RED CHINA ON SLIPPERY SLOPE – OPENS FIRST OVERSEAS MILITARY BASE

RED CHINA ON SLIPPERY SLOPE – OPENS FIRST OVERSEAS MILITARY BASE

In my analysis, Red China placed herself on Slippery Slope by opening her first overseas military base in Djibouti. Red China’s military adventurism cannot ward off natural disaster, natural calamity, and natural catastrophe that is waiting, for Beijing invited her own Doom with her evil actions.

Soviet Union failed in the past due to military adventurism. It is too late for Red China to learn and plan to avoid sudden Downfall.

Rudranarasimham Rebbapragada

DOOMDOOMA DOOMSAYER

China sends troops to Djibouti, establishes first overseas military base

By Brad Lendon and Steve George, CNN

Wed July 12, 2017

“This base can support Chinese Navy to go farther,” Chinese paper says
Djibouti has become host to several foreign military powers

(CNN)China has dispatched troops to Djibouti in advance of formally establishing the country’s first overseas military base.

Two Chinese Navy warships left the port of Zhanjiang on Tuesday, taking an undisclosed number of military personnel on the journey across the Indian Ocean.

An editorial Wednesday in the state-run Global Times stressed the importance of the new Djibouti facility — in the strategically located Horn of Africa — to the Chinese military.

“Certainly this is the People’s Liberation Army’s first overseas base and we will base troops there. It’s not a commercial resupply point… This base can support Chinese Navy to go farther, so it means a lot,” said the paper.

The Global Times said the main role of the base would be to support Chinese warships operating in the region in anti-piracy and humanitarian operations.

“It’s not about seeking to control the world,” said the editorial.

Chinese People’s Liberation Army-Navy troops march in Djibouti’s Independence Day parade on June 27, marking 40 years since the end of French rule in the Horn of Africa country.

Chinese military presence

At a regular press briefing Wednesday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang described the base as part of ongoing efforts to help bring peace and security to the region.

“China has been deploying naval ships to waters off Somalia in the Gulf of Aden to conduct escorting missions since 2008,” said Geng. “The completion and operation of the base will help China better fulfill its international obligations in conducting escorting missions and humanitarian assistance … It will also help promote economic and social development in Djibouti.”

China has expanded its military ties across Africa in recent years. According to a report by the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), cooperation with Africa on peace and security is now an “explicit part of Beijing’s foreign policy.”

In 2015 Chinese President Xi Jinping committed 8,000 troops to the UN peacekeeping standby force — one fifth of the 40,000 total troops committed by 50 nations — China also pledged $100 million to the African Union standby force and $1 billion to establish the UN Peace and Development Trust Fund.

More than 2,500 Chinese combat-ready soldiers and police officers are now deployed in blue-helmet missions across the African continent, with the largest deployments in South Sudan (1,051), Liberia (666), and Mali (402), according to the ECFR.

“Blue-helmet deployments give the PLA a chance to build up field experience abroad — and to help secure Chinese economic interests in places such as South Sudan,” said the ECFR report.

Africa is home to an estimated one million Chinese nationals, with many employed in infrastructure projects backed by the Chinese government.

“China’s involvement in African security is a product of a wider transformation of China’s national defense policy. It is taking on a global outlook … and incorporating new concepts such as the protection of overseas interests and open seas protection,” said the ECFR report.

US ‘strategic interests’

China joins the US, France and Japan, among others, with permanent bases in Djibouti, a former French colony with a population of less than one million residents.

Though small in both population and size, Djibouti’s position on the tip of the Horn of Africa offers strategic access to the Bab el-Mandeb Strait.

The strait, which is only 18 miles wide at its narrowest point, connects the Mediterranean Sea via the Suez Canal and the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean beyond.

One of the world’s most important sea lanes, millions of barrels of oil and petroleum products pass through the strait daily, according to GlobalSecurity.org.

US Marine Corps Gen. Thomas Waldhauser, the head of the Pentagon’s Africa Command, stressed Djibouti’s location during a visit to the US Camp Lemonnier garrison there earlier this year.

