Firm founded by ex-Blackwater boss to operate in China’s Xinjiang province

 

A security firm founded by Erik Prince, the former boss of the private military company Blackwater, has announced a deal with the Chinese state to operate a training facility in China’s largely Muslim Xinjiang province. In the months following the United States invasion of Iraq, Blackwater was hired by the Department of State to provide diplomatic security at several locations throughout the Middle Eastern country. By 2010, when the company was abruptly sold to a group of private investors, its tactics in Iraq had prompted international controversy. Prince went on to help found Frontier Services Group (FSG), another private security firm registered in Hong Kong. The company provides security training to personnel working for Chinese companies. Its specialization is training personnel of Chinese firms based abroad, mainly in regions of Africa.

Inside China’s razor wire ringed ‘vocational schools’: Curriculum is taser-enforced re-education

‘Graduates’ receive a certificate after they finish ‘vocational training.’ / Screen grab from CCTV

 

To build better “Chinese citizens,” officials at re-education camps which hold Muslim Uighurs and other ethnic minorities (referred to as “vocational schools” by China) are instructed to “break their lineage, break their roots, break their connections, and break their origins,” according to a Chinese government document.

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“Thousands of guards equipped with tear gas, Tasers, stun guns and spiked clubs keep tight control over ‘students’ in facilities ringed with razor wire and infrared cameras,” said AFP, which examined more than 1,500 publicly available government documents.

The Altay Pipeline: A Geopolitical Game Changer

Source: BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2018.

 

It is a matter of common knowledge that energy relations between Russia and China have boomed in the past decade, with all sorts of new infrastructure being built to facilitate the ever-further expansion of bilateral energy trade. Yet it has seemed for some time now that new gas projects are very unlikely to happen – the 38 BCm per year Power of Siberia pipeline will go onstream December 20, 2019 and seemed to satiate China‘s needs for Russian gas – but that has now changed. A second project, generally denoted as the Altay pipeline (sometimes also mentioned as Power of Siberia-2), which had been stalled for four years due to limited demand and Gazprom’s sanctions-induced constraints, is set to be the next big Russo-Chinese gas project.

Vatican’s deal with Beijing could end Taiwan’s ties with its last European ally

The Wanchin Basilica in Pingtung County, Taiwan was built in 1870. / Wikipedia

 

A deal between the Vatican and China, which would grant China the right to nominate future bishops, would likely end the diplomatic relationship between the Holy See and Taiwan that began in 1942.

Reports of the pending agreement come amid other reports of the suppression of religious expression throughout China.

A Human Rights Watch report estimates that over a million Muslim Uighurs are currently detained in re-education camps in the western province of Xinjiang. AP reported last week that reported that China’s government is seeking to drive citizens away from organized religion and toward the atheist Communist Party through scare tactics such as Bible-burning, shuttering churches, destroying crosses and forcing individuals to renounce their faith on paper.

U.N. Says It Has Credible Reports That China Holds Million Uighurs in Secret Camps

Men install a CCTV camera in a shopping street in the old town of Kashgar, Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, China / Reuters

 

GENEVA (Reuters) – A United Nations human rights panel said on Friday that it had received many credible reports that 1 million ethnic Uighurs in China are held in what resembles a “massive internment camp that is shrouded in secrecy.”

Gay McDougall, a member of the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, cited estimates that 2 million Uighurs and Muslim minorities were forced into “political camps for indoctrination” in the western Xinjiang autonomous region.

Chinese Ambassador To Syria: We Are Willing To Participate ‘In Some Way’ In The Battle For Idlib Alongside The Assad Army

Chinese special forces (image: Youm7.com, December 15, 2017)

 

As the Syrian regime army prepares to launch a campaign for the recapture of Idlib in northern Syria, the Chinese Ambassador to Damascus, Qi Qianjin, told the pro-regime daily Al-Watan on August 1, 2018 that the Chinese military would be willing to participate “in some way”  in the campaign in Idlib or in other parts of the country. The ambassador expressed his support for what he called Syria’s war against the terrorists, and noted that there is cooperation between the Syrian and Chinese armies. The report also quoted the Chinese military attaché in Syria as saying that the Chinese military wishes to enhance its relations with the Syrian military, and as expressing regret that Chinese Uyghurs are taking part in the fighting against the Assad regime.

Leaked Chinese Memo Warns Of “Thucydides Trap” With US, “War Is Unavoidable”

 

A series of leaked internal documents reveal that China’s military reforms are aimed at allowing Beijing to “manage a crisis, contain a conflict, win a war” and overtake the United States in military strength, according to the Express.

The leaked documents were published by the Central Military Commission in February for the purpose of spreading President Xi Jinping’s “thought on strengthening the armed forces”.

