Note: Japanese names are introduced with family names first, followed by given names. A diacritical sign (horizontal line) above a vowel makes its reading twice longer ( “o” becomes “oo.”).

“I cannot balance coronavirus measures with [running] the (LDP- Liberal Democratic Party presidential) election campaign. I will dedicate myself to preventing infections from spreading.”

This stunning statement made by Japanese Prime Minister Suga Yoshihide (picture) on September 3^rd brought to an unexpected end his year-long tenure.

The LDP is the longest ruling ,thus most successful Conservative party among the world’s democracies. It is justly credited with Japan’s postwar emergence as a major global economic, cultural and  (since 2012) influential political power. The Party has been at the helm for sixty of the past sixty-five years. Therefore, the president of the LDP almost always becomes prime minister right away.

The LDP is in fact a steady coalition of factions- these days seven in number. Mr. Suga did not have a faction of his own but was nonetheless able to reach the pinnacle of power to a significant extent due to the fervent support of his powerful predecessor Abe Shinzō, whose marquee domestic and foreign policies he pledged to continue. Relevant in this context is that Mr. Suga had been Mr. Abe’s Chief Cabinet Secretary – thus closest to the PM in both policy and politics- for the full eight years of the second Abe administration.

Abe Shinzō was the longest serving prime minister in Japan’s history (2006-7 &2012-20) and left a most important legacy in the domestic realm and even more in foreign policy.

Abenomics – the three-pronged economic, fiscal and monetary policy of Abe Shinzō- continued unabated under Suga. Abe-era economy-related office-holders stayed on. The outgoing Prime Minister’s top initiative (he didn’t give himself time for more) concerned  government management reform and digitization of the machinery of State. Mr.Suga’s decision to hold the 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games -postponed for 2021- in drastically limited conditions due to the scourge of the New Coronavirus and in the face of domestic and international opposition was a display of fortitude and leadership. And yet, if the serious challenge of the national health emergency is the real reason for Mr. Suga’s departure it would indicate a lack of basic stamina which his towering predecessor possessed to an exceptional degree.

Abe Shinzō’s transformational role in Asian and global international relations (for which his candidacy is being proposed for the Nobel Peace Prize) gave Japan a position of influence which Prime Minister Suga wisely nurtured. The Abe Free and Open Indo-Pacific [FOIP] concept centred on Japan, the US, Australia and India [the Quad] – the democracies’ political, legal, economic, technological and military -though peaceful- response to aggressive (not assertive) Chinese hegemonism was reinforced by the Suga administration with enthusiastic support of the Trump and Biden administrations. Canada is a declarative FOIP supporter.

Mr. Suga succeeded Abe Shinzō who stepped down for health reasons and was to have completed his predecessor’s last of a three-year term as LDP leader as well as call an election for the all-powerful House of  Representatives. Now, those two major tasks will be carried out by another leader.

The LDP leadership race will be decided on September 29, after which the Party’s new leader cum Japan’s prime minister will have to call a national election by late November.

The earliest candidates (more could emerge until the September 17 deadline) vying for becoming the president of the LDP and the 100^th (since 1885) prime minster of Japan are six very experienced politicians:  Minister of Management Reform and former defense minister Kōno Tarō, former foreign minister Kishida Fumio, former defense minister Ishiba Shigeru, former interior minister Takaichi Sanae and Acting LDP Secretary General  Noda Seiko.

At this point the Takaichi candidacy attracts attention having received the valuable support of Abe Shinzō, immediately after the Suga resignation announcement.

On the other hand, it is somewhat strange that at this writing, Mr. Kōno is considered the most popular candidate nationally, although he was in charge of the anti-New Coronavirus vaccination campaign– whose problematic rollout probably caused , in part, Prime Minister Suga’s resignation.

Japan, between 2006-2012, was in one of its occasional periods of “revolving door” administrations (like in the 1930s, 1944-48, the late 1970s and the late 1980s) a phenomenon peculiar to the nation’s political culture. The country had six prime ministers – three representing the Liberal Democratic Party [LDP] –and three from the Democratic Party of Japan [DPJ],a now-defunct LDP “light”. Although in the postwar era a string of  brief administrations does not cause confusion given the country’s solid democracy and the firm continuity provided by the powerful bureaucracy, Japan’s international stature – which Abe Shinzō had enhanced to an unprecedented degree- and the national mood- are inevitably impacted. One hopes that Mr. Suga’s resignation has not reopened the “revolving door.”

The post The surprising end of Japan’s Suga Administration appeared first on Free & Open Indo-Pacific.

Motto no. 1: “China [domestically] is a socialist [Marxist] country…an alliance of workers and farmers…where the power of the state belongs to the people. China’s socialist democracy is the broadest, most genuine, and most effective democracy to safeguard the fundamental interests of the people.”  Strongman Xi Jinping at the 19^th CCP [Chinese Communist Party] Congress, 2017; emphasis added.

Motto no. 2: “Making irresponsible comments on the central leadership [Xi Jinping] and distorting key party policies by straying from the official line (妄議中央大政方針), are completely forbidden.”  Strongman Xi Jinping ruling on CCP discipline, 2016.

Motto no. 3: “China must build universities into strongholds that adhere to Party leadership [and engage in] ideological and political work.” Strongman Xi Jinping, 2016.

Motto no. 4:“China always pursues a foreign and national security policy that is defensive in nature. China’s development does not pose a threat to any other country. No matter what stage of development it reaches, China will never seek hegemony or engage in expansion.” Strongman Xi Jinping at the 19^th CCP Congress, 2017; emphasis added.

Motto no. 5: “We must not let the rules set by one [the United States] or a few [democratic] countries be imposed on others, or allow unilateralism pursued by certain countries to set the pace for the whole world. What we need in today’s world is justice, not hegemony. Big countries should behave in a manner befitting their status and with a greater sense of responsibility…..In state-to-state relations, the principles of equality, mutual respect and mutual trust must be put front and center. Bossing others around or meddling in others’ internal affairs would not get one any support. We must advocate peace, development, equity, justice, democracy and freedom, which are common values of humanity, and encourage exchanges and mutual learning among civilizations to promote the progress of human civilization…However strong it may grow, China will never seek hegemony, expansion, or a sphere of influence. Nor will China ever engage in an arms race.” Strongman Xi Jinping’s keynote speech at the annual Beijing propaganda Boao Forum for Asia – April 20, 2021; emphasis added.

Motto no. 6: “We are now facing a historic opportunity that happens only once in a thousand years… The [anti-democratic] international community [Russia, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Pakistan, Iran, Turkey, Cuba, Venezuela, most of Africa, JK] increasingly thinks highly of us and wants to hear what China has to say and see what China wants to do…People are gravely disappointed in the Western ruling apparatus. Many leaders of developing countries… told me that they are doubtful about the political system of the West and expressed hope to learn about how China has developed itself.” Strongman Xi Jinping to the CCP Central Military Commission, 2016; italics added.

Motto no.7: “China is not the provocative side in disputes with Japan and the Philippines that have occurred in recent years. If Japan hadn’t nationalized the Diaoyu Islands, or if the Philippines naval vessels hadn’t dispersed Chinese fishermen around Huangyan Island, [the Philippines’ Scarborough Shoal] these crises wouldn’t have broken out. China is the biggest power in East Asia, and it’s also the main advocate of putting aside disputes and jointly developing disputed areas. As long as other countries don’t provoke the status quo, a peaceful relationship with China can be maintained. If China had really taken assertiveness in its strategy as a national policy, Asia wouldn’t be what it looks like today.   Global Times, January 30^th, 2013; emphasis added.

Motto no. 8: “[I] n recent years, some countries have been provoking China with tactics such as the rebalancing to the Asia-Pacific region by the Obama administration, the nationalization of the Diaoyu Islands by the Japanese government, and the South China Sea arbitration filed by the Philippine government under Benigno Aquino III. China’s “assertive” actions are merely countermeasures taken to buffer those moves against China’s interests.” Global Times, August 2017; emphasis added.

Motto no. 9: “There is a vast gap between the words and deeds of China. We have always shown our heart-felt goodwill and exercised the utmost restraint, but China’s response has grown increasingly threatening. We always wish for peace and friendship, but those things must be based on independence, self-reliance, sovereignty and territorial integrity. We will never trade these sacred things for a certain false and dependent peace and friendship [with China]. ” Nguyen Van Dung , Prime Minister of  Vietnam  at the World Economic Forum in Manila, May 23^rd, 2014.

Motto no. 10: “This is a very serious turn of events…It certainly has increased a [sic] level of concern and a [sic] level of great anxiety among all parties, particularly parties that would need the access, the passage and the freedom to go through.” Surin Pitsuwan, Secretary-General of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), in reaction to China’s arbitrary interference with international shipping in the South China Sea most of which it arbitrarily declared “Chinese territory.” November 2012. (Xi Jinping expanded the aggression and in 2016 rejected the International Court in The Hague’s ruling recognizing Philippines territorial waters in the South China Sea   which Beijing grabbed – see below).

Motto no. 11: “Japan has been steadfast in demonstrating its solidarity with the Philippines as we advocate freedom of navigation and the rule of law in the face of China’s unlawful territorial claim. For Japan’s support for our peaceful, lawful, and principled approach…we thank you.” President Benigno Aquino of the Republic of the Philippines, 2015; emphasis added.

Motto no.12: “The threat of [Chinese] hegemony…is at the core of the sharpening geopolitical competition…in Asia.” Indian strategic analyst, Brahma Chellaney, 2013; emphasis added.

Motto no. 13: “[T]he BRI is China’s grand bid for global economic supremacy and political domination.” China in the Middle East – ‘Silk Road’ to the Levant” by Mordechai Chaziza and Ephraim Karsh, Middle East Quarterly, Spring 2021; emphasis added.

Motto no. 14:“ China poses ..the greatest threat to democracy and freedom worldwide since World War II…Beijing intends to dominate the ….planet economically, militarily and technologically.” John Ratcliffe– National Security adviser to President D.J. Trump, 2019.

Motto no. 15:“ [In addition to Jihadism] Russia currently poses the biggest state-based threat to Britain, but China will become more dangerous in the future.. Russia is delivering bursts of bad weather, while Beijing is changing the climate…the biggest long-term challenge is…China.” Ken McCalum head of Britain’s MI5; December 2020; emphasis added.

Motto no. 16: “They [the Chinese] are continuing with their salami slicing, reef by reef, step by step… In reality they want to change … the South China Sea into a Chinese lake.” Professor Tran Truong Thuy, Vietnam Institute for East Sea Studies, 2014; emphasis added.

Motto no. 17: “China follows a familiar salami-slicing playbook in territorial disputes: change ground positions stealthily, move forward assertively, express outrage when discovered, denounce provocations and intrusions by the other party, threaten exemplary retaliation, step back in “good faith,” propose fresh border management procedures, ensure its territorial creep becomes a de facto reality, and repeat as required.” Indian analyst Ramesh Thakur on China-India border dispute, 2020; emphasis added.

Motto no. 18: “You [Xi Jinping] have created an inscrutable, non-transparent China. Before Corona, China was known as a surveillance state. Now, China is known as a surveillance state that infected the world with a deadly disease. That is your political legacy…You plan to strengthen China through a plague that you exported. You will not succeed. Corona will be your political end, sooner or later.” Julian Reichelt ,editor of  Bild-German weekly magazine in open letter to Xi Jinping titled “You are endangering the world.” April 20, 2020; emphasis added.

Motto no. 19: “I’m not afraid of nuclear war. There are 2.7 billion people in the world; it doesn’t matter if some are killed. China has a population of 600 million; even if half of them are killed, there are still 300 million people left. I’m not afraid of anyone.” Mao Zedong at 40^th anniversary celebrations of the Bolshevik coup in Russia, November 1957, Moscow; emphasis added.

