China’s Behind-the-Scenes Role in Ukraine War
From Newsweek BY
Natalie’s Commentary: All the points Gordon G Chang made, are valid at face value, to withdraw “most favored nation” trade privileges for Russia. This includes banning all imports of Russian goods—seafood, vodka, and diamonds—and a prohibition on exports of luxury items.
And certainly, trying to hold China accountable for its human rights abuses is important.
The bigger problem that threatens United States National Security is Xi Jinping rehearsing on the world stage hypersonic missile tests. They have practiced more than we care to know or admit but now we must imminently face this possible reality before it blows out of proportion on our side and would be catastrophic to the entire population of the United States.
Not to mention, who else would be involved from other countries trying to appease Xi Jinping.
We must work towards deterring China’s aggression on a much bigger scale. Currently since I last read, we are well on our way to completing our own hypersonic capability. I say, place it at the top, as first priority.
But there is still one huge problem, the treasonous illegitimate Biden, DoD Secretary, Lloyd Austin, and Chairman, Mark Milley of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and those in the Pentagon who are corrosively destroying the military’s capability and motivation with demanding military personnel continue to get jabbed with experimental genetic altering shots the government deceptively calls “vaccines”. These are not vaccines by any human rights gold standard trials. They have wreaked havoc on the US population; killing us or disabling innocent hardworking Americans.
It’s time the respect and priority in this country goes to the American taxpayers. After all, none of the big executives in mainstream media and social media would be as rich and as backstabbing without hardworking American’s financial support. What is social media, the entire informational database and the internet but binary bytes, opinions, words, information, intelligence spying, selling peoples personal data and it will all go up in smoke if a hypersonic missile lands anywhere in this country.
What would happen if big companies like Walmart, Target, Coca-cola, all food commodities and their advertisers were pulled off ABC, CBS, & NBC. All big companies could afford to do this, why, to change the minds of people who have protected the crime and corruption that is ruining this country out of Washington, DC, spreading like wild fire for decades. And still no one has been indicted and sentenced to prison starting with Obama and his administration. With George Soros’s Open Society Foundation financially supporting the real domestic terrorism organizations like Antifa and BLM.
We are partly a communist country when innocent people from the January 6th protest that got out of hand are still rotting in jail because this administration and the egregious Nancy Pelosi decided to call Americans, exercising our rights for freedom and fair elections, domestic extremists and put in jail for what seems like an eternity.
I hope my commentaries and most of all my deepest concern for this country ring true to start acting like our founding fathers wished for our futures and our children and grandchildren. Malice entitlement and bold ignorance has been coming from the very top in this country for decades. ~ Natalie
China is Russia’s partner in waging war in Ukraine. Oleg Rubak, 32, a local engineer who lost his wife Katia, 29, in the shelling, stands on the rubble of his house in Zhytomyr on March 02, 2022, after it was destroyed by a Russian bombing the day before.
Jinping’s role in Ukraine is far less visible than Vladimir Putin‘s, but make no mistake: China is also a combatant in the war. What isn’t yet clear is whether China will feel the consequences as Russia has.
On Friday, President Joe Biden announcedthat the United States, along with NATOmembers, European Union countries, and Group of Seven nations, will withdraw “most favored nation” trade privileges for Russia. Biden also announced bans on imports of Russian goods—seafood, vodka, and diamonds—and a prohibition on exports of luxury items.
These actions, at least on their face, run afoul of trade rules. Russia has MFN, most-favored-nation status, now in America renamed PNTR or permanent normal trade relations. A nation with PNTR will receive the trade benefits accorded to all other nations with PNTR.
“Putin is an aggressor—is the aggressor,” Biden said on Friday. “And Putin must pay the price.”
The president is right. But China, playing a particularly malign role in Ukraine, should also pay the price.
Beginning February 4, when Beijing and Moscow proclaimed their “no limits” partnership in a 5,000-word communique, Russia announced large commodity sales of oil, gas, and coal to China, and Beijing removed restrictions on the importation of Russian wheat. In other words, China is giving Russia the cash to wage war in Eastern Europe.
