China – Page 12 – praag.org

Mugabe’s ban on Western poll observers

President Robert Mugabe on Thursday reiterated the Zimbabwe government’s position to bar Western observers from general elections set for Wednesday, insisting that only officials from friendly nations would be allowed to monitor the polls.

The veteran Zimbabwean leader said the United States, United Kingdom and other Western countries would never be invited to observe elections in Zimbabwe until they remove economic sanctions against top Harare officials.

“Our position is very clear. We will never allow the Americans and the British to come and observe our elections as long as their sanctions continue to burden our people,” he told supporters during a campaign rally in Chinhoyi farming town, about 100km northwest of Harare.

Zimbabwe has since 2002 refused to allow Western observers to witness the country’s general elections, accusing them of bias in favour of the opposition.

The Zimbabwe government however, said it has no problems welcoming election observers from the United Nations, Asia, the Southern African Development Community, the African Union and the BRICS group of countries comprising Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.

Mugabe also said Thursday that the US and UK had no moral ground to lecture Zimbabwe on democracy when their own histories are tainted with cases of human rights abuses.

The US said earlier this week that it was concerned about the conditions prevailing in Zimbabwe ahead of general elections set for July 31.

A State Department spokesperson said Washington was wary about lack of transparency in electoral preparations and continued partisan behaviour by security organs, particularly the army and police. – APA

What international community?

By Richard Haass. Whenever something bad happens – Iran moving closer to acquiring nuclear weapons, North Korea firing another missile, civilian deaths reaching another grim milestone in Syria’s civil war, satellites revealing an alarming rate of polar-ice melt – some official or observer will call upon the international community to act. There is only one problem: there is no “international community.”

Part of the reason stems from the absence of any mechanism for “the world” to come together. The United Nations General Assembly comes closest, but little can be expected from an organization that equates the United States or China with, say, Fiji or Guinea-Bissau.

To be fair, those who founded the UN after World War II created the Security Council as the venue in which major powers would meet to determine the world’s fate. But even that has not worked out as planned, partly because the world of 2013 bears little resemblance to that of 1945. How else could one explain that Britain and France, but not Germany, Japan, or India, are permanent, veto-wielding members?

Alas, there is no agreement on how to update the Security Council. Efforts like the G-20 are welcome, but they lack authority and capacity, in addition to suffering from excessive size. The result is “multilateralism’s dilemma”: the inclusion of more actors increases an organization’s legitimacy at the expense of its utility.

No amount of UN reform could make things fundamentally different. Today’s major powers do not agree on the rules that ought to govern the world, much less on the penalties for breaking them. Even where there is accord in principle, there is little agreement in practice. The result is a world that is messier and more dangerous than it should be.

Consider climate change. Burning fossil fuels is having a measurable impact on the earth’s temperature. But reducing carbon emissions has proved impossible, because such a commitment could constrain GDP growth (anathema to developed countries mired in economic malaise) and impede access to energy and electricity for billions of people in developing countries, which is unacceptable to China and India.

Stopping the spread of nuclear weapons would seem a more promising issue for global collaboration. The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) limits the right to possess nuclear weapons to the Security Council’s five permanent members, and then only temporarily.

But agreement is thinner than it appears. The NPT allows countries the right to develop nuclear energy for purposes such as electricity generation, a loophole that allows governments to build most of what is necessary to produce the fuel for a nuclear weapon.

The inspection regime created in 1957 under the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is a gentlemen’s agreement; inspectors can inspect only those facilities that are made known to them by the government in question. Governments (such as Iran’s) can and do carry out illegal nuclear activities in secret sites that international inspectors either do not know about or cannot enter. At least as important, there is no agreement on what to do when a country violates the NPT, as Iran and North Korea (which withdrew from the treaty in 2003) have done.

More international cooperation exists in the economic realm. There has been real progress toward reducing tariff barriers; the World Trade Organization has also established a dispute-resolution mechanism for its 159 members. But progress on expanding free trade at the global level has stalled, as many countries disagree on the treatment of agricultural goods, the elimination of subsidies, and trade in services.

Meanwhile, cooperation in the realm of cyberspace is just getting started – with difficulty. The US is most concerned about cyber security and the protection of intellectual property and infrastructure. Authoritarian governments are more concerned about information security – the ability to control what is available on the Internet in order to maintain political and social stability. There is no agreement on what, if anything, constitutes an appropriate target for espionage. The prevalence of non-state actors is further complicating efforts.

Another area where there is less international community than meets the eye is human suffering. Governments that attack their own people on a large scale, or allow such attacks to be carried out, expose themselves to the threat of outside intervention. This “Responsibility to Protect,” or R2P, was enshrined by the UN in 2005.

But many governments are concerned that R2P raises expectations that they will act, which could prove costly in terms of lives, military expenditure, and commercial priorities. Some governments are also worried that R2P could be turned on them. Russian and Chinese reticence about pressuring governments that deserve censure and sanction stems partly from such concerns; the absence of consensus on Syria is just one result.

In short, those looking to the international community to deal with the world’s problems will be disappointed. This is not reason for despair or grounds for acting unilaterally. But so long as “international community” is more hope than reality, multilateralism will have to become more varied.

In the trade area, this implies regional and bilateral accords. On climate change, it makes sense to seek “mini-agreements” that set minimum common standards for fuel efficiency, slow deforestation, or limit the largest economies’ carbon output.

In these and other areas, governments will need to rally around regional undertakings, form coalitions of the relevant or willing, or simply seek understandings among countries to do their best to adopt common policies. Such approaches may lack the reach and legitimacy of formal global undertakings, but they do have the advantage of getting something done.

Richard N. Haass is President of the Council on Foreign Relations

Neocons threaten life on earth with nuclear war

Amitai Etzioni has raised an important question: “Who authorized preparations for war with China?” Etzioni says that the war plan is not the sort of contingency plan that might be on hand for an improbable event. Etzioni also reports that the Pentagon’s war plan was not ordered by, and has not been reviewed by, US civilian authorities. We are confronted with a neoconized US military out of control endangering Americans and the rest of the world.

Etzioni is correct that this is a momentous decision made by a neoconized military. China is obviously aware that Washington is preparing for war with China. If the Yale Journal knows it, China knows it. If the Chinese government is realistic, the government is aware that Washington is planning a pre-emptive nuclear attack against China. No other kind of war makes any sense from Washington’s standpoint. The “superpower” was never able to occupy Baghdad, and after 11 years of war has been defeated in Afghanistan by a few thousand lightly armed Taliban. It would be curtains for Washington to get into a conventional war with China.