Motto no. 20: “Ever since the [1949] Chinese [communist] Revolution we had to think of what the new China was likely to be…We realized …from history that a strong China is normally an expansionist China . Throughout history that has been the case …All revolutions tend to function abnormally…Now, China is very, very far from normality and that is our and the world’s misfortune. Considerable strength coupled with an abnormal state of mind is a dangerous thing…I doubt if there is any country in the world which cares less for peace than China today.” Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru speaking in Partiament,1959; emphasis added.

Motto no. 21 : “We have been stabbed in the back [by China] … (after)…living in a fool’s paradise of our own making (pretending that Tibet’s 1950 capture by China never happened, JK)”

Jawaharlal Nehru speaking in the Indian Parliament after the Chinese aggression in the Hymalayas, 1962

Motto no. 22: “The more vigorously and courageously injustice and force are attacked at their first appearance,the less often will it be necessary to take the field against them in battle…The more sensitive is every part to the injuring of the whole, the less frequent will wars become.” A History of the Balance of Power in Europe by Friedrich Gentz [1805] quoted in J.W. Wheeler-Bennett in Munich: Prologue to Tragedy [London: The Viking Press,1963];  emphasis added.

Motto no. 23: “This policy (of using corrupting means to gain political and economic influence in democratic nations, JK) encourages overseas Chinese who are acceptable to the PRC government to become involved in politics in their host countries as candidates who, if elected, will be able to act to promote China’s interests abroad. It also encourages China’s allies to build relations with non-Chinese pro-CCP government foreign political figures, to offer donations to foreign political parties and to mobilize public opinion via Chinese language social media so as to promote the PRC’s political and economic agenda abroad.” Ann- Marie Brady, Australian China specialist; emphasis added.

In July 2021, the CCP celebrated its centennial. Founded by intellectuals Chen Duxiu and Li Dazhao, and since 1943 led by Mao Zedong, it took over China in 1949 after defeating the Nationalist Party [KMT] of Chiang Kai-shek [Jiang Jieshi] in a brutal civil war that lasted intermittently for 22 years and cost (as all other internal Chinese upheavals) millions of lives.

The PRC [People’s Republic of China] was established as a dictatorial, murderous communist system by Mao Zedong who died in 1976. In the first four years of his rule, the Great Helmsman ordered the liquidation of over two million private, thus politically undesirable, land- owners as prelude to the failed collectivization of agriculture. The mad autarkic experiment of multilateral collectivized development known as the Great Leap Forward (GLF, 1958-61) and the protracted (1964-76) and deliberate criminal chaos of the “cultural revolution” (aimed only at allowing Mao to stay in power even after the devastating GLF by destroying the CCP!!!) added at least another 50 million victims to the gruesome tally.

The evolution of the Beijing Regime after 1976 has followed a path like no other in history. A process of political and socio- economic change falsely called “socialism with Chinese characteristics” (in truth a CCP-dominated State-capitalist system) launched by Deng Xiaoping in 1978 and completed by Xi Jinping ( who added “in the new era” to the Regime’s defining slogan and anointed himself Strongman-for-Life) in March 2018 resulted in a case of what I call Dire History Repeated : China, while officially still “communist, ” in reality, both domestically and in its foreign policy is a Neo-Fascist (or considering its foundational millenary socio- political ideology – Confucian-Fascist) entity fully reminiscent of European Fascism until 1945. This is a purely descriptive designation; as the table and picture below indicate, the only major difference between Communism and Fascism is that the latter allows private property/businesses to exist, which, however, are at the mercy of the One-Party State and ultimately, the Never-Elected-Strongman- in China since late 2012, Xi Jinping.

The ideological identity between Benito Mussolini:”All within the [One Party] State, nothing outside the [One Party] State, nothing against the [One Party] State,” and Xi Jinping: “The country, the military, society , schools, north , south, east and west, all belong to the [One] Party [State]” is crystal clear. The statement to the People’s (in fact the CCP’s) Armed Police (right picture below) unequivocally casts Xi as a Neo-Fascist strongman. Falsely portraying postwar Japan as fascist (left picture) is part of Beijing’s routine anti-Japanese racist propaganda.

Almost a decade after Japan’s Abe Shinzō administration, in the metaphorical role of the canary in the mineshaft alerted the world to the mounting aggressiveness of the Beijing Regime – the world’s democracies – the Quad(Japan, the US, Australia and India) NATO(sans Turkey) /G-7 and all nations determined to defend their survival are feverishly attempting to pool their resources to stave off Beijing imperialism. Those nations should be even more committed to their struggle to escape Xi Jinping’s clutches after considering his July 1, 2021 speech at the CCP centennial bash that included this Pearl of Truth:

The Chinese people have never bullied, oppressed or subjugated the people of any other country and we never will.!!!!!

The images above – of recent demonstrations against Chinese imperialism in Makati City in the Philippines (left) and in Vietnam’s Ho Chi-min City – among many others, speak for themselves and present the real, truthful and highly disturbing picture. In addition to the Philippines and Vietnam, the peoples of India and Europe are also increasingly concerned with Xi Jinping’s aggressive imperialism and expansionism (mottos no. 9-17 & 20,21).

Much worse, of course, is the situation of Tibetans, Uyghurs, Kazakhs, Inner Mongolians,etc.- whose ancestral lands that China has grabbed since 1949 make up 40% of its territory. China- contemporary history’s second most successful imperialist and colonial power- has used  military conquest followed by linguistic, educational and socio-cultural assimilationist policies for the Sinification of all non-Chinese. The most successful imperialist and colonial power following the same pattern (leading to Russification) is China’s (temporary) ally, Russia.

The hypocritical and thuggish quality of Strongman Xi’s speech at the Tiananmen Square celebratory hullabaloo is unmistakable: “The Chinese people will never allow any foreign forces to bully, oppress or enslave us. Anyone who dares will have their heads cracked and their blood will flow before the steel Great Wall built with the flesh and blood of 1.4 billion Chinese people…Only socialism can save China and only socialism with Chinese characteristics can develop China.”  The excerpt is a monumental example of egregious moral inversion: the World’s Chief Bully speaking in the name of the also bullied and Never Consulted 1.4 billion Chinese, threatens imaginary foreign bullies with bloody annihilation; the (political and/or physical) Enslaver of Chinese, Uyghurs, Tibetans, Kazakhs and Inner Mongolians pledges to continue monopolizing enslavement. Berlin’s National Socialism of yore is Beijing’s 21^st century “[National]Socialism with Chinese characteristics in the New Era.”

Indeed, in the 2020s there is strong interest in Regime universities (especially Tsinghua University – the alma mater of Hu Jintao and Xi Jinping) in the Fűhrerprinzip (the Supreme Leader principle) ideology of German philosopher and Nazi Party luminary Karl Schmidt. Fascism and Marxism have always used antisemitism as ideological and political tool. Beijing is adopting the worst conspiratorial antisemitic tropes-used by Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and the Soviet Union, its role models – in rampant anti-American propaganda. In May 2021,the official CGTN [China Global Television Network] commentator Zheng Junfeng blamed the rift between Washington and Beijing on “Jews dominating the financial, media and Internet industries in the US.” Furthermore, Zheng described Israel as an “American bridgehead” undermining Arab aspirations. The same month, Beijing’s embassy in Tokyo tweeted an antisemitic cartoon showing the Grim Reaper wrapped in the American flag, carrying a scythe with the Star of David and causing bloodshed in Muslim nations (represented by doors) from Afghanistan to Egypt. The caption below (in Japanese) read: ”This is what happens when America brings democracy.”

In July, Xinhua– the CCP/Regime (propaganda) news agency carried a cartoon (below) in the best tradition of Vőlkischer Beobachter & Pravda (in 1946 Stalin falsely accused Jewish doctors of plotting to murder him). It has American Secretary of State Antony Blinken (who is Jewish thus drawn with traditional antisemitic devilish horns and a long “Jewish” nose) plotting to get WHO [World Health Organization] boss (and Xi Jinping-man) Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus to undertake a new investigation into the origin of the New Corona [Wuhan] virus.

Therefore, in addition to rabid anti-Westernism and anti-Americanism, antisemitism, anti-Zionism (political antisemitism) and anti-Israelism (of the  kind I call CSA – Conspiracy Scapegoating Antisemitism- the Blinken cartoon) may become the ideological glue of Beijing and its totalitarian allies. Moscow gave the world the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Jihadi Islamabad, Ankara and Tehran are Beijing’s most reliable sources of Muslim anti-Israelism and antisemitism. With its full adoption of antisemitism as propaganda tool, Xi Jinping’s regime now possesses all the characteristics of a Fascist ,or accounting for its one and only original political tradition – a  Confucian-Fascist regime.

Strongman Deng Xiaoping transformed China’s economy from (centrally-planned and totally inefficient) communist to State-capitalist which, in a process launched in 1992, came to generate unprecedented material prosperity through foreign investment, purchased, forcibly transferred and especially stolen foreign technology (the latter I call heft through theft -to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars every year, especially from the United States),and ruthless exploitation of cheap Chinese labour by local and foreign businesses. The credit the Beijing Regime claims for the significant (though highly uneven) improvement in  the living standards of hundreds of millions of Mainland Chinese in the past four decades resulted from a devilish bargain in which,  in exchange for their bellies being fuller than even before  (thanks only to the capitalist mode of production),all political, socio-economic, educational and cultural (including history) realms – are in the perpetual stranglehold of the one and only  totalitarian, draconian, violent, highly corrupt, inhumane CCP. This is particularly so since late 2012 when Xi Jinping took over.

In August 2021, following the annual (always closed-door) gathering of CCP heavyweights at the Beidaihe sea resort (outside of Beijing) a propaganda campaign ensued to fabricate an environment of “groundswell” support for extending Xi’s rule indefinitely after 2022 (for which he gave himself “constitutional” approval in March 2018). As part of this self-serving political offensive the Capo di Tutti Capi attacked CCP bosses of Zhejiang province – actually his political base- a bastion of private (as opposed to State-owned) enterprise (Ali Baba etc.) and called for [national]-socialism – cleverly expressed in the Leftist populist (Xi-centred) slogan of common prosperity.

In 2018, Xi Jinping and the global Left (including the EU leadership!!!) celebrated the 200^th birthday of communist guru Karl Marx – the Trier (Germany)-born, awful son, failed father and husband, financially incompetent thus envious individual, but deadly pedlar of invidious class warfare and racist, genocidal antisemite (see his “On the Jewish Question”) to boot. However, when considering Xi Beijing [Xi’s Beijing regime] the fact that there are billionaires – “Pony” Ma Yun , the founder of Tencent and countless others like him– as CCP members all completely dependent for their economic wellbeing and even physical survival on Strongman Xi’s whims clearly reinforce, as shown above , the idea of the monumentally fraudulent  nature of the CCP: “Communist” in name,(picture below) Corporatist, Neo-Fascist (Confucian-Fascist) in reality

Therefore, Beijing’s donation of a bust of Marx to the city of Trier (picture below) is but a clever propaganda stunt designed to bolster the CCP’s (fake Marxist) political credentials domestically as well as with international Radical Leftist, anti-democratic groups under its domination.

The February 2020 statement by Shii Kazuo – the leader of the Japan Communist Party- harshly critical of the CCP as exuding “great-power chauvinism, hegemonism and violations of human rights [which] have nothing to do with ‘socialism’ and are not worthy of the term ‘communism,’” speaks for itself. However, Shii offered no alternative name for the Regime. In English, logical options reflecting its draconian domestic policies and aggressive imperialist international behaviour would be for CCP to stand for the Chinese Chauvinist Party or considering the unimaginable brutality of its strongmen since 1949 (see below), the Chinese Criminal Party.

