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/...ade-probe/

[Transsimian]

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/08/us/po...trump.html

Quote:

Next Stop for the Steve Bannon Insurgency: China
By MARK LANDLERSEPT. 8, 2017
Stephen K. Bannon, the former chief strategist to President Trump, views China as the greatest long-term threat to the United States. “A hundred years from now, this is what they’ll remember — what we did to confront China on its rise to world domination,” he said.

WASHINGTON — Stephen K. Bannon has held court in the Capitol Hill townhouse of Breitbart Media since he packed up his West Wing office last month, meeting with conservative lawmakers, advocating hard-line policies on undocumented immigrants and waging gleeful war on those he considers traitors to the Trump cause.

Now Mr. Bannon is taking his insurgency abroad.
Next week, he plans to travel to Hong Kong to deliver a keynote address at an investor conference, where he will articulate his call for a much tougher American policy toward China. CLSA, the Hong Kong brokerage firm that invited Mr. Bannon, is owned by a politically connected Chinese investment bank, Citic Securities.

People close to Mr. Bannon said he met recently with Henry A. Kissinger, the elder statesman who opened a diplomatic channel to China in 1972, to exchange views about the relationship with Beijing. Mr. Bannon said he admires Mr. Kissinger and has read all his books, but none of that swayed him from his preference for confrontation over diplomacy.

The meeting and speech kicks off an effort by Mr. Bannon, who served as President Trump’s chief strategist, to influence his former boss on China policy as much as he does on immigration, trade or tax policy. Given the lack of strong voices on China in the administration and the inconsistency in its approach, Mr. Bannon believes he can make a difference, though his record when he was inside the White House was mixed.

It is no accident that of all the foreign policy issues he could have chosen, Mr. Bannon gravitated to China, where he once lived and which he now views as the greatest long-term threat to the United States.

“A hundred years from now, this is what they’ll remember — what we did to confront China on its rise to world domination,” he said in an interview, previewing the themes in his speech.

“China right now is Germany in 1930,” Mr. Bannon said. “It’s on the cusp. It could go one way or the other. The younger generation is so patriotic, almost ultranationalistic.”

Mr. Bannon’s combative views on China are no secret to those who listened to his Breitbart radio show before the election. In March 2016 he declared, “We’re going to war in the South China Sea in five to 10 years.” Last month, he told Robert Kuttner, co-founder of the left-leaning journal The American Prospect, “We’re at economic war with China” — one of a number of impolitic observations that hastened his departure from the White House.

But now Mr. Bannon is going to present this worldview to an audience of Chinese investors. His speech is likely to attract attention, if not raise eyebrows, at a forum where the past speakers have included Bill Clinton, Sarah Palin, Al Gore, Alan Greenspan and George Clooney. Among other things, Mr. Bannon will tell his audience that they made their wealth on the backs of Mr. Trump’s voters.
“China’s model for the past 25 years, it’s based on investment and exports,” he said. “Who financed that? The American working class and middle class. You can’t understand Brexit or the 2016 events unless you understand that China exported their deflation, they exported their excess capacity.”

“It’s not sustainable,” Mr. Bannon declared. “The reordering of the economic relationship is the central issue that has to be addressed, and only the U.S. can address it.”

Mr. Trump clearly shares that view. He made it a centerpiece of his campaign, and installed Mr. Bannon in an office near his, where he sought out like-minded China bashers, including the economist Peter Navarro. But Mr. Bannon had as many setbacks as victories on China at the White House.

Shortly after Mr. Trump was elected, Mr. Bannon exulted when the president-elect threw in doubt America’s adherence to the “One China” policy. But he was undercut a month later when Mr. Trump, prodded by his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, told President Xi Jinping that he would honor the policy.

Mr. Bannon poured his energy into engineering Mr. Trump’s nationalist trade agenda. He cheered when Mr. Trump ordered investigations of China’s theft of technology from American companies and its dumping of steel in the world market. But he fought constant rear-guard actions against other advisers, who warned Mr. Trump not to start a trade war with China at the same time that he needed its cooperation in confronting North Korea.

Mr. Trump has suggested that he will go easier on trade if China steps up its pressure on the rogue regime of Kim Jong-un. Mr. Bannon contends that this is a sucker’s bet: China is stringing along the United States, he says, and has no intention of exerting influence on its neighbor.

“If you’re a great power,” he asked, “how come you can’t control the Frankenstein monster you created in North Korea?”
Last weekend, Mr. Bannon said he was thrilled when Mr. Trump tweeted that the United States would consider halting trade “with any country that does business with North Korea.” The statement was aimed at China, which conducts the lion’s share of trade with the North.