When China was a primitive third world country, it fought the US military to a stalemate in Korea. Today China has the world’s second largest economy and is rapidly overtaking the failing US economy destroyed by jobs offshoring, bankster fraud, and corporate and congressional treason.

The Pentagon’s war plan for China is called “AirSea Battle.” The plan describes itself as “interoperable air and naval forces that can execute networked, integrated attacks-in-depth to disrupt, destroy, and defeat enemy anti-access area denial capabilities.”

Yes, what does that mean? It means many billions of dollars of more profits for the military/security complex while the 99 percent are ground under the boot. It is also clear that this nonsensical jargon cannot defeat a Chinese army. But this kind of saber-rattling can lead to war, and if the Washington morons get a war going, the only way Washington can prevail is with nuclear weapons. The radiation, of course, will kill Americans and most of the rest of the world as well.

Nuclear war is on Washington’s agenda. The rise of the Neocon Nazis has negated the nuclear disarmament agreements that Reagan and Gorbachev made. The extraordinary, mainly truthful 2012 book, The Untold History of the United States by Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick, describes the post-Reagan breakout of preemptive nuclear attack as Washington’s first option.

During the Cold War nuclear weapons had a defensive purpose. The purpose was to prevent nuclear war by the US and USSR each having sufficient retaliatory power to ensure “mutually assured destruction.” MAD, as it was known, meant that nuclear weapons had no offensive advantage for either side.

The Soviet collapse and China’s focus on its economy instead of its military have resulted in Washington’s advantage in nuclear weaponry that, according to two US Dr. Strangeglove characters, Keir Lieber and Daryl Press, gives Washington first-strike capability. Lieber and Press write that the “precipitous decline of Russia’s arsenal, and the glacial pace of modernization of China’s nuclear forces,” have created a situation in which neither Russia nor China could retaliate to Washington’s first strike.

The Pentagon’s “AirSea Battle” and Lieber and Press’ article in Foreign Affairs have informed China and Russia that Washington is contemplating pre-emptive nuclear attack on both countries. To ensure Russia’s inability to retaliate, Washington is placing anti-ballistic missiles on Russia’s borders in violation of the US-USSR agreement.

Because the American press is a corrupt government propaganda ministry, the American people have no idea that neoconized Washington is planning nuclear war. Americans are no more aware of this than they are of former President Jimmy Carter’s recent statement, reported only in Germany, that the United States no longer has a functioning democracy.

The possibility that the United States would initiate nuclear war was given reality eleven years ago when President George W. Bush, at the urging of Dick Cheney and the neocons that dominated his regime, signed off on the 2002 Nuclear Posture Review.

This neocon document, signed off on by America’s most moronic president, resulted in consternation and condemnation from the rest of the world and launched a new arms race. Russian President Putin immediately announced that Russia would spend all necessary sums to maintain Russia’s retaliatory nuclear capability. The Chinese displayed their prowess by knocking a satellite out of space with a missile. The mayor of Hiroshima, recipient city of a vast American war crime, stated: “The nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the central international agreement guiding the elimination of nuclear weapons, is on the verge of collapse. The chief cause is US nuclear policy that, by openly declaring the possibility of a pre-emptive nuclear first strike and calling for resumed research into mini-nukes and other so-called ‘useable nuclear weapons,’ appears to worship nuclear weapons as God.”

The Neocons do not accept any accountability whatsoever to international law, to human rights, to the Geneva Conventions, or to any statutory law.

The post World War II wars originate in the so-called “free world”. Other countries do not have imperial expansionary ambitions. The Chinese government has not seized Taiwan, which China could do at will. The Russian government has not seized former constituent parts of Russia, such as Georgia, which, provoked by Washington to launch an attack, was instantly overwhelmed by the Russian Army. Putin could have hung Washington’s Georgian puppet and reincorporated Georgia into Russia, where it resided for several centuries and where many believe it belongs.

For the past 68 years, most military aggression can be sourced to the “superpower”.Washington has drafted a war plan based on nuclear first strike, a direct threat to life on earth.

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy under Ronald Reagan and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal.

US ‘trying to save face on Snowden’

US President Barack Obama, meeting senior Chinese officials who were in Washington for annual wide-ranging talks, “expressed his disappointment and concern” over the Snowden case, the White House said in a statement.

Deputy secretary of state William Burns, one of the main US officials in the talks, said Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed at their summit last month at the California resort of Sunnylands to cooperate over problems.

“That is why we were very disappointed with how the authorities in Beijing and Hong Kong handled the Snowden case, which undermined our effort to build the trust needed to manage difficult issues,” Burns said.

“We have made clear that China’s handling of this case was not consistent with the spirit of Sunnylands or with the type of relationship – the new model – that we both seek to build,” Burns said at a joint press event.

State councilor Yang Jiechi, speaking next to Burns, defended decisions on Snowden, whose allegations of US snooping in Chinese internet networks caused a stir in Beijing.

“The central government of China has always respected the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government’s handling of cases in accordance with the law,” he said.

Hong Kong “handled the Snowden case in accordance with the law and its approach is beyond reproach”, said Yang, a central figure in Chinese foreign policy.

Snowden was allowed to leave Hong Kong, a territory of China that enjoys a large amount of autonomy, for Russia.

“The Americans are just trying to save face,” said Hong Kong pro-democracy lawmaker Claudia Mo, dismissing the rebuke from Washington as “diplomatic talk”.

“The Chinese didn’t exactly invite Snowden to come to Hong Kong,” Mo said.

Hong Kong executive council member Bernard Chan was also critical of Washington, saying “Hong Kong and China were not the ones at fault”.

“It was the US, not Hong Kong, that decided to operate a global electronic spying operation, which even some Americans now believe is out of control,” Chan wrote in the South China Morning Post.

“It was the US, not Hong Kong, that decided directly or via outsourcing to use the services of a young man who turned out to be disloyal.”

Earlier on Thursday, Russia’s Interfax news agency said the US had stopped pressing Russia to extradite Snowden, quoting a source close to the situation.

“There has not been any request either through official or unofficial channels for several days now,” the source told the agency.

Snowden has applied for asylum in 27 countries.

Although many of them have already turned down his request, Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro offered “humanitarian asylum” to Snowden last week.

But the country’s foreign minister Elias Jaua said on Thursday that Snowden had yet to accept his country’s offer.

Speaking on the sidelines of the Mercosur trade bloc summit in Montevideo, he said his government had had no contact with Snowden.

Earlier, Jaua said that Mercosur leaders, when they meet on Friday, would release a resolution denouncing the diversion of the jet carrying Bolivia’s President Evo Morales home from Moscow last week.