Marxism is ideologically utopian- especially its fraudulent promise of a “classless society” once communism is achieved through “scientific,” “inevitable” transition from capitalism through socialism. Lenin – the clever and ruthless realist- gave Marxism an overtly insurrectional nature through the idea of the “accelerated” achievement of a communist society through a violent revolution led by a small hardcore party of ruthless activists and their Leftist intellectual and academic supporters (“useful idiots” in Leninist parlance). The fact is usually ignored that historically, workers’ rights -beginning with unionization and the right to strike – were first granted (after struggle) by conservative Bismarckian Germany. Those “sacred” rights are lost or completely adulterated under any Marxist regime- from the Soviet Union through North Korea and Cuba,to China.

The false nature of Xi Jinping’s statement on the benign domestic nature of the regime (motto no. 1) is glaring when considering the awful reality on the ground since 1949. In democratic nations (such as Japan) Marxism’s appeal has been limited in the postwar era by its ideological commitment to class warfare and militant anti-capitalism and especially its ghastly past record in Russia and China. When in power, Marxism is the most unequal socio-economic system since Communist Party members – always a small, privileged minority -enjoy profligate political and socio-economic advantages accruing from their political affiliation, at the expense of the overwhelming majority of the politically unconnected. History unequivocally teaches that a Marxist regime is always a crime (of various magnitudes) against humanity – a stark, incontrovertible reality evident when simply considering all leading communist rulers over the past century as shown in the pictures below: from Stalin and Mao, through Cuba’s Castro, Cambodia’s Pol Pot, Ethiopia’s Mengistu Haile Mariam, Romania’s Nicolae Ceauşescu, North Korea’s Kim Il-song and Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez. Among them (and excluding WW II and the Chinese Civil War) this international Voldemort (after Lord Voldemort- the evil character in the Harry Potter series) gallery of Marxist rulers caused the deaths of at least 100 million innocent people!

Therefore, it is downright disheartening that 77 years after the end of World War II, and 33 years since the collapse of communism in Russia and Eastern  Europe, the peace, stability, prosperity and even the basic physical survival of the peoples of the world, to a significant extent depend on the bullying Xi Jinping Regime – a politically anti-democratic and dictatorial, ruthlessly hegemonic, economically semi-mercantilist, territorially expansionist, militarily aggressive, culturally ultra-nationalistic, supremacist and racist and  overall  imperialist and colonial system (millions of Han-Chinese settlers having been dispatched to occupied Tibet and Xinjiang, as well as Africa as shown below).

This most disturbing reality has emerged only because the world’s democracies, as they did eight decades ago, have again (until most recently) ignored one of the most fundamental lessons of history: that they must not tolerate or compromise with, but rather rally together and resolutely oppose any political system engaged in aggressive bullying and expansionism (China in this case- motto no. 22).

It is indeed astounding that the democracies – in a display of  monumental disrespect for their most cherished principles, and in obscene pursuit of financial profit, (reminiscent of Lenin’s brutal quip that capitalists will sell even the rope with which communists will hang them) mixed with  the vain hope that capitalist prosperity would make  21^st century China a somewhat more benign version of its aggressive millenary imperialist past (mottos no.12,14, 15,18) have extended recognition and respect to a regime whose founder is the worst murderer (of his own people and, through followers like Pol Pot, of Cambodians and others) in modern history. The CCP – for its own selfish political interests and physical survival- resolutely prevents the national reckoning with Mao’s unimaginable crimes (even by communist and traditional Chinese standards) mention of which to this day is harshly punished in the “People’s Republic.” Rather, Mao is Xi Jinping’s “role model,” and his effigy dominates the heart (Tiananmen Square) of the imperial capital and is splattered on banknotes.

In 2015, on the 26^th anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, the Tiananmen Mothers’ group in New York, demanded that Beijing confess to and allow free discussion of the crimes of Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping if Xi Jinping’s premier Li Keqiang was sincere in his statement that “the leaders of a state not only inherit their predecessors’ successes but also bear historical responsibility for their predecessors’ crimes.” Xi Beijing is going in the opposite direction.

The third decade of the 21^st century started with the still unfolding global catastrophe of the New Coronavirus pandemic, which originated in the unsanitary Huanan animal (“wet”) market or in a biological warfare lab in Wuhan. Xi Jinping, in relentless pursuit of his Neo-Fascist agenda of perpetual monopolization of political power domestically and in accelerating his imperialist drive internationally, first denied, then deliberately delayed alerting his people and the world to the impending catastrophe- all in an unconscionable move aimed at cornering the world basic medical supply market for political and financial gain!!! Specifically, the dictator ordered a grotesque international propaganda blitz combining fake generosity – in the form of donating (frequently defective) medical equipment to some nations – and gouging others –while arrogantly touting the Regime’s supposed “superiority” over the United States and the democracies, in dealing with the deadly pandemic he had unleashed on China and the world. Beijing’s ever-growing battery of egregious exculpating lies (circulated with Russian, Pakistani, South African and Iranian assistance) includes the idea that the plague reached Wuhan through imported frozen fish, via the port of Qingdao; that it was brought into China by members of the US team to the World Military Games in Wuhan in October 2019 and that the virus originated in other countries.

The campaign has generally backfired- Xi’s monumental ignorance, crass inhumanity, racist arrogance, cultural chauvinism and plain evil nature were quickly grasped by most foreign “barbarians,” [蛮夷- Mányí- especially those in the democratic West].

The book of Norwegian author Stein Ringen describing Xi Beijing as a controlocracy (cartoon above) and the scathing editorial by German journalist Julian Reichelt (motto no.18) aimed at Xi Jinping (for the Regime’s early – and later better hidden- incompetence in dealing with the pandemic, then for its criminal penchant for secrecy so as to protect the Despot’s contrived image of infallibility) were blocked from reaching China. Inside China, female journalist and blogger Zhang Zhan who tracked and publicized countless Regime failures and lies in dealing with the Wuhan virus was incarcerated for four years for “spreading lies.” Worst yet, CCP princeling (hailing from one of 400 families with exclusive, Confucian-style CCP connections like the Xi clan) and Beijing real-estate mogul Ren Zhiqiang – a courageous critic of Strongman Xi -whom he called a “naked clown,” for his pandemic mismanagement was sentenced to 18 years in prison. Even internet billionaire and international business celebrity “Jack” Ma Yun was disappeared for a number of weeks by the Regime for statements perceived as critical of Xi Beijing. These are but few of countless examples of Xi’s “[national] socialist democracy” at work (mottos no.1,2,3)

Former president Benigno Aquino of the Philippines during a visit to Japan in 2015 referred to China’s relentless aggression in his nation’s territorial waters [West Philippine Sea] of the South China Sea as the Asian version of Nazi German imperialist expansionism. Indeed, the Beijing Regime’s global imperialist Heshin Ri’i [Core Area (expansionism “with [Han] Chinese characteristics for the new era”)] – foreign policy is the perfect 21^st century version of Germany’s Lebensraum [Living Space] of eight decades ago; it is the most dangerous threat to the peace, prosperity and even physical survival of Indo-Pacific nations and the world. (mottos no.9;10,12,14,15,16)

Unlike the benign- sounding though absolutely  false statements above (mottos no.4,5,6) bolstered by fraudulent victimist statements of his propaganda organs,particularly the malodorous Global Times (mottos no. 7, 8) Xi Jinping’s clear goal is no less than world rule, (motto no. 6) using a variety of instruments: development and trade (through  the BRI – the Belt and Road Initiative, (motto no. 13) designed to lure nations everywhere into Beijing’s imperialist orbit through debt trap tactics – developing nations taking loans from Beijing and when unable to pay them back being forced to give China territorial, political and economic privileges; military and political pressure- including cyberespionage, traditional espionage and ruthless propaganda  using selective or fake history originating in China or undertaken by appeasers and some naturalized citizens of the US, Australia, New Zealand and Canada. (motto no. 23)

The South China Morning Post’s Huang Zheping has documented thoroughly the ghastly phenomenon of Xi Jinping’s propaganda war against the West and, in a sense, against his people. It is only natural for Xi Beijing, the world’s most ruthless surveillance regime which penetrated democracies at all levels through sprawling espionage and appeasers’ networks (below) to be using freedom of expression for blatant anti-American propaganda videos in New York’s Times Square.Lei Xiying a Chinese PhD student at the Australian National University in Canberra produced and circulated in Australia and beyond an anti-American video titled “The dark shadow of the Stars and Stripes.”

Domestically, the Regime has increased exponentially anti-Western propaganda through an endless national campaign of anti-foreign hysteria. The younger generation are being targeted by the Communist Youth League (the equivalent of the Hitlerjugend and the Komsomol) which uses the Weibo social media platform and even CCP-sponsored rap groups like CD REV!!! In 2015 Xi Jinping launched National Security Education Day (April 15) which among other means “mobilizes” Western pop culture icons from Mr. Bean to Batman to drive home the Despot’s message of treating foreigners with suspicion. The campaign has included the incarceration of human rights lawyers falsely accused of being foreign spies and brainwashed into confessing to trumped up charges. Beijing pays US$72000 to any Chinese subject apprehending a foreign spy!

A particularly dangerous element in Beijing’s pernicious imperialist tao is to state that politics and economics/trade should not be linked while in fact using economic and trade pressures for political gain on a grand scale. The victim nations’ reluctance to jeopardize economic or trade “benefits” they think they obtain from exchanges with Beijing in many cases prevents them from reacting firmly to Xi Jinping aggression. Beijing has victimized a slew of countries which had carelessly expanded economic ties with the Regime exposing themselves to its ruthless blackmailing – from Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, the Philippines, Brunei, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Australia and Canada, to France, Norway, Montenegro, Czechia.

Overall, China’s He Shin Ri’i [Critical Areas expansionism] /Lebensraum [Nazi Germany’s Living Space expansionism] campaign extends from the East China Sea in northeast Asia through the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean to the Himalayas in the south/southwest- an enormous area I call the Arc of Chinese Imperialist Aggression [ACIA]. Xi Jinping’s ultimate aim is to turn all nations into Beijing satrapies – like North Korea, Cambodia, Laos, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, most African states and potentially, even Greece. Regime English-language media have coined the adulatory term Xiplomacy for the Despot’s foreign policy. A recent xiplomatic success touted joint Sino-Cuban path to “socialism.” Can Chinese missiles be far behind?

In its immediate vicinity, Beijing uses military, economic and political means at one and the same time, in the East China Sea – against Japan (whose Senkaku islets it calls Diaoyũtai and wants to grab) – as well as in the sprawling South China Sea where its targets are territories and resources stolen from Taiwan, the Philippines, Brunei, Vietnam, Malaysia and Indonesia. Beijing justifies its rapaciousness through the so-called Nine Dash or Cow Tongue, Line– a unilateral imperialist fabrication in contravention of international law using fake history as expansion crutch. Xi rejected outright the 2016 verdict of the International Court in The Hague which ruled in favour of the Philippines which contested the legality of the Chinese  claim, covering  92% of the area! (map)

In the South China Sea, Beijing combines territory and resource theft with aggressive disruption of international navigation through unilateral and illegal regulations and by turning sandy shoals into militarized artificial islands in the Spratly and Paracel archipelagos (full-size airport on Woody Island, below).