But Mr. Trump has assiduously cultivated a relationship with Mr. Xi, and his willingness to confront him on this issue is not clear. After speaking by phone with the Chinese president on Wednesday, he told reporters, “I believe that President Xi agrees with me 100 percent” on the threat posed by North Korea. There is no evidence, however, that China plans to support Mr. Trump’s call for a cutoff of oil supplies to the North.

For Mr. Bannon, who lived in Shanghai when he ran an online gaming company, the key to understanding China’s motives is to look at its history, specifically the Taiping Rebellion and the Cultural Revolution. “The whole thing is about control,” he said. “They think that by 2050 or 2075, they will be the hegemonic power.”
“We have to reassert ourselves because we have retreated,” he said. “We have to reassert ourselves as the real Asian power: economically, militarily, culturally, politically.”

[Enigma]

Quote:

Mr. Trump has suggested that he will go easier on trade if China steps up its pressure on the rogue regime of Kim Jong-un. Mr. Bannon contends that this is a sucker’s bet: China is stringing along the United States, he says, and has no intention of exerting influence on its neighbor.

Bannon is a national treasure.

[Fortis]

Better buy property in Houston, boys.

But seriously, this shit scares the shit out of me.

[Transsimian]

Whilst I'm no fan of FaceTwitOogle, he makes a good point.

https://www.engadget.com/2017/09/15/chin...all-trade/

Quote:

The missing trade war against China’s digital protectionism
Tech companies don't have a chance of competing right now.

Earlier this summer, the Trump administration took its first concrete step toward what some think could turn into an all-out trade war with China. The product that it put an import tax on? Aluminum foil. Like the Obama administration, which took action against China's subsidies to auto parts manufacturers and withholding of rare earth exports that are crucial to tech manufacturing, Trump seems focused on physical goods.
But China's main trade barrier against the US isn't on manufactured or raw goods; rather, it targets Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and the bulk of the multi-billion-dollar, fast-growing tech sector. Many of these companies have been facing market access issues in China for years due to the blocking or censoring of their digital content or tools, likely costing them billions in potential revenue.

"China's extensive use of digital trade barriers ... have reshaped the production and sales of many global tech sectors as they've been forced to either adapt to China's restrictive and costly requirements or avoid the market entirely," said Nigel Cory, trade policy analyst at the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation.

Unlike the flashpoint over aluminum foil, there has so far not been a single trade case against China for the blocking of websites, apps, or platforms by what is the world's biggest internet market. This digital protectionism has resulted in the creation of China's own tech superpowers -- Tencent, Alibaba, and Baidu -- which are now competing globally with their US counterparts. The new president has not yet shown any sign of taking on digital trade with China. Tech companies like Apple, Facebook, and Amazon either have been silent or are openly courting or complying with Chinese regulators.

As China's digital economic power grows, the question is whether that will change, as freedom-of-expression groups and, increasingly, the tech industry have been asking. The goal: ensure that digital trade and information flows as freely in and out of China as do lightbulbs, shoes, or any of the other Chinese-made consumer goods found in stores across the US. Otherwise, some fear that the Chinese model of the internet -- state control of information and access -- may be copied by other countries for censorship and protectionism purposes. At risk is nothing more than the future of the internet as a global public forum.

Not too long ago, many argued that the spread of the internet to authoritarian states like China would lead to greater democratization. In reaction, countries like North Korea and Cuba severely restricted their citizens' access to the web. China, however, was in the midst of opening its markets to global companies, and wanted to become a hub for manufacturing devices that would give internet access to the world. Blocking the web entirely was not an option.
The solution was called the Golden Shield Project, announced in 2000 by the Chinese Ministry of Public Security. Today, the project is more commonly known outside of China as the Great Firewall. It was an attempt to give China the best of both worlds: courting local innovation and foreign investment to make the country a hub for tech manufacturing without the pesky side effect of relinquishing too much of the Communist Party's near-monopoly on information.

What was initially the blocking of a few web pages that the Chinese government deemed sensitive, such as those about the Chinese occupation of Tibet or the Tiananmen Square Massacre, has turned into a massive filter between the Chinese web and the websites and apps of many foreign companies, news media, and NGOs. The Great Firewall has gotten progressively more sophisticated, and a major move came in 2009 when the growing social networks Facebook and Twitter were blocked, along with YouTube.