Morales, who accused four European nations – France, Italy, Portugal and Spain – of denying their airspace because they believed Snowden was hiding on his plane, has been invited to the Mercosur summit. – AFP

China police fire on Tibetans honouring Dalai Lama: Groups

Chinese police blocking exiled Tibetans from ascending a hill in homage to the Dalai Lama

Chinese police opened fire on Tibetans marking the Dalai Lama’s 78th birthday, shooting at least one monk in the head and seriously wounding several other people, two overseas groups said Tuesday.

Security forces disrupted Tibetans in Sichuan province’s Daofu county as they carried out rituals to honour their exiled leader, whom Beijing denounces as a separatist, said the US-based International Campaign for Tibet (ICT) and India-based phayul.com.

Regional authorities denied the allegations.

“Two Tibetan monks were shot in the head and several others seriously injured after Chinese police opened fire at a crowd,” ICT said, citing unnamed local and exile sources.

It named the monks as Tashi Sonam and Ugyen Tashi, and said both were in hospital.

Armed police and soldiers who arrived to block the group began shooting and using tear gas “without warning”, it said, citing two Tibetans in exile.

At least 20 people were detained after the incident on Saturday, ICT added.

Phayul, a news site on Tibet, said police opened fire after a monk tried to “drive past the security blockade”, citing an overseas Tibetan. One monk was shot in the head, the site said.

Police and religious affairs authorities in Daofu both told AFP: “There was no incident of this kind”.

The county is part of Ganzi prefecture, one of southwestern China’s Tibetan-majority areas.

Members of the ethnic minority have long complained of religious and cultural repression by Beijing, and more than 100 have set themselves on fire in recent years in apparent protest at Chinese rule.

Beijing insists it respects ethnic minorities and has invested heavily to develop Tibetan areas. It blames self-immolations on overseas groups seeking to push a separatist agenda.

Friction in Tibetan areas has sharpened as ethnic majority Han Chinese have increasingly settled in Tibetan areas. Reports of authorities opening fire are rare, however.

The Dalai Lama fled Tibet following a failed uprising against Chinese rule in 1959 and later founded the Tibetan government-in-exile in India.

China has denounced foreign leaders for meeting with the Nobel peace laureate.

Last month Beijing denied reports that it had relaxed its policies of publicly denouncing the Dalai Lama and banning worship of his image.

At a regular press briefing Tuesday, foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying called him “a political exile engaged in separating his country and undermining the social stability of the country”.

“The Dalai clique is using his birthday to promote the separatist agenda of the Dalai Lama,” she said, adding she was not aware of the reported shooting incident. – AFP

Rice leaves UN with final blast over Syrian ‘disgrace’

US ambassador Susan Rice left the United Nations on Tuesday slamming the Security Council’s failure to act over the worsening Syria conflict as a “moral and strategic disgrace.”

But while Rice criticized Russia and China for their veto of resolutions on the Syria war, she said it was not inevitable that relations with Russia would continue to sour.

Rice, who moves to become President Barack Obama’s national security advisor, said: “The repeated failure of the Security Council to unify on the crucial issue of Syria I think is a stain on this body and something that I will forever regret.”

“The council’s inaction on Syria is a moral and strategic disgrace that history will judge harshly,” Rice told reporters after making her farewells to other UN envoys after four and a half years as US ambassador.

Russia and China have three times used their vetoes as permanent members of the Security Council to block western-proposed resolutions that would have increased pressure on President Bashar al-Assad.

Rice stressed that there were no sanctions or threats of force in the proposed resolutions which she called “very mild.”

“Yet we have been paralyzed, and I don’t know how in any circumstance one could ascribe that to a failure of US policy or US leadership, when the vast majority of the council was ready and willing to move ahead.”

Russia and China accused the United States, France and Britain of only seeking regime change in Syria, where the United Nations says more than 93,000 people have been killed in the past 27 months.

Rice said tougher sanctions against Iran and North Korea had been a Security Council success and showed it was possible to work with Russia, which could become a key dossier in her new White House job.

At Rice’s final closed consultations, Russia’s UN ambassador Vitaly Churkin read out a mock council statement which “expressed relief” at Rice’s departure, according to diplomats at the meeting.

Russia is a “complex” relationship, Rice acknowledged to reporters after the good natured farewell from her rival envoy.

“While there are certainly important points of divergence, and there have been points of friction and there undoubtedly will be in the future, I am not prepared to predict that that is inevitable,” she said.

“On issues as important as Iran and North Korea, and many others, we have been able to find common ground and effect outcomes that have been beneficial,” Rice said.

Samantha Power, a White House advisor, has been named as the new UN ambassador and is awaiting Congress confirmation. – AFP

White House wants Snowden extradited from Russia to America

The U.S. assumes National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden remains in Russia, and officials are working with Moscow in hopes he will be expelled and returned to America to face criminal charges, President Barack Obama’s spokesman said Monday. He declared that a decision by Hong Kong not to detain Snowden has “unquestionably” hurt relations between the United States and China.

Snowden left Hong Kong, where he has been in hiding, and flew to Moscow but then apparently did not board a plane bound for Cuba as had been expected. His whereabouts were a mystery. The founder of the WikiLeaks secret-spilling organization, Julian Assange, said he wouldn’t go into details about where Snowden was but said he was safe.

Snowden has applied for asylum in Ecuador, Iceland and possibly other countries, Assange said.

At the White House, spokesman Jay Carney said the U.S. was expecting the Russians “to look at the options available to them to expel Mr. Snowden back to the United States to face justice for the crimes with which he is charged.”

“The Chinese have emphasized the importance of building mutual trust,” he added. “And we think that they have dealt that effort a serious setback. If we cannot count on them to honor their legal extradition obligations, then there is a problem. And that is a point we are making to them very directly.”

Snowden has given highly classified documents to The Guardian and The Washington Post newspapers disclosing U.S. surveillance programs that collect vast amounts of phone records and online data in the name of foreign intelligence, often sweeping up information on American citizens. He also told the South China Morning Post that “the NSA does all kinds of things like hack Chinese cellphone companies to steal all of your SMS data.”

Snowden still has perhaps more than 200 sensitive documents, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said over the weekend.

He had been in hiding in Hong Kong, a former British colony with a degree of autonomy from mainland China. The United States formally sought Snowden’s extradition but was rebuffed by Hong Kong officials who said the U.S. request did not fully comply with their laws. The Justice Department rejected that claim, saying its request met all of the requirements of the extradition treaty between the U.S. and Hong Kong.

Said Carney: “We are just not buying that this was a technical decision by a Hong Kong immigration official. This was a deliberate choice by the government to release a fugitive despite a valid arrest warrant, and that decision unquestionably has a negative impact on the U.S.-China relationship.”