High in the Himalayas – in the Dok-Lam area China is re-enacting the Maoist aggression of 1962, this time using the gradual, “salami-style” tactic. (motto no. 17)

Since 2020, Xi has frequently and publicly (most recently at the March 2021 session of his “parliament”) ordered his military to be ready to fight and win his future (imperialist) wars. In early November 2020 he gave his coast guard in the East China Sea and South China Sea perimeters, permission to use weapons against any ships not complying with Beijing’s unilateral, illegal navigation rules in those areas. This particular provocation has the direst potential consequences. As a determined practitioner of Confucian-Fascist imperialism, the possibility should not be ignored of Xi Jinping actually implementing Mao’s brutally cavalier remarks in 1957 regarding nuclear war (motto no.19); unlike Mao, Xi has sprawling nuclear weapon capacity, and his inhumanity matches that of his murderous hero.

In the 2020s, China is the core of an enormous, territorially contiguous and rapidly coalescing politically, de-facto BIMPAT [Beijing/Islamabad/Moscow/Pyongyang/Ankara/Tehran] totalitarian, aggressively anti-democratic, Axis which, when fellow anti-democratic African, Asian and Latin American nations are added, becomes what I call BIMPAT Plus. The fact that three Axis members which although major Muslim (Islamist) states – Iran – Turkey (formally still a NATO member!) and Pakistan a firm Beijing bailiwick – are silent regarding China’s appalling treatment of its Uygur and Kazakh Muslim minorities is resounding evidence of their ghastly hypocrisy and monumental anti-Western racism and antisemitism – an issue on which the EU’s approach in particular amounts to inexcusable appeasement of evil. In addition, Beijing (with Moscow as junior partner) dominates the SCO [Shanghai Cooperation Organization]– a rapidly growing anti-Western political and military framework focused on Central Asia as well as the BRICS [Brazil/Russia/India/China/South Africa] grouping of regional powers whose viability is still in doubt. India’s membership in the BRICS and the SCO is most regrettable and justifies its reputation as a duplicitous power some call “the France of Asia.” Standing shoulder-to-shoulder with today’s Beijing in any context amounts to nothing less than India “unlearning” the devastating lesson in ruthless violent realpolitik Mao administered it 61 years ago. (mottos no. 20,21)

Xi’s relentless, multilateral and concomitant aggression -using any and all means- against most of China’s neighbours plus Australia, the US and the EU- at first sight may seem as mindless serial provocations. However, Evil is never stupid. The Beijing Despot’s offensive moves stem from (hopefully misplaced) confidence that his BIMPAT Plus camp is politically and militarily stronger as well as more determined than the democracies and their supporting nations (Vietnam, Indonesia etc.). Simply put, Xi engages in Hitlerian brinkmanship because, like his European predecessor until 1939, he too, believes he can do it with impunity – until proven wrong- which is yet to happen. The paragraphs above point to a situation with unimaginably destructive potential to humanity should it reach a stage where only military means can stem Beijing’s Heshin-Ri’i global imperialism.

Appeasement reminiscent of that of some of the democracies’ politicians, intellectuals and academics vis-à-vis Europe’s Fascist powers 90 years ago is in full view in the 21^st century with China the Appeased Power. A leading Beijing appeaser is Chinese-speaking Kevin Rudd, Australia’s Leftist former premier, now head of the ASPI [Asia Society Policy Institute] in New York. Rudd’s China-accommodating activism knows no boundaries; beyond politics and foreign policy issues it includes (seemingly) trivial gestures like leading a Chinese Dream -Xi Jinping’s nationalistic imperialist slogan- singalong in Singapore or the kowtow-light (in Chinese civilizational symbolism) gesture of stooping to lace up the shoes of a Chinese female student (picture)

Rudd’s pro-Beijing ilk includes former German Socialist chancellor and vulgar America-hater Gerhard Schroeder, Kishore Mahbubani – Rudd’s close ideological pal and Singaporean former diplomat turned shrill “Beijing-man”/Asian nationalist academic , Nobel Prize winner Leftist American economist Joseph Stiglitz and his Columbia College colleague Jeffrey Sachs, breathlessly enthusiastic Beijing admirer and Thompson Rivers University (British Columbia) lecturer Cyrus Janssen as well as the monumentally ignorant Alexandre Trudeau – the (China appeasing) Canadian PM’s brother:

The freedom we have in Canada is built on this tremendous elbow room built on the backs of a conquered continent. The Chinese had no outlet , couldn’t move north or south east or west to find new great territories. It became the very codified , collectivist society that they still are today.” The Ottawa Citizen, 2016.

The Canadian counterpart of Australian Senator and unswerving China-appeaser/supporter (and as such forced to retire) Sam Dastiary is Independent Senator Yuen Pau Wu. The former head of the Government of Canada’s Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada [APFC] advisory institute inaugurated his legislative career with a memorable piece titled “Now that Harper is gone can we have a sensible talk about China? on the online iPolitics site. The essay was published in late October 2015 after the China-careful administration of the Conservative Party of Canada of Prime Minister Stephen Harper, was replaced by the China-cheerleading Liberal Party of Justin Trudeau. Here are the core ideas (the Five China Commandments) of Wu’s piece which I have retitled The Beijing on the Rideau Manifesto:

We want China to succeed…We support China’s desire for a bigger voice in global and regional governance…Canada welcomes Chinese investment…Canada is committed to helping its citizens become more knowledgeable about China and China’s place in the world…We are doing all of the above in our national self-interest. Emphasis added

Wu jumped immediately on the Beijing-serving bandwagon of fake linkage between legitimate criticism of Xi Beijing aggressive imperialism with the absolutely unacceptable anti-[East] Asian racist incidents in a commentary (“Anti-China sentiment is becoming anti-Chinese prejudice in Canada”, June 2021) in Canada’s Globe and Mail he co-authored with fellow Beijing-appeaser Paul Evans.

In fairness to Evans & Wu it should be mentioned that the self-righteous, lifelong Beijing-appeasing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau already in May 2021 unscrupulously accused Opposition Conservative MPs of fomenting anti-Chinese sentiment for “daring” to criticize and ask questions about the Government’s policy toward Xi Beijing. One year earlier, Trudeau in his relentless chase for votes “confessed” and apologized for Canada’s supposed Systemic Racism. All it takes to firmly prove Trudeau’s statement as ruthlessly self-serving and mendacious is to consider the make-up of his cabinet where BIPOCs (especially Sikhs) constitute 19% while they make up 5% of the population. Canada – like all other postwar democracies is not racist although, like all other nations, does have pockets of racism which governments and society at large are trying to combat. Had democratic societies been as racist as Leftists, BIPOC racists and their feminist allies purport them to be, millions of Africans, Asians, Latin-Americans etc. would not put their lives in danger to reach them. They would instead go to the 56 Muslim or 49 African states, or…China. For an immigrant society like Canada the ONLY policy conducive to socio-economic and political stability is one of unfettered equality of access and opportunity to all, NOT one based on tribalism and ethnic or skin-colour quotas.

The highly volatile and potentially explosive environment caused only by Xi’s reckless aggression around Japan’s Senkaku islets (which China started claiming in 1972, after oil and gas resources were discovered in the area) and even more perilously throughout the enormous South China Sea, increase dramatically the urgency of much expanded political, security, military and economic cooperation among nations affected by Beijing’s Indo-Pacific hegemonism. For Canada, Japan and other Indo-Pacific democracies and all nations keen on preserving their independence, the 2020s are a particularly propitious time for meaningful elevation of their bilateral and multilateral ties, with Chinese imperialism as common existential challenge. The enhancement of these relationships, however, can be effective in (hopefully) deterring and in extremis defeating Chinese aggression, only if fully intertwined with their existing formal and de-facto alliances, first and foremost with the United States ,as well as with their already existing links with other countries targeted by Beijing imperialism – from Taiwan and the Republic of Korea, India, Vietnam and Indonesia to Australia and New Zealand as well as Britain, the EU and even NATO [which as  long as the Beijing threat exists, thus for geo-strategic reasons should become APTO – Atlantic and Pacific Treaty Organization- which would coopt Japan and other Indo-Pacific nations as counterbalance to BIMPAT]. Heshin Ri’I/Lebensraum, of course, did not start with Xi Jinping, although he has been expanding it exponentially. Beijing’s aggressive, hegemonic, expansionist policies were in full view under Strongman Hu Jintao whose report to the 18^th CCP congress in 2012 included the statement: “China intends to intensify its [aggressive, JK] activity in the East China Sea and South China Sea perimeters.” Hu’s defense minister General Liang Guanglie was most operationally direct in his report : “In the coming five years, our military will push forward preparations for military conflict in every strategic direction.” It has to be remembered that the perimeters covered by Liang’s statement – from the East China Sea to the South China Sea, the Indian Ocean and the Himalayas – can each become a devastating casus belli for which Beijing alone is responsible.

Therefore, I reject the reference – by “mainstream” media, academe, politicians and intellectuals-to the tenor of Xi Beijing’s foreign and security policy as “assertive.” As abundant evidence indicates it is nothing less than a case of totalitarian (Communist or Fascist “nationalism with Chinese characteristics in the new era”) global imperialist campaign unfolding in real time. Furthermore, I consider spurious the idea bandied about by those circles, especially in democratic nations ,that in the 2020s China ( the “rising” global power- in fact blatant  opportunistic aggressor) and the United States ( the “reigning hegemon”) are engaged in a “mano a mano” confrontation for global domination. Rather, the situation is one where China, by itself, together with Russia through the SCO in Central Asia – or as the core of the BIMPAT Axis, is feverishly attempting to achieve global domination which in the Indo-Pacific means chipping away and eventually destroying the present geo-strategic framework which the US established, maintained and protected with the cooperation of all democracies – especially Japan- since 1945 for the benefit of all nations – including China .In the 21^st century Japan has enhanced significantly its participation especially in the Abe Shinzō era. Overall, the United States, Japan ,India and  Australia (the Quad ) and most other nations in the area seem at last determined to stand up to Chinese aggression.

The US and its allies -certainly Japan, Australia, Taiwan, Britain and hopefully the EU (whose Foreign Affairs Commissioner Josef Borrell ,in November 2020,  approached  then president-elect Joe Biden urging cooperation against Chinese aggression) and even Canada and India have no choice but to pool their capacities -only for reasons of national survival- in order to thwart Xi Jinping’s imperialism which affects them individually and as a group. In other words, being a “neutral” or “spectator “nation is not an option since a world dominated by the BIMPAT Axis would mean a return to the dark days of Fascism.

The palpable enhancement of Trump-era  China containment policies by the Biden administration, is easily identifiable in the rapid sequence of major moves by the democracies aimed at stemming Chinese aggression: the looming institutionalization and expansion of the Quad alliance ; the G-7 summit in London (where India, Australia and South Korea were invited, as a first step toward the potential founding at the suggestion of Prime Minister Boris Johnson of a D-10 [Ten Democracies] framework) followed by the NATO summit in Brussels, where Secretary General Jan Stoltenberg and EU leaders repeatedly referred to Beijing as a “systemic rival.” Considering the overwhelming evidence adduced here, it is more of an existential threat.

It has been said that there is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come. The starting point of the cardinal developments mentioned in this essay is in Abe Shinzō’s eye and mind-opening, concise yet seminal ADSD [Asia’s Democratic Security Diamond] essay of December 2012, and his subsequent intensive and highly successful endeavours at implementing them – a clear trend continued by Japan, its allies, other Indo-Pacific and European nations after his formal departure and untimely death. This is Abe Shinzō’s eternal legacy.

The post Dire History Repeated: The One-Party State, <em>Lebensraum</em><br> Foreign Policy and Antisemitism of <b>the Neo-Fascist Beijing Regime</b> appeared first on Free & Open Indo-Pacific.

Motto no. 1:”China’s….diplomatic style is distinctly belligerent, which has been the case for a number of years now.”  Mark Harrison, senior researcher in Chinese Studies, University of Tasmania, 2020; emphasis added.