Beijing is, in addition, making its financial system available to Russian institutions as the U.S. and Europe cut them off, so expect Russian banks to soon join the Cross-Border Interbank Payment System, China’s version of SWIFT. Russians, after Visa and Mastercard pulled out of their country, can now sign up for China’s UnionPay card.
Moreover, Beijing is putting its diplomats in the service of Russia and using state media to propagate ludicrous Russian narratives about the war.
China was clearly involved in Vladimir Putin’s planning for the invasion. Beijing persuaded Moscow to postpone its attack until the Beijing Winter Olympics ended, according to The New York Times. The Olympic flame was extinguished February 20. Russia invaded February 24.
In the U.S., legislation—not presidential action—decides which countries are accorded PNTR. Last March, three Republican senators—Tom Cotton of Arkansas, James Inhofe of Oklahoma, and Rick Scott of Florida—introduced the China Trade Relations Act, which would revoke PNTR for Beijing. The bill, among other things, would go back to pre-2001 rules requiring China to obtain MFN status each year. This yearly review gave Congress the opportunity to examine Chinese behavior.
Staunch human rights defender Rep. Chris Smith, the New Jersey Republican, and New York Democrat Rep. Tom Suozzi will, this week, co-sponsor a bill to take away China’s PNTR status. “Many if not most business and political leaders, Republican and Democrat, bought into the ‘China Fantasy,’ overlooking human rights abuses while saying increased trade will make China more like us,” Smith, co-chair of the House’s Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission, told Newsweek. “It was not true then, and it’s not true now.”
Smith believes Congress should “make annual renewal of normal trade relations contingent on concrete progress on human rights.”
Smith is correct. With PNTR safely in hand, China’s regime has been free to embark on genocide and other crimes against humanity, most notably against Uyghurs, Kazakhs, and other Turkic minorities. Now, it is, among other aggressive acts, directly supporting Russia’s slaughter of Ukrainians. Beijing is pressuring India, Japan, the Philippines, Taiwan, and others. The U.S. should not trade with countries committing atrocities at home and aggression abroad.
There’s a legal hiccup. U.S., China, and Russia are members of the World Trade Organization. Generally, a revocation of MFN-PNTR status violates the WTO’s core non-discrimination principle because revocation permits the revoking country to treat the target nation differently than the revoker treats other members.
As a practical matter, Biden’s move to withdraw PNTR is, as Washington, D.C.-based trade expert Alan Tonelson tells Newsweek, “largely symbolic for a variety of practical reasons.”
Why? As an initial matter, the U.S. almost certainly will argue that the WTO’s “national security” exception applies so it can discriminate against Russia and China.
Russia and China, however, will not agree, and they could initiate cases before the WTO’s dispute-resolution mechanism.
Fortunately for America, that will help neither Moscow nor Beijing. WTO rules structurally favor nations that intentionally violate the rules, because no trade penalties may be imposed unless a nation continues violative conduct after a WTO dispute-resolution panel issues a ruling. A ruling can take years.
Yet neither Russia nor China can obtain a decision against the U.S. because, thanks to the Trump and Biden administrations, the trade organization cannot field a panel with a quorum. Tonelson, a WTO critic who blogs at RealityChek, says it is now open season on the world’s trade rules.
In short, the U.S. can continue to impose discriminatory treatment on Russia and China even without Congress formally voting to revoke PNTR.
Bills to revoke Russia’s status will now sail through Congress.
China is a different story. The Senate effort to revoke China’s PNTR status has been stalled for months, and the Biden administration will undoubtedly oppose the Smith-Suozzi bill.
Yet Biden opposition is not necessarily the end of the story. CNN reports that his administration had opposed the suspension of Russia’s PNTR status and was successful in killing the concept in Congress. Circumstances changed on February 24, however.
And circumstances can change for China as well. China, after all, is losing friends in Washington fast.
Gordon G. Chang is the author of The Coming Collapse of China. Follow him on Twitter @GordonGChang.