The dual lines of diplomacy — harsh with China, hopeful with the Russians — came just days after Obama met separately with leaders of both countries in an effort to close gaps on some of the major disputes facing them.

Snowden arrived in Moscow on Sunday, but his whereabouts were thrown into question Monday when a plane took off from Moscow for Cuba with an empty seat booked in his name. The U.S. has revoked his passport.

In Washington, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said it would be “deeply troubling” if Russia or Hong Kong had adequate notice about Snowden’s plans to flee to a country that would grant him asylum and still allowed him leave.

“We don’t know, specifically, where he may head, or what his intended destination may be,” Kerry said, responding to a question during a news conference in New Delhi where he was discussing bilateral issues between the U.S. and India.

U.S. officials pointed to improved cooperation with the Russians in the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombing and to assistance the U.S. has given Russia on law enforcement cases.

“We continue to hope that the Russians will do the right thing,” Kerry told NBC News. “We think it’s very important in terms of our relationship. We think it’s very important in terms of rule of law. These are important standards. We have returned seven criminals that they requested for extradition from the United States over the last two years. So we really hope that the right choice will be made here.”

“We don’t know, specifically, where he may head, or what his intended destination may be,” Kerry said during a news conference in New Delhi.

Carney said the U.S. was in touch through diplomatic and law enforcement channels with countries through which Snowden might travel or where he might end up.

“The U.S. is advising these governments that Mr. Snowden is wanted on felony charges and as such should not be allowed to proceed in any further international travel, other than is necessary to return him here to the United States,” Carney said.

An Aeroflot representative who wouldn’t give her name told The Associated Press that Snowden wasn’t on flight SU150 to Havana, which was filled with journalists trying to track him down.

In Moscow, security around the aircraft was heavy prior to boarding and guards tried to prevent the scrum of photographers and cameramen from taking pictures of the plane, heightening the speculation that Snowden might have been secretly escorted on board.

After spending a night in Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport, Snowden had been expected to fly to Cuba and Venezuela en route to possible asylum in Ecuador.

Some analysts said it was likely that the Russians were questioning Snowden, interested in what he knew about U.S. electronic espionage against Moscow.

“If Russian special services hadn’t shown interest in Snowden, they would have been utterly unprofessional,” Igor Korotchenko, a former colonel in Russia’s top military command turned security analyst, said on state Rossiya 24 television.

The White House’s tough response to Hong Kong’s decision to let Snowden leave came just two weeks after Obama met with Chinese President Xi Jinping for two days of personal diplomacy in a desert retreat in California.

Carney said that after the U.S. sought Snowden’s extradition from Hong Kong, authorities there requested additional information from the U.S.

“The U.S. had been in communication with Hong Kong about these inquiries and we were in the process of responding to the request when we learned that Hong Kong authorities had allowed the fugitive to leave Hong Kong,” Carney said.

Ecuador’s foreign minister, Ricardo Patino, said his government had received an asylum request, adding Monday that the decision “has to do with freedom of expression and with the security of citizens around the world.”

Ecuador has rejected some previous U.S. efforts at cooperation and has been helping Assange avoid prosecution by allowing him to stay at its embassy in London.

But Assange’s comments that Snowden had applied in multiple places opened other possibilities of where he might try to go.

WikiLeaks has said it is providing legal help to Snowden at his request and that he was being escorted by diplomats and legal advisers from the group.

Icelandic officials have confirmed receiving an informal request for asylum conveyed by WikiLeaks, which has strong links to the tiny North Atlantic nation. But authorities there have insisted that Snowden must be on Icelandic soil before making a formal request. – AP

US warns countries against Snowden travel

Fugitive former U.S. spy agency contractor Edward Snowden was seeking asylum in Ecuador on Sunday after Hong Kong allowed his departure for Russia in a slap to Washington’s efforts to extradite him on espionage charges.

In a major embarrassment for President Barack Obama, an aircraft thought to have carried Snowden landed in Moscow on Sunday, and the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks said he was “bound for the Republic of Ecuador via a safe route for the purposes of asylum.”

Earlier, Ecuadorean Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino, visiting Vietnam, tweeted: “The Government of Ecuador has received an asylum request from Edward J. #Snowden.”

It was a blow to Obama’s foreign policy goals of resetting ties with Russia and building a partnership with China. The leaders of both countries were willing to snub the American president in a month when each had held talks with Obama.

The United States continued efforts to prevent Snowden from gaining asylum. It warned Western Hemisphere nations that Snowden “should not be allowed to proceed in any further international travel, other than is necessary to return him to the United States,” a State Department official said.

U.S. Senator Charles Schumer charged that Russian President Vladimir Putin likely knew and approved of Snowden’s flight to Russia and predicted “serious consequences” for a U.S.-Russian relationship already strained over Syria and human rights.

“Putin always seems almost eager to stick a finger in the eye of the United States – whether it is Syria, Iran and now of course with Snowden,” Schumer, a New York Democrat, told CNN’s “State of the Union” program. He also saw “the hand of Beijing” in Hong Kong’s decision to let Snowden leave the Chinese territory despite the U.S. extradition request.

Ecuador, which has been sheltering WikiLeaks‘ founder Julian Assange at its London embassy for the past year, once again took center stage in an international diplomatic saga over U.S. data secrecy.

Ecuador’s ambassador to Russia, Patricio Alberto Chavez Zavala, told reporters at a Moscow airport hotel he would hold talks with Snowden and Sarah Harrison, a WikiLeaks representative.

Hours later, shortly after midnight (2000 GMT Sunday), the ambassador emerged from a business-class lounge near the hotel and refused to say whether he had met Snowden or make any other comment. Shortly before he appeared, a cart with three plates of salmon and a Starbucks bag were rolled into the lounge.

Snowden, who had worked at a U.S. National Security Agency facility in Hawaii, had been hiding in Hong Kong, the former British colony that returned to China in 1997, since leaking details about secret U.S. surveillance programs to news media.

U.S. authorities had said on Saturday they were optimistic Hong Kong would cooperate over Snowden.

U.S. authorities have charged Snowden with theft of federal government property, unauthorized communication of national defense information and wilful communication of classified communications intelligence to an unauthorized person, with the latter two charges falling under the U.S. Espionage Act.

A source at Russian airline Aeroflot said on Sunday that Snowden was booked on a flight scheduled to depart for Havana on Monday at 2:05 p.m. (1005 GMT) from the same Moscow airport where the flight from Hong Kong arrived, Sheremetyevo.

The chief of Cuba’s International Press Center, Gustavo Machin, said he had no such information though pro-government bloggers heaped praise on Snowden and condemned U.S. spying activity.