“This particular piece of geography is very, very important to our strategic interests,” Waldhauser said in joint appearance with US Defense Secretary James Mattis.

The US military has some 4,000 troops at Camp Lemonnier, a 100-acre base for which it signed a 10-year, $630 million lease in 2014, according to media reports.

Elsewhere in Djibouti, the US military operates the Chabelley Airfield, from which the Pentagon stages drone airstrikes, likely into Somalia and across the Bab el-Mandeb Strait into Yemen, according to the Center for the Study of the Drone at Bard College in New York. The Pentagon is investing millions in the base, and satellite photos show several construction projects, the center reported last year.

US Marine Corps MV-22 Ospreys prepare to land at a landing zone during training conducted in Djibouti on January 10.

‘Get-rich-quick scheme’

Japan, which has seen tense relations with China over disputed islands in the East China Sea, has established what it calls an “activity facility” to support its anti-piracy efforts there.

A spokesperson for the Japan Self Defense Forces said 170 troops are at its 30-acre facility in Djibouti.

Lease terms would not be released, but Japan will spend about $9 million to operate the facility this fiscal year, the spokesperson said.

Edward Paice, director of the London-based Africa Research Institute, said a base in Djibouti makes a lot of sense for China, just as it does for Japan or the US.

“It (China) has cited its desire to play a greater role in peacekeeping, and it has combat troops in both South Sudan and Mali. It’s logical that it needs an actual base somewhere in Africa, which is really no different from the Americans saying that they need Camp Lemonnier as a headquarters for operations in Africa, whether in peacekeeping or counterterror or whatever,” Paice said on The Cipher Brief website.

Picture taken on May 5, 2015, shows work in progress on the new railway tracks linking Djibouti with Addis Ababa.

Paice points out that China made a substantial investment in Djibouti — about $500 million, according to reports — to build the Djibouti portion of a rail line to the capital of neighboring Ethiopia.

“It’s a confluence of these factors — trade, military, and stability in the host country’s government” that brought China to Djibouti, Paice said.

Meanwhile, for Djibouti, it’s all about money, Paice said. “This is a fantastic get-rich-quick scheme — to rent bits of desert to foreign powers. It’s as simple as that.”

CNN’s Serenitie Wang, Daisy Lee and Junko Ogura contributed to this report.
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TIBET CONSCIOUSNESS – RED CHINA HAS NO REDEEMER

TIBET CONSCIOUSNESS – RED CHINA HAS NO REDEEMER

The proud Han Chinese people may choose to ‘love’ or ‘hate’ United States of America. The issue is not that of bilateral US – China relations. Red China would be paid back with the very weapons she used on others. Just as she destroyed Tibet, she would be destroyed. Red China is exhausting herself for nothing. She dominated Tibet but she is wearing herself out. Red China is moving toward her own logical end of self-destruction.

The Evil Red Empire is destined to be uprooted, torn down, and destroyed for Red China has not repented and her evil actions are not forgiven.

Chinese people may love or hate America. But, Red China has no choice. Red China has no Redeemer. No one can save Red China for she pursued a hazardous course of action to the brink of catastrophe. Beijing is Doomed.

Rudranarasimham Rebbapragada
Ann Arbor, MI 48104-4162, USA
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THE NEW YORK TIMES

Contributing Op-Ed Writer

A Land China Loves and Hates

OCT. 13, 2015

**TIBET CONSCIOUSNESS – RED CHINA HAS NO REDEEMER. UNITED STATES CANNOT SAVE RED CHINA FROM HER CHOSEN FATE. BEIJING IS DOOMED.**

Credit Erik S. Lesser/European Pressphoto Agency

MURONG XUECUN

HONG KONG On the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, a major Chinese television network broadcast a documentary that investigated how Chinese people viewed not only those pivotal events but America itself. One man, referring to the slaughter of thousands of Americans, declared, What a beautiful job! Another said, They should give America more of the same. And a student standing in Tiananmen Square said he approved of the attacks because the United States was a bully and a hegemon. Later in the film, the young man in Tiananmen Square went on to describe his plans for the future. He said that he loved America and that he was about to go there to study. If I don’t have to come back, then I won’t, he said.
The Chinese view of America has not changed since this aired four years ago.