"Twitter and Facebook and other large social media apps, in the eyes of the authorities, simply cannot operate in China without censorship.
"Twitter and Facebook and other large social media apps, in the eyes of the authorities, simply cannot operate in China without censorship," said Charlie Smith, co-founder of GreatFire.org, a nonprofit that provides analysis and circumvention tools for the Great Firewall. "This has everything to do with protecting the party's grip on power ... Helping domestic companies may be an additional side benefit, but it is not the main reason."

Facebook and Twitter were blocked in June 2009, just days before the 20th anniversary of the crackdown on the pro-Democracy protests in Tiananmen Square, and alongside deadly riots in China's restive western province of Xinjiang.

Since then, the list of blocked sites and apps, as well as the number of restrictions on internet companies, has only grown, as has the Chinese digital market. Today, the vast majority of Chinese internet users are not just prohibited from searching about sensitive topics but can't share files via Google Drive, chat with overseas coworkers through Slack or post anything, sensitive or not, to Facebook or Twitter.

Yet according to Matthew Schruers, the vice president for law and policy at the Computer & Communications Industry Association, which counts Google, Facebook and Amazon as members, it is difficult to quantify how much China's trade barriers impact US companies.

"It's relatively easy to tell if a country is blocking bananas at the border and to calculate the scope of the banana market," said Schruers. "With digital trade, it is not always that straightforward. Sometimes services are not fully blocked, but they are throttled, and quality of service is diminished, or they are selectively filtered over time."

Still, the impact is real. In 2010, Google controlled 40 percent of the Chinese search market, but since it left the country (and was subsequently blocked), Chinese search traffic has gone to the local, censored alternative Baidu, which now controls a nearly 80 percent market share.

Since China joined the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001, the US has filed, and won, several trade cases against the world's second-largest economy. But these cases are focused entirely on physical products, like the December 2016 complaint about tariff rate quotes for wheat, rice, and corn. None, so far, address digital trade.
"Unfortunately, countries [like China] are able to enact barriers to digital trade, as there is a vacuum in terms of rules that deal with digital trade issues," said Cory.

This is a limitation in nearly all existing agreements governing trade, which mostly date from the pre-internet era. The WTO came into force in 1995, and its predecessor, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), in 1947. Both focus on the trade of goods, not services.

"Existing rules at the WTO -- mostly agreed to in the mid-1990s, when the internet as we know it didn't exist -- have proven ineffective," said Cory.

That's why when the Chinese tried to block American-made auto parts from entering the country, the US quickly filed a complaint at the WTO and won. Yet when China blocks or throttles a US-based website or tool like Flickr, Pinterest or Instagram, there is little action.

"We're going to continue seeing countries restrict information access if they think there will be no trade consequences."
"We're going to continue seeing countries restrict information access if they think there will be no trade consequences," said Schruer. "Not until a trade case is brought will these practices disappear."

One of the few opportunities to rework global trade, at least for the US, may have been lost when Donald Trump won the 2016 US presidential election. He campaigned against the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which was officially abandoned shortly after his arrival at the White House. The TPP, for all its faults, could have provided a basis for regulating the trade of digital services, at least among the 11 countries meant to be its original members.

"The e-commerce chapter of the TPP ... represented a major step forward in developing new rules to support and protect digital trade," said Cory. ITIF is still hopeful that even a TPP without the US could provide at least a framework for future global policy.

"If enacted -- even without the United States -- these rules will still cover a large part of the global economy, thereby going a long way toward establishing a new global norm for China and others at the WTO to work towards."

There is a flipside to this argument. In most of the world, the US digital giants -- Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft and Apple -- control the so-called open web. To "Google" has become a verb in many languages, as has to "Instagram," "tweet" and "Snap." In most countries, one or more US companies dominate search, social media, chat or streaming, with some exceptions, like Korea (which has Naver) and Myanmar (Viber). While China's internet is not likely what techno-utopians had in mind in the late '90s and early 2000s, neither is the oligarchic corporate control of the internet in the rest of the world.
The only place where the US giants don't have a firm foothold in the market is China. While the origins of the Great Firewall may have been to protect the Communist Party, another impact has been to enable the growth of local internet companies. In China, you don't Google something, you "Baidu" it (百度). To tweet is to "Weibo" (微博), referring to the national Twitter alternative. The language reflects the power of these Chinese alternatives, which grew under the protection of the Great Firewall.

"Essentially, the absence of US tech companies allowed China's Internet companies to grow without strong competition and capture the lion's share of the domestic market," said Shanthi Kalathil, director of the International Forum for Democratic Studies at the National Endowment for Democracy.

The result is China's own digital giants -- Tencent, Baidu and Alibaba. In fact, this model of protectionism as a form of economic development is not new, and was used by some of China's neighbors to grow their economies.

