Photos puts China’s ‘galloping military buildup’ on vivid display

Aerial image of the Jiangnan Shipyard in Shanghai

 

China’s military spending for 2019 will increase by 7.5 percent to about $177.61 billion, as revealed on March 3, 2019 by an official at Chinese Communist Party’s annual National People’s Consultative Congress.

Canada installs Chinese underwater monitoring devices next to US nuclear submarine base

One of the Chinese undersea devices off Canada. Photo: Handout

 

• Ocean Network Canada confirms addition of hi-tech sensors built by Chinese scientists to its marine observatories in Pacific Ocean
• US state department has ‘nothing to say’ on matter

While the eyes of the world have been on the strategic tussle between Beijing and Washington in the South China Sea, Chinese scientists, with the help of the Canadian authorities, have succeeded in positioning four monitoring devices in waters just 300km (186 miles) off the United States’ Pacific coast.

China’s Command Innovation

Image: Visual Capitalist

 

Hardly a day passes without some sort of China news in the financial headlines. There’s a good reason, too. China is the global economy’s 600-pound gorilla, second in size only to the US. Yes, it was largely a copycat business economy up until the early 2000s, but Chinese entrepreneurs have really taken charge in the last 10 years. Fueled by the profits from huge consumer demand, they are expanding not only in China but globally. This story is largely ignored in the US and in much of Europe. We hear about a few projects here and there, but we don’t understand the extent.

China is on its way to becoming the largest economy in the world, which because of its population, it should be (possibly with the exception of India, if they ever get their act together). Short-term events and arguments sometimes obscure this longer-term reality. China’s transition from rural poverty to export powerhouse to consumer goliath may be the most consequential economic event in centuries. Possibly ever—I can’t think of a historical example to rival it. Historians might argue the British Empire or even the US from 1800–2000, but that took centuries. China has done it in a little over 30 years.

Report: China has Stopped Buying U.S. Treasuries

 

While It’s Not Selling Them, Yet, It Reportedly Stopped Buying Them ‘Several Weeks Ago.’

Despite positive signs that Chinese President Xi Jinping may make a wink-and-nod concession to the U.S. overnight at the Boao Forum, a new report suggests China has already engaged its so-called “nuclear option.”

China is Building Laser 10 Trillion Times Stronger than the Sun That Could Tear Space

 

Chinese scientists are reportedly at work constructing a mega-laser that is so powerful, it could literally tear apart empty space. How can a laser tear apart the absence of matter?

Physicists hailing out of Shanghai, China are building what they refer to as a “Station of Extreme Light,” a device that they claim could be fully functional as early as 2023, about 5 years from now. The Station of Extreme Light appears to be a CERN-level project that could create temperature extremes not typically found on planet Earth. They say the technology it utilizes could one day be used to conduct a particle accelerator similiar to CERN.

China’s New Gold-Backed Oil Benchmark to Deal Blow to U.S. Dollar

ISTOCK.COM/SELENSERGEN

 

New financial instrument gives oil-exporting nations their long-sought alternative to the petrodollar.

China will soon introduce a crude oil futures contract denominated in yuan and convertible into gold, the Nikkei Asian Review reported on September 1. Analysts say that since China is the world’s largest oil importer, the move could deal a major blow to the global influence of the United States dollar.

The contract would allow oil exporting nations such as Russia, Iran and Venezuela to conduct sales in yuan, instead of in U.S. dollars, and to then change the yuan into gold on both the Hong Kong and Shanghai exchanges. This would also allow these countries that often fall afoul of American foreign policy to circumvent dollar-based U.S. sanctions.

The Chinese government has been developing the gold-backed futures contract for years, and Oilprice.com reports that it is expected to launch this year. It will be China’s first commodities futures contract available to foreign entities, and analysts expect many oil-exporting nations and firms to find it appealing.

China’s maritime Strategic Realignment

A simplified view of the PLAN maritime lines of communication between its major naval bases in southern China and its newly established oversees bases. The major island bases in the South China Sea are omitted from this map, but should be considered in gaining an accurate picture of Chinese maritime defense posture.

 

Introduction

China has begun construction of the first Type 075 Landing Helicopter Dock (LHD) at the Shanghai based Hudong Zhonghua Shipbuilding Company. Construction most likely started in January or February of this year, with some satellite imagery and digital photos appearing online of at least one pre-fabricated hull cell. The Type 075 will be the largest amphibious warfare vessel in the Peoples’ Liberation Army Navy (PLAN), with similar displacement and dimensions as the U.S. Navy Wasp Class LHD. The PLA has also made it known through non-official channels that the force plans to expand the current PLA Marine Corps from 20,000 personnel to 100,000. As China completes preparations for its new military base in Djibouti, located in the strategic Horn of Africa, it has also continued its substantial investment in developing the port of Gwadar, Pakistan. Not only will Gwadar become a key logistics hub as part of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) and the “One Belt, One Road” trade initiative, but will also be a key naval base in providing security for China’s maritime trade in the region.