On Sept. 3, President Xi Jinping orchestrated an extravagant military parade in Beijing. An acquaintance from my schooldays was so excited by the spectacle, the disciplined troop formations, the advanced equipment that he wrote in a post on WeChat that he could hardly sleep that night. He added that his friends should guard against America because American imperialism still wants to destroy us.

Only a few months earlier, this same man had taken his daughter on a trip to Boston, where he reported enthusiastically on social media about visiting Harvard University and eating a huge lobster. He also pledged to send his daughter to America. We should help our next generation live in a place without pollution, without recycled cooking oil and poisoned milk powder, he wrote.

The young man in Tiananmen Square and my former schoolmate are hardly alone in holding contrasting, schizophrenic views of America. For many Chinese people, the depth of their admiration for the American system and way of life is matched only by their animosity toward the country.

According to a Pew Research Center survey released earlier this year, only 44 percent of Chinese people have a favorable view of America the 33rd lowest approval rating out of 40 countries surveyed, and far lower than the 84 percent reported for South Korea and the 68 percent for Japan.

The Chinese hostility to America is first and foremost the result of government propaganda. Because of censorship, many people lack a basic understanding of life outside China. And although in the past few decades the Chinese government has been careful to avoid a real clash with America, Beijing’s domestic propaganda has never ceased presenting it as the enemy. Stir in 60 years of uninterrupted anti-American schooling, and it is hardly surprising that one result is an irrational hostility toward the United States.

Another Chinese documentary, Silent Contest, from 2013, highlighted one of the major reasons for castigating America as the eternal enemy. In the film, it was said that America’s key strategic objective is to dominate and break up China. You hear a lot of this kind of talk from Chinese officials. Like most despotic governments, the Chinese leadership likes to play the part of defender of the people a role that necessitates the existence of a powerful external enemy. A strong and hostile America is an important source of the legitimacy for Communist Party rule.

But in our globalized age, where there are myriad, multilayered interactions between countries, it is impossible for our government to fully stop people from seeking to research, study and understand the United States.

American films, TV shows and products, and many other aspects of American culture remain influential in everyday Chinese life. On the Internet, Chinese netizens loudly praise America’s system of government and spontaneously rally to America’s defense in global affairs. Some people like to compare America and Russia in recent years Beijing has been cozying up to Moscow and analyze the behavior of the two countries toward China, wondering aloud if we have chosen the right friend.

Many of the same people who are suspicious of America’s intentions are the ones who harbor the most fervent hopes of going to live there. In everyday conversation these people might be ashamed of China’s human rights record and our political situation, or they may talk about how they want to buy an apartment in New York to find a secure place for their money, but when a foreign government or organization (from no matter what country) criticizes the Chinese system, they become defensive. In the case of the United States, they will often fire off a list of America’s failings, such as racism and gun violence.

A mixed view of extremes about America is not uncommon around the world, but what makes it so striking here is that many Chinese government officials and elites seem to hold these contrasting views.
Like the young man in the documentary in Tiananmen Square, the children of many high officials go to America to study, to settle down, to invest in property. For years, the children and grandchildren of the Communist Party elite have been attending America’s top universities. Perhaps most famously, President Xi Jinping’s daughter enrolled at Harvard in 2010.

Many Chinese people can’t help but notice that the elites have no problem taking advantage of what America has to offer, but when they are preaching to the public, they seem to have another view.

Government leaders can’t be relied on to deliver better bilateral relationships, especially not the Chinese government. But its encouraging that, in the shadow of censorship, some ordinary Chinese people are opening their eyes and looking more realistically at our country and its place in the world. American leaders should realize that the best hope for improved Chinese-American relations resides with these Chinese people.

Nevertheless, as long as the Chinese government pretends to be the defender of the people against the United States and persists in its negative propaganda, Chinese-American relations will have a long way to go.

Murong Xuecun is a writer whose latest novel to be published in English is Dancing Through Red Dust. This article was translated by The New York Times from the Chinese.
A version of this op-ed appears in print on October 14, 2015, in The International New York Times.