Venezuela, Cuba and Ecuador are all members of the ALBA bloc, an alliance of leftist governments in Latin America that pride themselves on their “anti-imperialist” credentials.

In their statement announcing Snowden’s departure, the Hong Kong authorities said they were seeking clarification from Washington about reports of U.S. spying on government computers in the territory.

The Obama administration has previously painted the United States as a victim of Chinese government computer hacking.

At a summit this month, Obama called on his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping to acknowledge the threat posed by “cyber-enabled espionage” against the United States and to investigate the problem. Obama also met Putin in Northern Ireland last week.

A spokesman for the Hong Kong government said it had allowed the departure of Snowden – considered a whistleblower by his supporters and a criminal or even a traitor by his critics – as the U.S. request for his arrest did not comply with the law.

However, a U.S. Justice Department official said at no point in discussions through Friday did Hong Kong raise issues about the sufficiency of the U.S. arrest request.

“In light of this, we find their decision to be particularly troubling,” the official said.

U.S. sources familiar with the issue said Washington had revoked Snowden’s U.S. passport. State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said revoking the passport of someone under a felony arrest warrant was routine and does not affect citizenship status.

“It’s a shocker,” Simon Young, a law professor with Hong Kong University said. “I thought he was going to stay and fight it out. The U.S. government will be irate.”

The issue has been a major problem for Obama, who has found his domestic and international policy agenda sidelined as he has scrambled to deflect accusations that U.S. surveillance practices violate privacy protections and civil rights. The president has maintained that the measures have been necessary to thwart attacks on the United States.

The White House had no comment on Sunday’s developments. – Reuters

Dollar soars on news of diminishing US stimulus

The dollar soared Thursday as global markets reeled from the US Federal Reserve’s signal it may start to taper its massive stimulus this year.

News of a cash crunch in China also sent jitters through the market, driving investors into the safe-have dollar.

The euro fell to $1.3223 around 2200 GMT from $1.3297 late Wednesday.

The dollar jumped against the Japanese currency, to 97.27 yen from 96.39 yen, while the euro rose to 128.62 yen from 128.24.

“The price action in the US dollar today confirms that yesterday’s Federal Reserve meeting marked a major turning point for the greenback,” said Kathy Lien of BK Asset Management.

Stock markets across the globe and commodity prices swooned after Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said Wednesday that the central bank could begin to wind down its $85 billion-a-month stimulus program as early as this year if the US economy continues to improve.

Analysts said the markets focused on the timetable for the tapering instead of the Fed’s statement that any move is conditional on the economic outlook.

The world’s reserve currency also benefited from renewed concerns about slowing growth in China, the world’s second largest economy, after weak manufacturing data.

Lien noted that interbank overnight lending rates in China had spiked to a record high in a rise that began two weeks ago, but the central bank has refrained from injecting money into the system.

The situation was made worse by weakening economic data, she said.

“Now China finds itself in a liquidity crunch begging for the central bank to step in,” Lien said.

“The central bank however refuses to do because they want to punish speculators and are in the midst of reforming the economy but the longer they hold off, the more disruption it will have on China’s economy and the global financial markets.”

The dollar rose to 0.9275 Swiss franc from 0.9277 late Wednesday.

The pound, however, was stronger against the greenback, fetching $1.5501, up from $1.5483. – AFP

China benefits most from Iraq oil

China already buys nearly half the oil that Iraq produces, nearly 1.5 million barrels a day, and is angling for an even bigger share, bidding for a stake now owned by Exxon Mobil in one of Iraq’s largest oil fields.

“The Chinese are the biggest beneficiary of this post-Saddam oil boom in Iraq,” said Denise Natali, a Middle East expert at the National Defense University in Washington. “They need energy, and they want to get into the market.”

Before the invasion, Iraq’s oil industry was sputtering, largely walled off from world markets by international sanctions against the government of Saddam Hussein, so his overthrow always carried the promise of renewed access to the country’s immense reserves. Chinese state-owned companies seized the opportunity, pouring more than $2 billion a year and hundreds of workers into Iraq, and just as important, showing a willingness to play by the new Iraqi government’s rules and to accept lower profits to win contracts.

“We lost out,” said Michael Makovsky, a former Defense Department official in the Bush administration who worked on Iraq oil policy. “The Chinese had nothing to do with the war, but from an economic standpoint they are benefiting from it, and our Fifth Fleet and air forces are helping to assure their supply.”

The depth of China’s commitment here is evident in details large and small.

In the desert near the Iranian border, China recently built its own airport to ferry workers to Iraq’s southern oil fields, and there are plans to begin direct flights from Beijing and Shanghai to Baghdad soon. In fancy hotels in the port city of Basra, Chinese executives impress their hosts not just by speaking Arabic, but Iraqi-accented Arabic.

Notably, what the Chinese are not doing is complaining. Unlike the executives of Western oil giants like Exxon Mobil, the Chinese happily accept the strict terms of Iraq’s oil contracts, which yield only minimal profits. China is more interested in energy to fuel its economy than profits to enrich its oil giants.

Chinese companies do not have to answer to shareholders, pay dividends or even generate profits. They are tools of Beijing’s foreign policy of securing a supply of energy for its increasingly prosperous and energy hungry population. “We don’t have any problems with them,” said Abdul Mahdi al-Meedi, an Iraqi Oil Ministry official who handles contracts with foreign oil companies. “They are very cooperative. There’s a big difference, the Chinese companies are state companies, while Exxon or BP or Shell are different.”

China is now making aggressive moves to expand its role, as Iraq is increasingly at odds with oil companies that have cut separate deals with Iraq’s semiautonomous Kurdish region. The Kurds offer more generous terms than the central government, but Iraq and the United States consider such deals illegal.

Late last year, the China National Petroleum Corporation bid for a 60 percent stake in the lucrative West Qurna I oil field, a stake that Exxon Mobil may be forced to divest because of its oil interests in Iraqi Kurdistan. Exxon Mobil, however, has so far resisted pressure to sell, and in March the Chinese company said it would be interested in forming a partnership with the American company for the oil field.

If the United States invasion and occupation of Iraq ended up benefiting China, American energy experts say the unforeseen turn of events is not necessarily bad for United States interests. The increased Iraqi production, much of it pumped by Chinese workers, has also shielded the world economy from a spike in oil prices resulting from Western sanctions on Iranian oil exports. And with the boom in American domestic oil production in new shale fields surpassing all expectations over the last four years, dependence on Middle Eastern oil has declined, making access to the Iraqi fields less vital for the United States.