China intensifying THAAD retaliation

China may continue to ratchet up its retaliation against South Korea over Seoul’s decision to allow the deployment of a U.S. Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) battery here, analysts said Monday.

In what was likely a retaliatory maneuver last week, Beijing abruptly banned South Korean airlines from operating chartered flights between the two countries beginning this month. Chinese airlines also withdrew their plan to run chartered flights to Korea.

‘This is just the start’: China’s passion for foreign property

“China is so big,” marvels Victor Li, using his fingers to count all the cities he has flown to over the last 12 months to meet with cash-rich Chinese buyers interested in buying into a real-life game of London Monopoly.

Li, a director of international project marketing for the US real estate giant CBRE, is predicting a surge of eastern investment in British homes over the next decade, as increasingly affluent Chinese investors acquire a taste for international property.

“I think it is just beginning,” says Li, of the amount of money pouring into property around the world from mainland China. “You do the figures: China has a population of 1.4 billion. If you target only 1% of China’s population, that’s 14 million people – so it’s already almost two Londons.”

Is Chinese salvage ship searching for flight MH370 spying on Australia?

The Chinese embassy in Canberra has strongly denied accusations that a Chinese government ship involved in the international effort to find the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 is spying on the Royal Australian Navy. The ship, the Dong Hai Jiu 101, is a salvage and rescue vessel built in Shanghai in 2012 and currently sailing under the Chinese flag. In April, the Chinese government contracted the Dong Hai Jiu 101 to join the international search effort for the wreckage of Flight MH370. The Boeing 777 aircraft disappeared over the South China Sea on March 8, 2014, while flying from Kuala Lumpur International Airport in Malaysia, to the Beijing Capital International Airport in China.

China’s New Silk Road to Make a Big Move in Gold

It’s one of the great engineering achievements in history…

At 48 miles long, the Panama Canal cuts through a narrow strip of land in Central America.

It links up the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, allowing ships to pass through the landmass instead of sailing around a whole continent.

Ships pay dearly to use this shortcut… up to $375,000 for a one-way toll.

It’s worth the price.

A Chinese Banker Explains Why There Is No Way Out

Over the past year, we have frequently warned that the biggest financial risk (if not social, which in the form of soaring worker unrest is a far greater threat to Chinese civilization) threatening China, is its runaway non-performing loans, which at anywhere between 10 and 20% of total bank assets, mean that China is one chaotic default away from collapsing into the post “Minsky Moment” singlarity where it can no longer rollover its bad debt, leading to a debt supernova and full financial collapse. And as China’s total leverage keeps rising, and according to at least one estimate is now a gargantuan 350% of GDP (incidentally the same as the US), the threat of a rollover “glitch” gets exponentially greater.

China Launches Yuan-Based International Payment System

MOSCOW (Sputnik) – China launched the first phase of its China International Payment System (CIPS) in Shanghai on Thursday, allowing cross-border transactions in the Chinese national currency, the yuan.

CIPS’ first phase provides clearing and settlement services, according to the People’s Bank of China announcement. Its launch is said to remove hurdles to the yuan’s internationalization by reducing transaction costs and processing times.

The China Challenge: The weapons the PLA didn’t show

 

 

A Pentagon official said the carefully choreographed military parade through Beijing’s Tiananmen was notable for the weapons that were not shown. They include China’s growing cadre of cyber warfare forces; its ground launched anti-satellite missiles and its new ultra-high-speed maneuvering hypersonic glide vehicle, known as the DF-ZF.

All three programs remain tightly guarded secrets for the Chinese government and details about them are unlikely to be made public any time soon.

James Dale Davidson: Current Global Crash Is a ‘Rerun of 1929’

Please see the website for the video.

 

 

The current global stock-market crash is eerily reminiscent of the Wall Street crash of 1929, investment expert and author James Dale Davidson told Newsmax TV.

“What we’re seeing, if I could say it this way, is a rerun of 1929 with the main crash falling in Shanghai rather than in Wall Street,” he told “Newsmax Prime.”

“If you’re not scared, you’re not watching,” he said. “Since the last time I was on Newsmax TV on the 11th of August to discuss the Chinese devaluation, which was a small step, I said it was only the beginning of a major change that was going on. And since that time, $5 trillion have gone to money heaven, which is a significant change,” he said.