Motto no. 2 :“Boy, [Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau] your greatest achievement is to have ruined the friendly relations between China and Canada, and have  turned Canada into a running dog of the US.“ Li Yang–  Xi Beijing’s wolf-warrior diplomat in Sao Paulo [Brazil] using a communist insult [“running dog”] against the Canadian leader; emphasis added.

Motto no. 3 :“We treat our friends with fine wine but for our enemies we have shotguns.” Gui Congyou, Xi Beijng’s wolf–warrior diplomat in Sweden in reaction to a 2019 decision by PEN, the international writers group, to honour a Hong Kong-based bookseller who had been kidnapped by the lawless Beijing Regime; emphasis added.

In early June 2021 international media reported that Chinese Strongman Xi Jinping had ordered his sprawling global propaganda machine to start a campaign aimed at creating a “lovable” public image for his regime among democratic nations !!!! It remains to be seen what kind of lipstick the CCP espionage squads and Beijing’s appeasing and adoring supporters in democratic nations will use to make the ghastly Regime look better. The gross behaviour of Xi’s rowdy and crass diplomatic representatives – the subject of this piece- seems to have backfired. The Despot tried a similar – equally crass, insensitive and ignorant – trick on Japan in 2018,but failed dismally; this one must not be allowed to succeed either. This is not an easy task since it is an undeniable fact that among his Asian (Pakistan, Iran, Cambodia, Laos, Sri Lanka etc.) African (Ethiopia, South Africa, Zambia, Malawi etc.) and Latin American (Cuba, Venezuela etc.)  satrapies Xi Jinping is the role model of sorts to their own strongmen.

Beijing’s growing economic and political clout in the past two decades (facilitated only by the politically blind, financially greedy and irresponsibly accommodating stance of the democracies) has found offensive expression in the supremacist and racist behaviour of its representatives in international and especially diplomatic forums. (mottos 1;2;3). The EU bureaucracy has branded the vulgar Bullying Beijing’s envoys, Sopranos-style diplomats after the popular US gangster TV series. Recently, the ill manners of Beijing diplomats abroad are said to be inspired by a series of Regime-sponsored, ultra-nationalistic, anti-American, martial arts flics launched in 2015, whose hero is Wolf Warrior (WW #2 poster below ) – PLA [People’s Liberation Army] special forces veteran, always victorious over “evil” Americans in Africa – Beijing’s recent colonial turf.

Wang Yi, Bullying Beijing’s Foreign Minister is encouraging the disgraceful manners of his underlings. While there is nothing wrong with Rambo-style, hyper-patriotic fictional flicks, uncouth behaviour of professional diplomats inspired by a jungle environment of Confucian- Fascist (see Dire History Repeated essay on this website) propaganda films should not be tolerated by any self-respecting nation hosting them. Given the deeply entrenched nature of millenary Confucian racism it is utterly unthinkable for Bullying Beijing to allow the making of the Chinese version of The Ugly American. Canada and Japan – like countless other nations- have been the targets of His Arrogance Wang Yi and his rowdy minions. At a press conference in Ottawa, in 2016, King Wang rudely chastised Canadian journalists for daring to ask him real questions. In November 2020 in Tokyo, Wolf Warrior Wang complained in public to his host, Japanese foreign minister Motegi of …Japan’s territorial ‘intrusion” in the Senkaku area!!!

Zhao Lijian (below) is the quintessential Xi Jinping “wolf warrior” in Western suit. He was the first Beijing foreign ministry spokesman to falsely accuse the US of being the source of the Wuhan Coronavirus in March 2020. At the time, Beijing’s envoy in Washington called the allegation “crazy.” The arrogant, bad-mouthed Zhao has constantly repeated the slur and is still on the job. It is ambassador Cui Tiankai who recanted and was replaced.

In Canada, before the brash Wolf Warrior Cong Peiwu – Xi’s present ambassador – notorious specimens of Chinese diplomatic thuggery included not one but “Two Lus” – the rude and racist (yet not reprimanded or kicked out, by self-disrespecting Ottawa) envoys Lu Shu-min and Lu Sha-ye. Latter Lu (below left) since 2019 has been doing his abusing in Paris which reprimanded him for posting racist lies on the embassy  website about the French people and the Wuhan pandemic. Japan – frequently at the receiving end of Bullying Beijing’s (Pravda/Völkischer Beobachter/Xinhua/Jenmin Jibao-style) Global Times propaganda vehicle – was the subject of an even worse case of vile behaviour by an arrogant Beijing bully, before 2015. This indicates that overall, crass, racist language and manners are to be expected of any Xi Beijing diplomat of sorts, as demonstrated below.

Liu Xiaoming (above right), then Xi’s man in Britain- kicked off one of Beijing’s frequent crass global anti-Japanese propaganda campaigns in early January 2014 with a baseless and nasty opinion piece in the Daily Telegraph (“Japan- threat to global peace by rekindling militaristic spirit of World War Two”) in which he grossly misrepresented then Prime Minister Abe Shinzō’s defensive security policies as revanchist and militaristic. Liu also bashed the Japanese leader for praying at Yasukuni Shrine- the Shintoist, national (though privately-owned) memorial where the spirits of Japan’s fallen soldiers since 1869 are enshrined. Since 1978 the remains of 14 top leaders of wartime Japan (hanged as war criminals by the Allies in 1948) are also interred at Yasukuni. The site also contains some controversial displays attempting to whitewash Imperial Japan’s aggressive ways, a fact used by the country’s Chinese and South Korean detractors as supposedly – and considering incontrovertible postwar facts, utterly falsely- indicating the country’s present and future aggressive intentions.

China and South Korea started their joint attacks on Japanese leaders visiting Yasukuni only after 1982; the bashing intensified in the 21^st century despite of the fact that no Japanese prime minister has ever expressed support for controversial elements and historical falsehoods (Beijing-style…) at Yasukuni. Prime Minister Koizumi (who like all other Japanese leaders apologized and tried repeatedly to make amends in different forms with Beijing and Seoul) rejected outright his neighbours’ criticism on the Yasukuni issue which he saw as blunt interference in Japan’s internal affairs, which it is. Due to the controversy it has caused, Japanese emperors stopped visiting Yasukuni in the late 1970s. Potential solutions to the problem – from transferring elsewhere the remains of the 14 wartime leaders to building a new national war memorial and others- have been futilely considered for decades.

For Liu, Japan under Abe Shinzō, embodied Lord Voldemort – the evil character in the Harry Potter series. Hayashi Keiichi- then Japan’s ambassador to the UK- replied to his Chinese counterpart’s crass diatribe with a dignified and factually solid editorial piece of his own in the same newspaper. Ambassador Hayashi most appropriately urged Liu to stop “invoking the ghost of [Japanese] militarism of seven decades ago which no longer exists.” His overall message was poignant, and memorable: “East Asia is now at a crossroads. There are two paths open to China. One is to seek dialogue and abide by the rule of law. The other is to play the role of Voldemort in the region [and the world, JK] by letting loose the evil of an arms race and escalation of tensions, although Japan will not escalate the situation from its side. The answer seems obvious.” The future proved the visionary quality of the Japanese diplomat’s analysis and forecast: imperialist Xi Beijing (Xi Jinping’s Beijing) fulfills daily ambassador Hayashi’s and any peace-loving person’s, worst fears.

Regarding the Yasukuni pilgrimage on December 26, 2013, for which Liu had bashed him, in fact Abe Shinzō had issued a statement titled “Pledge for Everlasting Peace” which contained the following excerpt:

I paid a visit to Yasukuni Shrine to pray for the souls of those who had fought for the country and made ultimate sacrifices…I have made a pledge never to wage war again, that we must build a world that is free from the sufferings of the devastation of war. Emphasis added.

In other words, like all his predecessors, Prime Minister Abe visited Yasukuni in order to pray for peace – for Japan and the world (the Chinreisha section of Yasukuni commemorates the souls of fallen soldiers of all nations) a statement that reflects most accurately Japan’s international record since 1945 as a bastion of democracy, pacifism and prosperity particularly when compared with the domestically colonialist and genocidal cum rabidly imperialist Beijing Regime.

Furthermore, in an interview with a Chinese-language newspaper in Yokohama (a city with a large Chinese community) on the eve of the Chinese new year in January 2014, Abe stated that postwar Japan was “[re] built [as] a free and democratic country and taken the path of peace.. Nothing has been changed in the policy of continuing to uphold this position,” which was and is, of course, true.

Nevertheless, as expected, Beijing, Seoul and their Leftist cohorts in the American and Japanese media and universities, continuing their relentless global anti-Japanese propaganda campaign, ignored the Japanese leader’s constructive and reasonable messages and bashed him for the Yasukuni visit. Sasae Ken’ichirō – then Japan’s ambassador to the United States- explained his nation’s position on the issue in a dignified and professional manner in a media exchange with Cui Tiancai.

Ambassador Hayashi’s impressive, dignified and widely publicized reply to Liu’s crass rant, would have been even more powerful had it referred to Mao’s aggressively expansionist policy, afflicting Xinjiang, Tibet, Korea, India, Vietnam and even the Soviet Union. Worse yet, domestically, any postwar nation whose (Communist) Dictator Founder was responsible for the death of at least 50 millions of his own people in grotesque schemes like the Great Leap Forward and the mad, self-serving “cultural”  revolution but who has never been taken to task for them, whose awful crimes the people are forbidden from even mentioning decades after his death and instead, inspire his successors especially Xi Jinping – warrant crowning Mao Zedong the Supreme Voldemort of modern national leaders.

Furthermore, even a slightly broader inquiry reveals the mindboggling reality of totalitarian lawlessness, criminality and aggressiveness of the Beijing Regime whose unelected strongmen after Mao, turned it from Confucian- Communist (see my “Understanding Chinese Confu-Communism” online) to Confucian- Fascist today. Hua Guofeng, made boss by Mao, weeks before the dictator’s death, came from the CCP’s dreaded security apparatus, the regime’s domestic espionage and dissident-disappearing machine, which today penetrates society to the local neighbourhood level. The willy Deng Xiaoping (who swiftly emasculated Hua after 1978) provoked a border war “to teach Vietnam a lesson” mainly for dislodging the regime of “mini Mao” Pol Pot, Beijing’s protégé , who only murdered over two million fellow Cambodians. Domestically, Deng liquidated the Democracy Wall in 1980 and butchered the Tiananmen Square democracy movement in 1989, at the cost of thousands of innocent lives. Jiang Zemin, bossed in by Deng, launched the criminal system of forcible harvesting and selling of organs of tens of thousands of Falun Gong practitioners, an outrage courageously documented by Canadian researchers David Kilgour and David Matas (book below). The caption on the direction arrow at an entrance to Kashgar (Xinjiang) airport (right picture) reads: “Special Passengers: Human Organ Export Lane.”

The inevitable question arises: has the ghastly forced organ harvesting and trade system victimizing the Falun Gong been extended to the Muslim Uyghurs in Xinjiang?

Strongman Hu Jintao launched the Sinification of Tibet (through a flood of Han-Chinese settlers, while rejecting the Dalai Lama’s compromise of accepting Beijing’s colonial rule in exchange for religious and cultural autonomy for Tibetans.) Historically, the most convincing but oddly overlooked proof that Tibet is completely different politically from China- thus not an integral part of the Chinese empire- is that Beijing represents a tradition where Religion has always been subservient to the State whereas Tibet’s heritage is one where the Dalai Lama is both religious and political leader, JK].  Chinese soldiers manhandling an elderly protester in 1959 (left picture) and the self-immolation of a young Tibetan protester (in 2017 right picture) illustrate the sordid history of Chinese imperialism.