At the same time, China’s interest in Iraq could also help stabilize the country as it faces a growing sectarian conflict.- NYT

China could become US nightmare

Most Americans assume that the U.S. military is so vastly superior to everyone else that no other nation would ever dream of fighting a full-scale war against us. Unfortunately, that assumption is dead wrong. In recent years, the once mammoth technological gap between the U.S. military and the Chinese military has been closing at a frightening pace. China has been accomplishing this by brazenly stealing our technology and hacking into our computer systems. The Pentagon and the Obama administration know all about this, but they don’t do anything about it. Perhaps the fact that China owns about a trillion dollars of our national debt has something to do with that. In any event, today China has the largest military in the world and the second largest military budget in the world. They have stolen plans for our most advanced jets, helicopters, ships and missile systems. It is estimated that stealing our technology has saved China about 25 years of research and development. In addition, China is rapidly developing a new generation of strategic weapons that could potentially enable it to actually win a future war against the United States. At one time such a notion would have been unthinkable, but as you will see below, the next war with China could go very badly for the United States.

The Washington Post is reporting on a confidential report that was prepared for the Pentagon, and what this report says about the extent of Chinese cyber espionage is absolutely startling. Will China know ALL of our secrets at some point? The following is a brief excerpt from the Washington Post article about the theft of our military technology by China. It turns out that Chinese hackers have gotten their hands on plans for almost all of the new cutting edge weapons systems that we have been developing…

Some of the weapons form the backbone of the Pentagon’s regional missile defense for Asia, Europe and the Persian Gulf. The designs included those for the advanced Patriot missile system, known as PAC-3; an Army system for shooting down ballistic missiles, known as the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD; and the Navy’s Aegis ballistic-missile defense system.

Also identified in the report are vital combat aircraft and ships, including the F/A-18 fighter jet, the V-22 Osprey, the Black Hawk helicopter and the Navy’s new Littoral Combat Ship, which is designed to patrol waters close to shore.

Also on the list is the most expensive weapons system ever built — the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, which is on track to cost about $1.4 trillion.

One military expert that the Washington Post showed the report to was absolutely stunned…

“That’s staggering,” said Mark Stokes, executive director of the Project 2049 Institute, a think tank that focuses on Asia security issues. “These are all very critical weapons systems, critical to our national security. When I hear this in totality, it’s breathtaking.”

The experts said the cybertheft creates three major problems. First, access to advanced U.S. designs gives China an immediate operational edge that could be exploited in a conflict. Second, it accelerates China’s acquisition of advanced military technology and saves billions in development costs. And third, the U.S. designs can be used to benefit China’s own defense industry. There are long-standing suspicions that China’s theft of designs for the F-35 fighter allowed Beijing to develop its version much faster.

But it isn’t just hackers that the U.S. military needs to be concerned about.

The truth is that the Chinese are stealing secrets from us any way that they can.

For example, the Chinese use attractive young women to seduce our defense contractors. In fact, as the Washington Times recently reported, one 59-year-old American man was recently charged with passing very sensitive secrets to a 27-year-old Chinese “honeypot” that he was seeing…

A U.S. defense contractor who works in intelligence at the military’s Pacific Command in Hawaii has been charged with passing classified national security information to a 27-year-old Chinese woman he was dating.

Benjamin Pierce Bishop, 59, is accused of sending the woman an email in May with information on Pacom’s war plans, nuclear weapons and U.S. relations with international partners, according to the complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Honolulu and unsealed Monday.

The complaint goes on to allege that Mr. Bishop told the woman over the telephone in September about the deployment of U.S. nuclear weapons and about the ability of the U.S. to detect other nations’ short- and medium-range ballistic missiles.

Another way that China is gaining a strategic advantage over the U.S. is by getting the U.S. military to become increasingly dependent upon them. According to Forbes, now the U.S. military is even leasing a Chinese satellite for communications purposes…

American dependence on China grows by the day. The latest news is that the United States has been reduced to leasing a Chinese satellite to handle communications with U.S. military bases in Africa. Surprising, isn’t it? The nation that launched the world’s first communications satellite (I remember it well – it was called Telstar) has so lost its manufacturing mojo that it has to rely on its most formidable military adversary to provide the hardware for some of its most sensitive communications. This at a time when underlying unemployment rates among U.S. manufacturing workers remain at near-depression levels.

Isn’t that crazy?

And a recent Senate report discovered that many of our most advanced weapons systems are absolutely riddled with counterfeit Chinese parts…

A recent Senate report, titled Inquiry Into Counterfeit Electronic Parts In The Department Of Defense Supply Chain, “uncovered overwhelming evidence of large numbers of counterfeit parts making their way into critical defense systems.”

The investigation found 1,800 cases of counterfeit electronic parts involving over one million suspect parts in 2009-10 alone, thereby exposing “a defense supply chain that relies on hundreds of unveiled independent distributors to supply electronic parts for some of our most sensitive systems.”

The report concluded, among other things, that China is the “dominant source” of counterfeit products that enter the DoD supply chain, that the Chinese government does little to stop it and that the DoD doesn’t know the “scope and impact” of these parts on critical defense systems.

Who in the world would be stupid enough to allow one of their greatest strategic enemies to supply large numbers of parts for key weapons systems?

Apparently we are that stupid.

Things are particularly bad when it comes to semiconductors…

Senator John McCain commented: “We can’t tolerate the risk of a ballistic missile interceptor failing to hit its target, a helicopter pilot unable to fire his missiles, or any other mission failure because of a counterfeit part.” Calling the issue “a ticking time bomb,” Brian Toohey, president of the Semiconductor Industry Association, commented: “The catastrophic failure risk inherently found in counterfeit semiconductors places our citizens and military personnel in unreasonable peril.”

It would be bad enough if we just had to worry about counterfeit parts failing. But what if China has a way to shut some of those parts down in the event of a conflict? What if some of those parts contain “Trojan Horse” computer chips or malware?

That may sound crazy, but unfortunately Trojan Horse chips can be extremely difficult to detect. The following is from a recent Forbes article…

As the Defense Science Board pointed out, Trojan Horse circuitry is almost impossible to detect even with the most rigorous analysis. This is particularly so if a saboteur can accomplish matching subversions in both software and relevant hardware.

And as I mentioned above, China is rapidly developing a vast array of new strategic weapons which may enable it to actually win the next war with the United States.

For example, China has been developing a new generation of inter-continental and submarine-launched nuclear missiles.

The submarine-launched missiles are of particular concern…

The Ju Lang-2 intercontinental missile is the second generation of Chinese submarine-launched ballistic missiles.

It’s a closely held secret, and details are sketchy. If it lives up to what public military intelligence says it is, it’s a huge get for China, especially with their new sub fleet.

The missile is believed to have a range of 8,000 km, and can carry conventional or nuclear warheads.