"There are some parallels with Japan's protectionism of its auto industry, which runs very deep in its political and economic system."
"There are some parallels with Japan's protectionism of its auto industry, which runs very deep in its political and economic system," said Anindya Ghose, a China business expert at NYU's Stern School of Business.

Protectionism works only as long as you aren't held accountable or facing retaliation. Japan couldn't protect its auto industry forever, and in 1981 it was forced to accept quotas that limited its ability to freely export cars into the US. By then, however, Japanese companies were large enough to compete on a level playing field with US and European automakers. Toyota, which benefited greatly from pre- and post-1981 protectionist policies, is today the largest automaker in the world.

Korea followed a similar model for both its auto industry and its tech companies, like Samsung and LG. Countries that did not protect local industries have faltering national car industries -- case in point: Malaysia, whose automaker Proton was recently acquired by a Chinese competitor -- or are almost completely dependent on foreign companies setting up factories, as in Indonesia.

"The fact that Facebook, Google, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube are all blocked in China has no doubt benefited the tech titans of China, such as Baidu, Weibo and Tencent," said Ghose. Now these companies are so entrenched that they can not only compete with the US giants but lead on innovations.

The question is: What's next? China shows no sign of lowering its digital trade barriers. In fact, they are getting stronger and more widespread, as the crackdown on virtual private networks (VPNs) and a new cybersecurity law show.

Moreover, in the past few years, China has been pushing to transform internet governance in its own image, through an ideology of "internet sovereignty."

"China uses the phrase 'Internet sovereignty' as a broad framing device for all of China's activity related to the Internet," said Kalathil. This approach allows each country to govern its internal digital space as it sees fit, with little or no overarching global governance structures.

China's influence is massive -- it is already the world's biggest internet market, with an estimated 1.1 billion internet users in 2016 -- and other countries, like Russia, have expressed support for China's style of digital control.

"China wields tremendous power because of its market, and this allows it to dictate terms in a way that other countries without that same market cannot," said Kalathil. For example, WeChat, the most ubiquitous Chinese app, has nearly 800 million users and accounts for an astounding one-third of all Chinese user time on the mobile web. That gives it a powerful base from which to expand globally, as it has done with some success.

Other countries are looking to emulate the Chinese model, mostly because it has proven so successful at its original goal. The Communist Party is still in power, and China's economy is still growing. For authoritarian regimes like Thailand and Egypt, where social-media-driven protests have caused considerable stress to the ruling military juntas, the notion of controlling the domestic internet is enticing.

"China is exporting its great firewall to other countries," said Smith. "To think that other countries could easily replicate China's draconian censorship is frightening."

Tactics that were once features of the Chinese digital space are starting to become more common throughout the world. Internet shutdowns have taken place in Egypt, Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia, India (Kashmir) and several other countries in the past year. Distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks pioneered by the Great Cannon are on the rise, targeting, for example, news media sites.
Meanwhile, in China, digital security measures tested in restive regions like Xinjiang and Tibet are being implemented all across the country, in what some are calling the "digital totalitarian state." Together with projects like the social credit system, Chinese authorities could ultimately gain complete control of all information flows from Chinese internet users. This control could even extend beyond China's borders.

"By exerting growing influence over the platforms for global speech, the Chinese government is shaping and controlling expression not only domestically but internationally as well," said Kalathil. "The international community -- not just governments, but civil society and the private sector as well -- should recognize that this phenomenon is well under way, and speak with one voice in support of core democratic values."

If the WTO or a US-less TPP can't open up digital trade barriers, then it may be time to fight fire with fire. We saw a taste of this earlier this year, when Russia, a supporter of internet sovereignty, blocked WeChat, the first major instance of China getting a taste of its own digital medicine. Could other countries -- perhaps the US, which used retaliatory measures to force, for example, Japan to accept car export quotas in the 1980s -- do the same?

"The US government could easily make WeChat inaccessible in the United States, creating a great inconvenience for Chinese who are living, working and studying in the country," said Smith. "However, this really goes against the idea of internet freedom and this is not a position that I would advocate. But as the situation gets worse in China, maybe it is time to try a different approach."

Meanwhile, tech companies may be contorting themselves to national requirements. Facebook, openly courting China for years, has already developed a censorship tool for the country, in a bid to get back into the market. Left unchecked, this could be the future of the internet: more Great Firewalls, with tech giants reworking their products for different countries to satisfy the government. It would be a far cry from the open, global internet many dreamed of not so long ago.