Xi Jinping’s ever-growing record of inhumanity includes the Sinification campaign of millions of Muslim Uyghurs through re-education camps (picture below) and even by forcing them to “adopt” Han Chinese agents into their families (!!!)

Overall, Xi Jinping, using the latest technologies, has turned his empire into the world’s top surveillance state- Regime software installed on private smartphones, a draconian social-credit system and hundreds of millions of surveillance cameras blanketing the country – here the political heart of the empire – Tiananmen Square . (pictures below)

In this context the wake-up call issued at the 2019 annual Davos conference by businessman and Open Society founder George Soros regarding the existential challenge of Xi Jinping totalitarianism carries potential relevance:

China is not the only authoritarian regime in the world but it is the wealthiest, strongest and technologically most advanced. This makes Xi Jinping the most dangerous opponent of open societies. That’s why it’s so important to distinguish Xi Jinping’s policies from the aspirations of the Chinese people. The social credit system, if it became operational, would give Xi total control over the people. Since Xi is the most dangerous enemy of the open society, we must pin our hopes on the Chinese people, and especially on the business community and a political elite.

At this dark juncture, however, the Beijing Regime’s domestic reality is one of a Mao-style Xi Jinping cult of pandemic proportions – his pictures and slogans flooding trains, streets and apps. The app in the picture below (left) requires the player to tap the screen as many times as possible in 18 seconds, which then turn into applauses of support for Xi Jinping; the 10-part TV series “Carrying reform through to the end,” celebrates Xi’s “achievements,” in education: disciplining students using face-recognition (picture below right).

An investigative report in the South China Morning Post in October 2019, drew a dark picture of the Orwellian atmosphere in the CCP-dominated education :

“Chill and fear pervade in Chinese classrooms as students are recruited to report teachers with ‘radical’ opinions. Some educators have been punished …or reprimanded after discussing social issues such as the environment, gender equality and the death penalty.”

Beijing’s arrogant, racist “diplomatic” corps has its counterpart in CCP media. Multimillionaire HU Xijin (picture below) past editor of Global Times was Xi ’s racist online attack dog serving his master in Der Stűrmer/Pravda-Krokodil/Jenmin Jibao– style journalism.

Said Xi’s Hu on Australia (for daring to stand up to reckless Chinese espionage, blackmail and brinkmanship culminating in the audacious demand that a professional international investigation of the Wuhan pandemic be launched): “Australia is always there, making trouble. It is like chewing gum stuck on the sole of China’s shoes. Sometimes you have to find a stone to rub it off.” Hu deserves the Mahathir bin Mohamad prize for anti-Australian racism.

Xi Jinping has earned another feather in his dreadful cap, by deliberately not alerting his people and the world in timely fashion to the Wuhan virus – a crime which cost millions of non-Chinese and Chinese lives. The BIMPAT [Beijing/Islamabad/Moscow/Pyongyang/Ankara/Tehran] totalitarian Axis continues to shamelessly try to shift responsibility for the plague from China to the US and European nations. In conclusion, for their unmatched postwar record of murderous treatment of their own people and of the ethnic and religious minorities under their rule (especially Tibetans, Uyghurs, Kazakhs, Mongolians and Falun Gong) and their aggressively imperialist and colonialist foreign policy in the era of Asian and African decolonization (unless the colonizer is Chinese, Russian or Turkish…)- the Beijing Regime’s top leaders constitute a veritable Voldemort Gallery.

The post <b>The</b><em> Voldemortian</em> <b>Beijing Regime’s</b> <em>Sopranos</em><b>-style Diplomacy</b> appeared first on Free & Open Indo-Pacific.

Note: This piece is part of “Abe Shinzō: Transformational Leader in 21^st Century Indo-Pacific and Global international Relations” – the main essay on this website.

Canada and Japan have similar – constitutional monarchal- parliamentary political systems, and share all democratic socio-political values: freedom of expression, of the press and of religion, human rights, the rule of law and gender equality; their market economies are  (potentially) highly complementary as already are their cultures (Anne of Green Gables, aurora borealis tourism/anime/manga etc.)

The two democracies are prominent members of the OECD, APEC, G-7, G-20 as well as of the highly promising CPTPP in which they are the largest economies. It was former Japanese Prime Minister Abe Shinzō’s assiduous efforts -together with Canada’s- that saved the pact after President Trump’s withdrawal. The absence of the United States – the most important ally of both Canada and Japan and the ultimate guarantor of their security and economic prosperity since WW II – should be seen as only a temporary setback. Given its strategic, political as well as economic/trade benefits, the Biden administration has signalled its intention to rejoin the grouping.

The Canada-Japan relationship is metaphorically reminiscent of an impressive building whose construction is being inexplicably stalled after the foundation is in place.

In the First World War, Japan and (the then Dominion of) Canada were allies and the Japanese navy secured Canada’s west coast. A century later, their relationship has reached a point where present political and security circumstances – first and foremost Chinese imperialism- warrant serious consideration of a much more meaningful relationship, leading to a formal alignment aimed at maintaining and advancing democracy, security and peace in the Indo-Pacific and beyond.

Ninety-three years after establishing diplomatic ties, bilateral relations between Canada and Japan are friendly and solid but must be dramatically enhanced so that they – together with the US, South Korea, Australia, India, Taiwan – as well as most ASEAN members, the EU and especially the UK –can contribute fully to the defence and promotion of peace, prosperity and democracy, in the face of Chinese aggression and in support of the Free and Open  Indo-Pacific [FOIP] concept launched by former Japanese Prime Minister Abe Shinzō. In 2021, France coordinated a multinational naval exercise in the Gulf of Bengal ; a French nuclear submarine has been patrolling in the South China Sea; a German frigate is scheduled to sail through the South China Sea later in the year. Even more consequential is the Johnson administration’s dispatch of a naval taskforce to the area and Britain’s expected application for CPTPP membership.

While trying to strike a balance between needs and costs , especially since the economic crisis of the 1990s, and forced by the deteriorating security environment caused by  Beijing and Pyongyang, pacifist Japan has built a solid, defensive conventional military capability, whose value is proven daily when countering , by itself or in cooperation with allied American forces (based on the 2014 Collective Self-Defence agreement) Beijing’s relentless imperialist forays into the East China Sea and South China Sea perimeters.

The high quality of Japan’s Self-Defence Forces [SDF] in human resources, training and equipment is matched on the Canadian side only by the first two parameters. A RCN [Royal Canadian Navy] fleet of modern frigates is in the early stages of construction; the RCN’s second-hand submarines purchased from Britain two decades ago are safe only on land, while the RCAF [Royal Canadian Air Force] is still awaiting a government decision on replacing the antiquated CF-18s. In other words, Canada is only capable of occasionally “showing the flag” – through participation in anti-submarine warfare exercises in the South China Sea in early 2021 or HMCS Winnipeg joining the NEON international campaign of enforcing sanctions on North Korea or sailing through the Taiwan Straits (picture below).

Compare that with Japan’s advanced, domestically designed and produced reconnaissance planes, tanks, submarines, Izumo-class dual-use (helicopter and jetfighter) light carriers and squadrons of Lockheed F-35 stealth jets of its Air Self- Defence Forces (pictures below) as well as the advanced, domestically designed and produced F-3 fighter of the future.

The 2010 Canada-Japan Joint Declaration on Political, Peace and Security Cooperation is the adequate take-off platform for a deeper bilateral partnership on regional and global security issues. The document’s practical core is the Political, Peace and Security Subcabinet “2+2” Dialogue, which commits the nations to periodic consultations on foreign affairs and defence issues at the deputy- minister level and includes the Symposium on Peace and Security Cooperation which brings together researchers and policy-makers to consider important regional security and bilateral cooperation topics. In April 2018, Canada and Japan signed the Acquisition and Cross-Servicing Agreement, which further enhances cooperation between their militaries.

Prime Minister Abe visited Canada in April 2019 for consultations with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on the agenda of the G-20 gathering in Osaka in June of that year. The visit came at what must be the most auspicious time in Canada-Japan relations since the establishment of formal diplomatic ties. Indeed, there has never been a more promising convergence of mutually beneficial multilateral circumstances and complementary national interests, with the potential to expand bilateral ties most significantly in the immediate future.

The two leaders, in addition to substantive talks, shared celebratory moments mixing the 90^th anniversary of Canadian- Japanese diplomatic relations, with sport. They exchanged rugby jerseys with the identical number “90” (picture below) and the Japanese dignitary expressed his wish that the two nations meet in the final of the Rugby World Cup which Japan was to host  in September. Canada and Japan did not meet in the rugby final; yet, should the two nations aim at multilateral and mutually beneficial cooperation, major results can be expected.

Even before the 2019 New Coronavirus pandemic, perilous developments in Canada-China relations -particularly the festering Meng Wanzhou extradition crisis – when Bullying Beijing resorted to hostage-taking (which, together with kidnapping ,are routine  political tools of the Regime) of two innocent  Canadians – Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, in order to force Ottawa to ape Xi’s lawless system and illegally interfere with the judiciary and free the seven passports holding “communist  princess.” This most serious incident, together with Beijing’s scandalously manipulative behaviour regarding the Wuhan pandemic, should at last, make Ottawa recognize that a comprehensive  – economic, political, security –  relationship with Japan- a highly developed, friendly, reliable, fellow democracy – whose citizens (businessmen fraudulently accused of espionage) have also been victims of  Hostage-Taking Beijing – is vastly preferable to being a meek member of an emerging stable of states kowtowing to Despot-for-Life Xi Jinping’s dictatorial and racist (for putting millions of Tibetans and Uighurs in Sinification camps, forcing them to accept Han- Chinese agents as  “relatives” in their families and for continuing the forcible harvesting and selling of organs of Falun Gong  practitioners) , domestically and expansionist internationally 21^st century version of the ancient Confucian “tributary”- these days Confucian- Fascist – system. (see essay Dire History Repeated on this website).

The Wuhan pandemic crisis was an opportunity for Canadian-Japanese cooperation in finding a treatment for, or a vaccine against the plague. Japan’s Mitsubishi-Tanabe Pharmaceutical Co. already has a presence in Canada through a joint-venture with Montreal’s Medicago company. The project is highly original in that the vaccine – now in second-stage trials – is produced by using live plants that mimic the Coronavirus (as Virus-like-Particles or VLPs ) but are not infectious and only boost the immune systems of  patients. Furthermore, the Japanese multinational Fujifilm’s Avigan anti-viral drug was being tested in Canada. The two nations, however, were temporarily unsuccessful in producing in timely fashion either a treatment or a vaccine for the New Coronavirus and had to rely on American and European products.

Japan has consistently shown a positive inclination toward much enhanced relations with Canada. On the Canadian side, however, positive thinking toward a strategic partnership is yet to materialize, in the past six years due to Prime Minister Trudeau’s and his Liberal Party’s  regrettable affinity for totalitarian criminal regimes- smaller like Castroite Cuba, and especially the biggest of them all- China, stemming from a short- sighted and misplaced admiration for the perceived efficiency of the Beijing Regime and its “inevitable” dominant global role in the future.

Historically, the late Maurice Strong – a globe-trotting, well-connected, clever and somewhat shady international operator who spent his last years in Beijing – and past Prime Ministers Pierre Trudeau and Jean Chrètien (the “architect” of the dubious Team Canada concept) and business leaders like the Demarais  family have been instrumental in promoting Chinese influence in the Liberal Party.