Do you remember a few years ago when a Chinese sub fired a missile from just off the west coast of the United States?

We didn’t know that the sub was there. If that missile had been fired at Los Angeles it would have been destroyed long before we could have ever responded.

And don’t think that a first strike by either China or Russia is inconceivable. As I have written about previously, the U.S. strategic nuclear arsenal has already been reduced by about 95 percent, and Obama seems absolutely determined to whittle it down even more. In fact, there has been talk that the Obama administration ultimately wants to reduce our arsenal down to just 300 warheads. If Russia or China knows exactly where those warheads are, it would be very easy to take them out in less than 10 minutes with a submarine-based first strike.

And China has also reportedly been developing very sophisticated EMP weapons. The following is from a WND report…

In 2011, it was first revealed that China was developing EMP weapons to be used against U.S. aircraft carriers in any future conflict, especially over Taiwan, according to a 2005 National Ground Intelligence Center study.

That center study said the Chinese were developing a family, or “assassin’s mace” of EMP and high-powered microwave, or HPM, weapons to be used by a technologically inferior force such as China’s, against U.S. military forces.

The once secret but now declassified study pointed out that the Chinese could detonate an EMP weapon some 30 to 40 kilometers over Taiwan or – by inference – a U.S. carrier strike group – and destroy the electronics capability on which U.S. network-centric strategy depends.

But an EMP weapon does not have to be a high-altitude weapon that affects a large area. Smaller scale EMP weapons could take out a wave of fighter jets or a carrier fleet.

In a future conflict with China, we could see U.S. planes falling out of the sky or great naval vessels sitting dead in the water after being hit with EMP blasts.

But isn’t China our friend?

That is what most Americans and most American politicians seem to believe. They seem to think that China is our “buddy” and “trading partner” and that we will never have a military conflict with China.

But that is NOT how the Chinese see things.

The Chinese regard the United States as their greatest strategic threat and as an enemy that needs to be vanquished.

That is why they are constantly spying on us, hacking into our computers and stealing our technology.

That is why they are feverishly building up their military and preparing for a future war with America.

So what do you think?

Do you believe that war with China is in our future? – http://endoftheamericandream.com

New Zealand, China to drop US dollar

New Zealand—Seeking to help its exporters, New Zealand is negotiating with China to make their currencies directly convertible, a spokeswoman for Prime Minister John Key said.

Most of New Zealand’s exports to China are agricultural products—particularly milk powder, meat and wool—while most of its imports from there are computers, mobile phones and clothes. Above, sheep shearering near Dunedin, New Zealand in September.

Wellington’s push is aimed at driving down costs for companies that do business with China, which is close to overtaking Australia as New Zealand’s No. 1 trading partner.

Talks are in the “very early stages” and “progressing,” the spokeswoman said, adding that the issue had been brought up during Mr. Key’s visit to China last month.

Officials at the People’s Bank of China didn’t return calls seeking comment.

Direct convertibility between the Chinese yuan and New Zealand dollar would end the need for New Zealand’s companies and currency traders to convert New Zealand dollars or yuan into U.S. dollars when making or receiving payments.

New Zealand’s two-way trade with China totaled 15.3 billion New Zealand dollars (US$12.4 billion) in the year ended April 30, compared with NZ$16.8 billion with Australia, government data showed last week. Most of New Zealand’s exports to China are agricultural products—particularly milk powder, meat and wool—while most of its imports from there are computers, mobile phones and clothes.

Trade relations took a knock earlier this month when China temporarily blocked millions of dollars of New Zealand meat from entering the country, as it bolstered scrutiny of imports after a spate of mainly homegrown food-safety scandals.

Beijing is undertaking a long, gradual campaign to establish the yuan as a more market-oriented, international currency. China’s State Council, or cabinet, said in a statement this month that the country would draft a plan to allow the yuan to become fully convertible. Meanwhile, the People’s Bank of China is guiding the currency higher and set the median point of its permitted daily trading band last week at the strongest level ever.

China and Australia reached a deal to allow direct convertibility between the yuan and Australian dollar last month; before that, only the U.S. dollar and Japanese yen were directly exchangeable with the yuan. As China has become more industrialized, it has become Australia’s biggest trading partner and buyer of its commodities, including raw materials such as copper and iron ore.

For New Zealand, “There is no time frame for concluding an agreement,” Mr. Key’s spokeswoman said. “We are aware it took Australia around 12 months to achieve its recent agreement with China.”

China topped Australia as New Zealand’s biggest trading partner from February through April this year, recent monthly government data showed. Trade between the countries has been growing ever since they reached a bilateral free-trade agreement five years ago. That increased trade helped New Zealand, like Australia, weather the economic turmoil in Europe and the fragility of the U.S. recovery, which have weighed on global growth.

As well as lowering business costs, direct convertibility may pave the way for New Zealand’s central bank to diversify some of its foreign-exchange assets into Chinese government bonds. Last month, the Reserve Bank of Australia said it planned to invest up to 5% of its foreign-currency assets—close to two billion Australian dollars (US$1.9 billion)—in Chinese government bonds.

The Reserve Bank of New Zealand declined to comment. – WSJ

Voortrekker Monument gets gold award from China – 50% of all Chinese tourists go there

The Voortrekker Monument won a prestigious gold award for overall performance at the China Outbound Travel and Tourism Market, the Pretoria municipality said on Wednesday.

Strategic Executive Director, Nomasonto Ndlovu said in a statement the City of Pretoria were concluding its exhibition at Indaba 2013.

“What a fantastic way to end our participation at Indaba 2013. This is such good news and will give our tourism industry a tremendous boost.”

According to the statement Sonja Lombard, Managing Director of the Voortrekker Monument, said the main reason for winning the award was the 45% increase in Chinese visitors to this landmark.

“More significant is that 50% of all Chinese visiting South Africa visited the Voortrekker Monument,” Lombard was quoted as saying.

Ndlovu said in keeping with government’s decision to promote South Africa as a heritage and cultural hotspot, the City of Pretoria exhibited its wide array of attractions at Indaba 2013.

“The Voortrekker Monument, which receives more than 200 000 visitors per year, was built to commemorate the centenary of the Great Trek. It received its new status as a Grade 1 National Heritage Site last year.”

The building was designed to commemorate the bravery and persistence of the Afrikaner pioneers who left the British-controlled Cape Colony during the Great Trek between 1835 and 1854 in search of freedom further north.

“The monument also serves as an ideal venue for classical music and choral performances. The Hall of Heroes can accommodate up to 600 people, and its fantastic acoustics enhance the music coming from its digital Allen organ,” Ndlovu said.

She added that this is the ninth consecutive year that the city has showcased Pretoria’s tourism offerings at Indaba.