If the reforms go ahead, they will lead to heightened tensions with China’s neighbouring countries, including Japan, in the East and South China Seas and the US. –Express

China Prepares for Anti-Satellite Missile Test

DN-3 test contrails

DN-3 missile spotted preparing for launch

China is preparing to conduct a flight test of a new missile capable of destroying satellites in space, one of Beijing’s most potent asymmetric warfare weapons.

Test preparations for the Dong Neng-3 anti-satellite missile were detected at a military facility in central China, according to Pentagon officials familiar with reports of the impending test.

China preparing to deploy troops rapidly

Every day, Chinese trains take millions of people to various stops around the country. Last year, the government stopped the commuting for a day along one stretch so their troops could conduct exercises designed to ship the People’s Liberation Army to the border via high-speed train, according to National Interest.

China exploits terror threat in West to gain access to foreign tech firms

China passed a new anti-terrorism law on Dec. 27 that critics say exploits fears of terrorism in order to extract sensitive information from technology companies.

Tech firms strenuously objected to the law that was unanimously passed by Beijing’s rubber-stamp parliament. The new law states that telecom operators and Internet service providers must “provide technical support and assistance, including decryption” to Chinese authorities in their investigations into terrorist activities.

China & Russia align strategies against US: Global Times

Although they are far from being true allies, they have one goal in common: Exterminate America (See also HERE). “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.” describes perfectly the real relationship. In real life, there are no allies, just interests.

As JR Nyquist mentioned years ago, One Clenched Fist is what will be used to carry out their goal. This is why you should also be concerned about economic crashes since the blame is always shifted outward, and sometimes by means of war.

What’s worse is nobody noticed what was going on right under their nose, or if they did, cared to do something, until it was too late. And now… It’s too late. Their economic and military infrastructure have been set up. America has complacently crossed the Rubicon without knowing and the die have been casted.

Say hello to your future neighbors, Mr. Chang and Boris… if you last that long.

 

 

China and Russia are aligning their strategies to team up against the United States, according to a commentary by the Global Times, a tabloid under the auspices of the Communist Party mouthpiece People’s Daily.

Following more than two decades of development, bilateral relations between China and Russia have reached a new phase, the July 18 commentary said, adding that China now considers Russia an irreplaceable partner for all its key strategies.

China Launches New Freight Train Link to Moscow

The railway authorities in Xinjiang said the additional cargo train service linking the region’s capital Urumqi with Moscow would contribute to the economic development of the autonomous region, which is seen as a “core area” of the Silk Road economic belt, Xinhua news agency reported.

Since March 2014, Xinjiang has opened cargo train service to Kazakhstan, Georgia, Iran, Turkey and also Chelyabinsk in Russia.

By the second half of the year, more than three cargo trains will run between Xinjiang and the destinations in Russia and also central and western Asia per week.

China reaps harvest from Russia sanctions

China is gaining an edge in energy deals with Russia as Moscow faces sanctions pressure from the conflict in Ukraine.

The latest energy accords announced in Beijing on the sidelines of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit suggest that China is increasing its access to Russian resources while resisting demands for more favorable financial terms.

At a signing ceremony on November 9, Presidents Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin sealed a memorandum of understanding for a second Siberian gas pipeline on a western route that Russia has promoted unsuccessfully for years.

The preliminary commitment to the project known as the Altai pipeline, named for a remote Russian border region, follows an agreement in May on an eastern Siberian gas line to supply China’s coastal cities and industrial northeast.

PLA has set up Chinese version of ‘PRISM’ monitoring in H.K.: Kanwa

Hong Kong, Nov. 17 (CNA) The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has established a large-scale signals and information monitoring facility in Hong Kong similar to the U.S. PRISM monitoring program, according to the Canada-based Kanwa Information Center.

In a report obtained by CNA, Kanwa, which publishes a monthly magazine on Asian defense issues, said that intelligence experts have made the findings after observing the facility from the top of Tai Mo Shan, the highest mountain in Hong Kong with a altitude of 950 meters.

By removing Assad, Obama may be declaring war on China

President Obama is not the only actor with a red line on Syria. China, Russia and Iran also have their own red line on Damascus.

CNN on 12 November reported Obama administration is suddenly focused on removing Assad as the core of its anti-ISIS strategy, once again submitting to Turkey and Arab Gulf states that enabled ISIS to begin with, and are actually contributing very little to the anti-ISIS efforts to be dictating such orders to Washington.

Moreover, these demands are harmful to US security interests—redefining US anti-ISIS mission to one of anti-Assad mission—and thereby potentially drawing in Eurasian powers of China, Russia and Iran into open military conflict against the US.