New examples of misguided China policies of the present Trudeau administration appear all the time. Health Minister Patty Hajdu has constantly praised Beijing’s “responsible and open” New Coronavirus approach. Worse yet, the government- as the devastating investigative reporting of Global News TV’s Sam Cooper revealed  in July 2020 – allowed Beijing’s diplomatic offices, together with a number of Chinese community groups in Canada heavily penetrated by the CCP’s United Front Work Department (the espionage and subversion arm of the Party which preys on the Chinese diaspora to  participate in Beijing’s ghastly plot of delaying to inform the world about the real scale of the 2019 pandemic as mentioned earlier, until the Regime cornered the global market in basic medical supplies , for financial and political gain!  It is this appalling inclination to appease evil that underpinned Ottawa’s dogged pursuit of a free trade agreement and strategic partnership [!!!!!] with aggressive, imperialist, supremacist Beijing.

Positive, unexpected developments have taken place recently. First, on September 18^th, 2020, Ottawa announced its highly appropriate decision (in light of Beijing’s overall behaviour) to discontinue FTA negotiations. This could open the way for an FTA and a further enhanced relationship overall with Japan. Second, and equally promising, the first courtesy phone conversation between Prime Minister Suga and Prime Minister Trudeau, in late September, indicated that the two leaders were ready in principle, to proceed toward closer bilateral relations based on the FOIP concept. Such a move, if implemented would have a transformative impact. However, one can only take a very cautious approach to this promising potential change on the Canadian side. This is particularly so when considering the very detailed (advisory) position paper of September 2020 by Global [in fact Foreign] Affairs Canada’s Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada [APFC] Vice-President for Research Jeffrey Reeves. The title- “Canada and the Indo-Pacific: ‘diverse’ and ‘inclusive’ not ‘free’ and ‘open’” (emphasis added) – is the clear and condensed message of the very long, in the main ideologically Leftist essay. It constitutes a disconcerting example of intellectual, political and strategic appeasement as demonstrated in my Dire History Repeated essay on this website – aggressive German Fascism of 80 years ago, being reincarnated in the form of the even more globally threatening Neo -Fascist Xi Beijing regime of today, Reeves wants Canada to accommodate. Indeed, as the tried and true maxim reminds us, those who forget history tend to repeat it. Winston Churchill’s definition of the appeaser of his time (as the one who kowtows to the crocodile hoping to be eaten last) fits ours, too. The Reeves proposition is the 2020 metaphorical digital version of the Munich agreement sheet fluttering in the wind in Neville Chamberlain’s hand who then uttered the mortally wrong “Peace for our time,” on September 30^th, 1938. Default supporters of the Reeves thesis most probably include the China hands at the University of British Columbia – especially Paul Evans and Wenran Jiang- the China Institute and related outfits in Alberta (whose activities are about to be drastically curtailed in provincial retaliation to Beijing’s relentless and multilateral aggression against Canada) and particularly Independent Senator Yuen Pau Wu (whose “Now that [former Prime Minister Stephen] Harper is gone can we have a serious talk about China?” – iPolitics, October 30, 2015) qualifies as the “Beijing on the Rideau Manifesto.”

At the dawn of the third decade of the 21^st century, the fundamental incentive for dramatically expanding multilateral – security, political, economic and overall strategic – cooperation among Indo-Pacific nations is the existential threat posed by the imperialist Xi Beijing regime and its allies (see “Dire History Repeated”). The nations of the world are strangely unaware of the fact that historically, the two most successful imperialist and colonial powers have been China and Russia .Over the past 72 years the top targets of Beijing imperialism have been – in chronological order- Xinjiang, Tibet, the Korean peninsula, Vietnam, India, the Soviet Union, Japan (in the Senkaku perimeter of the East China Sea) as well as Taiwan and the nations bordering the South China Sea; in 2021 the latter four are the most potentially explosive  areas. In 2019, the Parliament of Canada declared China the nation’s top security challenge. Japan preceded Canada by a decade. Therefore, in the immediate future, the existential Beijing threat must bring Canada and Japan as well as other fellow democracies like South Korea and Taiwan much closer together. Japan should be invited to formally join the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing security framework with which it now has informal arrangements. Former defense minister Kōno Tarō in late October 2020 publicly requested the affiliation. Ottawa should consider the very delicate task of mediating between Tokyo and Seoul by convincing the latter to really pursue its frequently pledged but never adhered to, “future-oriented” relationship, since cooperating with Beijing against Japan and the US, only benefits Chinese expansionism. After all, Beijing is the direst threat not only to Ottawa, Tokyo and Seoul, but to all nations outside the emerging BIMPAT [Beijing/Islamabad/Pyongyang/Ankara/Tehran] Axis.  .

The post Canada-Japan Relations: Turning Great Potential into Reality appeared first on Free & Open Indo-Pacific.

Note: Taiwanese, Japanese and Chinese names are rendered with family name first followed by given name.

Taiwan is a mountainous, highly developed island-nation in the western Pacific, with an area of about 36000 square kilometers, and a population of almost 24 million. It borders China, Japan and the Philippines.

Historically, today’s superb democracy of the Republic of [China on] Taiwan emerged after a long and arduous struggle. From 1945 – when fifty years of Japanese imperial rule ended – until July 1987, Taiwan was under strict martial law, originally imposed by the then Nanjing-based ruling Nationalist Party [Kuomintang or KMT],following the 2/28 [February 28, 1947] incident – the massacre by the Chinese  military of thousands  of  Taiwanese opposed to Mainland Chinese rule. Martial law – officially known as the “Temporary Provisions Effective During the Period of National Mobilisation for Suppression of the Communist Rebellion” was made permanent in 1954. Among other hard measures, the authorities militarized education, stamped out free speech and conducted widespread political surveillance. The entire era of 1947-1987 is known as the “White Terror.” When generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek [Jiang Jie-shi] – the ruler of Taiwan- died in 1975, martial law continued under his son Chiang Ching-kuo, who, however, ended it on July 16, 1987.The highly educated and hardworking people and successful government development policies, resulted in Taiwan’s “miraculous” emergence as a most advanced and diversified capitalist economy. This achievement was also facilitated by the close multilateral relationship with the United States – the island-nation’s de-facto political and military guarantor and ally even after America signed on to the “One China” policy in 1978 – a move most detrimental to Taiwan’s international position- which could have been avoided.

Almost forty years of totalitarianism could not stamp out pro-democracy political activism despite the dire consequences awaiting those who were seen as endangering the regime. Today’s governing Democratic Progressive Party [DPP] of President Tsai Ing-wen was founded in 1986, thus officially deemed illegal at the time.

Taiwanese director Hou Xiao-xien’s haunting A City of Sadness – produced in 1989,was the first film to focus on the 2/28 tragedy and is considered a central element in the national process of open discourse on the  harsh past- a reality unthinkable to this day in Mainland China, whose inhumane communist policies since 1949 have cost tens of millions of  Chinese lives.

In 1995, Lee Teng-hui – the first Taiwan-born leader of the KMT and president (who had been arrested and interrogated in 1969 for political sedition) apologized to the Nation for severe past policies of the State. In 1997, popularly- elected President Lee decreed 2/28 an official national day of commemoration not only of the incident itself but of the entire period of martial law to be formally known as Peace Memorial Day. In 2008, then President Ma Ying-jeou issued his own apology to the people of Taiwan. The Tsai Ing-wen administration – in power since 2016- formed Truth and Reconciliation Committees tasked with creating a national historical consensus based on the full accounting of the past. Story Taiwan the democratic State-sponsored political memory project is part of this effort.

Taiwan evolved into a vibrant multi-party democracy, a free and highly educated society, a prosperous nation and a prominent economic, technological, trade and cultural entity – a global role-model.

A recipient of American aid until the early 1960’s, subsequently Taiwan became a net ODA [Official Development Assistance] donor and a provider of technical expertise in all fields- from agriculture to manufacturing and education. Today, the 17^th richest nation globally, Taiwan has a cutting-edge industrial manufacturing and technological base. Hon Hai Precision (aka as Foxconn), TSC [Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing], Pegatron are but the cream of the crop in electronics, computer hardware and peripherals as well as highly sophisticated computer chips in which Taiwan is a world leader.

Taiwan’s multilateral achievements are most impressive when considering its limited formal international position, the legacy of the misguided foreign policy of the J.E.Carter administration in the United States, mainly its appeasing and accommodating approach that underpinned the US-Mainland China normalization agreement of 1979. The same year, Carter/Brzezinsky betrayed the pro-Western Iranian monarchy, in favour of the Jihadi regime of Rukhollah Khumayni, a close Beijing ally. This, despite China’s harsh colonialist Sinification policy of the Uyghurs – the native Muslim population of Xinjiang (East Turkestan) in Central Asia.

In 2021, imperialist Beijing’s relentlessly aggressive political, economic, military and even health-care related pressure aims to turn democratic, thriving, fully self-ruling Taiwan into a Beijing satrapy, like Hong Kong, under the “One Country, Two Systems” scam.

Taiwan is the most convincing example of the full compatibility among democracy, capitalism, and Chinese culture. Taiwan’s grotesque antithesis is China (picture below)- the violently anti-democratic regime and its oxymoronic CCP [Chinese Communist Party]- dominated “socialist market economy.”

The totalitarian  Beijing Regime is the ultimate police state, totally dependent for its basic survival on an enormous security apparatus, lorded over by Xi Jinping`s CCP through two security ministries, millions of police and the most invasive surveillance technology and concentration, re-education (thus brainwashing) as well as Sinification camp system-all in order to prevent the natural socio-political evolution of capitalism (State- capitalism in China`s case) into direct popular participation in national politics – thus democracy. This is China’s sordid political reality today.

The Beijing Regime which has never ruled Taiwan (historically occupied by the Portuguese- who named it Ilha Formosa [Beautiful Island] -Spanish, Dutch, Chinese and Japanese) but which it nonetheless aggressively considers a “renegade province”- and today’s (for all intents and purposes, the Democratic Republic of) Taiwan are completely incompatible in political, social and even cultural terms. The chasm is strongly illustrated in the historical paths the two entities have treaded in the last three decades. In China, mentioning the CCP’s genocidal crimes against its people is a harshly punishable taboo imposed by its never-elected Strongmen. The picture of Mao Zedong – the murderous founder of the communist version of the totalitarian system- dominates Beijing’s enormous Tiananmen Square and appears on banknotes. Deng Xiaoping, who in 1980 liquidated the Democracy Wall was behind the bloody ending of the June 1989 Tiananmen Square student democracy movement. (left picture below.)

In monumental contrast, in Taipei, less than one year later, the March 1990 White Lilly student movement (right picture above) negotiated with President Lee Teng-hui the systematic democratization of the political system. Three decades later, the island-nation is a vibrant semi- presidential democracy where in January 2020, the people re-elected the Democratic Progressive Party [DPP]’s leader and first female President Dr. Tsai Ing-wen. Unlike the KMT, the main opposition group, President Tsai refuses to subscribe to the so-called “1992 Consensus” which includes the One China concept- which is incompatible with the Taiwanese identity of the majority of  the population who were born in Taiwan. As well, the Consensus subscribes to the territorial expansionism of China.

The 2014 Sunflower movement of students and civil society groups who took over the Legislative and Executive Yuan (branches of government) prevented the signing of an expanded trade pact with Beijing. The Sunflower movement should be seen as philosophically linked to its White Lilly predecessor and as the facilitator of the DPP electoral victory in 2016. In June 2020, in a highly consequential display of genuine democracy at work, the people of Kaohsiung – Taiwan’s second largest city- (under the impact of Xi Jinping’s liquidation of Hong Kong’s autonomous and democratic status within China, in blunt contravention to the One-Country Two Systems arrangement which was to have lasted until 2047) recalled Mayor Han Kuo-yu – a Beijing-inclined politician and the 2020 KMT presidential candidate.