Bird flu or the American flu? Chinese allege ‘biological warfare attack’

A Chinese Air Force officer on Saturday accused the U.S. government of creating the new strain of bird flu now afflicting parts of China as a biological warfare attack.

People’s Liberation Army Sr. Col. Dai Xu said the United States released the H7N9 bird flu virus into China in an act of biological warfare, according to a posting on his blog on Saturday.

The charge was first reported in the state-run Guangzhou newspaper Southern Metropolis Daily and then picked up by several news outlets in Asia.

State Department spokesman Jason Rebholz dismissed the claim. “There is absolutely no truth to these allegations,” he told the Washington Free Beacon.

Seven deaths from the bird flu outbreak were reported as of Tuesday in state-run Chinese media. As many as 24 people reportedly were infected by the disease in Shanghai, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Anhui.

Chinese authorities are trying to calm public fears of a major epidemic, claiming there is no evidence the virus can be transmitted between humans.

The government also is claiming that the outbreak is not related to the recent discovery of thousands of dead pigs floating in a river in China.

The accusation of U.S. biological warfare against China comes as the Pentagon is seeking closer military relations with China. Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is set to travel to China for talks with Chinese military leaders later this month.

Dai is a military strategist who in the past has been outspoken in seeking to foment conflict between China and the United States. He told the Global Times in August that China should go to war over U.S. support for Japan’s claims to the disputed Senkaku Islands.

Writing on Sina Weibo, a Chinese microblogging site akin to Twitter, Dai stated that the new bird flu strain was designed as a biological weapon similar to severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), which he also claimed was developed as a U.S. bio-weapon, that affected the country in 2003.

According to Dai’s posting, the new flu outbreak should not be a cause for concern. “The national leadership should not pay too much attention to it,” the PLA lecturer at the National Defense University wrote. “Or else, it’ll be like in 2003 with SARS!”

“At that time, America was fighting in Iraq and feared that China would take advantage of the opportunity to take other actions,” he said. “This is why they used bio-psychological weapons against China. All of China fell into turmoil and that was exactly what the United States wanted. Now, the United States is using the same old trick. China should have learned its lesson and should calmly deal with the problem.”

Dai said that even if “a few may die” from the flu outbreak, it will not equal one-thousandth of the deaths caused by vehicle accidents in China.

Dai in the past has called for China to punish the United States for U.S. arms sales to rival Taiwan, by selling arms to U.S. enemies. “China recognizes that a few perfunctory protests will not have any effect,” Dai said in 2010. “China can’t directly sanction American arms companies since they did not do business with China … but China can sanction companies that are doing business with China directly, like Boeing or General Electric.”

Dai also has said the United States has used crises with North Korea and offers of cooperation on the issue as a plot to drive a wedge between Beijing and its fraternal communist ally.

Dai also has said U.S. efforts to counter Chinese espionage and intelligence-gathering were part of a U.S. “plot theory” of “western countries threatening others by [releasing] information gained through spying in order to damage the reputations of other countries.”

A State Department official said China notified the World Health Organization (WHO) on March 31 about its first detected human cases of H7N9 infection. Fourteen cases were confirmed by the WHO by April 5, of which six were fatal. The organization said there is no evidence of human-to-human transmission.

“U.S. Embassy Beijing and U.S. Consulate Shanghai are monitoring the situation, working closely with counterparts at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, and the Beijing and Shanghai municipal governments,” the official said.

The colonel’s accusation provoked a widespread response on Chinese websites. One post in reaction joked that Dai’s comment about auto deaths must mean that the United States and Germany are responsible for a conspiracy to produce cars, according to a report in Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post.

Luo Changping, deputy editor of Caijing, said most PLA soldiers would not support Dai’s comments and he urged the colonel to resign and apologize to those who have died from the current bird flu outbreak.

A defiant Dai then said in a new posting Sunday that “it is common knowledge that a group of people in China have been injected with mental toxin by the United States.”

“Now, a group of fake American devils are attacking me,” he wrote in another post. “I will not retreat even half a step.”

Analysts say the colonel’s remarks are a reflection of the growing xenophobic atmosphere within the Chinese military that views the United States as its main enemy.

Former State Department intelligence analyst John Tkacik said China’s military was largely to blame for mishandling the 2003 outbreak of SARS. Tkacik said there was speculation when the epidemic began that “the PLA suspects SARS had emanated from its own biological laboratories and was all the more eager to keep it secret.” China is known to have a covert biological arms program.

“Col. Dai Xu is a shameless liar when he accuses the United States of using bio weapons,” Tkacik told the Free Beacon. “He’s probably motivated by a desire to exculpate the PLA for their mishandling of the epidemic—no doubt most Chinese have happily forgotten the episode—as much as by a cynical xenophobia. But, that’s what passes for deep strategic thought at China’s National Defense University these days.”

The Pentagon has been trying with varying success to develop closer ties to the Chinese military as part of a strategy aimed at building trust. However, China’s military leaders believe the U.S. offers of closer ties are a ruse designed to contain China’s growing military buildup.

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel spoke by phone with China’s Defense Minister Gen. Chang Wanquan on April 2. Chang is the No. 4 defense official after Chinese President Xi Jinping and two other generals who run the Central Military Commission, the Communist Party’s ultimate power organ.

“The leaders both expressed their intention to work together to continue to build a military-to-military relationship that serves the vision of both President Obama and President Xi,” Pentagon press secretary George Little said in a statement after the call.

“The secretary discussed the importance of focusing on areas of sustained dialogue, practical areas of cooperation, and risk reducing measures,” he said.

U.S. ties with China are strained due to China’s reluctance to rein in neighboring North Korea.

China provides North Korea with large amounts of fuel oil and other goods. However, Beijing has not taken steps to pressure Pyongyang using its economic leverage during the ongoing crisis.

The flu has lit up China’s thriving Internet, according to analysts. Over 945,600 microblog postings addressed the flu between April 8 and 9. Since the outbreak began some seven days ago, between 1.3 million and 3 million postings were put online on outlets including Sina Weibo and QQ Weibo.

Tens of thousands of users expressed doubts about the official Shanghai municipal government’s denial of any link between the dead pigs found floating last month in the region’s Huangpu River.

The proximity to the initial outbreak in Shanghai and the river has led to speculation that the pig deaths may have been linked to the flu virus jumping from animals to humans.

That speculation was fueled by reports that one of the victims of the flu was a pig butcher.

The avian flu strain is similar to an earlier outbreak with a significant difference: The current strain does not kill the birds it infects, making it more difficult to identify infected poultry.

The Shanghai government waited 20 days before announcing the first H7N9 infection on March 31. – The Washington Free Beacon