On the other side of the Taiwan Strait, the Beijing Regime, in a process launched by Deng Xiaoping in 1978 and completed in 2018, became a full-fledged Neo- Fascist system ruled singlehandedly by Never-Elected-Strongman Xi Jinping. The ideological identity between Benito Mussolini – “All within the [One Party] State, Nothing outside the [One Party] State, Nothing against the [One Party] State” and Xi Jinping – “The Country, the Military, Society, Schools, North, South, East and West, all Belong to the [One] Party [State]” is complete. Furthermore, Beijing’s Heshin Ri’i (Critical Areas) foreign policy is identical to Germany’s imperialist Lebensraum (Living Space) of eight decades ago.

The Neo-Fascist designation for today’s Xi Jinping-centred system is purely descriptive. As the table below indicates, domestically, the only fundamental difference between Communism and Fascism is that the latter allows private/business property to exist, which, however, like everything else in the Regime and as in Germany and Italy of eighty years ago, is under the thumb of the One-Party State and its Never-Elected-Ruler– in China’s case, Xi Jinping.

Xi Jinping’s aggressive military, economic and political pressure aimed at turning Taiwan into a province of his empire is strongly reminiscent of Germany’s Anschluss campaign of 83 years ago. When the imperialist forays in the East China Sea -against Japan- and in the South China Sea-against the Philippines, Brunei, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia,- as well as high in the Himalayas – against India- are added, China’s 21^st century Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere comes into full ghastly view.

Taiwan possesses all the socio-political and cultural institutions of democracy. These include full recognition of and support for Aboriginal traditions, languages and inherent rights. Furthermore, as shown above and worthy of particular attention are Taiwan’s policies of national recognition, apology and reconciliation regarding past ofState against the People – an approach diametrically opposed to that of the Beijing Regime. Commemorative sites have been built (left picture below) and every year, the national leaders (President Tsai Ing-wen and former President Ma Ying-jeou, apologize, and together with the people, commemorate 2/28. (pictures below).

The Trump administration in the US led the international community in significantly expanding relations with Taiwan. The new trend began with the American leader accepting a congratulatory phone call from President Tsai after his election in November 2016. On April 3, 2020, with rare full by-partisan support ,the US Congress approved the Taiwan Ally International Protection Enhancement Initiative  [TAIPEI] a strong reinforcement of  the TRA [Taiwan Relations Act] of 1979 . TAIPEI tasks the State Department with strengthening Taiwan’s defense capabilities in the South China Sea as well as taking steps against nations which deliberately contribute – under Beijing’s pressure- to the limitation of Taiwan’s international space. In 2020, then American Health Secretary Alex Azar undertook an official visit to Taiwan and together with Kevin Krutch – then Assistant Secretary of State for Economic Cooperation – represented   the US at the funeral of former Taiwanese President Lee Teng-hui.

IN 2021, patrols by US, Japanese, Australian Indian, Canadian and EU warships have expanded with the dual goal of enhancing Taiwan’s security as well as the freedom of international shipping in the island’s vicinity and throughout the sprawling South China Sea and beyond. These moves stem from the FOIP [Free and Open Indo-Pacific] concept devised by former Japanese Prime Minister Abe Shinzō by now the joint platform of all democracies and other nations in their efforts to contain China’s expansionism in and militarization of the South China Sea, 92% of which (map) it claims through the Nine-Dash or Cow Tongue scam (using fraudulent history as tool).

Xi Jinping’s decision in early November 2020 authorizing his Coast Guard to use weapons against foreign ships not heeding Beijing’s illegal rules in its claimed territorial waters in both the East China Sea and the South China Sea has the potential to further exacerbate the already tense security situation in both theatres to the point of explosion. Indeed, 2021 has seen a dramatic increase in the number and variety of Beijing violations of Taiwan’s air and maritime space. Xi Jinping’s numerous bellicose statements threatening to conquer Taiwan, culminated in a violent speech at the CCP”s centennial bash on July 1^st. In direct reaction to the Chinese dictator’s frequent threats the US, Japan, India and Australia (the Quad of democracies) in April issued an unprecedented document, which -for the first time since 1979 criticized aggressive Chinese hegemonism while expressing multilateral support (short of outright independence) for Taiwan.

The LDP [Liberal Democratic Party]- Japan’s highly successful ruling party has always supported Taiwan. Former prime minister Abe Shinzō met with Dr. Tsai Ing-wen ( left picture below) and other leading Taiwanese personalities. The Suga administration continues the policy of assistance to and cooperation with ,Taiwan. On the Taiwanese side, the leading promoter of close Taiwan-Japan friendship was late President Lee Teng-hui ( right picture below) the architect of Taiwanese democracy and identity as well as the originator of the idea of Taiwan and China as two neighbouring but separate states. Former prime minister, Mori Yoshirō and then parliamentarian (now Defense Minister) Kishi Nobuo, represented Japan at the funeral of the late national Taiwanese political icon in August 2020.

Dr. Tsai Ing-wen and Prime Minister Abe Shinzō, 2015   Lee Teng-hui , first elected President of Taiwan

Japan, even after normalizing relations with Beijing in 1979 (the agreement including an anti-Soviet hegemony clause at the insistence of hegemonic Beijing…) has balanced its formal recognition of the “One China” scheme, with consistent multilateral relations with Taiwan. The decision of the Abe administration in 2019 to allow the use of the designation Taiwan (replacing Taipei) in the name of the island nation’s representative office in Tokyo carries both symbolic and political relevance. When Taiwan decided to vaccinate its population against the New Corona virus in 2021, Japan (in addition to the United States and Czechia) supplied 3 million dozes to the island. In the words of Nakayama Yasuhide , the Deputy Defense Minister of Japan in late June 2021: “Japan and Taiwan are really close…We are  brothers.”  Indeed, Japan’s reactions to Xi Jinping’s relentless and multilateral pressures on Taiwan have not been late in coming. Prime Minister Suga Yoshihide – echoing powerful statements and policies of the United States- has frequently expressed his commitment to enhanced relations across the board, with Taiwan. Tokyo’s 2021  Defense White Paper mentions the vital importance of Taiwan’s security to Japan’s. In July 2021, Asō Tarō – Japan’s Deputy Prime Minister- stated that any [Chinese] attack on Taiwan would be seen as a direct threat at Japan’s own vital security interests, a position reiterated by Defense Minister Kishi Nobuo.

The overall friendly and constructive Tokyo-Taipei relations stand in stark contrast to the frequent tensions marring Japan’s ties with the ROK [Republic of Korea] particularly during Leftist South Korean administrations and stemming from the colonial era and the Pacific War. This despite of the fact that Taiwan – like the Korean peninsula- was a colony of Japan for 50 years until 1945. Hundreds of thousands of Taiwanese (and Koreans) served in the Japanese military and more than a few died for Japan. The leading element accounting for this history-related discrepancy is Taiwan’s more balanced approach to the colonial period; that includes recognizing certain beneficial administrative, educational and technological reforms implemented by Japan.

Canada, which recognized Maoist China earlier than most other democracies, but sensibly only “registered” (not accepted) expansionist Beijing’s position on Taiwan, in 2021 is in a position to facilitate much enhanced interaction with Taiwan –which the island-nation needs and amply deserves.

Taiwan, daily threatened militarily by imperialist Beijing, is forced to invest heavily in its defence: from sophisticated US-made warplanes to domestically- manufactured tanks, submarines and various advanced weapon systems. President Tsai Ing-wen – the second national leader representing the Democratic Progressive Party [DPP] came to power in 2016. Her creative and ambitious New Southbound policy aims at reducing the nation’s material dependence on Beijing by expanding economic relations with 18 Indo-Pacific states, from India and Bangladesh to Australia and New Zealand. This is not an easy task considering China’s regional and global trade, economic and political leverage, the geographic, linguistic and cultural closeness between Taiwan and China and the fact that over one million Taiwanese live and work on the continent. As well, Beijing’s clever tactic of giving Taiwanese access to the Chinese job market, constitutes a potent economic and political challenge to Taiwan. Under these circumstances, it is mutually beneficial for all democracies to enhance their existing bilateral economic, trade, political and strategic  relations with Taiwan as well as inviting the island-nation to join the 11-nation strong CPTPP (in which Japan and Canada are the largest economies).

Taiwan implemented swift and highly successful measures against the New Coronavirus  pandemic under the coordination of  Chou Jih-haw, director-general of Taiwan’s Centers for Disease Control. The steps included ramping up border screenings, then banning altogether flights from Wuhan – the epicentre of the plague- enhanced onboard inspections and intensive public promotion of health awareness; concentration of distribution of basic medical supplies (masks, PPEs) and the imposition of a two- week quarantine regime on persons arriving from China. As a result, Taiwan not only evaded the scourge, but was even able to assist other nations in their struggle against the pandemic.

Taiwan alerted the Beijing-dominated WHO as early as December 31^st, 2019 to the nature and magnitude of the impending catastrophe. However, WHO head Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus and Dr. Bruce Aylward, his Canadian subaltern, both Beijing supporters rudely ignored Taiwan’s vital contribution– a professionally irresponsible move that cost countless lives throughout the world.

The urgent need for a coordinated global effort to deal with the New Coronavirus pandemic  on one hand, and Taiwan’s exemplary performance in the crisis, on the other hand, must lead Canada, Japan and other democracies to jointly  bring about Taiwan’s full affiliation with the WHO, and other UN  professional – thus formally non-political- global agencies such as the Montreal-based ICAO [International Civil Aviation Organization]. Democracy and human rights which Bullying Beijing’s policies threaten,  and the memory of  Dr. Li Wenliang- the heroic whistleblower from Wuhan who , on his deathbed criticized Beijing’s inhumane politicization of the pandemic -must underpin this worthy endeavour. After all, the “innovative” Beijing Strongman while scapegoating his pandemic on the US and the West (Italy and Spain) recently proposed another expansionist, imperialist (Beijing) Trojan Horse scam, called the Health Silk Road!

On June 4, 2020 (the anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre) legislators from 18 democracies launched the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China [IPAC] whose mandate is “to promote a coordinated response among democratic states to challenges posed by the present conduct and future ambitions of the PRC.” IPAC called on WHO head Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus to invite Taiwan to the November meeting of the WHA [World Health Assembly] the WHO’s supervisory body. Xi Jinping, through “his” man Tedros blocked the initiative. This failure must bring about stronger support for Taiwan.

Taiwan’s political future, like its immediate democratic past depends on the Taiwanese people. In a book titled Prisoner of the State (below) which he wrote on banana peels and smuggled out of his house-arrest location, Zhao Ziyang (prime minister of the Beijing Regime at the time of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre after which he was removed from office for refusing to crush the democracy movement) wrote that Taiwan should be China’s model for eventual democratization.

Beijing’s path since then has been diametrically opposed to Zhao’s hope. After coming to power in 2012, Xi Jinping purged the CCP hierarchy of hundreds of thousands [!!!] of real and perceived political opponents under the pretense of fighting corruption. A second wave of “anti-corruption” purges was launched in 2020. However, indicative of the completely corrupt nature of his regime is that Xi Jinping himself is suspected of having syphoned off billions of dollars for his family and relatives- a “bagatelle” in a system where the CCP 400 (Confucian-style) families dominating the system are said to have smuggled out of the country, at least US$ one Trillion dollars. At this point, the Neo-Fascist Xi regime appears outwardly stable. However, for how long– especially when considering the New Coronavirus pandemic’s Regime-undermining potential, reinforced by Xi’s concomitant aggressive foreign adventures (against the US, Canada, Japan, India, Australia, Taiwan, Vietnam, Indonesia, the EU )- is a  question only the future will answer.

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